Last November, my world was falling apart around me. I had a husband in jail, a family that wanted to lynch him, and the fear of losing everything: my marriage, my home, my job, my life as it was right then. In those twelve days between arrest and bail, I did a lot of writing. However, I also did a lot of reading, and subscribed to a few blogs from people working their own ways through similar experiences. I get emails at least every couple of days with new posts; it’s a daily email more often than not. A lot of the time, if the subject line doesn’t pique my interest, I simply archive the mail without opening it. Other times, I take the time to read the attached excerpt, and recently a post caught my eye from Lessons From the End of a Marriage, about the reasons a cheating partner may use to excuse their actions.
And oh fuck did they resonate with me. I read through them, mentally replaying some of the variations I heard over the last part of our sixteen years together. When I first discovered he’d cheated, I asked him to figure out what had happened and why it had happened, to try to get to the very root of his actions. He broke it down to “I needed to feel appreciated/desired/understood.”
And at the end of the day, accept responsibility for your part but refuse to take the blame for theirs.
Lessons From the End of a Marriage
I won’t be that wife that puts the blame for her husband’s cheating entirely on herself. Everyone told me the usual platitudes of “this isn’t your fault” and “you didn’t do anything wrong”. I know they only want to make me feel better and their comments are sincere, and I know a lot of people think I’m making excuses for his behavior. While it might be how they feel about the situation, it’s not the truth. They weren’t privy to anything that happened, they only saw the happy couple that met on Livejournal in 2000. Looking back, I can see I didn’t appreciate him for all that he did for me. I didn’t act like I desired him unless it suited my own needs.
So. That first excuse slides right into another one I heard. “It didn’t mean anything.” It was never physical, it was simply the thrill. The ego boost. It wasn’t anything I did that made him do it. He’d chat with them, but come home to me. They gave him a thrill online he didn’t get at home.
In many ways, that “it didn’t mean anything” ends up going hand in hand with “It won’t happen again.” I’ve heard it. In a fight we had once, I said something about how could I be certain what he was saying was the truth. You can’t prove a negative, I argued. He fired back with, “you could try trusting me for once.” A lot of the time, I find it very hard to take him at his word, so these excuses are difficult for me to accept. There were so many lies between us, both big and small, over the last half of our marriage, neither of us could trust what the other said.
Actions speak volumes when words fail us. He’s made a point to be transparent and open about anything I bring to him, and I’ve promised that I won’t keep things bottled up and expect him to read my mind when my headspace gets dark. If something new comes out into the open, I might silently seethe about it for a little while before addressing it with him. However, the amount of time I spend stewing about whatever is bothering me has been drastically reduced from the days or weeks it would be before I would confront an issue.
In his case, from the moment he got home, he’s been honest and has never once denied anything or tried to gaslight me. He confessed to a long-denied lie before we’d barely gotten out of the prison parking lot, and to the scope of his behavior before going to bed that night. A few days later, someone I considered to be a good friend, someone who comforted me and been a shoulder to cry on and dragged him down and told me how much better I could do than him, told me she had been complicit in his actions. I confronted him shortly after her admission, and he immediately admitted to it, and apologized for doing it.
Similarly, when confronted with some hard numbers and facts two weeks ago, he again acknowledged the truth of things. He apologized for everything, then apologized (again) and comforted me as best as he could later that night when he knew I was still upset and dealing with it. It’s never been a case of I’m sorry, but…. or I’m sorry you feel that way. Instead, it is a genuine I’m sorry I made you feel this way.
Part of rebuilding our relationship (in general – rebuilding our marriage is an entire other post I won’t get into) is to have complete honesty with one another. He’s taken full responsibility for what’s happened between us, and what he’s done to put us in the situation we find ourselves in. There’s individual counselling happening. Even when he knows that the truth will hurt me, he’s been brutally honest in his answers to anything I’ve brought up. I don’t doubt the sincerity of his apologies, I’m learning to spot the differences between the lies and the truth more clearly now that I’ve seen him at his worst. I’ll admit, however, that there are times when I’ve wondered if he’s sorry for his actions, or sorry he was caught. Only time will tell.
