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.

STOP IT OP!! Seriously, stop it!! Stop engaging with those posters who make untrue comments about your kids !
Some have apologised which is good however you need to stop engaging and feeding ! You've defended your kids and clarified that they are in a safe and loving environment. Please stop discussing this and making yourself even more bitter. Like you said , these are a bunch of strangers who know nothing about your kids , so IGNORE!

You are deviating away from the helpful comments . There's been a few posters who have taken the time to write really good advise and perspective. Please divert your attention and energy in the right place . I'm sure you can do so considering you've managed to overcome a cheating husband- that takes great courage - which you have !

I suspect a few of these people are at home living very lonely, angry and bitter lives

Projection, much?

Thing is. People are focusing on how the kids are being affected, going on the OPs own posts. Nobody else wrote them.

If my children are affected, which I go to great sacrifice to ensure they are not, then it is because their father repeatedly put his penis into someone else. Not because I spent four minutes with a willy in my mouth and not because of anything I did or didn't do.
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They would certainly be more affected by me being divorced, and if I end up being so, that won't be my fault either - because I am not the person who took a poop on my marriage.
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@AnneLovesGilbert
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You said you took a month off work to cry day and night. There’s no way your children weren’t very aware of something being incredibly wrong in their home
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I am sure they were at the time. Not really my fault though because I didn't have the affair.
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To sum up. If the kids are affected then that's on him as well. How is that a healthy thing for them to carry on trying to save this marriage?

They don't deserve to be in the middle of all of this and for nearly a year now and with no end in sight seemingly.

So yes, people are thinking about the kids. It's not trolling. If you don't want people to be concerned then don't post concerning things.

I think that's you.

Good luck for the future. I think you're going to need it if you stick with the selfish prick.

Op. Is this thread helping you? Is it diverting your anger and giving you an outlet for lashing out?

people are just responding to what you wrote. From how you regularly go postal to sitting at home crying for a month. Even the bj thing. No one is saying you did it specifically to hurt your husband, what they are saying is you texted to tell him to hurt him.

you keep attacking people, people who in the main have been kind to you, just you weren’t ready to hear it, sure some horrible comments, but generally it’s just a different perspective.

if attacking makes you feel better about yourself, your situation, your life, your cheating husband, and maybe stops the going postal at home episodes, then at least some good has come from it. If it isn’t, then I’d leave the thread.

@DinaofCloud9 You quoted and replied to my post of 13.11

ImNotWorthy · Today 13:11
I suspect a few of these people are at home living very lonely, angry and bitter lives
Projection, much?

@DinaofCloud9
The bolded part was from a recent post by OP.

I am not @Naomi189, but was commenting on something she posted

Love that this is still going! 🍿

Reading this thread is exhausting so I can't imagine how difficult it is to live it. What you did is in no way comparable to what he did - however by texting him about it - you did intend to hurt him -otherwise why do it - do it and move on. It is inevitable he is going to use it to try and reclaim some ground.

He is never going to do what you want and say it is only his fault and even if he did - he would only be saying to please you and it would be another lie.

You need to either accept that and move on or accept that and split up

In life, as in the drama triangle, its very seductive to stay in the victim role because the victim can ask for help, demand sympathy, and act out without fear of chastisement or at any rate by wailing that it is just their rightful reward for suffering. Thats why people who are forced to submit to unjust authority often commit small crimes, or lies, to steal back some of their lost power.

We can see it here where O and her supporters really can’t tolerate anything but kid glove treatment or OP cries for support as the “victim” of posters who simply responded to her in kind. Forgive me if a woman who bragged about the BJ and said outright that she would have been justified in giving anal to an entire football team didn’t seem like someone who would hit the fainting couch similarly worded comments.

But in the black and white world of this domesticated drama OP must always be the sainted victim and everyone else the persecutor if they aren’t the rescuer.

Forgive me if a woman who bragged about the BJ and said outright that she would have been justified in giving anal to an entire football team didn’t seem like someone who would hit the fainting couch similarly worded comments.

@pikkumyy77 i don’t have a defined opinion on OP’s situation and thus haven’t voiced one, but as regards the above:
The OP has the right to joke about giving anal to a football team and still object to being slut shamed for engaging in oral sex. Using an extreme example of sexual activity for the purpose of making a point should not somehow make belittling comments about her lack of class, etc, acceptable. Also, a woman vocally objecting to being shamed is not a woman “hitting the fainting couch”; in itself a sexist metaphor, but here we are.

To say otherwise is to borrow from the regressive “she was wearing a short skirt when she was assaulted” line of argument.

I wasn’t slut shaming OP—Im indifferent. What I think caught my eye, as well as other’s attention, was the disjuncture between the swaggering tough girl bantz and the incredibly obvious distress and shame OP was (and is) covering up here.

For fuck’s sake the poor woman copped to being suicidal and considering killing herself before choosing the BJ. I’m not at all opposed to OP doing Eat, Pray , Love or 50 shades of rage or whatever floats her boat but her own account of her choices breathed miserable dissociation and sounded more like self harm than sex positivity .

Sure there were people who took a hard moralistic stance on it. I wasn’t one of them. But I think a lot of us were and are concerned that the OP is still operating from a place of collapsed rage while performing some kind of misbegotten girl power shtick.

Its all UNDERSTANDABLE but its really toxic to OP. As I said upthread she should do what she wants but if she puts her choices on AIBU she is going to find out that not everyone thinks she is BU.

Something else I want to say is that I’m really sympathetic to OP’s anguish at being betrayed. However she is a grown woman—she is driving the bus she is on and that her kids are on. Who has the luxury in this world of carrying on hysterically and becoming suicidal and wailing for a month off work? People are unfaithful—you don’t die of it. You join chump lady and get over it. You have to for the sake of the children and for your own sake. 60 hours of therapy assisted grieving is enough, surely?

Yes sorry @ImNotWorthy I was replying to the op not you. Quoted your response instead of the hers in error.

@DinaofCloud9 I get it We were basically making the same point

*What he wants is for me to be responsible for his pain. Which I don't think I am responsible for - he acted with agency knowing the consequences - but regardless I apologised that he was hurting and offered him reassurance.

He has even asked me to take responsibility for the hurt my anger has caused him. He has said things like "you are entitled to be angry but you have to take responsibility for the affect that anger has had on our relationship".

Which shows really how far his head is up his arse.*

His thinking here is wrong, messed up and completely wrong. I don't see how you can ever move past everything he did, when he believes this utter rubbish. He is responsible for the fallout from his affair and the fallout from the harm he knowingly did you after. He is lucky you stuck around and yet here he is trying to put fixing the relationship he smashed to pieces back on you. His thinking is never going to change, you'll end up destroyed trying to put this marriage back together.

He says everything you need to know about him in these words. I know that desperate hope that if you can just reach him he'll realise and he'll step up and be the man you need him to be, the man you thought he was, clinging to the good memories, 15 years of them in my case, but he isn't that person. He's showing you here who he is, believe him. I'm sorry for what you've gone through and I hope you can find a better furture for you and your DC. You deserve better than this.

He is gaslighting you and blaming you, the victim for the fallout from his actions. After everything he's put you through he's now messing with your mind. I won't pretend to know why, but for whatever reason he's adding this harm on top of all the harm he's already done you.

Apologies for misunderstanding you. Your posts on this are very wise, and I was perhaps being hypervigilant after the shaming posts from some others. Also “fifty shades of rage” - ha ha, I would read that book!!

Haha! Me too.

I’m actually really sorry for OP’s pain. If she were open to it I would recommend Tich Nhat Hanh’s book on Anger (Anger: Wisdom for cooling the Flames) and his book Reconciliation. If you can get past his very simple style they are both on point for someone who is grieving and hurt but who wants to be in a relationship with the one who has hurt them and who they have hurt.

I feel like him going back to OW and then you sucking off a guy in your garden is two separate incidents. Yes you did it because he went back to OW but you still made an active choice to do it and had a choice. it's very different to say someone pushing you and you breaking your phone and saying they made you break it.

I haven't RTFT and I know you've got annoyed at people saying you did it to hurt him but it comes across like that to me also. You said you got nothing out of it or enjoy it and told him about it straight away it seems like you wanted him to have a reaction.

Dear OP, you've been through a horrible betrayal, mental breakdown and depression and now you're posting on here where 95% of people don't care about you or supporting you. They will project, assume, argue with you about what you felt and why you did what you did because they are just random people with no experience or qualifications to deal with your issues, let alone empathy.

You did nothing wrong. You were pushed to your limits and AFTER separating from your husband you gave someone a blow job. You didn't cheat, you were clear with you boundaries and owed him nothing.
I have first hand experience of how someone betraying you and treating you badly can make you feel absolutely crazy and do things you would not normally do.

It seems like the main person you hurt with your actions was you. Not your ex. Not your children and it's disgusting some people try to shame you as a mother for having sex or for crying after betrayal. Shame on them for using your children against you as if anything can be said to a stranger and any moves were allowed as long as they get a kick of being a "better person".
After having your head fucked so much the last thing you need is some random people messing with your sense of reality or undermining your feelings. It's not helpful.

Healing is a long process. You need to talk to your husband and set ground rules of how you can move forward and that should include him stopping deflecting blame on you. There is nothing wrong with staying after infidelity but it takes a lot of effort from a guilty party and unless he's willing to give it his all its not going to work but it will destroy you.

@Lili132 thank you for those kind words I needed to hear today x

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