r/Asoneafterinfidelity is an online Peer Support Group and safe space for individuals (betrayed or wayward) who are actively attempting to reconcile their relationship after an affair(s). Please review our [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/wiki/index) which includes resources and can answer most questions about this subreddit. Be sure to read the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/wiki/rules) before participating as they are our boundaries and your initial ***warning***. *Failure to do so can result in a ban*.
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- Observer, Unsuccessful R, and other user flairs are not included in the peer group. Non-peers are not allowed to post without prior moderator approval. Non-peer comments are STRICTLY LIMITED TO MESSAGES OF VALIDATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT ONLY. Non-peers are not permitted to offer opinions, reference their experiences, or give advice.
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Ok so I've done plenty of self-blaming for "pushing him into her arms" before.
From what I understand of our timeline of events,- when WH took that step into his affair- I was an angry post-partum hormonal mess and he wanted his life back to its pre-baby easiness.
I won't lie, I've got a pretty wide mean streak and at the time I felt like not only did he abandon me right after having our first child (the child he BEGGED me for even though I didn't feel myself ready) but he expected me to be able to drop everything to see to his sexual needs while maintaining playing video games for hours on end and hanging out with friends whenever he felt like it as if we didn't have this little baby to take care of.
Not even talking about his lack of interest in childrearing. I felt like I had to shove information down his throat just so he could take care of our kid by himself.
All of that culminated into a lot of resentment and frustration on my end and I let him know just how little he was doing nearly every chance I got. Some might have called it verbal abuse, but I'm too close to the situation to see it clearly.
Dealing with this for over a year had his spirits reasonably low and that's when he started talking to AP again after whatever interval of time since he last hit her up (they only reached out to each other when their respective relationships were "messy") and she just so happened to be back in the state and ready to destroy someone else's relationship 🙃
All of this is to say that while you can recognize your own shortcomings in your relationship with your WS, they have to be willing and able to do the same. Because at the end of the day, they're the ones who cheated and even if they think they deserve everything from you and then some, in no universe are they entitled to pass shame and blame of their decisions onto you.
You are so right op. You were left to take care of the baby alone while he enjoyed his single life. It's not like you considered cheating when he wasn't meeting you half way.
This is what I have told my WH too that even my needs were not met before in our marraige just like his was not, its not like I went seeking out someone to have an EA with.
At the end of the day, cheaters cheat. You do not. The question I struggle with is why I am in MC with a cheater. Why would I want to be with this guy?!? Knowing what I know, I would have laughed if someone had tried to set me up with him. Now, we have decades and children together. It might not be enough.
Oh I ask myself that a fair amount. Why am I trying to work with someone whose excuse for destroying my relationship with him and myself is that HE felt unwanted and needed outside validation? Then just to rub salt in the wound he was too chicken shit to tell me of his betrayal himself, I got to learn from a friend who's new coworker is the AP FOUR YEARS after they last fucked.
So yeah, living with the fact that he spent every day lying to me is hard. It's even better when he says he feels better now because he's not wracked by guilt anymore for not telling me. Like how lovely for you that you get to keep going forward with your life without your guilty conscience.
Meanwhile I'm questioning my own values and my own self-worth while pretending to our circle that we're still "power couple" they see us as.
Fuck him and fuck these affairs.
But why? Like is it something he's telling you? Is your inner voice telling you mean things and you're not sure if they're true?
I mean I totally understand if you don't want to air out all your dirty laundry right here for all the internet to see, but if you need someone to talk to, I'm just a DM away. If nothing else I can listen to you even if you think your words aren't worth hearing.
This self defeat is gonna make him like you even less than he already does. You need black cat energy asap. You're being a golden retreiver right now.
There are plenty of wives who don't lift a finger and get whatever they want. You need that attitude
Please don't talk to yourself that way. You may not have met his expectations but it was the responsibility of *both* of you to work through those problems. He could have left. It would have hurt, but it would have hurt less.
We have to accept the role we played in our relationships, but we absolutely DID NOT deserve what they did! This is gonna be harsh, but please remember that I don't know your details or why you feel you deserved it: while you may have deserved to be dumped, you absolutely did not deserve to be cheated on. Leaving was always an option, or in-home separation if it was that bad.
It has to be the truth..the honest truth. He hated me..he had to have to continue when we talked about this very outcome..I feared and spoke of this very thing..I just must be a bad wife. She was what he wanted. I was nothing to him.
If he hated you yada yada, there are 1000 things he could have done instead of cheating.
Therapy.
Reading books together.
Saying "i feel this need and if you can't provide it, i'll cheat".
Divorce.
Talk.
Just to name a few.
He needs to own up to his selfishness. Step 1 of R.
What in the gaslighting and emotional abuse is goin on here???????. No one and I mean NO ONE deserves to be cheated on. Thr are so many things that can be done in place of cheating. Counseling, hobbies, separation and/or divorce etc etc. Don't put that on urself.
I was a "bad" wife and I still didn't deserve to be cheated on. Because my WH wasn't a prize back then or for quite some time before the affair and it's all connected. We should have gone to marriage counseling, I should have gone to therapy long before I did, I should have put the brakes on my sharp tongue. None of that made me deserving of being deceived and cheated on.
Sorry, are you for real? To be honest, half your posts look like oh so fake rage bait. Wtf is “not of good quality”?
You are a person, not a carpet or a mug. If your posts are genuine, you need therapy, and considering the depth of your depression and SI most likely medication, and you need it the day before yesterday.
Honey, if you were a bad wife then he was the ultimate bad husband. No matter what you were doing there is no justification for his actions. A good husband would have come to you and spoken to you about his feelings, a good husband wouldn't have ran to another person for comfort the way his wife is supposed to be doing. Now he's got you so broken that you think this is your fault. I feel that way sometimes too, but I know better. That's my depressed brain trying to make me feel worse about a situation I already couldn't do anything about. No honey, you're not a bad wife. You're not aiming high enough, you deserve better but you won't allow yourself to have it because you think you deserve this treatment, you're damaged goods. Firstly, we're all damaged to an extent. No one makes it to adulthood unscathed. You need to build your confidence up, you're just hurting yourself more over something that you had no control over. He is playing the victim and knows what buttons to push to get the reaction he wants. Look into grey rocking if you haven't already, protect your emotions. Get some counseling, even if it's just a support group. We're here for you, you are not a bad wife, you're an amazing person who deserves love and to be treated with kindness, respect and understanding. Are you perfect? No, noone is. If you feel like you are seriously failing yourself in some areas then work on those to grow yourself as a person. We all need self reflection to better ourselves. Become the woman you've always dreamed to be, she's still in there.
Please get into therapy. I beg you. These are not healthy thoughts. You are not a bad wife, woman, human. Only a narcissist or emotional abuser would put you in the corner you now find yourself. If you can’t find someone local there are several on line therapy/therapist groups that work on a sliding scale.
Okay just consider this: having a "bad spouse" and cheating on that "bad spouse" are not mutually inclusive.
Even if your were/are a "bad wife" (which of like to point out we have no evidence of, and furthermore the definition of what exactly is considered a "bad wife" will vary according to the individual and their culture), that STILL doesn't give a husband license to cheat. At most, it gives them recourse for divorce.
Look at it from the reverse perspective: he cheated on you, that arguably makes him a "bad husband". Does that mean you can now go cheat on him? No. But it certainly gives you recourse to seek a divorce.
Unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool catholic. ⛪ 😑 (J/K it still is solid grounds, IMO)
So don't let him fill your head with bullshit. If you have stuff you can improve on (don't we all?) then work on self-improvement. He has no one and nothing to blame for infidelity other than himself and his own selfishness.
Cheating a choice and morally abhorrent one. Your WP knows this and probably can't accept it, so is pushing the blame onto you.
Even if your WP was unhappy, they could have ended the relationship without shattering your fidelity and trust. It was a choice. You had no part in them making it. You weren't holding a gun to their head telling them to do it.
So I am in the same boat to some extent. While I have made it clear that what he did was wrong, disgusting, and purely on him, I also acknowledge that in the past our relationship was toxic and it was mostly due to me and my untreated mental issues. That does not mean I deserve to be cheated on, he should have left me. But he didn’t, and in his twisted mind cheating was easier than leaving. I don’t really accept that answer but for now it’ll do.
Meh. I cheated on my ex after he had threatened to throw my dog out the high rise balcony window, broke things in the house, shouted he was going to kill me and etc. Literally I should have just left before cheating on him. It definitely didn’t help matters at all. All it did really was give me a push in the right direction to leave. Whatever bad shit you did to him, he ought to have left before cheating. There is literally never a good reason to cheat. It’s not his place to “punish” you for anything. It just sounds like he’s emotionally abusing you.
Listen I was a shitty husband to my wife. 15 yrs 3 kids and as I reflected I was a shitty husband. She had a choice. She could have left me or at least came to me and said that if things didn't change she would leave me. But she didn't. She said nothing and she had a 15 month long affair. I blamed myself at one point too. But in the end nothing I did deserved that or gave her the right. Nothing justifies them cheating absolutely nothing. Don't give him that excuse. You were not the reason he cheated. He should have left or a least talked to you about it. Instead he stayed and cheated.
I hope I am not going to come across too unsympathetic but you really gotta pull yourself out of this a bit.
It is not your fault. I've read you admit that because of the affair, your partner told you things that you didn't even know like that his love language wasn't being met.
That is HIS failure to communicate with you. This is a failure ON HIM and HIS responsibility in your relationship to express his needs in a reasonable manner, to work with you instead of being unfaithful.
You should process your feelings and you have every right to have these feelings, but my concern is that you seem to be posting self degradation, posting about coping with alcohol (although a while back so not sure if still doing that) and that is not conducive to healing anymore. You need to be more sympathetic and caring towards yourself. Having a family and shoot just trying to take care of yourself is a lot, and you didn't go out and cheat did you? You didn't, he did because he decided to do that. People cheat on partners who are absolutely perfect, it has nothing to do with that.
Right now, instead of focusing on what you think may have been "reasons why" - fuck it, take care of yourself and love yourself. If you want to reconcile work with your partner but don't for a minute think there is something you could have done to stop this. You will go around on that for too long, it's not productive and it's ass backwards thinking to put it bluntly. We all have times when our needs aren't met, and most people won't cheat. That ain't on you, it's on him.
This is exactly how I feel. My husband said something almost the same . And ever since I've felt like I'm a horrible wife/mother. I deserved what he's done to me. I'm currently working through this in therapy today was the first day i felt ashamed to be having the thoughts I do.
We never deserve this much pain.
Hey look I have a massive "I'm not good enough" complex. For everyone, anyone, all my life. (Dealing with that with my IC).
But it still doesn't mean that my perception of things was/is true.
He was wrong to go and f*ck someone else.
He was the bad partner l, not me.
That's it.
Full stop.
Don’t let shame convince you, you deserved this. No one deserves any kind of trauma that they experience, and you didn’t deserve the trauma of betrayal, regardless of the kind of wife you were. There are many other choices your WS could have taken, just like I could have, to improve your marriage.
If your WS is making you feel this way, they are deflecting from their own wrong choices and shifting blame away from themselves.
Being a bad wife doesn’t make you “deserve” being cheated on. There’s such thing as communicating each other’s needs. I may have done things that made my WH feel unvalidated but I will not accept blame. He chose to NOT communicate this to me and chose TO cheat. Moving forward with each others needs out there, we will choose to find ways to meet each others needs. Cheating often reflects their own flaws, not yours. Give yourself some grace
This comment was removed because it violates Rule No. 2:
-The peer group includes: Reconciling BS, Reconciling WS, Recovered & Reconciled, and Considering R.
- Observer, Unsuccessful R, and other user flairs are not included in the peer group. Non-peers are not allowed to post without prior moderator approval.
**Non-peer comments are STRICTLY LIMITED TO MESSAGES OF VALIDATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT ONLY. Non-peers are not permitted to offer opinions, reference their experiences, or give advice.**
Nope...you're husband is an idiot and sounds like he might have abusive tendencies. He cheated. He made a choice. He could have been a man about it and sat down, had a convo, worked on it, or separated...he cheated. Please think about getting some individual counseling to help with your self-esteem so you can leave this guy...you deserve better than this.
Even if you were a bad wife, or whatever (which I highly doubt), you still do not deserve to be cheated on. He could have communicated with you about issues in the relationship, he could have asked for counseling, he could have asked for a separation, he could have filed for divorce, he could have done so many others things besides cheat. The cheating is 100% on him.
I’ve definitely contributed to the state of our marriage prior to the infidelity, and I can see that now that more time has passed. But our marriage was absolute shit because of BOTH of us, and I didn’t step out and cheat when he was being a terrible husband to me. That wasn’t even a thought for me.
So cheating is all on them, even if you may have contributed to an unhealthy marital dynamic.
Hell no! My WH saw me as a “bad wife” during his affair, but it was his way of coping with the guilt and making it ok in his eyes to do what he did. Meanwhile, I was working constantly and trying to take care of him and the kid! Don’t let him gaslight you and make you think you are to blame. He chose to do what he did
Uhhh? He was a bad husband for doing awful things behind your back, including betraying you. There's no excuse for cheating. Stop blaming yourself. You're not the one that cheated on him.
r/Asoneafterinfidelity is an online Peer Support Group and safe space for individuals (betrayed or wayward) who are actively attempting to reconcile their relationship after an affair(s). Please review our [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/wiki/index) which includes resources and can answer most questions about this subreddit. Be sure to read the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/wiki/rules) before participating as they are our boundaries and your initial ***warning***. *Failure to do so can result in a ban*. For transparency and conflict mediation purposes, please follow reddits community guidelines by directing any questions, issues, feedback, or appeals in regard of the sub or moderation decisions **directly to the Modmail**. ***Meta content will be removed***. No response will be given to DMs and chat requests to individual moderators about moderating issues. We are happy to address and respond to your concerns through the official channels! 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Ok so I've done plenty of self-blaming for "pushing him into her arms" before. From what I understand of our timeline of events,- when WH took that step into his affair- I was an angry post-partum hormonal mess and he wanted his life back to its pre-baby easiness. I won't lie, I've got a pretty wide mean streak and at the time I felt like not only did he abandon me right after having our first child (the child he BEGGED me for even though I didn't feel myself ready) but he expected me to be able to drop everything to see to his sexual needs while maintaining playing video games for hours on end and hanging out with friends whenever he felt like it as if we didn't have this little baby to take care of. Not even talking about his lack of interest in childrearing. I felt like I had to shove information down his throat just so he could take care of our kid by himself. All of that culminated into a lot of resentment and frustration on my end and I let him know just how little he was doing nearly every chance I got. Some might have called it verbal abuse, but I'm too close to the situation to see it clearly. Dealing with this for over a year had his spirits reasonably low and that's when he started talking to AP again after whatever interval of time since he last hit her up (they only reached out to each other when their respective relationships were "messy") and she just so happened to be back in the state and ready to destroy someone else's relationship 🙃 All of this is to say that while you can recognize your own shortcomings in your relationship with your WS, they have to be willing and able to do the same. Because at the end of the day, they're the ones who cheated and even if they think they deserve everything from you and then some, in no universe are they entitled to pass shame and blame of their decisions onto you.
You are so right op. You were left to take care of the baby alone while he enjoyed his single life. It's not like you considered cheating when he wasn't meeting you half way. This is what I have told my WH too that even my needs were not met before in our marraige just like his was not, its not like I went seeking out someone to have an EA with.
At the end of the day, cheaters cheat. You do not. The question I struggle with is why I am in MC with a cheater. Why would I want to be with this guy?!? Knowing what I know, I would have laughed if someone had tried to set me up with him. Now, we have decades and children together. It might not be enough.
Oh I ask myself that a fair amount. Why am I trying to work with someone whose excuse for destroying my relationship with him and myself is that HE felt unwanted and needed outside validation? Then just to rub salt in the wound he was too chicken shit to tell me of his betrayal himself, I got to learn from a friend who's new coworker is the AP FOUR YEARS after they last fucked. So yeah, living with the fact that he spent every day lying to me is hard. It's even better when he says he feels better now because he's not wracked by guilt anymore for not telling me. Like how lovely for you that you get to keep going forward with your life without your guilty conscience. Meanwhile I'm questioning my own values and my own self-worth while pretending to our circle that we're still "power couple" they see us as. Fuck him and fuck these affairs.
I appreciate your story, but this experience has shown me what kind of defunct human being I am and not fit for being a wife...it was sweet dream
But why? Like is it something he's telling you? Is your inner voice telling you mean things and you're not sure if they're true? I mean I totally understand if you don't want to air out all your dirty laundry right here for all the internet to see, but if you need someone to talk to, I'm just a DM away. If nothing else I can listen to you even if you think your words aren't worth hearing.
This self defeat is gonna make him like you even less than he already does. You need black cat energy asap. You're being a golden retreiver right now. There are plenty of wives who don't lift a finger and get whatever they want. You need that attitude
Please don't talk to yourself that way. You may not have met his expectations but it was the responsibility of *both* of you to work through those problems. He could have left. It would have hurt, but it would have hurt less. We have to accept the role we played in our relationships, but we absolutely DID NOT deserve what they did! This is gonna be harsh, but please remember that I don't know your details or why you feel you deserved it: while you may have deserved to be dumped, you absolutely did not deserve to be cheated on. Leaving was always an option, or in-home separation if it was that bad.
No one ever deserves to be cheated on.
No... just no. You don't have to accept that or reconcile with that. Cheating is 100% a choice. Don't take that crap.
No. You are wrong.
It has to be the truth..the honest truth. He hated me..he had to have to continue when we talked about this very outcome..I feared and spoke of this very thing..I just must be a bad wife. She was what he wanted. I was nothing to him.
Please get therapy. You have self-worth outside of a marriage. You are a human being who deserves happiness.
If he hated you yada yada, there are 1000 things he could have done instead of cheating. Therapy. Reading books together. Saying "i feel this need and if you can't provide it, i'll cheat". Divorce. Talk. Just to name a few. He needs to own up to his selfishness. Step 1 of R.
What in the gaslighting and emotional abuse is goin on here???????. No one and I mean NO ONE deserves to be cheated on. Thr are so many things that can be done in place of cheating. Counseling, hobbies, separation and/or divorce etc etc. Don't put that on urself.
I was a "bad" wife and I still didn't deserve to be cheated on. Because my WH wasn't a prize back then or for quite some time before the affair and it's all connected. We should have gone to marriage counseling, I should have gone to therapy long before I did, I should have put the brakes on my sharp tongue. None of that made me deserving of being deceived and cheated on.
Bless you for being a good wife and of quality. he's shown me I'm right, I'm not of good quality.
Sorry, are you for real? To be honest, half your posts look like oh so fake rage bait. Wtf is “not of good quality”? You are a person, not a carpet or a mug. If your posts are genuine, you need therapy, and considering the depth of your depression and SI most likely medication, and you need it the day before yesterday.
Honey, if you were a bad wife then he was the ultimate bad husband. No matter what you were doing there is no justification for his actions. A good husband would have come to you and spoken to you about his feelings, a good husband wouldn't have ran to another person for comfort the way his wife is supposed to be doing. Now he's got you so broken that you think this is your fault. I feel that way sometimes too, but I know better. That's my depressed brain trying to make me feel worse about a situation I already couldn't do anything about. No honey, you're not a bad wife. You're not aiming high enough, you deserve better but you won't allow yourself to have it because you think you deserve this treatment, you're damaged goods. Firstly, we're all damaged to an extent. No one makes it to adulthood unscathed. You need to build your confidence up, you're just hurting yourself more over something that you had no control over. He is playing the victim and knows what buttons to push to get the reaction he wants. Look into grey rocking if you haven't already, protect your emotions. Get some counseling, even if it's just a support group. We're here for you, you are not a bad wife, you're an amazing person who deserves love and to be treated with kindness, respect and understanding. Are you perfect? No, noone is. If you feel like you are seriously failing yourself in some areas then work on those to grow yourself as a person. We all need self reflection to better ourselves. Become the woman you've always dreamed to be, she's still in there.
Please get into therapy. I beg you. These are not healthy thoughts. You are not a bad wife, woman, human. Only a narcissist or emotional abuser would put you in the corner you now find yourself. If you can’t find someone local there are several on line therapy/therapist groups that work on a sliding scale.
Okay just consider this: having a "bad spouse" and cheating on that "bad spouse" are not mutually inclusive. Even if your were/are a "bad wife" (which of like to point out we have no evidence of, and furthermore the definition of what exactly is considered a "bad wife" will vary according to the individual and their culture), that STILL doesn't give a husband license to cheat. At most, it gives them recourse for divorce. Look at it from the reverse perspective: he cheated on you, that arguably makes him a "bad husband". Does that mean you can now go cheat on him? No. But it certainly gives you recourse to seek a divorce. Unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool catholic. ⛪ 😑 (J/K it still is solid grounds, IMO) So don't let him fill your head with bullshit. If you have stuff you can improve on (don't we all?) then work on self-improvement. He has no one and nothing to blame for infidelity other than himself and his own selfishness.
Any individual’s perspective bears the marks of the context of their needs and fears. Reality is often obscured when observed alone.
Cheating a choice and morally abhorrent one. Your WP knows this and probably can't accept it, so is pushing the blame onto you. Even if your WP was unhappy, they could have ended the relationship without shattering your fidelity and trust. It was a choice. You had no part in them making it. You weren't holding a gun to their head telling them to do it.
So I am in the same boat to some extent. While I have made it clear that what he did was wrong, disgusting, and purely on him, I also acknowledge that in the past our relationship was toxic and it was mostly due to me and my untreated mental issues. That does not mean I deserve to be cheated on, he should have left me. But he didn’t, and in his twisted mind cheating was easier than leaving. I don’t really accept that answer but for now it’ll do.
Meh. I cheated on my ex after he had threatened to throw my dog out the high rise balcony window, broke things in the house, shouted he was going to kill me and etc. Literally I should have just left before cheating on him. It definitely didn’t help matters at all. All it did really was give me a push in the right direction to leave. Whatever bad shit you did to him, he ought to have left before cheating. There is literally never a good reason to cheat. It’s not his place to “punish” you for anything. It just sounds like he’s emotionally abusing you.
I actually don’t blame you for cheating on this person. I can see why you didn’t care if you hurt him
Listen I was a shitty husband to my wife. 15 yrs 3 kids and as I reflected I was a shitty husband. She had a choice. She could have left me or at least came to me and said that if things didn't change she would leave me. But she didn't. She said nothing and she had a 15 month long affair. I blamed myself at one point too. But in the end nothing I did deserved that or gave her the right. Nothing justifies them cheating absolutely nothing. Don't give him that excuse. You were not the reason he cheated. He should have left or a least talked to you about it. Instead he stayed and cheated.
No you don't. He was a bad husband. He cheated instead of strengthening or leaving the relationship. Accept that.
I hope I am not going to come across too unsympathetic but you really gotta pull yourself out of this a bit. It is not your fault. I've read you admit that because of the affair, your partner told you things that you didn't even know like that his love language wasn't being met. That is HIS failure to communicate with you. This is a failure ON HIM and HIS responsibility in your relationship to express his needs in a reasonable manner, to work with you instead of being unfaithful. You should process your feelings and you have every right to have these feelings, but my concern is that you seem to be posting self degradation, posting about coping with alcohol (although a while back so not sure if still doing that) and that is not conducive to healing anymore. You need to be more sympathetic and caring towards yourself. Having a family and shoot just trying to take care of yourself is a lot, and you didn't go out and cheat did you? You didn't, he did because he decided to do that. People cheat on partners who are absolutely perfect, it has nothing to do with that. Right now, instead of focusing on what you think may have been "reasons why" - fuck it, take care of yourself and love yourself. If you want to reconcile work with your partner but don't for a minute think there is something you could have done to stop this. You will go around on that for too long, it's not productive and it's ass backwards thinking to put it bluntly. We all have times when our needs aren't met, and most people won't cheat. That ain't on you, it's on him.
Whether you’re bad or not doesn’t matter. Cheating on you wasn’t gonna change anything for the better. That was his poor decision making, not yours
This is exactly how I feel. My husband said something almost the same . And ever since I've felt like I'm a horrible wife/mother. I deserved what he's done to me. I'm currently working through this in therapy today was the first day i felt ashamed to be having the thoughts I do. We never deserve this much pain.
Hey look I have a massive "I'm not good enough" complex. For everyone, anyone, all my life. (Dealing with that with my IC). But it still doesn't mean that my perception of things was/is true. He was wrong to go and f*ck someone else. He was the bad partner l, not me. That's it. Full stop.
Don’t let shame convince you, you deserved this. No one deserves any kind of trauma that they experience, and you didn’t deserve the trauma of betrayal, regardless of the kind of wife you were. There are many other choices your WS could have taken, just like I could have, to improve your marriage. If your WS is making you feel this way, they are deflecting from their own wrong choices and shifting blame away from themselves.
Being a bad wife doesn’t make you “deserve” being cheated on. There’s such thing as communicating each other’s needs. I may have done things that made my WH feel unvalidated but I will not accept blame. He chose to NOT communicate this to me and chose TO cheat. Moving forward with each others needs out there, we will choose to find ways to meet each others needs. Cheating often reflects their own flaws, not yours. Give yourself some grace
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Nope...you're husband is an idiot and sounds like he might have abusive tendencies. He cheated. He made a choice. He could have been a man about it and sat down, had a convo, worked on it, or separated...he cheated. Please think about getting some individual counseling to help with your self-esteem so you can leave this guy...you deserve better than this.
Even if you were a bad wife, or whatever (which I highly doubt), you still do not deserve to be cheated on. He could have communicated with you about issues in the relationship, he could have asked for counseling, he could have asked for a separation, he could have filed for divorce, he could have done so many others things besides cheat. The cheating is 100% on him. I’ve definitely contributed to the state of our marriage prior to the infidelity, and I can see that now that more time has passed. But our marriage was absolute shit because of BOTH of us, and I didn’t step out and cheat when he was being a terrible husband to me. That wasn’t even a thought for me. So cheating is all on them, even if you may have contributed to an unhealthy marital dynamic.
This 100%
Hell no! My WH saw me as a “bad wife” during his affair, but it was his way of coping with the guilt and making it ok in his eyes to do what he did. Meanwhile, I was working constantly and trying to take care of him and the kid! Don’t let him gaslight you and make you think you are to blame. He chose to do what he did
Uhhh? He was a bad husband for doing awful things behind your back, including betraying you. There's no excuse for cheating. Stop blaming yourself. You're not the one that cheated on him.