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.

@EarringsandLipstick

Right - and on what basis have you established my children are being unintentionally abused? Or that their needs are not being met? Because that is an outlandish accusation for which anyone who said it should immediately apologise.

@Naomi189

But your relaying of the conversation sounds ... perfectly fine! The poster was questioning your belief that your self-esteem is fine, you love yourself etc. that's a fair point - if you truly did, you wouldn't allow this man abuse you.

About me & my self-esteem? You're right. It does require more work. As I've said. I too realise that had I had true self-love (I know it sounds cringey) I wouldn't have got into the relationship in the first place. I'm trying to address that, for hopefully future happiness.

It's not that people are saying awful things and behaving like complete twats.

But they're not (in 90% of the posts at least!).

The other quotes are harsh. I think there's parts that are unfair.

However the underlying point, that your relationship is utterly unhappy & dysfunctional, is true, sadly.

But for me, I keep going back to your post this morning about H'a gaslighting leaving you breathless with the shock & hurt of it. Which I told you I'd experienced.

Nobody should do this to you. Anyone who does is not worth your time and the only solution is to make sure he's far away from you.

@EarringsandLipstick

Why is a stranger "questioning" my beliefs about myself several times after being politely told they're barking up the wrong tree?

Jesus Christ.

your husbands a cunt.

if he makes you happy though get on with it. Why you still here arguing with people who don’t agree with you.

@Naomi189

I am going to share something I wouldn’t usually but just in case it helps I will.

DH and I been together 20 years, many years back now he was unfaithful, and it completely and utterly devastated me. I did very similar to you and went all Agatha Christie over every detail, picking everything apart including speaking to the OW and making sure I was illuminated with all the facts. As shattering as it was to know and find out all the details, I had to know, I needed to know because if I was going to even consider forgiving I had to know exactly what it was I was forgiving. He begged me to stay, gave full disclosure, took responsibility, apologised profusely and promised me many many things and jumped through the many hoops and agreed to some specific terms in order to move forwards.

I remember being so angry at myself for still loving him, I was angry at myself for considering forgiving him, infidelity had always been a complete dealbreaker for me and he knew that. I also remember feeling a deep sadness and intense disappointment in him, how easily he had managed to hurt me, how he could risk our family for just a thrill and an ego boost (as like your situation feelings were not involved) I couldn’t reconcile how he could do it. It shook me to my very core, as I’m sure it did for you too.

Like you I made no promises but I did agree to try because what we had was worth it, but I didn’t try for him, I tried for me and because I wanted to. That was hard to admit to myself for a long time, and until I could admit that to myself I had felt like he was getting off too easy, getting to keep his family together after what he had done felt like some kind of injustice but once I realised that I was doing it for me and not for him that helped. I was trying to give myself what I wanted, it just so happened to be what he wanted too.

Forgiving an affair/betrayal is complicated, the feelings and emotions involved are complex and changeable. It’s a very long, tough and tricky uphill road to navigate and there will always be bumps along the way.

What my DH broke with his betrayal has been rebuilt and in very many ways we are stronger for it, we are improved and bettered and I think a lot of that has come from analysing parts ourselves and our relationship that we wouldn’t have had to do otherwise. Importantly he never saw my staying as a green light to be unfaithful and he never saw it as him getting away with it either, but it did get him to face up to what he very almost lost, it did then make him appreciate what he had because he had to work very very hard to keep it. I don’t believe he will make the same mistake again, but I will never again blindly assume that to be the case, and that’s the one big thing that does remain changed in our relationship, I know he is capable of being unfaithful to me and that is not something I can never forget, nor do I want to but it’s been well over a decade now and it’s not something I fear, it’s just something I know to be possible. The blind trusting faith I once had has gone, and nothing will ever bring that back. He knows this! He also knows there will be no third chance, I’ve been extremely explicit about this.

LTB isn’t for everybody, it wasn’t for me. I shocked myself because I always thought that without question I would leave, and indeed I had left in relationships previously. Just because you didn’t leave (or haven’t left yet!), doesn’t mean you are weak or that you are putting up with it, and doesn’t mean that he is getting away with it, or that he will do it again as so many people are so very quick to tell you. It just means that for you, you feel like you have something worth saving, doesn’t mean it will be saved, but you can try because you want to try, and there is no need for you to justify that to anyone but yourself.

For me I am glad I stayed, it’s ancient history of our relationship now, and while we bear the scars and it was tough going getting through it at the time and repairing us was a very long process…..but for what we have had since then it has been worth it.

You’ve been getting such a hard time with posters over analysing your behaviour, telling you should leave or that he will do it again and just generally picking you apart, I just wanted to offer a different voice to all that and tell you that while what has happened has been awful and completely devastating to you it doesn’t always have to automatically spell the end. His betrayal will never be a good thing, but good things can come out of it. 💐

I know you won't accept what I'm about to say ...!

But sometimes strangers can see more accurately the truth of a situation or person. Not every part or nuance, of course.

Plus sadly, some of us have walked a little in your shoes.

You want to proclaim you've high self-esteem & love for yourself. The reality is if that were true you wouldn't allow what's happening to you to take place. (I know because it was true of me - I was able to be denigrated so badly by my H as I basically believed he was right about me)

I said earlier that this thread might not be helpful to you but the Relationships board often has a lot of wise counsel.

@Janieforever i agree with your statement,

“Op, you’re so so angry and unhappy. and it’s not about the responses on here. You’re lashing out hard. Looking for someone to kick. The poster you keep attacking isn’t your enemy, they are not to blame”

whether you like it or not op many other peoples reactions aren’t to go and suck another man’s private area. My focus would’ve been our daughter and doing nice things for her and with her but we are all different and we all make mistakes.

however you’ve came on a public forum expecting everyone to agree you did nothing wrong when infact you did do so which ever way you want to paint it. your attitude stinks and yes some people have been cruel but what do you expect. A good woman with good morals and self respect which I
imagine is plenty on this thread would not of resorted to doing what you did in retaliation to what your husband did.

now you can either take this thread as what ever you want stay with him never trust him be miserably unhappy and as angry as you like at the world for the fact your relationship has failed or you can pull your big girls pants up do what’s right for your children because believe me they and their needs come above your relationship and as we can quite clearly see while he’s been shagging his other woman and you’ve been sucking someone off no one thought about how any of this would effect your children who are watching the fall out no matter how much you keep it away from them I’m sure they have seen and can feel the difference.

grow up shut this thread down and do the right thing and stop blaming others for their response to what you don’t like you asked for it. Not many people will agree with you and some do.

@EarringsandLipstick

I don't agree with you at all. I agree with @ChristmasCrumpet

She's understandably frustrated with now 16 pages of people inventing things that haven't happened, and insisting she felt a certain way, when she's said about 50 times, no, she didn't feel that. But some won't have that and are actually telling OP how she did indeed feel, according to them. Beggars belief

About 90% of this thread is a mixture of irrelevant, invented, repeatedly ignoring information, and accusations

Seeing as the thread is "for me", hopefully my perception is at least of a little value and that's certainly it.

@Lillygolightly

Thanks for sharing that. I'm sure it was horrendous at the time but it is great it did work for you.

Very few posters told OP her H would cheat again or denigrated her decision in itself.

It's her H's ongoing treatment of her, especially his gaslighting behaviour, his lack of ownership & desire to really invest in the marriage, that posters are commenting on.

OP is in an abusive marriage. Your DH seems to have made a terrible error, owned it & invested in your relationship, agreeing the boundaries that were set. OP's H hang managed to even stick to staying away from OW, putting her feelings ahead of OP's.

It doesn't sound comparable at all.

I think whoever it was who said the BJ has alleviated him of his guilt and levelled the playing field in his mind is on the right path. I imagine it's common after a betrayal for the cheater to try and minimise their actions and the impact of them as much as possible so they can live with themselves. Even if he appears to be engaging well with the therapy and self-reflection, it does sound like underneath that he has a developed a view that what he has done can now be defended in some way. Hence the gaslighting etc. He not being vulnerable.

If this has now become a defence then i think this could be challenging to unpick with him. He will naturally want to hold on to it because it's saving him from feeling terrible. Also if he has an avoidant personality then this will play into avoiding feeling so vulnerable and at the mercy of difficult emotions/internal states.

I wonder if you can bring this to couple therapy to shine some light on it.

@EarringsandLipstick

You believe that "Silver" whatever her name is from Mumsnet who has never met me has done a more accurate self esteem evaluation of me that my qualified therapist who's spent in excess of 60 sessions with me working, very specifically, on evaluating my self esteem?

Is this seriously what you think? I honestly can't help you 😆You're all bananas!

I think you do need to own what you did. You clearly intended to cause him harm and/or distress as after you did what you did you told him all about it.
The reason that you did this is understandable, he had caused you significant pain and you wanted him to hurt to.
It sounds like he is trying to hold your actions against you to remove some of the blame from himself.
Rather than arguing have you tried owning it and telling him that he is correct you did cause him intentional harm as at the time you wanted him to feel just a little bit of what he had made you feel.
Doing this doesn't remove any blame from him, as you say if he had never broken your trust not only with the affair but also with the closure meeting you would never have been put in the position you were put in. It just might stop him trying to deflect some of the responsibility onto you.

That's fine OP. It's of course up to you how you want to react to the opinions offered.

I guess as someone who was in an abusive relationship, the hallmarks are way too similar in yours, and I thought important to say that, intended supportively.

I had no idea my H's behaviour was abusive. I thought afterwards that I wish someone could have told me, could have shared a story of their own. (I wasn't on MN then).

That's all I was trying to do.

When I went to counselling I vehemently denied to my counsellor that I'd been abused. She recommended 2 books. I picked them up & immediately put them down, annoyed she even thought they were relevant. I also was irritated that she was casting me as a victim
I see a lot of parallels in my initial response & yours, which is why I posted.

The penny did drop with me - and then for a while it was harder. I didn't want to believe it. It's been hard to work through it & very much an ongoing process.
❤️

Ok OP: you win the thread! You have massive self worth and are calm, confident, and ecstatically happy and secure in your relationship!

I feel like I’m forgetting the first post which appeared to describe quite a different woman whose life and life choices seemed to be much more structured around reacting to her cheating husband.

But be that as it may I’m going to say that you win the thread. And in a similar vein you will “win” the marriage. Surely picking fights with strangers on the internet, bragging about your 60 hours of counseling, and proclaiming you are healed is all it takes to make your dh admit that he hurt you and deserves to accept whatever treatment or punishment or reminding that you dish out.

The place where you snd your supporters make your error is thinking that you can win a battle on the internet, or in a marriage, or with gravity. You can’t. The people who kindly tried to assist you on this thread will not magically agree that you are not a rage filled woman in an abusive/unhappy/broken relationship with a cheater who ultimately will try to escape again. The husband who is dutifully attending therapy is not going to give up his selfish sense of wounded ego over the blow job. Gravity will not flow upwards.

So you do you. You are determined to believe that the injured party (you) gets to win something. Even if its just a few stray plaudits from some randoms on the internet or the ego boost of a random tinder date. Truly has it been said that only the unexamined life is worth living. Oh , wait, thats backwards.

I would suggest examining your life and life choices again. If you want to stay with your dh you have to accept him back warts and all and not fantasize that he will magically transform into someone else —someone who will accept that his sin is greater than yours, for example. Perhaps he won’t even agree to be your whipping boy for the next thirty years. Perhaps he will break other vows to you again.

Nothing any online commenter says or doesn’t say will affect the main person who matters here to you: your dh. We could berate him but he’s not going to be educated by us. You are here and you asked for help and only you can change or act. So that is why we mostly discussed your choices and goals. Not because we didn’t sympathize with you.

Maybe not! But I think Silver made perceptive comments.

I also know that we hear what we want to hear, including in therapy, until we are ready.

I spent over a year just talking, crying, retelling my story. I remember saying to my counsellor, when will I move to 'fixing' all this? She said it was a process, it would come, but for now, I just needed the sessions to be a 'safe space' - she was right.

Also I've no doubt you are confident, able & have strong self-worth in many contexts.we all wear different personas. That's how I was seen, too eg professionally. It didn't take away from the lack of this in my personal life tho.

@Lillygolightly Thanks so much for sharing this story. I am really glad this worked out for you and I do appreciate it. One of the most unhelpful things in this process is people passing judgements on you.

That's a really good post @pikkumyy77 a lot of wisdom there (not trying to get at you OP, I just mean how the poster has phrased her points & the underlying advice).

Obviously men go through shit marriages too, but my heart breaks for the utter crap so many women endure from thoughtless selfish narcissistic men 😞

OP I think the issue with this thread is that you have a great many people projecting onto you.
They are coming from a good place, but when you try to tell them their reality is not yours, they can’t accept it and are gaslighting you (unintentionally I’m sure).

Surely you have got what you need from this thread by now?

@EarringsandLipstick I suspect there's various reasons people post on threads like this.

Some people genuinely want to help.
Some people want to troll
Some people want to engage in a kind of story game

It's a problem I think that people can't stop projecting their narrative onto someone else's life. They read a word or a sentence and declare it to be what they think it must be. They can't accept the situation is not the same.

I think some of the things my husband says are abusive. I don't think that means I am in an abusive marriage. It's entirely possible some of the things I say might be abusive. I would have to investigate it quite a lot before I came to such a serious conclusion. But on Mumnset you just declare things fait acommpli.

Some of the things said here have been truly preposterous. Saying my kids are being unknowingly abused for example is just really toxic internet behavior.

Your second last paragraph is nearly word for word what I used to say to my counsellor. 😞

He's abusive OP. I hope in time you'll be able to deal with it in a way that brings you happiness.

I do know what you mean about mixed intentions on threads 🙁 I think a lot of posters were genuinely trying to help.

I hope you've a good night & some rest & can take away the parts of your thread that were helpful 🙂

Ok op. I’m pleased for you. For your self love, your high self esteem, your happy loving joyous safe home, and even though your husband stupidly had an intimate relationship with another woman, it’s good he only did so whilst repeatedly telling her how much he loved you and as you say it was his low self esteem and her pestering that made him do it.

anything you did is his fault.you are right to “go postal” if he suggests otherwise. Your children have no idea and only see the happy joyous safe home.

your happiness is a lesson for every cheated on woman.

you have it nailed.

@pikkumyy77

Picking fights with strangers on the internet? You literally just sought out my thread and commented on it to say my children were victims of abuse, and then followed up with an A4 page of completely made up histrionic bull shit.

Are you okay?

Op, You come across as a very intelligent, high esteemed , eloquently spoken and head strong individual! I think you are probably too intelligent for many of the masses on this thread ! Your head strong personality is , though a highly attractive trait , is proven to also be a hindrance to you receiving criticism, advise , differing perspective or help .

You have ignored those sensible questions posed by posters who genuinely want to find out about your relationship and offer advise - instead you've cited that "I don't really feel like talking in depth about things on this thread, given the way people have behaved continually." Yet , you've spent a great deal of your time battling with every other poster who has implied or stated an incorrect narrative about your marriage or character . You choose to respond to such posters as opposed to the ones who are asking questions which may help build a picture of what has actually gone wrong . It's like you're attracted to the posters who get it wrong but have little interest in addressing the ones who want to get it right . I wonder whether you are afraid of hearing something which may just throw every theory read in the book out!

You say you've healed , that your relationship is good , you go to bed cuddling and laughing most nights with your dh, yet, your earlier posts resonates that of an angry and bitter wife who has been deeply betrayed by their husband . That is not what I call healing . Please go back and re-read some of your responses- I have read every single
Comment on this thread .

You need to face facts . You are a strong minded and very confident woman however, you need to dig a bit deeper than the narrative in the books you've read. Your dh isn't ready to take full responsibility and as a result your marriage hasn't fully healed . That's a very important element to healing - its fundamental in your situation. Without that , nothing else matters. You cannot say that he has accepted responsibility yet still deflects some responsibility on you for hurting him- and if this is the case , then you also need to take responsibility for your action ! If you're not ready to do so then neither of you are ready to heal .

In all due respect , I really don't know what you want from this post? You seem very head strong and assured of your view point so why did you bother write this post ?

@Aserena

OP I think the issue with this thread is that you have a great many people projecting onto you. They are coming from a good place, but when you try to tell them their reality is not yours, they can’t accept it and are gaslighting you (unintentionally I’m sure)

I agree there's a lot of projection, but some of this stuff is clearly not coming from a good place. There's a considerable number who are just arriving to say horrific things like "your kids are being abused" without a shred of evidence of that, and when I get annoyed (as anyone would) they are gaslighting me.