Recovery from the affair often means dealing with abuse. Strangely as it may see, the offending spouse often “turns the table” and blames the spouse for his/her behavior. This is common in the “My Marriage Made Me Do It” affair.

Here are some questions I posed regarding this pattern and the responses:

1. What in the way of disrespect, blame, criticism and/or abuse are you facing?

2. What has worked best for you in stopping or tolerating less and less of these destructive behaviors?

Case Study #1:

I believe my wife would say our marriage made her do it, and a little of I can’t say no to him with some revenge motive too. I guess I get no respect from her. She gives all her emotional support to him, shows me no affection, wants both worlds, have her cake and eat it too.

I haven’t learned how to charge neutral! I would blow up at times when I would here her talking with him, or when someone would tell me they saw them together. I’m not sure that anything has worked best for me,

Case Study #2:

Every time I make a remark about his affair his excuse is”well we had problems in our relationship so he blame’s it on me more than anything (you should have done something about your kids behavior ,make changes ) See i have a Daughter living with me that’s not his. We are not married but been together for more than 6 years .

I tell him” blame me it’s easy for you that way so you don’t have to feel bad or i just say to him well we have to work both on our problems not just one of us .Most the time we talk and try to see each other’s point of view .

Case Study #3:

Knowing the pain it causes me, my husband continues to talk to ‘her’ despite requests not to. he blames me for why he has ‘nothing to give’ to our relationship anymore because I put work first for a couple of years. Also my harsh personality made him feel defeated and he just ‘gave up’. he also now is turning anything I say around and twisting it to mean something to feed his guilt.

I haven’t quite figured that out. Anything I say or do hasn’t worked. It seems if I do the ‘neutral charge’ it helps and not stepping over anything. just trying it. but now he’s still in that pointing fingers game and is also affair #7 so to get close is really hard.

Infidelity changes one’s life. New ways of coping and viewing self, others, family, marriage and the future emerge.

Here’s a question I posed:

1. List 3 or 4 meanings that your partner’s affair has for you. That is to say, what impact is the infidelity having upon YOU? For example, how has is changed what you think about? how you spend your time? how you think of yourself? etc? Tell a story or give examples of how your life is now different.

Even though I know the affair is not my fault, I think about ways I could make myself better. I continue to try and push away the negative and think about what positive has come out of this. Weird thing to say but I can breathe easier knowing that some positive things have come of this. My life is completely different, my husband has decided after 45 days of me finding out and not seeing or speaking to me about anything that he wants a divorce. Needless to say I was absolutely crushed, my family is destroyed or feels that way, we have two children of our own and my nephew who we are guardians for. Our son is 7 and our daughter is 18 mos old. All of a sudden, the dream I thought we both were striving to achieve was on pause while he was put on active duty to support the war. Instead I find that he had an a ffair with a married woman who has four children, he didn’t even cheat right, he told her he was divorced that his wife, whom he still loved left him. I am torn inside in a way that I have never felt before. Our friends and family were surprised but I wasn’t and that is the part that hurts. Through this I have found faith to help me through the rough days and family and friends support is always good. I spend my time trying to stay busy

The healing journey for affair and infidelity recovery can be difficult and long. Successfully walking that journey can, however, provide tremendous satisfaction and discovery.

Here are real people in different stages of infidelity healing letting you know what they are doing to heal and recover:

>>>>Went for walks together Went out for social events together

>>>>face the facts talk about the feelings understand why it happened

>>>>I did NOT give an ultimatum about stopping seeing the OP or asking him to leave. We stopped shouting and talked like adults. We still do things together e.g. family stuff, household chores. He still sees the OP and I’ve a long way to go. His guilt prevents moving forward.

>>>>1. I just backed off. I listened about the other person and heard the areas where there was a void that was filled. 2. Since I didn’t do a lot of good things through this, I don’t sling mud over the transgression. This has helped a lot with opening the doors to meaningful conversation without arguments or sore feelings that would undue months of work. 3. I am in no hurry to fall back into old patterns. So when he is ready to come home, great. If not, then he can continue to stay in his apartment and we will just continue to date. Since he hasn’t expressedan interest in seeing his son too much, am not forcing them to be together. We’ll work on us first then our son.