it's all your fault!

[SidLyon]

A question re: people who get involved in affairs...

 

something I have noticed since the first days when I came on this board ( was trying to work my through my husband having cheated) is that so many people who get involved in affairs ( be they married or other person) seem to almost be "swept along" with things and some even want to assign blame for their behaviors to the other person in the affair...

 

I can see if a married person lies to the other man/woman and says they are not married that they aren't really, in effect, responsible for their actions, as they made their decisions based on a complete lie ( i think there should be some special kind of torment for people who lie like that)...but I just don't get the lines like " it's his fault I am feeling bad right now" or " she made me do it"..it just seems so common...

 

I'm wondering what the reason is for this? Is it shifting the blame out of guilt over what happened, is it naivety, or is it that some people are just more easily influenced than others? Maybe a combination of the three?

 

I'm not trying to sound smug ( and I am sorry if it comes off that way), but I've been hit on by lots of married guys in my time, and I never give them a second glance. Even when I wasn't married I didn't, because they were married. I've also had married guys who were friends ( still do) , and few of them tried to turn it into something more ( you can kind of tell what's up when they start lamenting the state of their marriage:laugh:)...again, as soon as that happens, the friendship is over. The nice words just kind of bounce off...had I decided to get involved with one of the, that , and any negative fallout, would have been on me.

 

I was fortunate in that my husband didn't blame "the other woman" for what happened...but she did try and blame him, me and everyone else...still does, and I know that I'm going to hear about it all over again from her at the upcoming squadron holiday party...for some reason, her new thing is to try and convince me that "it was all his fault" or "it's all your fault" or " I didn't know what I was doing"...:laugh::laugh::laugh: come on, at 35 years of age you didn't know what you were doing?

 

it's so lame that it's funny, and I can actually find something amusing about it now ( i probably shouldn't, but finding it funny is better than finding it sad...she's supposed to stay well away from me, but I kind of let it pass at these functions, as it's just easier that way)...

 

I think I'm just trying to understand that mindset a bit more...for people like her, why is everything always someone else's fault?

 

but this thread isn't just about how any one particular person (wayward spouse, other man/woman, betrayed spouse) blames everyone else...really when it comes right down to it, often they all do...

 

this has kind of been in my mind for a while, but I read a post on here not too log ago this gist of which was how a married guy should feel responsible for his other woman having "baggage" if she ends her marriage because of the affair...

 

seems to me that it pretty unfair...the other woman has 'baggage" ( don't like that term at all, but anyway) because of decisions she made about her life...

 

this isn't to say that she deserves to have been hurt, or that it's okay that she feels bad...rather, if someone is gong to make adult decisions about their life, then they have to accept the fallout and not try and shift the blame...( funny thing is that it wasn't her blaming him, it was someone else...blamed the married man for 'ruining her life'), Most people don't do that, but some do...

it's like when a betrayed spouse is blamed for "making" a wayward spouse cheat...that seems pretty silly. They cheat because, for whatever reason, they wanted to, and didn't really have that much of a problem doing it.

 

I haven't personally met any split-self MM......

 

...

 

I haven't heard anyone bring up split self and then show how this MM has grown and overcome it and is making better, empowering choices. Most often it is employed by the OW to explain why he can never leave.

 

But I haven't seen any cases where it has been brought up where an OW or BS is talking about how through his split-self nature and EMR he then grew and stopped the A and worked on his M or left his M and moved on........

 

I posted yesterday but my post disappeared without explanation, even though many of the others discussing "split-self" stayed. If anyone responded inappropriately to my post I didn't see it as I didn't read LS for several hours.

 

My post was intended to explain my POV on "split-self" which has been used on LS many times to "blame" for the A, so I feel it was on-topic, especially as the point I was responding to (raised my Miss Bee) is still in this thread.

 

So with that long-winded explanation here goes with something similar again...

 

I'm not certain I believe in the split-self hypothesis (or is it a theory?), BUT I can acknowledged that my fWH pretty well ticked all the boxes.

 

So...given that we are now reconciled and any "split" in him is no longer there... I can only assume that anyone who does believe in split-self would say he has stopped the A, worked on his M and grown to be a better man. Presumably Emily Brown (who is the psychologist who is the originator of the split-self hypothesis) would be able to use him as an example of how split-self can be healed.

 

On the other hand a MM who is still in the A after many years is not an example of someone who has/can outgrow his split-self (if it exists). He may in fact be something quite different if he hasn't been able to utilize the relationship with the OW to heal his so-called "split-self".