One of the problems you often encounter with an affair is that no one wants to assume responsibility for the
affair. This denial of responsibility ranges from mild to flagrant levels of avoidance.
At the mild level, there is an avoidance of assuming full responsibility. One party is willing to accept responsibility but ONLY if the other party accepts responsibility for their part. In such cases, there is some acceptance of responsibility, yet whatever responsibility is assumed is often contingent on others. When there are contingencies for acceptance, it amounts to a non-acceptance.
At the flagrant level of avoidance, there is a total denial of the affair even happening. In such cases, you can present them with evidence of the affair such as pictures or recordings and they deny that it is them or that it happened.
There are also various amounts of avoidance along the whole continuum from mild to flagrant. In some cases, they are very sincere in denying any fault or responsibility for the affair. In their heart and mind, they genuinely believe they are not at fault.
Assuming responsibility for an affair in terms of saying “The affair is all my fault!” is scary. Few of you would want to be at fault for an affair. In the event that you are wanting to be at fault, there are some heavy relationship issues going on.
Wanting to be blamed for the affair is often a hallmark for an exit affair. Since exit affairs are often done intentionally to exit your marriage, the one wanting out may want the blame. They want you to be so angry with them that you give them the boot from your marriage.
Wanting the fault for the affair may also be one spouse’s attempt at taking on the pain. Rather than allow each spouse experience discomfort or pain, they assume all the blame, thus allowing the other spouse to be free from the pain. This is another use of the “Pain See-Saw” . In this case, the pain is taken on by one party so that the other is out of pain. (I address the “Pain See-Saw” dynamic in the Affair Recovery Workshop).
Whenever you or your spouse do not feel pain, including the pain related to an affair, abnormalities start developing in the relationship. Healthy healing involves pain as part of the process. When there is either no pain or the assumption of pain that is not theirs, abnormalities may begin developing.
When the cheater or yourself proclaims “The affair is not my fault!” there is also the potential for another major problem. This problem is that of assuming that once you know who to blame for the affair or how the affair started, you have ‘fixed’ the problem. The only problem you have fixed is “Who to blame”.
Attaching blame to one spouse does not make your marriage better. When you confuse healing with fault-finding, you will stay dysfunctional. Even though there is a myth of “Finding the source of the affair will heal my marriage”, it does not make it true.
When the neighbor’s kid breaks my window with his baseball, I can clearly see the problem. I can even hit what remains of that window with the baseball repeatedly, but it is not going to repair the window. If anything, the repeated application of the baseball to the window is only going to shatter things further. Reapplying the problem or locating the problem does not fix my window. ‘Healing’ or fixing my window requires different actions.
In a similar manner, finding who is at fault for the affair will not ‘fix’ your marriage. It may let you know where to start making your repairs, but knowing the cause or who is at fault is not healing anything.
Healing your marriage requires different actions and approaches to your marriage relationship. You can start the healing process with the material contained in the Affair Recovery Workshop.
Best Regards,
Jeff
