To think anything I did was also his fault?

[Naomi189]

I'm about a year into recovering from my DH having an affair. We stayed together, and there's been generally good progress but we keep having the same argument and I get insanely angry when we have it and I just want to know AIBU.

After he cheated, for the first couple of months I was fairly calm. I was devastated, but I wasn't chucking his clothes out of windows or screaming and shouting.

The first 12 weeks was hell, but in a lot of ways we were closer than ever before and I felt like it would be a lot road but we'd recover from it. We'd been to counselling and attended an online infidelity course and things had been really positive.

One thing drilled into him was the need for total honesty going forwards. During that period, he met the OW for drinks to give her "closure" he felt she "deserved", after he'd expressly promised not to speak to her ever again.

To me, that was actually worse than the affair itself and I went absolutely postal, chucked him out, went on Tinder, got insanely drunk and gave a random date a blow job in the garden and texted DH to tell him.

I'm not proud of that, but he'd had an affair that went on for months and while I was in the process of giving him an opportunity to make amends (and while he'd seen me clearly devastated), he betrayed me again.

So we got through it all eventually, but now as we're trying to do the work on the affair, he keeps banhing on about how I "hurt him too" and how much what I did, damaged HIM.

To which I roll my eyes, go absolutely postal again and tell him HE is responsible for his affair and breaking our marriage and HE is responsible for betraying me again when I was devastated and therefore HE is responsible for any fallout or consequences.

He says I need to take responsibility and just because he screwed someone else 50 times while I was home cooking his dinner, that I still had "choices" and didn't need to behave in ways to deliberately hurt him.

I think I have absolutely zero responsibility for damaging our relationship and that he's lucky I didn't do worse.

Am I wrong here?

Largely we are doing well, but he just will NOT stop bringing this up during arguments which they turn very ugly because it feels like he's trying to act like I'm to blame for reacting to his shit behaviour.

You’re not doing well though are you? Otherwise arguments wouldn’t degenerate back into who did what to who.

You either need to both agree to draw a line under it and move on (and frankly that also includes you not blaming him for what you did in reaction. It might have felt good at the time but it was absolutely your decision to do that) which means not bringing it up.

Or you split up.

In your shoes, I’d split up.

YANBU

Okay so how you handled it wasn’t the best, which you admit yourself, I think I’d have a similar reaction to a betrayal of that size. He drove you to madness because of his infidelity and that fact he brings it up and expects you to grovel concerns me.

I’d have left him on his arse the moment I found out about the cheating

Recovery from a long term affair doesn't mean after a year you "draw a line under it and move on". It means you work through all of it, and there are many steps the betraying partner has to take to make amends and rebuild the marriage that they broke.

We have lots of work to do in the hows, whys, repairing the trust and the damage and it takes - at minimum - from what we have been told by every book, website and our old marriage counsellor that we should expect it to take at least two years to even begin to feel healed.

What caused me to get pissed and give a stranger a blowjob in the garden doesn't need deep unravelling. We know why (my DH had a long term affair and after promising to never hurt me again, he met with his affair partner behind my back). I had reasons to do what I did.

An affair is totally different from that. I should be able to talk about the affair and the 250 days of lying to me, betraying me in every way, without having two hours of retaliation thrown back in my face as if this is somehow the same thing.

@Drummend01 what made me so angry at the time was that he'd seen how devastated I was. He'd seen me take a month of sick leave to cry all day and all night. He'd brought cups of tea and given hugs and wiped away tears and watched me practically scream in pain. He knew the damage he had done. And he had promised me, looked me in the eye and told me he would never lie to me or see OW again. And after months of that he decided to meet her to give her closure. For me, that was beyond the pale. Yes, I wanted to hurt him and while I am not proud of what I did I think he pushed me to the edge and is lucky I didn't just leave him permanently. I was a completely loyal, faithful person and I feel like I was driven to madness and he need to stop trying to put a little bit of the blame onto me.

You're both stuck and you won't heal without some time apart. You can't keep banging the same drum every time you fall out.

The underlying reasons for everything that have happened are still there. Time to dig out the root or it's just going to keep coming to a head.

Really hope there are no kids stuck in the middle of all of this.

@Naomi189 i completely agree with you, the affair is one thing but to then start making amends and promises only to lie again is another level. It seems now that you’re both putting in the effort to move forward, and if that’s what you want then I really hope it works out for you

Honestly you’re not as bad as him but as the saying goes two wrongs don’t make a right and as a woman sometimes we have to make better choices for ourselves as people.

he is responsible but he didn’t force another man’s thing down your throat you did that so you are responsible for your actions and it’s almost like it’ll just keep being played like a tennis game now between you.

you really need to sort your shit out the both of you and grow up.

both need to take working on it seriously or leave .

Have you considered that maybe you’re flogging a dead horse? I think any relationship would struggle to come back from what’s happened.

What he did was disgusting. And I think your reaction was entirely normal. But he feels like you gave him a get out clause. He doesn’t need to feel quite so guilty or pretend to feel ashamed because he can tell himself that you did it too. It doesn’t matter to him that the situation is completely different and that you weren’t even together at that time. He feels like he’s got a stick to beat you with and he’s not going to give that up without a fight.
He’s always going to engage in ‘but what about…’ because it’s not pleasant for him to feel the consequences of his actions. He’s angry with you for making him feel bad about betraying you, and now he gets to express that anger.

I don’t think anything will change unless you have more counselling. But do you really want to give him yet another opportunity to fix what he broke? How many will he need?

I'm totally with you on this. He betrayed you twice. What you did was totally different and unacceptable given the situation. I'm sorry that you've been through so much and I hope things get better.

Bing, where you’re at did the forgiving did the counselling. Sorry to say once a cheat, always a cheat get the hell away from him.
He’s not changed he’s trying to blame you for something he caused sounds like a narcissist to me

We have lots of work to do in the hows, whys, repairing the trust and the damage and it takes - at minimum - from what we have been told by every book, website and our old marriage counsellor that we should expect it to take at least two years to even begin to feel healed.

Yes, but you shouldn’t be spending those two years expecting him to feel “lucky that you didn’t do much worse” in retaliation.

Healing involves realising that you can’t demand his gratitude for you staying and taking ownership of the reasons you did stay without every argument returning to why you might have left.

Please, don’t spend the rest of your life punishing each other, it’s really not worth it.

You need to leave this man. He has no respect for you. He wouldn't have seen OW to give her closure if he had any decent level of empathy. He is going to cheat again. His remorse is fake.

Would divorce be so very much worse than this perpetual holding pattern of reciprocal blame?

I completely agree with you, it’s obvious what you did was the action of someone in a lot pain, reacting to his (double) betrayal. The fact he is trying to make you take “responsibility” for this suggests he isn’t as remorseful as he should be/still being defensive.
I would separate if possible, even with a view to start slowly seeing each other again at some future point. But for now I don’t see how you can move forward and will just be causing each other more pain

Surely nothing is worth living like this?

He sounds inherently untrustworthy.

YANBU.

"He’s always going to engage in ‘but what about…’ because it’s not pleasant for him to feel the consequences of his actions. He’s angry with you for making him feel bad about betraying you, and now he gets to express that anger"

This OP.
He doesn't care about you, just about himself.

I know a lot of people here would leave their DH for having an affair, but I didn't and I am working through that so I'm really not here looking for the advice to leave. It's just quite stressful actually to hear that kind of judgement because when you go through this it's already very difficult without judgement from others.

I don't really believe "once a cheater, always a cheater". Actually I think someone who's been through a long period of gruelling agony as a consequence of cheating has actually usually learned a lot and probably wouldn't put themselves through similar again.

I believe if I left my husband permanently, no WAY would he ever cheat on anybody again. I think he's absolutely learned a lesson of grief, pain and hell that he'd never want on himself ever again.

I've been through the excruciating decision to stay or go already and made my choice to stay. I am just looking to know is IAMU to feel the way I do about this because sometimes when you're angry you can't see clearly if you're being a twat.

He says I need to take responsibility and just because he screwed someone else 50 times while I was home cooking his dinner, that I still had "choices" and didn't need to behave in ways to deliberately hurt him.

You didn’t need to behave in a way to deliberately hurt him but you wanted to. You had good reason to want to hurt him so you did. You can accept responsibility for it at the same time as being justified in it. You do not deserve to hear him wailing about it. Tell him to deal with it like you had to and that you’ll hurt him a million times worse if he ever behaves like a shit again.

@Nagado One thing you learn when you read every book written about infidelity is that people who have affairs have certain weaknesses in their character. That doesn't mean they are terrible human beings or not good spouses, but they have a tendency towards being selfish, rationalising, justifying, entitlement and low self esteem. It can be very hard for them to take "responsibility" for bd actions.

I agree he does this (unknowingly) because he doesn’t need to feel quite so guilty, but I think it;s because his innate selfish mindset means the situation ISN'T completely different in his head. In his head, I caused him enormous pain and therefore that is the same.

He's not trying to hurt me, in his head, I think he's genuinely hurt that I harmed him and caused him pain. He's not angry with me - he just can't comprehend on some level that he wasn't entitled to fidelity or trust or kindness or caring from me.

He was entitled to ZERO. As a consequence of his own actions.

This is why healing is a long road. The cheater has to change their mindsets from being the selfish person they were when a bit of attention made them feel good.

I don't think it makes him a terrible person - he just has weaknesses like the rest of us.

One of my weaknesses is being stubborn and indignant. So I just wanted to know if I am being an arsehole here and he deserves to have me say "I am sorry I hurt you too".

What I actually FEEL is "fuck you. I am glad I sucked his cock and with hindsight I am sorry I didn't shag him for 6 months and tell you later".

This isn't because I don't love my husband - it's because in truth, he is absolutely never going to know how what he did made me feel, and that will always suck.

@Ghastisflabbered

Your post illustrates what it's quite hard to see when you're angry. It's quite hard to see your own flaws!

I do expect him to feel lucky I stayed, I am pretty lovely to him and have been really generous with the healing (he would agree with that if he were here) - I don't think people who have affairs should have any expectation that they keep their spouse. Actually, I think they have chucked their spouse away the moment they made a decision to have an affair.

I don't want to spend all my time punishing him, and I don't think I do that. But if a conversation about his affair generally devolves into "you hurt me too!!!" then I feel like he's trying to

a) make it all about him when he should be being unselfish
b) implying I did something that damaged our marriage, when the reality is as far as I am concerned he had already completely destroyed it
c) minimise or imply a false equivalence.

Being honest, had I done what he did, I'd fully expect him to leave me and shag half of Britain and I wouldn't feel entitled to a damn thing.

After I'd taken full and total responsibility for the affair and all it's repercussions, then and only then would I feel entitled to talk about me being hurt too.

You know OP, I’m really sorry, but relationships aren’t supposed to be this awful and difficult. They’re just not. Are you sure you want to live with this level of resentment your whole life?

@sweetpeaorchestra

It’s obvious what you did was the action of someone in a lot pain, reacting to his (double) betrayal

Thank you. This. It is absolutely nothing like having an affair!

The fact he is trying to make you take “responsibility” for this suggests he isn’t as remorseful as he should be/still being defensive

Thank you, this is exactly what I think. It's a maladaptive mindset of trying to be defensive.

I said to him "you're trying to blame me for the problems we have and I am not even 1% to blame" and he said "I am not trying to blame you, I am just trying to even it out a little".

I think I will probably book us in for a bit of marriage counselling in the hope someone can help him move past this mindset because it's so damaging.

Everything else in the healing process is going really well. Just every six weeks this comes out of his mouth and we have a huge fight.

Voted yabu as you are still with the waste of space.

It's a tough one and I understand why you did what you did and I certainly don't condemn it at all. You must have been in an absolute state.

However, the OW is a person too. He probably told her all sorts of lies throughout the affair about your relationship being dead and how they would end up together , it's pretty normal for men to do that. She probably had her heart broken too. He shouldn't have lied, but ending the affair in person wss the right thing to do. It may well have been better for her to know that yes he definitely meant it was over. Sometimes that finality can be difficult to convey otherwise, especially if he had been feeding her a load of guff previously.

At the end of the day like him, you did have a choice. You wanted to hurt him like he hurt you and that is totally absolutely human, but two wrongs do not make a right.

If you really want to continue to make your marriage work, you do need to accept that your behaviour hurt him, even if you don't consider it on the same scale (and why would you, it was a very different scenario). You would have to own your culpability for that single act. Even if it feels totally unjust that he gets to feel hurt too.

Honestly I'd give up on it. It was a full 3 years of him lying to you. I don't think you'll ever be able to let go of the anger his long term affair has provoked enough to get your head around him also feeling hurt and why should you? Most people wouldn't in your shoes. It was an utter betrayal for a lengthy period of time and the meeting was the straw the snapped the camel.

Can't say that I would ever let go of that anger either. Really feel for you OP. I think you are doing an awful lot for a man who doesn't deserve it.