She looked up at me with tears in her eyes and asked “What’s wrong with me?” I realized that her questions are asked of many men and women in her position of having had partners and spouses cheat on them repeatedly.
Being betrayed once is bad enough, yet when in happens more than once, it often leaves you asking the question “What is wrong with me?” It is a natural question to consider when you are in those circumstances. In many ways, you may even view yourself as a two-time looser.
I have trouble with the label “two-time looser”. Yes, you have been the victim more than once. You lost a relationship more than once, including loosing the dreams that go with it. The woman that was talking to me described how she felt flawed and broken after being cheated on repeatedly. That is the problem with the ‘looser’ label. It is a label that often cuts you down to your being. You feel like you are the trash, rather than the person who betrayed you and treated you like trash.
The situation can spin out of control to where you view yourself as “unloved” and “unwanted”. We all want to feel needed and wanted. The rejection of an affair slaps you upside and sideways. The affair rejects you, rejects your sexuality, rejects your being. That kind of rejection is a heavy hurt.
When that kind of rejection happens repeatedly, the affair wound never seems to heal. Like a scab that keeps being picked off, each rejection or perceived rejection reminds you of that ugly side of yourself.
She was able to move past her issues. After some serious soul searching, she realized that she was attracted to men who were unable to love her. She picked men who were familiar. They each reminded her of a parent who left an imprint of fractured love on her life. That parent established a pattern. She loved her father and wanted someone in her life that reminded her of early life feelings.
She found them, and they let her down. There was NOTHING wrong with her. She made some impulsive choices based on poisoned experiences from childhood. Those poisoned experiences left brain programming in her life that tripped her up. An imperfect parent left an imperfect program that tripped her up by influencing her choices in spouses.
The good news is that you can move past those imperfect programs. You can change those old messages and imprints left in your brain. You are not doomed to a replay loop of affairs and failed marriages.
It was freeing for her to move past her pain. You can move past your pain as well. Some of the same interventions addressed in dealing with affair trauma, you can use in moving past the trauma of repeated affairs as well.
Best Regards,
Jeff
