I don't know if I disagree with you or not. No one got here by their spouse's hand alone. We ALL helped steer our respective "ships" into the rocks. This feels liek a platitude to me. This is like saying, "We are all human."
Of course we are. We all have failings. We all have bad days. We all have flaws and weak points. If you want to call that a "betrayal" go ahead.
But I do not subscribe to the theory that it is always the case that one spouse pushes out the other. I have seen it happen - I know of a couple where it was obvious. The passive-aggressive behavior on the part of one person was apparent to everyone, and it was little surprise then that the other spouse eventually was unfaithful. In this case both partners obviously did not want to be married. They both bore strong responsibility, even though one of them was "unfaithful". The infidelity was just a ceremony, if you know what I mean. The marriage was really dead much much before then. Anyway I see that this happens - where there is more or less equal responsibility.
But I do not agree that this is the only way. If I show up late coming home from work, you can call that a "betrayal" if you like. An alternative view is - we'll gee, he's working hard, he's trying to balance lots of things. Coming home late is something he doesn't do very often. I know where his heart really is. So I won't take offense.
It is not a matter of "forgiveness" at that point. Even "forbearance" is too strong a word - it is just not sweating the small stuff.
I don't know whether it's a personal thing for me, or what. I just don't like to hear this "it takes two to destroy a marriage." I'm sorry I don't subscribe to that.
It takes TWO to MAKE a marriage. It takes just one to destroy it. It takes a team of people to build something beautiful - a skyscraper or a bridge or a church. It takes one maniac to destroy it. One guy with a truck bomb can, in 10 seconds, tear down what it took 300 people 9 months to build.
When a building gets blown up, should we blame the night watchman for not seeing the truck bomb? Should we blame the farm supply store for selling the fertilizer? Should we blame the rent-a-car company for renting the truck?
It takes one nutcase to make a big mess. And I think the same is true in a marriage.
NOT ALWAYS! I am not saying, that every strained marriage is the result of a single actor. I think mostly (though I am no expert and this is based only on my very limited experience) troubles in marriage are the result of both people. If you subtract the affair and its aftermath from my marriage, then YES, I would say to the extent we were not as close as we could have been, there was shared responsibility. But I will not accept responsiblity for her affair. I will not agree that the marriage was "the sum of all the mutual betrayals." That is a unnecessarily negative and pessimistic perspective, to my mind.
I choose to look at a marriage as "the sum of all joys". Why, why o why would we look back at the history of a marriage and characterize it as a sum of hurts? The only reason I can think of: to retrospectively excuse some major crime.
Infidelity is not justifiable, it is not the "result" of any of the actions of the left-behind spouse. If you want to remember some misdemeanor from 20 years ago, and let it compound interest for all that time, and then aggregate it with all the other misdemeanors, and then construe that as "a great betrayal",... I guess you can choose to do that.
But that just seems like a trap, a inescapable trap of negative thinking. There are always opportunities to take offense and to feel slighted. Storing them up and remembering them and keeping the ledger - that seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Doing this in a relationship, you are asking to fail.
This is how adult "kids" learn to hate their parents. Save up all the little hurts and then use that ball of slime to justify dishonoring their own parents.
