Did My Spouse Cheat On Me Because I’m Too Critical And Too Negative?
By: Katie Lersch: Many cheating spouses do their very best to blame the cheating on anyone but themselves. To that end, they will often say that their spouse’s negative behavior “drove” or “inspired” them to cheat.
A blamed wife might explain: “my husband cheated on me and I found out about it 2 months ago. Since that time, I have been trying to explore what would cause him to do this. When we first started having conversations about this, he would say that he didn’t know why he cheated. But lately, he’s started saying that my behavior drove him to cheat. More specifically, he is saying that my criticism drove him to seek out other women. He says that he always feels like he has to walk eggshells shells with me. He also says I make him feel as if he’s not good enough. Personally, I think what he’s saying is a not valid, but I want to know if it’s possible for my spouse to cheat because I was too critical of him?”
Here is my take on this. Obviously, I did not know this wife or her husband personally. So it wasn’t possible for me to say if the wife was overly critical in terms of her daily personality. However, I do know that the “too critical spouse” is a common excuse that people will give for their own cheating. There are other common excuses like “my spouse doesn’t understand or appreciate me,” or “my spouse doesn’t provide me with enough attention or enough of what I need.” But, regardless of the words that these spouses use, it all comes down to the same thing – they are trying to detract the blame from themselves and they are trying to point to their spouse’s behavior to justify their own actions.
Why This Argument Just Doesn’t Hold Up: But here is the thing that these spouses do not consider. Even if you gave them the benefit of every doubt and assumed that they were telling the truth, there is no justification for cheating. If their marriage lacked something, they could have spoken up, sought counseling, or approached their spouse before they were unfaithful. Instead, the went behind their spouse’s back and cheated. And whether their spouse is critical or not, there is no justification for this.
This mistake doesn’t mean that you can’t recover or save your marriage. People make mistakes every day. And, marriages recover from infidelity every day also. But, blaming your spouse for your infidelity is not the right way to start the healing.
What To Do If Your Spouse Is Blaming Your Criticism Or Your Negativity For Their Cheating: First of all, it truly is up to you what you want to do with this assertion. And if you think that there is any validity to his claims, then there is nothing wrong with using this information to make improvements to yourself or to your marriage. That’s using this situation for something positive rather than for something negative, which is always a good idea.
With that said, know that his saying it does not make it valid. He may well just be using this as an excuse. So you might want to think about a response like: “thank you for finally attempting to be honest with me. I suspect it wasn’t easy for you to say this and I will take that into consideration. However, we’re talking about our actions and your behavior, not mine. Because, in my mind, nothing excuses infidelity. You could have handled any problem you had with my criticism in many different ways that didn’t include cheating, but you did not. We have to heal regardless of the cause so I want to move forward rather than continuing to look backward. But at the same time, I want to make it very clear that you must take responsibility for this. I’m not going to accept the blame. I will work on myself and take a long, hard look at ways that I might have made our marriage vulnerable. But, whatever my faults, I was faithful to you. Now, let’s place our focus on moving forward instead of looking back.”
Notice that while I made it very clear that you won’t accept the blame and insisted that he take responsibility, I also left room for self-evaluation if you felt it was appropriate. So to answer the question posed, while I couldn’t tell this wife if her husband truly cheated because she was so critical, I could tell her that this is a very common excuse. And that, even if his claims were true, this was not a valid reason to cheat. Finally, healing and moving forward are more important than continuing to look back and then attempting to dole out the blame.
When I initially found out about my husband’s affair, he took full responsibility. However, as we started to try to heal, he started making little comments that seemed to point the blame back to me. I had to make it very clear that this wasn’t acceptable. Once he stopped, our healing sped up. If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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