Do you believe that in every relationship that ends both people must be to blame?

[LeoTheLateBloomer]

I met someone recently whose XH was consistently unfaithful. We were talking about where it all went wrong (not in depth as we don't know each other that well) and she said that she believed she must be to blame in some way because as far as she was concerned it could never just be one person's fault.

This has been bothering me ever since she said it. I don't know when I'll next see her but I want to reassure her that her XH's infidelity wasn't her fault. (Admittedly I don't know the full story but I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt here.)

My XH was emotionally controlling and abusive. Does she think I was in someway to blame for the break up of my marriage?

Does anyone else think this way?

I agree - if a partner chooses to be unfaithful or abusive instead of working on their issues then the other party is not to blame.

It's only hear 'fault' if you believe that not putting up with an unfaithful husband is a 'fault'.

i wouldn't agree with such a black & white statement, but having been through a very messy 1st marriage and divorce where i could easily have blamed everything on my ex (he gambled away all our money and wasn't interested in being a dad), and equally he could easily have blamed it all on me (i was cold and distant and only interested in our son), i do think that unless there is some pretty clear cut awful behaviour, there are always 2 sides to a story, and that you never really know as an outsider what is going on behind closed doors. so i'm extremely slow to judge when a marriage goes wrong.

i also have friends in terrible marriages express surprise that their controlling wanker of a boyfriend turned into a controlling wanker of a husband. so while it's not necessarily their fault their husband is horrible, they were at the very least complicit.

No, I agree MrsRavelstein it's difficult as an outsider. She seems so certain that there must always be blame on both sides. It was hard to listen to her because she looked so pained when trying to think what it was that she had done wrong

But it's not their fault he was controlling in the first place. Even if they hadn't married but had ended the relationship at "controlling wanker of a boyfriend" does that still place any 'blame'?

Hmmmm, I'm not sure. My marriage ended because ex-H was unfaithful - but in all honesty I couldn't put my hand on my heart and say that I was perfect & he was rubbish. I think each set of circumstances will be as individual as the people involved in it.

No Bugsy obviously there will be times when both parties are at fault.

I suppose I found it hard to accept that what I felt she was essentially saying was that I was in some way responsible for the way my ex treated me. Now I know I was by no means a perfect wife. Sometimes I dug my heels in deliberately due to his treatment of me, sometimes I was just plain slack. But my shortcomings weren't instrumental in our breakup.

He might claim that I was cold (who want's to hug and kiss someone whose just called them a 'lazy c*ing bitch'?) and unsupportive (he amassed a huge debt in our joint names while he set up the most ludicrous 'business' that was never going to work, but yes I did traipse around the countryside at weekends, send endless emails and spend all my free time sorting out his website and doing things that he couldn't be arsed to do himself). So does it just come down to one person's opinion versus another?

Sorry. Ignore me. I think I'm just having a moment. Might just get this removed.

Both parties have a responsibility for their part in the marriage but the person having the affair is solely responsible for the affair - it was their decision to do it, they could have said no.

Leo, I do think we sometimes enable people, I put up with (ie didn't challenge enough, say no emphatically enough) my DH's pretty appalling decision making re business/financial stuff. He would also probably say I didn't support him enough, offer encouragement etc. Resentment then builds between the couple. My DH chose to have an affair - his decision. I was not responsible for the affair (although our Relate therapist did try to suggest we were both responsible for it until I put her right) but I was 50% responsible for the communications problems in the marriage, we both could have come up with more constructive ways to deal with the resentment that was building up on both sides eg getting to Relate before the affair.

Bit of a waffle but hope it make some sense

i think that in the vast majority of relationships both sides do things that cause the breakdown

Counting it does make sense. I've spent so much of the last 6 months being told I'm not to blame (by family, Women's Aid, friends) that it's a hard pill to swallow.

Yes, I did enable his behaviour, but I'm finding it hard to admit to myself that I bear some of the responsibility. (Not very good at shouldering blame !)

I hope you don't remove the thread, because I think you raise interesting points.

In your acquaintance's situation, of course she is not to blame for her husband's infidelity. It's not that she let her marriage or partner down in any way, but if he was repeatedly unfaithful as she says - and she found out about it each time, maybe she let herself down by putting up with it, that's all. Perhaps congratulate on her on her freedom from that now and certainly reassure her that she's not at fault.

If one half of a partnership has a destructive behaviour and the other doesn't (i.e. addictions, infidelity, abuse and violence) then the fault for the inevitable breakdown of the marriage, if directly attributable to that behaviour, must rest with the person displaying it.

I think sometimes people are so desperate to be unjudgemental that it can be positively harmful to the people left behind after a failed relationship, as in your friend's case and possibly your own. It's okay to say that something is wrong and causes harm.

LeoTLB, it sounds like you are still feeling very sore & understandably so. In some situations, one person really is very much to blame. Maybe you did "enable" your ex's behaviour - but I'm sure it wasn't a conscious thing. We all carry around patterns of behaviour that we don't always understand.

However, each couple will have their own dynamic. I actually think there is not much point blaming anyone. Shit happens, if it is really broken & can't be fixed then you move on. Hopefully you move on & learn while you are at it.

I think every has some responsibility but it's a question of degrees.

Scenario 1: Wife behaves unpleasantly to husband, who decides he can't deal with it and has an affair. Marriage falls apart and it's the husbands fault, based on most MNers view.
Scenario 2: Wife behaves equally unpleasantly to husband who decides he can't deal with it and leaves. Would you reasonably assume it's the wife's fault even though she was the same in both scenarios?

Fault is perhaps assigned to the one who behaves in a worse way, ie it's relative rather than absolute.

I totally agree with countingto10.
The idea of 'fault' is probably the wrong one though. The idea of fault is based on the old and conservative idea that a marriage is for life and that, if your relationship ends then something has gone totally wrong and someone must have made a big mistake. I don't believe that. I believe that relationship start and die end. It's a normal process. So the breakdown of a marriage is not an issue about judging people and finding who is the 'bad' one as much as looking at responsabilities and opportunities throughout the relationship.
So if I look at my marriage, H has behaved appaulingly, emotionally abusive behaviours in MN standards. I found it extremely hurtful and once I found my feet again, I could have easily left saying it was 'all his fault'.
However, this is forgetting that I accepted the situation, found excuses (to start with) to his behaviours. I have a part of responsability because I could should have left years ago and I didn't. I have a part of responsability because I could should have express my unhappiness much more clearly and made my needs heard but I didn't.
As it turns out, now that I have made my feelings and my hurt very clear (and said i want to get divorced), explained what it is that I am finding unacceptable (I've had to say that stonewalling isn't acceptable...), H has actually changed his behavior.
So we both have taken responsability in our behaviours, him by changing some attitude that weren't acceptable, me by stopping accepting what was unacceptable.
It could have been that H had chosen not to make any amendment (which is the case with EA people). But the responsability of the breakdown of the marriage would have been neither just mine (because I asked for divorce) or just his (because his behaviour was appauling) but ours because it would have been the result of our reactions and actions.
Hope that makes sense....

I think in most cases, no-one is blameless - it might be 90:10, but I think it's very unhealthy to think it must have been 100% the other person's fault.

It really varies. Sometimes it's no one's fault at all: the couple realise that they are not compatible, or one or both of them does not want to engage in couplehood, and they separate amicably, wishing each other well. Sometimes they are both horrible, or both too messed up for functional couplehood (two addicts/alcoholics clinging on to one another in a mutually enabling mess; one gets clean and walks away/both get clean and find out that they can't live together). And sometimes one partner is an abusive arsehole, and the other partner is never to blame. Usually, people who end up married to abusers, whether that's the low level, selfish, lazy, sexist ones or the appalling predators who are determined to destroy a partner, are those with low self-esteem, vulnerable in some way. But you have to be pretty strong to resist the pressure all around you, if you are a woman, to work on a relationship and 'give him a chance' even when several red flags are showing.

My first marriage broke down as my husband rejected me physically. Was I to blame that he stopped fancying me. I can objectively look back to all those years ago and say that I was definately not a minger then.

Was he to blame because of his cruelty pushing me to finally kick him out thus releasing him from the partnership?

Different relationships , each one different circumstances.

I call this a damaging lie. It takes two to make a happy relationship, but only one to make it unhappy. The unhappy partner then has only two options - end it or "work at it". The myth of equal blame keeps too many people in un-balanced relationships, believing that their work can fix the other party's faults. Not so.

FTR, both mine were unfaithful because of their attitude to women. They didn't even try to blame me for that (they blamed me for their abuse, but were stumped for a way to blame their roving dicks on me.)

Why is there a need to find someone to blame though?

Is that not enough to say 'This relationship is dead' and leave it at that?

It jolly well should be, Oak! But we're human; we can't help going "Why did it happen? Why??!"

IMO there's human arrogance in there, too. We can't bear thinking that things happen beyond our influence. Honestly, if the pavement gave way while you were walking along, at least a part of you would go "I should have taken the other route, then this would never have happened!"

I think far too women get into relationships thinking they can change their partner and then get upset when it turns out they can't, and those flaws they once overlooked are staring them right in the face.

Or is it just easier because you don't have to look at your own darker sides?