My husband will not take full responsibility for the affair: he partially blames me

Sometimes I hear from people who are on the receiving end of a very infuriating excuse for an affair. Sometimes the cheating spouse is not willing to take full responsibility for his or her actions and take all the blame. He sometimes finds it preferable to shift at least part of that blame to his faithful spouse.

I heard from one wife who said, “Honestly, I was shocked to learn of my husband’s affair. I didn’t suspect anything at all. Honestly, I thought we were very happy. In fact, many of my friends told me they wish they had a marriage like the one.” Well, I guess the joke is on me because I just found out that my husband has been cheating with the woman down the street who takes care of our kids from time to time. I’ll admit it. My words haven’t been kind and my tone It’s been tough when I’ve demanded answers from him. And the biggest question I have is what caused him to betray me like this. From day one, I’ve absolutely demanded answers about what would make a man with a good marriage and his wife cheat. And last night, I was horrified and furious when my husband finally blurted out that I was partly to blame for his affair. He says I’ve let our marriage stagnate and I have to let go. He says I never laugh anymore and I don’t or am I funny to myself. and around. Also, he says that I am well aware that I don’t want to be as intimate as he is. He says that we have had conversations about this and that I knew of his displeasure. Worse yet, he says I almost gave him permission to meet his needs elsewhere. That is only a half truth. About a month ago, he told me that he felt he needed to have sex much more often or even once a day. I almost thought he was joking and sarcastically told him that if he needed sex so badly, maybe he should go and find someone who would be willing to accept that schedule. But he was part joking and part trying to point out how impossible he was being. He wasn’t serious. And I refuse to take any blame. But at the same time, he insists that we share the blame. What I can do? I will never admit fault. It was his business, not mine.”

I could identify with this wife. And I agreed with her. But I also know from experience that sometimes in order to heal, you have to move away from the subject of guilt and take a step toward what it takes to help you move forward. That said, there’s always a way to get her point across, even if you don’t let that stop you from getting what she needs. I will discuss more about this matter in the next article.

You have to decide if you want to continue discussing this or if you want to put it aside for now to start the healing: Whether your husband will abandon this position depends on how strongly he believes what he says and on his personality. And some husbands are swayed by her wife’s insistence that she won’t take any blame, while other husbands will simply be inspired to keep debating this endlessly.

In deciding how to play this out, you will often have to assess how far your husband is going to take his claims of guilt. Sometimes it becomes obvious that he will cling to this excuse endlessly and if you are going to make any progress, you will have to put this issue on a shelf until he gets some progress under you first.

Other times, you may notice that you begin to give up your stance and you may feel that you are beginning to see your point of view. Or you may feel that since you’re not going to buy this excuse anyway, there’s no need to continue this posture.

Most of the time, you’ll have to look closely to see which of the above scenarios is the most accurate. And sometimes you have to realize that you don’t need to agree on this point right away, although that should come over time. Sometimes it’s better to just worry about where you’re going from here rather than how you got here (although that will eventually have to be worked out).

Know that you can begin the healing even if you don’t agree with all the variables: As I suggested, sometimes the best strategy is to try to progress where you can. Often when her husband sees that you just want your life back instead of constantly punishing him, he will realize that he has no incentive to keep playing the blame game. Often this doesn’t happen until you start to make some progress. And you can’t begin to make that progress until you agree to at least some cooperation.

So you may want to make it clear to your husband that while his statement angers you and you feel inaccurate, you’ve decided you just want to move on and come back to it later. A suggested script might go something like: “I must emphasize that I accept no blame in this. Regardless of the state of our marriage or your satisfaction with it, there is never an excuse to cheat on your spouse. And I suspect that if the roles were reversed , you wouldn’t be too willing to accept any blame if I were the one who cheated on you. So I suggest we agree to disagree on this issue for now. I suspect we both may see things differently once we start to rebuild our marriage and heal. And we don’t need to agree on everything to do that. So let’s put that aside for now and focus on where we go from here.

People have told me that they feel this is giving in, but I disagree. Nothing says you can’t come back to this topic later when some of the volatility subsides. And sometimes, you just have to skip a problem for a short period of time to get over it.

So while she absolutely agreed with this wife and understood why she was upset, she also knew that as things got better between them, her husband might start to take more of the blame. Most people who cheat know deep down that they are the only one to blame. And saying otherwise is just posturing.