Recovery from the affair often means dealing with abuse. Strangely as it may see, the offending spouse often “turns the table” and blames the spouse for his/her behavior. This is common in the “My Marriage Made Me Do It” affair.

Here are some questions I posed regarding this pattern and the responses:

1. What in the way of disrespect, blame, criticism and/or abuse are you facing?

2. What has worked best for you in stopping or tolerating less and less of these destructive behaviors?

Case Study #1:

I believe my wife would say our marriage made her do it, and a little of I can’t say no to him with some revenge motive too. I guess I get no respect from her. She gives all her emotional support to him, shows me no affection, wants both worlds, have her cake and eat it too.

I haven’t learned how to charge neutral! I would blow up at times when I would here her talking with him, or when someone would tell me they saw them together. I’m not sure that anything has worked best for me,

Case Study #2:

Every time I make a remark about his affair his excuse is”well we had problems in our relationship so he blame’s it on me more than anything (you should have done something about your kids behavior ,make changes ) See i have a Daughter living with me that’s not his. We are not married but been together for more than 6 years .

I tell him” blame me it’s easy for you that way so you don’t have to feel bad or i just say to him well we have to work both on our problems not just one of us .Most the time we talk and try to see each other’s point of view .

Case Study #3:

Knowing the pain it causes me, my husband continues to talk to ‘her’ despite requests not to. he blames me for why he has ‘nothing to give’ to our relationship anymore because I put work first for a couple of years. Also my harsh personality made him feel defeated and he just ‘gave up’. he also now is turning anything I say around and twisting it to mean something to feed his guilt.

I haven’t quite figured that out. Anything I say or do hasn’t worked. It seems if I do the ‘neutral charge’ it helps and not stepping over anything. just trying it. but now he’s still in that pointing fingers game and is also affair #7 so to get close is really hard.