The Blame Game

“It’s your fault.”

Yes, I know, it’s my fault.

Now, before you go telling me that it’s not my fault, I do already know that.  You are telling me this, and you don’t even know what is my fault!

As I have said before, one of my unhealthy default positions was (and sometimes still is) to accept responsibility for things not of my doing.  In fact, I would not only to accept the responsibility, but I would own it, and blame myself.

This has happened many, many times over the course of my marriage.  The first major time, however, was surrounding the affair that my husband had with my friend.  When I discovered this affair, I was, of course, angry and hurt.  More than that, however, I was to blame.

I know that sound ludicrous; it sounds completely unreasonable.

So, how did my twisted little brain get me there?

Truthfully, I am not completely sure.  What I do know is that when I found out, I took a long, hard look at myself, and all I saw were the flaws.

“Of course he would want to look elsewhere, I was overweight, I was unattractive, I was overly opinionated, and worst of all, I was not a good housekeeper,” I said to myself.

It never occurred to me to blame him.  In addition to blaming myself, I blamed the other woman. If only she had respected me and our friendship more, she never would have done this to me.

Really? If only she had respected me?

What about him? Clearly, he didn’t respect me either…… And, while that may be true, since it was my fault, I overlooked that detail……

But wait! Isn’t a marriage supposed to be built on mutual trust and respect? I suppose….. but if I had been the woman I was supposed to be, maybe he would have been different….

So, I jumped into action, and tried to be who I thought he wanted me to be….. I cleaned the house, cooked all his favourite meals, was an amazingly wonderful and creative step-mom, was available at all times of the day or night for sex, made sure that I did things that were outside my comfort zone to spice up the sex life, was overly attentive, wore the things he wanted me to (even if I thought they were unflattering), tried to lose the extra weight…..

And yes, all of those things really only amounted to a run-on sentence.

Firstly, I was miserable trying to ascertain what he wanted and how I could fulfill his every desire. Secondly, in trying to do all of that for him, my own self-esteem took a bit of a nose-dive. Thirdly, I was neglecting myself in about a million different ways, and fourthly, if I wasn’t starving myself, I was emotionally eating, all the while hating myself, and what I looked like. And, it will come as no surprise that I did not lose weight.

Indeed, I was miserable in general.

All the while, he was living his life normally. To give him a modicum of credit, he was apologetic about the affair and tried to make it up to me with meals out at fancy restaurants (and I wasn’t losing weight? Really?)

 

 

And, I now ask myself, why was I the one to become overly attentive?  If marriage is a trusting partnership, and one partner breaks that trust, shouldn’t he be the one to be over attentive, to discover what his partner needed?  Shouldn’t he have been to blame?

 

And shouldn’t we have worked together as a couple to try to fix it?

 

 

I never once asked for counselling surrounding this problem; I was too embarrassed.  ‘My husband had cheated on me, and it was because I was not enough for him.’  Again, that was not true – the issue in this case was his, not mine.  I won’t go into details, but from all accounts our intimate life was pretty healthy.  Even knowing this, however, I still asked myself what was deficient in me that I couldn’t give him what he needed.

I now understand that I was phrasing the question incorrectly; the question should have been, “what was deficient in him that he needed to look elsewhere”.  I also now understand that his issues led him to need to make me feel lesser so that he would make himself feel better.  He didn’t need a partner, he needed a booster.  He didn’t want a mate, he wanted someone on whose back he could stand and try to raise himself up.

I am not to blame for his behaviour.  I am responsible for how I reacted to his behaviour (which wasn’t perfect by any means!)  I am responsible for my behaviour, and in this I am secure that I was not wrong.