With affairs comes anger. One brings the other. If the anger was already there, the affair makes it worse than it was before.
There are times you may wonder about the cheater being so angry after the affair. In your mind, they got what they wanted. You assume that after having had their fun that they’d be less angry.
One of the odd paradoxes of affairs is that the affair brings out MORE anger instead of lessening it. It also makes their anger harder to control.
The affair with the loss of control that comes with it, makes their ability of controlling anger weaker as well.
The intense anger isn’t about you, even though you may think it is. They may blame you for it and do their best to make you own responsibility for their anger.
They may have you believing that you are the cause of their anger. When that happens, you either intentionally or unintentionally accept blame for their anger.
When you do accept that blame, they feel some limited relief. It’s not that you caused it, they needed someone to blame and you accepted it. They viewed the ‘for better or worse’ part of your vows as a conditional statement.
In their mind, since you made them angry, they are justified in having an affair. They view the anger as you ‘making things worse’. Since you made things worse, they use that as a conditional justification for their affair.
I’d tell you not to accept blame for their anger, but in all likelihood, you’ve already done that. Instead, I’ll focus on pointing out that you didn’t make them angry. They made that choice.
Their blaming you is a way of reducing the discomfort of their guilt. When you accept blame, it takes the pressure off of themselves for the affair. It also reinforces the idea that you and they aren’t getting along.
The cheater needs you accepting blame in order to keep their conscience at bay. Taking blame in order to momentarily reduce the anger only serves to make dealing with the root issues behind the affair more challenging.
If there’s been anger, there’s a increased risk for violence and the trauma that comes with it. You may not have bruises on your body, yet the hurts in your heart and mind are real. You carry the scars of unpleasant episodes that happened related to the affair.
This is where the video on Overcoming Affair Trauma helps. It guides you through techniques designed for getting you past those scars and habits, like accepting blame for things you didn’t do.
When the cheater has anger problems, there’s a high likelihood that both of you are carrying scars and wounds needing attention. Start doing something about it today.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
