As odd as it sounds one of the things that puts cheaters in a bind is guilt. Although you wonder if they feel any guilt, it comes as a surprise they do, unless they’re a narcissist.
Since narcissists are a full-time topic themselves, I’ll defer dealing with them today. The surprise is that non-narcissists really do feel guilt.
The problem is their guilt is misplaced. They feel guilt for things like ending the affair abruptly, for supporting the lover’s children, for not staying in touch with the lover or committing to them.
Through manipulation, they are manipulated into thinking the emotions of others are more important than the emotions of you and their own family.
When they feel more guilt in their relationship with the lover than their relationship with you, their guilt is misplaced. The affair managed messing up their emotional wiring and priorities.
They feel guilty for what they shouldn’t and the things they should feel guilt about, they don’t show it or express it. When they tell you that they’re ‘confused’, they’re speaking the plain truth.
They know they feel guilt, but what’s driving the guilt is confused.
They forget that when they married you, it changed things. It changed the priority of relationships. You have a rightful claim on their affections whereas the lover doesn’t.
Here’s the hard truth. They owe the lover nothing. The lover uses emotional leveraging in putting pressure on them. The leveraging they use amounts to emotional manipulation.
By means of keeping secrets doing dirty deeds, the lover manages blackmailing the cheater into continuing their arrangement. The cheater pays to keep the truth from coming out.
There’s a huge difference between legitimate claims on your spouse’s loyalties versus imagined or manipulated guilt used by the lover.
The cheater operates as if there was a ‘relationship ledger’ where what is owed to them and by them is registered. The problem is that their guilt about having the affair leads them to artificially balance the ledger by over-investing in their relationship with the lover.
They think it somehow balances out. The dirtier the relationship, the more is owed to them. It amounts to using an emotional currency to buy their peace.
In my video, “Help for the Cheater: Starting the Road to Recovery” I address what’s needed in ending the affair and starting the road to recovery for the cheater. Click and download your copy today.
Start balancing the books by zeroing out those emotional debts put there by the lover. The cheater may not realize they can repudiate those debts and get out from under the pressure they bring into their life.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
