The spotlight is very much on him to explain away the A. Is that a resentment for him? I'm trying to think of the best way to explain this, but in my own sitch, I am mindful that my H's behaviour has been appalling, he stepped outside the M and yet I almost feel gulity that he is the bad guy when it was me who drove him away (not withstanding that it takes 2 to wreck a M). It's almost like I "made" him do it and now I'm blaming him and making him feel guilty while I sit here with a halo on. This is a conversation I want to reach deep into with my H.
This is so insightful, Pommy. I know when I look back at my role in my marriage going wrong, I feel a lot of sorrow. There's a very fine balance to be had between taking responsibility for your own actions and their contribution, and taking so much responsibility that you rob your partner of the space to deal with their own stuff and take responsibility for that. I know blame is a way of shifting responsibility onto others, and the kind of unproductive guilt that turns you into a doormat can often involve absorbing responsibility for stuff that rightly belongs to someone else.
What also compounds this is that when any of us feel guilty or ashamed or sorrowful about our past behaviour - knowing that we've hurt ourselves and our partners and our marriage, knowing that we've really let ourselves down and we aren't the person we wanted to be - we cry out for some kind of reassurance or comfort. Usually, when we mess up, it is our partner we turn to for that unconditional acceptance or understanding. For the safe place to heal and lick our wounds before we get back out there in the world and do better. But when the person you've hurt is your partner, that safe place is gone - for them, yes, and that's more important - but for you too. I think there's a lot of that going on in most of our situations - Wayward Spouses feeling awful for what they've done, and not being able to access the comfort and safety and understanding of their partners, so they cope by minimising or denying or blaming. I don't know what the answer is - other than, for a while, a third party to provide some of that acceptance and safety and empathy - not an AP, but a therapist. And that takes a lot of time.
