One of the things that will get cheaters mad in a hurry is telling them the truth. Telling them the truth often has the impact of throwing gasoline onto the fire. Once they are mad, they are not going to blame themselves. Instead, they are going to blame you. Phrases like “I’m mad and it’s all your fault!” (which is a chapter title I borrowed from my friend, Sue St. Clair in her book, “My Mother, My Frenemy”). When the cheater throws such blaming statements at you, they are avoiding all responsibility for their emotional state. It is a statement of blame and avoidance. The are emotionally upset and are blaming you for their anger. The only person they are holding responsible is you for making them mad, with the implication that you need to fix them as well, and in their mind fixing means that you undo what you have done.
There are good reasons why alcoholics often team up with rescuers. The same often happens with angry persons. When the cheater is the angry person, they will blame you, and if you are a rescuer, you will assume any guilt associated with the blame. Rescuers often eat guilt for breakfast, dinner and supper. They eat all the guilt which the cheater throws on them. It becomes a vicious cycle. The raging cheater continues raging and the rescuer continues believing that it is “all their fault.” If you are one of those who beat yourself up with “if only…” every time that the cheater rages, you need to wake up and stop this merry-go-round that you are on. As long as the raging cheater and the guilty rescuer feed into each other, they each live under an illusion of control, while they are both out of control.
What makes some of these situations sad, is that there are cases, where the ‘anger dance’ is the only thing holding the couple together. It is their way of engaging each other, although it is unhealthy as all get out. When anger is your only way of engaging your spouse, you not only need anger management, you need some real intimacy in your marriage as well (I address this with the SPRIG principle in my e-book on overcoming your partners affair).
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
