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?

easier because you don't have to look at your own darker sides?

Good question. But, ime, the person asking "Where did I go wrong?" is the one who's been mistreated. Fair enough if they're both asking and coming up with matching answers - that could be seen as a test of a healthy relationship, even when it's breaking up.

Sometimes a partner ends a good relationship with compassion, having met a better match. Decent people manage to do this without torturing the first partner, blaming them or making them insecure. That clearly isn't the case of OP's friend.

Sometimes couples really do grow apart and, again, can end their relationship with regret but no recriminations.

Thinking about it - surely the very question "Where did I go wrong?" implies unilateral control over a partnership? So, if you're asking, the answer is: "Your only mistake was loving a partner who let you down."

My emotionally abusive Twat #2 divorced me for emotional abuse. He wasn't lying; we wrote the final statement together. The difference between us is that he accepted no responsibility for the hurricane we called a marriage. My real fault was to have been well-acclimatised to abuse, thus choosing yet another arsehole to marry. I'm working on it. I can guarantee he isn't working on his.

FWIW, I think it is worth asking yourself why it all went so horribly wrong? But that is different from wanting to assign blame. I had to get some help with the why, because I couldn't do it on my own. Learnt alot about myself & have a much better idea of how I encourage certain types of behaviour in partners - which I wasn't aware of before.

Leo - don't you think the subject of 'blame' is an issue for you because of your experience of being with a controlling, abusive partner?

Someone like that never wants to take the blame or responsibility for things and, I don't know about you, but I was a person who would easily take on the blame for things eg 'oh, it's my fault', so it was too easy for me to come up with the wrong conclusion that I must have been at fault for him to be so horrible to me, and for him never accepting responsibility for anything.

I think that if, as in the case of your ex. if you don't have it in your character to be nasty to someone just because you can, it's hard to accept that they really were to blame and they chose to behave the way they did, and there really was nothing you could ultimately do to change that.

Sometimes people just really aren't right for each other, shouldn't be together and the longer they are, the worse their behaviour gets. There are clearly cases where one person is to blame (like in an abusive situation), but in many cases (including where people choose to have affairs) it simply is that the relationship should've ended a long, long time before because they were not right together.

LeoTheLateBloomer I hope you're feeling a bit better. No, you are not to blame for someone who was controlling and abusive.

In some cases, it's the prevailing culture that's mostly to blame. You know, that culture that tells women who are not married or in a committed relationship that there must be something wrong with them, so they end up hurling themselves at the first knobber who offers to buy them a drink. Though men, too, find themselves getting looked at suspiciously if they appear to be 'confirmed bachelors' especially in highly superstitious or socially backward communities so they, too, will grab the first available person they see. So you end up with perfectly OK people making each other's lives hell until one or both sees sense and calls time on the relationship.

Blame is a strong word and one that I don't think always applies to both sides when a relationship ends.

Our neighbours XH walked out on her and their DD when their DD was 4 months old. The poor girl had an awful pregnancy, PND and as the breadwinner returned to work after 8 weeks. She would sit next to me on the train and cry on the way to and from work after spending the previous 9 months throwing up on the train. It was awful to see her go through everything on her own. Her XH was not there for her when she needed his support. He wouldn't even drive her to the psycologist after her CS after she recognised she had PND.

Over coffee she told me she was partly to blame because she didn't look after herself when she was pregnant. I was taken aback by her comment and said that the fact her XH walked out on her 4 months after the birth of DD neigated her of any blame. In my opinion you don't walk out when the going gets tough and times are tough in the first few years after a baby arrives. She lost her home, savings and has to support him while raising their DD. Needless to say DH and I help out as much as we can because we all make mistakes. Her mistake was to have a child with the douchebag. She was not to blame though.

'Blame' is something that I believe should be primarily reserved for those who break the law.

When it comes to our intimate relationships with others it should be recognised that, depending on circumstances/characters/mental health etc of the consenting parties, it is possible that any breakdown can be attributed to the failure of one party to exercise sound judgement and the inability of another to do the same.

I remember reading books on relationships after dh had his affair and one of the things that I read was that women seem to have a particular penchant for holding themselves to blame when relationships break down. This seems to make sense to me as women often feel the need to accommodate other people, or that they should somehow naturally be the nurturing ones.

One of the most powerful things that my councellor told me is that we all chose to walk our own paths. dh chose to have an affair, that choice was not something I could have influenced or that I should have felt responsible for. Now that's not to say that there weren't other parts of the dynamics of the relationship where I did make wrong choices, some consciously and some less so, but taking ownership of your own actions doesn't include taking blame for your partners.

Sometimes....

On mumsnet .....

I find that some posters will give very opposing views if it was a man or a woman who cheated. For example there was a woman who was considering an affair a while ago and although most said she was wrong, there were many who said she had been pushed into it, te DH was emotionally neglectful etc, he was also at fault...

But often if a man has an affair the woman is told it is never part her fault or was she distant etc etc...

Just something I have noticed shit stirs

I myself am of the opinion that no two affairs or relationships are the same and that yes, sometimes both partners played a part in the breakdown in communication etc, but sometimes there is a completely innocent party. I am currently in the school of shrug...