WAW Hired a Divorce Coach (Cont9.)

[may22]

ooohhh, Sage!!! hearts to you, I'm so glad you're back and posting

I agree absolutely with this:

a marriage takes two
oftentimes the WAS/WS is vilified by the LBS (and this community)
we ALL should be on a perpetual path of growth and self-discovery

But in/re asking the LBS to shoulder a portion of the blame/responsibility for the demise of the M, here's my take:

-- first off, if you're married to a narcissist, I don't think you get to take any blame. The gaslighting in your case was/is extreme. I think you needed to remove yourself from the situation in order for the fog of his emotional abuse to clear and for you to see the light. Perhaps the process was the path you needed to take in order to get to where you are today. ((SAGE)) (And edited to add: perhaps the LBS per pinn and Ginger can take responsibility for ignoring warning signs before getting involved and/or staying with a narcissistic partner and work on improving their picker for next time around-- that definitely does make sense to me.) However, I definitely don't read ScottyB's wife as a narcissist from what I have read. I'm more with Wayfarer's interpretation on her.

-- second, the decision to cheat and the responsibility for the affair is always 100% on the cheater. Zero responsibility on the LBS. The WS may justify their actions to the skies-- SSM, MLC, whatever... but in the end, they, alone, made the cascade of decisions that led them to cheat. That's always on them. Not on you. I've heard you say before and completely agree that there are ways to end a marriage honorably. (as an aside, it sVcks to be an LBS, but I also think it sVcks to be the WS, who allowed themselves to become a liar and a cheater and justified it to themselves. It is a hard road back, I think, once/if the fog clears and you see your own behavior in the light of day.)

--third, assuming you have two relatively reasonable people in the M (no narcissists etc.), then of course both parties should shoulder their portion of the responsibility for the problems in their M prior to the A. I think if you can detach the cheating or wayward behavior from the circumstances within the relationship that may have contributed to the WS's affair-- hard to do for both parties, because the WS is clinging to that justification as a life raft to absolve their own choices, and the LBS often either vilifies the WS and doesn't look at their own behavior, or hyper-focuses on it and their role in "causing" the A (or pendulum swings back and forth between the two extremes). But if you CAN detach the two, go back in time before the A-- are there ways your S could have been a better partner? Are there ways you could have been a better partner? Can you put yourself in your partner's shoes and see how your own choices and behaviors-- while not cheating or lying-- might have been hurtful? Are there things you can learn from this situation that might lead you to be a better friend or partner to others in the future? I think the main point is that this is never a black and white situation (unless, again, one of the parties is a narcissist and unable to have a real relationship with another human being). And, don't be a victim or waste your time wishing karmic vengeance on your WS. I continue to love reading DnJ and WF on how to grow, learn, and forgive (for yourself) through the trauma we've all been through. None of us can go back in time and change the past. But we can all choose to learn and grow from our experiences.

Early on in our R process, my H felt like I did wrong (SSM) which caused him to do wrong (infidelity) and while he acknowledged that his wrong was worse than my wrong, he couldn't untie his choices from the SSM. He couldn't even talk about the A without tying it to the SSM. It was as though I forced him to cheat because of the SSM. Nopey-nopey-nope. Then we moved to him being able to take 100% responsibility for the A, but I was responsible for the SSM so we both were equally at fault for what happened to our M. I also refused this illustration. To me, we were each equally responsible-- 50-50-- for the problems in our marriage before the A. Yes, the SSM was on me, but it didn't appear in a vacuum, and he bears responsibility for his part in my disinterest and in his inability to communicate the depth of the problem to me. He then chose to cheat and is 100% responsible for that decision. At first, he didn't like this-- he turned it into this mathematical equation where he's 100% responsible for something far worse than what I'm 50% responsible for, so does that mean he shoulders 90% of the blame for where we are right now? I think that whole blame game is pointless anyway. We're both individually 100% responsible for our own choices, including our own individual mistakes and bad choices, and for our own individual decisions to stay and work on the M. (Which, to be completely honest, I probably need to own a little more right now.) He recently said to me-- I agree with you on the 50-50 pre-A responsibility and his own 100% responsibility on the cheating. But he thinks that he was more deeply affected by the problems in our M prior to his infidelity than I was. Which I do think is fair. I didn't miss the sex. I basically transferred all that physical touch to my children and felt over touched and pawed at all the time by them anyway. His primary LL is PT and he felt abandoned.

Also-- this is a hugely traumatic experience not only for the LBS but for the children as well, who bear zero responsibility for any of this are deeply affected anyway. It's all overwhelming. I see ScottyB as trying to navigate through this path for himself and for his kids and it just being hard. I think it is totally natural to question your own role in what happened and get angry with your WS for ditching. (FWIW, I also find that MLC post hilarious and sad.)

I think we should all give ourselves a break, especially those going through the hardest parts right now. It's okay to be mad. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to go through all these emotional swings and this is the best place to come and dump so that you don't act on emotion IRL. My recommendation to Scott would be to maybe read some of DnJ's thread and especially his recent posts on BL42's thread. As other posters above have said, you don't want to end up bitter and jaded. Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Don't do that. Figure out how to let it go.

You got this, ScottyB.