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.
May, very profound and well said. Though I do tend to disagree a bit here. SSM are rarely all one spouses fault. Maybe yours is in the rare category. But usually SSMs follow a similar path. The LD spouse starts avoiding, turning down, making excuses for not having sex. The HD spouse then gets bitter, angry, resentful and this causes them to behave in ways that further perpetuate the SSM. After all, the LD spouse is already struggling wanting sex, so when the HD becomes mean, short-tempered, stops helping with the kids and around the house, withdrawn, etc, the LD spouse now wants to have sex even less than they did before!
As the HD partner, I am always going to want sex more than my W. But what a difference the last 3 years since R have been. I dropped all the passive-aggressive, resentful behaviors over when she doesn't want to have sex. I remain the same upbeat, helpful, partner whether we had sex last night or whether we did not! And what a difference it makes. We now have sex quite regularly, but there are the odd time when she just isn't feeling up to it. But I do not let it change me being the best spouse that I can be! Our dynamic is 100% better because I don't act like a jerk about the occasional rejection.
Maybe your sitch was different, and he was 100% innocent in your SSM, but I find that hard to believe.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
