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.

Wow, life isn't supposed to be this hard.

It really is.

You deserve so much better.

As for your children?

OP, you are clearly intent on the narrative that they are immune to all this, but they really aren't.

He cheated on them and you cried for a month day and night while off work?

He hasn't the capacity to fully own what he did, too selfish and immature.

Get counselling for yourself to find the strength to be free of this toxic man and free your children too.

@Alwaysdecorating

Saying ‘I am sorry you are hurt but it’s your fault’ isn’t accepting responsibility. My suggestion of what you could say didn’t include a an apology. Because I don’t think you need to beg his forgiveness

What am I responsible for? What am I apologising for? What am I being forgiven for?

I didn't do anything wrong.

If you feel I did, can you please explain exactly what?

ME: if you ever talk to her again I will leave you and fuck someone else
HIM: Okay
(he talks to her)
(I left him and sucked someone else off)

It seems to me like he made a choice and got the exact consequences he was told to expect.

Op, when single, can give any amount of bjs she wants.

but, op, your husband is a cheat and a liar. He is continuing to lie. What do you think your husband and the ow did in that time? What do you think they spoke about? It will not have been respectful of you.

when he has let knowledge about his affair cool off and he starts this back up / starts another, will you look back and wish youd left after this one?

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… we are doing well, but he just will NOT stop bringing this up during arguments which they turn very ugly
^this is going to be his future justification for cheating on you again. Tit for tat.

it is all very toxic.

would you not rather model health relationships and divorce?

youre so angry and refusing to accept any responsibility for the utter toxic shit show that’s your marriage. Even pretending the kids are protected, when you’re crying daily, shouting, getting drunk and blowing some random, even inviting them to your home.

it’s very clear neither of you are staying as this is a love match with a future. It’s for other reasons, money, kids, the house, fear of being alone, fear of starting again, whatever, and I’m afraid I’d bet good money the marriage was already Rocky for some considerable time.

He is not the victim. I am

^ And that’s the crux of your problem.

You are clinging to your identity as the victim and him the aggressor. You cannot be in a healthy relationship post-infidelity if you are so focused on your victim-hood.

For a workable future, you have to forgive him, not hurl it back at him in arguments, accept that you made choices they hurt him too, regardless of magnitude. To move on.

You keep telling us you don’t want to leave him. Fair enough, that’s your decision to make. I’d have left the son of a bitch, but I respect your choice to give it a go.

But to preserve your marriage in a non-toxic way, you both have to get closure on the affair and its aftermath.

He’s got to accept the hurt he cause you, and also forgive the hurt (however lesser) you cause him, and you do the same. Otherwise you’re in a cycle of blame and anger that, quite frankly, you show no interest in healing.

Although the bit about anal with the football team was very funny, it demonstrates your rage. You can’t be healthy with that much anger against your partner.

I think the point here is that your marriage is not a zero-sum game. Your DH's need to take responsibility and atone in no way mitigates or impacts your own path through this. Moreover, expecting him to behave the way you want him to both disempowers you and puts you on a hiding to nothing.

You are in the throes of intense emotion, and what some of us are writing may feel untenable, unacceptable, or both right now. It doesn't mean we're wrong, though.

Thing is you're locked in this moment. You want him to wear a hair shirt, you want to be able to being it up whenever you want so he can beg forgiveness. You barely mention your kids and how this is affecting them at all and it WILL be. It's not fair on them.

Fact is, your BJ is a part of the affair thing. If you bring it up then it's going to be brought up you both can't keep living in this ground hog loop. It's not fair on the entire household.

You need to think of the future of your family, not rehashing the same old pain. I agree with a PP it IS a form of self harm. You won't be able to heal while you keep peeling off the scab over and over again.

Maybe the "affair work' should be kept to therapy only. Get it all out there and close the door on it until the next therapy if you want to stay with the twat.

The way you're dealing with your pain isn't working and not healthy long term.

I had reasons to do what I did.

No, you didn’t. You’re using that as an excuse to not feel guilty when you should be wholly ashamed of yourself.

Your DH is absolutely right to hold to you account for it.

Total and absolute bollocks.

There's no point talking about what you would do if you were in his place. You'd never be in his place, because you'd never do what he has done, because you're not a shitty person.

He IS a shitty person, a cheat and a liar, and you just don't want to accept that because that means you married a cheat and a liar, your children have a cheat and a liar for a father, you have wasted those years you had with him. Noone wants to accept that, which is why you are working so hard to "save the marriage" and "help him change" - it's the sunk costs fallacy. You want him not to be that person and you think if you just keep at it, do the therapy, read all the books, make him say all the right things and listen to your feelings etc it will somehow, by some magical process,make him not a shitty person, a cheat and a liar. It will mean you didn't make a mistake, you didn't marry an arsehole and have kids with him, you didn't waste your time.

But you did. He is. And THAT'S why him bringing up the BK makes you so so angry, because it's throwing in your face again and again that despite all the therapy and the reading and the "work" and the hoops you've got him jumping through, he is STILL that shitty person you are trying to change him out of. It's reminding you you made a mistake, you wasted your time. It's proving to you you are continuing to waste your time trying to make it right. You want him to shut up and jump through the hoops. Instead he is showing you,again and again, what a weak, selfish, shitty person he is and you don't want to see it.

You will be so much happier when you accept that this is who he is; you can't change it. Probably he can't change it. The best he can do is give an imperfect attempt to perform the role you describe to him, and ever now and then the mask will slip and the real him will show through, as with this continual raising of the BJ as some sort of immature gotcha. And eventually he will have another affair, as being a perpetual whipping boy (however justified) will eat away at his ego until he needs to have it stroked and petted by another pretty young thing. And we all know he's too weak, too selfish, too cowardly to do the decent, difficult thing and leave you first.

I also think your desire to blame him (however justified that is) is so powerful it is obscuring from you your obligation to your children. I was really chilled by the almost shrugging way you responded to the point a PP made that your kids can't help but have been frightened and upset by your breakdown and their dad being chucked out, and now confused by his return to the home and the happy families surface gloss when there is obviously still a lot of very nasty shit bubbling below the surface. "Well yes I guess that must be harming them but it's not my fault, it's all because of his affair so what can I do about it?"

These are your children. They are hurting. It really, really doesn't matter whose fault it is in terms of you having a responsibility to them. Yes he does too, but as discussed he's a shitty selfish person and he can't be relied upon. Can you? If they'd been knocked down in the street by a dangerous driver would you be stood by the driver's window telling them it's all their fault, or crouched down by your kids staunching the bleeding, calling the ambulance, getting them to a place of safety?

To be honest you seem far, far more interested in the ins and outs of your relationship, and making sure you are put first by your husband ahead of the OW, than how your kids are doing, in putting them first. There's a very "stately homes" vibe about your "I got them showered and dressed and to school every day, my kids are doing better than yours other kids" statement, and your talk about how what they see is you holding hands, joking around and making dinner - it's all about the surface, about what shows and can be articulated, it's almost gaslighting - "there, see, I hold your dad's hand, everything is fine, your perception that something is wrong is wrong" - rather than actually acknowledging that there is something very rotten in the state of Denmark and helping them understand and recover from that.

Actually I agree with the poster, two wrongs don’t make a right.

A question - you say after he met up with he'd again, you were determined that it was over, you had a fling, you filed for divorce.

What changed your mind, made you decide to try again? He crossed your red line - how did it come back from that?

No it isn’t. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Mate, he cheated on you and betrayed you for months. He knew that he might lose you if and when you found out; he did in anyway.

He was given a chance to keep you, on the perfectly reasonable basis that he not have further contact with his AP; he knew that he could lose you if he had contact with her; he did it anyway.

(And he had to have known there would always be a chance you'd find out). "Closure" with his OW was more important to him than not risking your relationship, again.

So he is saying that he values your relationship; but words are cheap. Look at his actions. He keeps fundamentally risking your relationship.
While you keep letting him stay, even though he had twice potentially thrown your relationship away (because it was perfectly possible you'd end it on the affair, many people would) and you should have ended it when he broke your basic, fundamental agreement around contact with his AP).

You are wasting your time.

He does not have the underlying commitment to your relationship, he just doesn't.
Or he thinks that no matter what he does, you'll stay with him, keep taking him back. Which is as bad or worse.

It's irrelevant.

Is it about being wrong?

Is that what it comes down to? Fighting with him and who was wrong? Or more wrong?

and what sort of wrong do you mean? Wrong isn’t the only way a situation has consequences. You didn’t do anything wrong in itself. But in hindsight, it wasn’t the right decision to tell him. But you did.

I think it depends on your point of view. Personally, I think you can do something where the act isn’t wrong. But also the consequences are still your responsibility.

You weren’t wrong to see other people, you weren’t wrong to give someone a blow Job. I don’t think you were even wrong to want to hurt him by telling him. But even if those things aren’t wrong, it still caused pain.

Your husband sounds like a dick. But you are the one that wants to make your marriage work. You giving someone a blow job and telling him chased him pain. Not on a scale he caused you. But it still did.

The consequences he expected didn’t happen. Because you for back together with him. He was aware of what you would do. But the actions were still yours. Not your husbands.

You wanted to hurt him, understandably. You did hurt him. Now you want to be back together, that action has some consequences. It doesn’t absolve him. It doesn’t make him less of a twat. But they are still your actions and choices.

Again, you don’t have to have been perfect to be the victim here. But if you want your marriage to work, you need to acknowledge you acted in a way (whilst being entitled to do it) has made that more difficult.

In all honesty, you can’t even admit you wanted to hurt him. Which you did. I don’t see this working long term. But I genuinely think you would be better walking away anyway.

Pile on trolls, often incel men, need to get off this forum.

I disagree. The OP has made it clear that, as far as she was concerned, the relationship was over when she did this. She may have changed her mind later, but at the time this happened there was no relationship as such.

I have been through this and believe I know as well as anyone what you are going through.

Your relationship won't recover because, despite what you originally thought, he wasn't willing to do everything he needed to do to rebuild it. You asked him not to see her again and he did. You now know in your heart that, despite his words, his actions say different things. His actions demonstrate disregard for your utter devastation and his willingness to lie, again, to achieve what he wants.

The fact that you keep having the same argument speaks volumes. You are absolutely in the right and he doesn't have a leg to stand on. But he is using your drunken 'date' as a stick to beat you with and deflect blame. He is an awful, weak person in every way. I hope you find the strength to leave and find the life you deserve.

I’m so sorry you’ve been through this OP, obviously his affair is awful and him meeting up with her again is unforgivable. You say you had told him “if you speak to her again I will leave you and fuck someone else”, he spoke to her again, so forgive me if I’m not understanding but you haven’t left him? Why

I do understand why you feel the way you do, but you have also now done wrong by choosing to go with someone else.

That was your choice and you do have responsibility for that.

Also just to play devils advocate, I know you will have no pity for the OW, but if they had been in a “relationship” for a long period of time then I can actually sort of see why from his perspective he might have felt they needed closure or that she deserved closure if he had feelings for her. Yes if he truly loved you then he wouldn’t have felt that way, but if he truly loved you then he wouldn’t have had the affair would he?

You clearly went off the rails when you found out he'd betrayed you again, gone back on what he agreed to again, prioritised his ow & himself again.

No wonder.

I don't know if you thought you were over or not when you did it; but it doesn't matter. From the point that man cheated on you, he was owed no fidelity from you. Fact is when you did that, he's not only betrayed you "once" (for months, but just dug a knife into the wound by breaking your conditions for staying with him, in spite of his infidelity.

He can fuck off to the power of 19 billion in my views, going on about your devastated, drunken, rash reaction to his double betrayal : go the evidence that he would rizk throwing away your relationship - again.

That's the fundamental issue for me - I think you're fighting to save something/someone not worth saving.

I think everyone has to agree to disagree on this one. I don’t believe she thought the relationship was over or intended it to be for one second, that’s why she texted and told him. She may have chucked him out temporarily but she was always taking him back

there is something unspoken here. This couple aren’t staying together as they love each other, they are staying together for another reason, as said, money, house, kids, fear, whatever. But it’s not due to love and a desire to be a couple.