'infidelity is caused by problems in the marriage'

[Wellwobbly]

This has come up again in a thread.

I can't cut and paste (copyright), but would like to post three links of differing views, and ask people's input of what they think of them?

First:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/07/couples-therapy_n_3977035.html?utm_hp_ref=divorce&ir=Divorce

Second:

chumplady.com/2013/10/it-takes-three/

Third:

www.davidclarkeseminars.com/apps/articles/?columnid=508&articleid=3813

What do you think?

Family even though I am far too busy in RL to get bogged down here, I can't let you get away with your comment: 'WW didn't say she wasn't discussing something with you'.

WW wrote:the issue I was debating at the time (with Dotty NOT YOU) was.....

Errr... which bit of that don't you understand?

I don't like this over use of extrapolation which keeps coming up to actually defend ambiguity in the post, or as a kind of cop-out when someone responds - 'Oh, I didn't mean THAT- you are extrapolating.

When people write things there is inference. I prefer to think that certain things are inferred, because language has shades and nuances - which is not the same as extrapolating. If posters were clearer and avoided writing anything from which ( possibly) unintentional inferences could be made, or even extrapolated, then there wouldn't be any confusion.

For example if someone says they'd rather be stabbed or shot, most readers assume that means they'd prefer to die- if they then come back saying 'oh most people don't die from being stabbed...so that's not what I meant'- who is at fault for the misunderstanding?

So Lazyjaney with your obvious access to 'all research, observations, testimonies' etc please do direct me to the research that meets the tests above (which are pretty mainstream I shoudl add, nothing contentious or extreme) because I would be fascinated to read it

Have you tried Google? Or looking at more divorces than your Uncles?

Mind you, if you have never yet read, seen or heard anything that disagrees with your point of view, it's unlikely you will in future

If you could link to the research you did mention, I'd find it very useful, actually.

Always one to consider evidence, being in science.

MBP, I wish you were too busy in RL to nitpick over Wws pain. So unnecessary.

This line of argument completely misrepresents the cause/effect relationship. If A is a cause of B, and B is a cause of C, then there is a causal link and A is a cause of C.

This argument works in a deterministic model, if A always causes B, and then B always causes C.
If problems in marriage, unhappiness, then cheating.

However, it's more problems in marriage, unhappiness, then several paths open for a choice a) working to solve them, b) leave the relationship, c) find someone else and lie to current partner.
In that sense, the problems didn't cause c). They may have led the person to make a choice, but that person is ultimately responsible (and the cause) for choosing c).

By your train of thought, and you haven't addressed this, do problems in a marriage cause a person to beat up their partner?
Because there is option d) violently force partner to accept one's point of view so that this person can be happy again.

If the problem is lack of sex, would option d) rape be caused by refusal to have sex, in the same way that you are proposing that it causes c) sex with another person (cheating)?

Or is it only and only caused by the person making that choice?

It is strange how when you've had the "light bulb" moment, you can't understand why others can't see the light too!

My ex-H had an affair 11 years ago. At first I was livid and full of anger - how could you do this? How could you break the promises? How could you deceive me? etc.

Then we went to counselling in an attempt to see if we could find a way forward. The counselling was all about my ex-H. All about how hard he found having young children, how hard he found sharing my attention, how lonely he sometimes felt, how he no longer felt I was interested in him, how I didn't understand him anymore. I sat through week after week after week of this shit and I started to doubt myself. I started to think that somehow it was my fault that ex-H was so miserable that I had somehow pushed him to the point of having an affair. I'm a control freak, a pleaser, a fixer & he is a narcissist. I started to think I could fix him & make it all better.

I tried, he didn't. We got divorced.

However, it took a decade to undo that mind set that I had somehow unwittingly, unknowingly made ex-H be unfaithful to me. That having babies (that he wanted more than I had done) and not being able to give 100% of myself to him meant that I had forced him to the point of an affair.

Having an affair is a selfish choice that one person in a marriage makes. It is not because of the problems, it is because that is the course of action they choose. Other people might choose to improve communications, to go to counselling, to get away together & rediscover themselves as a couple, to help the partner with drink issues, eating issues or MH issues etc etc, but the partner who has an affair makes a conscious choice to do lie, deceive & be unfaithful, rather than leave or try to sort out the problems.

Wow I can't believe this is still going and that there are two posters still bothering to post not about the issue at hand, but about how others write and their (mis)understanding of the meanings involved . If Lazyjaney and MissBoPeep met, I'm not sure either would understand what the other was saying at all and god knows how they'd accurately report the conversation afterwards .

What's that sort of behaviour on a thread all about though? It's so odd when everyone else can understand what folk are writing. Such a weird personality trait to do that too especially on a thread of this kind where posters have talked about their own personal pain and upset. Apart from the insensitivity of this bizarre nitpicking, why would anyone make themselves look so foolish deliberately?

Yup FB

"MBP, I wish you were too busy in RL to nitpick over Wws pain. So unnecessary."

Quite.

I could point to a hundred little things that MIGHT have led to H's decision to have an affair. I could also point to a hundred little things that might just have easily led to my decision to have an affair. But none of those hundreds are unusual in a long-term marriage with children and the usual pressures of family life.

I am fighting a rear-guard action against my need to take the blame for not being X, for not doing Y etc. Because I like to think that I am in control. H's affair was one thing that I was no in any way in control of. My need to blame myself was a way of counteracting that. But it wasn't my fault. It wasn't the fault of the marriage. It was his fault 100%. 100%! Even typing that makes me uncomfortable. But it is a fact. H tells me, has told me many many times. that I did nothing wrong, that the affair was nothing to do with me, it was to do with him and bad boundaries. He is ashamed. I am not (or I try not to be) because I was not to blame.

I have noticed on other sites dealing specifically with relationship issues that there is a tendency amongst some posters to be quite antagonistic to betrayed spouses/partners. To downplay their pain, to try to analyse their behaviour, their shortcomings. Some of them are ex or current OW, some of them aren't but seem to have difficulties with empathy. I don't understand it.

Orm, I think people spend a lot of time justifying why they had an affair or were the "other" person in an affair. Unless, like your H, they can admit that they made a selfish choice, they have to come up with lots of justifications for why that action was "right", or even if not right, somehow justifiable.

The easiest way to do that is to blame shift, to make someone else responsible for the choice that they made. The easiest person to blame is going to be the non-cheating partner. No single person on the planet is perfect, so there will undoubtedly always be a long list of flaws they can point to for how those flaws "made them" have an affair.

That's why I wonder about Lazy. She seems too invested in defending the indefensible.
She seems either to be a cheater or OW, or, more worryingly, be caught up in a damaging self-blame pit.
Although, she could also be one of those counsellors who blame the cheated on partner.

Well yes Orm. But I don't suppose it's just some OW who'd do that (or OM) but also people who've had affairs while still married and who are still blaming their partners for it.

Anyway, I want to acknowledge the great posts on this thread, because they are at risk of being overlooked while all this nonsense keeps hijacking it.

Terrific post PostBellumBugsy. That 'lightbulb moment' you mention and how long it took you to get there was kind of what Charbon was saying upthread about how, because this is such an emotive issue and is the last bastion of societally-approved victim-blaming, it's sometimes difficult for people to see this through a different lens.

What made the lightbulb come on?

Not entirely sure if it was a light bulb moment or more of a tiny glimmer that slowly became a giant flood light. For a good 8 years, I really did think that somehow I was to blame, that if I'd tried harder, lost the post baby weight quicker, realised I was anaemic quicker, been less ill & exhausted that somehow I would have prevented ex-H having the affair, but then a combination of being relentlessly pursued by a married man - and finding the Chump Lady website made me realise that I need to get over myself. It wasn't me, it was him. It was ex-H's choice, ex-H's actions - not mine!

I think the biggest eye opener was the married man who tried so hard to persuade me to have an affair with him. It is a complicated story but I did NOT yield to his endless flattery & charm & have an affair. However, it was genuinely a light bulb moment when I realised how all the crap that he was spouting about how lonely, misunderstood & unfulfilled he was in his marriage had nothing to do with his wife - it was all about him. I imagine that it was the very same stuff ex-H must have said to OW.

fb - yes, I am sure some OW, OM, WS etc can be like that. No monopoly on being an arse

That's so interesting. Isn't it so mad, bad and sad that people still blame themselves for what someone else did? But it must be especially hard if that person blames you for it and society seems to support his viewpoint. Like others were saying, I'd hope that sort of thing is rare now for crime victims because society itself pours scorn and approbation on victim-blamers and IME, eventually if enough people condemn that blaming it starts to enter public consciousness and bit by bit, that view becomes so unpalatable that most people are forced to change their minds and even the diehard dinosaurs would never risk saying what they think.

You were very insightful to see the parallels between what the MM was saying and what your ex likely said to his OW. How wise you are and how well-dodged that bullet!

WS = Wayward Spouses?

H tried to part blame me at first but I didn't accept it, and he backed down. I think it was only slowly over the next year that I started to look at the relationship differently, and to notice other examples of power imbalance. We went back to counselling as a result.

However, I do think I was a bit of a fixer etc. Working on strengthening my own boundaries instead of looking at his, stopping complaining and letting H experience all sorts of consequences instead, have been very useful.

So, for me, although I very much regret that he did put this nasty blot on our relationship, I do think the resulting trauma, or the working through it, helped me to develop as a person.

Yes, wayward spouse.

Ta, orm

PostBellumBugsy awesome post, thank you!

Lazeyjaney I have to say as a response that really lives up to your name.

Why not be honest and just say no, you have no links to research it's just your opinion. And yes of course I know of more people that have divorced. What an incredibly stupid thing to say.

I recall reading somewhere that women are particularly inclined to believe that they must be at fault somehow because of being strongly socialized to please others from childhood up. I don't know if men who have been cheated on have the same urge to go over and over things that they could surely have done differently to avert the infidelity. It seems quite a human urge to me, and the outside world doesn't help.

familyscapegoat, I totally agree, I think that relationships post affairs have to be different, really you need to start again with a recommittment and a mutual promise to do things differently. Otherwise they just limp on and are likely to disintegrate.

"However, it's more problems in marriage, unhappiness, then several paths open for a choice a) working to solve them, b) leave the relationship, c) find someone else and lie to current partner.
In that sense, the problems didn't cause c). They may have led the person to make a choice, but that person is ultimately responsible (and the cause) for choosing c)"

Lweji you are making very elementary errors in the way cause and effect works, which i have pointed out before. Also, as someone else showed you way upthread, you have created the convenient but impossible outcome that now no effects are possible for a troubled relationship.

Also your points on determinism clearly show you're unfamiliar with probability, which has been used for centuries to deal with multiple causes and/or effects.

Anyway, since your (and most others on here's) subsequent posts then go in for personal attack, there really is no point in continuing this debate - you know what they say about those resorting to the ad hominem....

"Why not be honest and just say no, you have no links to research it's just your opinion. And yes of course I know of more people that have divorced. What an incredibly stupid thing to say"

I suggested you Google, because if you were right there wouldn't be page after page on there refuting your point.