A man who cheats on his wife is bad enough. When your husband cheats and blames you for his cheating, he is not only unfaithful, but dishonorable as well. Really?! Come on guys, if you’re cheating, man up! Take responsibility for your own actions!
Seriously, why do cheaters blame their spouse? Did you force him to screw his secretary? Did you demand that he start confiding in his co-worker? Did you make him lie about why he was so late getting home from work? NO!
I have never heard from one midlife woman going through divorce who intentionally made her husband go find someone else, but many women are made to feel responsible when your husband cheats and blames you.
ADVICE: When your spouse cheats and blames you, don’t immediately feel guilty and start thinking about how you need to improve yourself! As women, we seem to always ask ourselves first, “What did I do wrong? How can I change to make him love me again and stop cheating?” Do NOT take responsibility for your spouse’s wrong behavior!
Especially during a long marriage, there are always things both spouses can do better. You made mistakes. He made mistakes. But even if you were “not meeting my needs” (a statement wives sometimes hear!), cheating was his decision, not yours. There are other, more effective ways to deal with dissatisfaction or problems in the marriage. Like talk about them! Get help! Fix them!
Men not only blame us for cheating, but then they also try to blame us for the natural consequences that happen because of their cheating! Your cheating spouse needs to realize that his actions have consequences that are his responsibility alone.
The unwanted consequences for cheating are common. Usually, if you cheat, your spouse is devastated, hurt, furious, etc. Your children are mad and may not speak to you. Your friends are disappointed. Many cheating husbands try to say the wife they cheated on is turning people against him. That’s usually not the case. The cheating spouse has done that on his own.
People are usually not all out to hurt cheaters. Uncomfortable stuff naturally happens when you cheat…(well, sometimes, women ARE trying to hurt them in response to how hurt they are by their spouse’s infidelity…)
Think of Lorena Bobbitt who cut her husband’s penis off when she found out he had been cheating on her! Remember, your husband’s decision to cheat and blame you is horrendous and sometimes marriage destroying, but it isn’t worth doing something that could send you to jail!
The repercussions for cheating are almost always negative. Most people don’t admire cheaters. We all reap what we sow.
How Men Blame Their Wives
One RADiCAL woman had a husband who blamed her for not fixing their marriage after his infidelity. She endured years of his cheating. She gave him every chance to change. He never did. At the end, when she said “enough is enough,” instead of taking responsibility for his cheating, he said something to the effect of “if you hadn’t been so unforgiving we could have fixed this. If you had given me one more chance that last time you caught us together, we could have fixed our marriage.”
How infuriating is that?! Instead of acting like a man and saying something like “I am so sorry I kept cheating and breaking your heart over and over again! I have been a fool! Can you please ever find it in your heart to forgive me?” he blamed her for his cheating and then tried to pretend their eventual divorce was her fault.
“I didn’t leave you. You left me,” a cheater often says after we decide we can’t stay in a marriage where our husband cheats…and then he sometimes has the gall to blame us for the divorce! Women, as a rule, are too quick to blame ourselves for our husband’s bad choices. We sometimes allow ongoing abuse and humiliation to save our marriage.
In my experience working with hundreds of women, putting up with abuse of any kind never works. Abuse and real happiness are incompatible. Some men take advantage of a woman who desperately wants to keep her family together, and he keeps “doing her wrong;” yet she gives him chance after chance after chance for her whole marriage.
Some husbands who cheat blame their wife for things like being overweight or not being “fun enough” or not being interested in his hobbies or whatever. If those are big enough problems for him in the marriage, he should tell her that! If the problem can’t be fixed, get a divorce and then do whatever you want, but don’t drag your wife and your family through all the lying and deceit and hurt of infidelity, and then blame her.
To have a good marriage, we each need to care for ourselves. I gave a talk once about how to have a more positive impact on our culture. It’s good advice for keeping a marriage together too.
We each have responsibilities to ourselves and to others. Along with being loving and kind partners, in my opinion we also should do our best to be:
- Fit
- Fun
- Relevant
- Real
If we see our body as the vessel of God’s spirit (as I believe it is), we will care for it and not abuse it with food, alcohol, drugs, porn, or any kind of addiction (even work or exercise!). If we are a fun, upbeat, positive person who tends to see the good instead of the bad, we will be appealing as well. We should be curious about what’s going on in our culture and be intellectually interested in our world. We also have to speak the truth and be who we are and stand up for what we think is right.
Of course, we can be all of those things, and our spouse can still cheat. It’s not our fault. We might contribute to problems in our marriage, but when your husband cheats and blames you, that’s an embarrassing cop-out for him. Sadly, sometimes our spouses are dissatisfied, but are afraid to tell us, and want to try out “a new model” before they cut the cord with us.
He’s Shifting His Guilt
“Why do cheaters blame their spouse? First of all, he is probably feeling guilty and knows that cheating is wrong and hurtful for you and for the marriage. So instead of manning up, he has to try to make himself look better by trying to make his wife somehow guilty for causing him to have to go find love and fulfillment somewhere else.
Again, cheating is bad enough, but trying to shift your guilt to your spouse is cowardly and weak. Instead, face the problems in the marriage. Be honest with each other. Get help. If you are both not willing to fix things and have a good marriage, go your separate ways.
He’s Rationalizing His Actions
When a woman comes to Midlife Divorce Recovery for help, and tells me, “He cheated and blamed me,” I know that she was married to someone who is trying to save face or trying to pretend that circumstances forced him to abandon his morals and betray the promises he made to his wife. Unless she held a gun to his head, nothing she could do would make him do something he didn’t want to do.
But often these guys are charming and charismatic and in positions of power. A cheater has to somehow make what he has done, “Okay,” even if just in his own head. And sometimes the more someone lies to themselves, the easier it is to believe those lies, especially if it’s a lie like blaming you or his job or his lover or a midlife crisis or whatever for his cheating. If a man cheats, that’s on him, no matter how much he might try to convince himself or anyone else otherwise.
He’s Manipulative
Understand that cheaters who blame their spouse are usually manipulators. Sometimes men cheat and manipulate their lover by saying they aren’t happy at home. They may give the lover a long list of ways his wife doesn’t “get” him…and at the same time make the lover feel like she knows exactly what he needs.
Then he manipulates his wife saying that she wasn’t meeting his needs, and so he had to find love with someone else. He manipulates on both sides of the bed so to speak. A manipulator’s cheating is devastating for the wife, but it also hurts the lover. He’s a coward on both fronts for not taking full responsibility for his bad behavior. Men who cheat make things so much worse for everyone by blaming you or anyone else!
He’s A Narcissist
Narcissists usually tend to make their bad behavior someone else’s problem. A cheater who blames his partner for his own cheating is often a narcissist who demands constant affirmation especially from those who are closest to him. He can’t allow anyone to think that any problems are his fault.
A narcissist’s life is focused on making sure he is adored and admired, so anything that puts that in doubt has to be squelched. Blaming his spouse for his own cheating becomes a necessity. It can’t be his (the perfect one’s) fault! If things are getting unbearable, take a look at our blog about divorcing a narcissist husband.
It’s Not Your Fault
I remember lots of people telling me during the cheating and the divorce that followed in my own life, “It’s not your fault.” I didn’t believe them. I thought, “it has to be something I’ve done or didn’t do. His cheating has to be a failure of mine to see that he wasn’t happy or to recognize that he was losing interest or whatever.” It was agonizing to think that I had somehow driven him away without even knowing he really wasn’t happy.
Now, when I see or hear a beautiful, good, fun, accomplished woman who tells me, “He cheated and blamed me,” I reassure her that his infidelity is not her fault. He made the choice to cheat. Even if there was trouble in the marriage, she does not have to take responsibility for her husband’s cheating, no matter how loudly he tells her she should. He’s a big boy. He decided to cheat. Now he has to bear the burden of the destruction that cheating has caused.
If you are dealing with a cheating husband, especially if he is blaming you for his cheating, contact us. Sign up for our free Divorce Recovery Crash Course to get started. Don’t try to slog through this alone! We can help!
All so true!
I was this person. I blamed her for things. I cheated on my wife. I regret it everyday. I ruined a relationship 1/3 of our lives on this Earth for 1 poor decision. I wanted to get back together after we divorced. Apparently she did too but didn’t speak out about it. I ended up remarrying and then found out. It took me months to open my eyes and realized how much pain, how much self doubt, and damage to her heart and soul I put her through. Even remarried, I still wish things were back to the way they were. Everything bad that has happened to me is karma. I’ve mentally gotten to the point where I’d rather live alone because I don’t deserve love after ripping someone else’s love in pieces. Some days I wish I never wake up.
I have been reading all the things that other women r going threw . After 25 years my husband divorced me. He married his 5 wife. He has cheated on us and i’m sure he will cheat on her. I keep telling myself he did me a favor.
How to prevent him from cheating on you
32 years of marriage and my husband cheated on me. He said it was all my fault. I filed for divorce. He was such a narcissist that he thought I was entitled to nothing after all those years. Our divorce took almost a year and astronomical legal fees later. Finally free with half the assets. These men think they are above the law.
Gosh where do I start , 21 yrs with a prolific liar, to the point he believes his own lies, I know when he is telling lies , because his mouth is moving . Have taken him back several times, he has never apologised, only when I kick him out , to get back in he sobs like a baby, once back in there is no remorse, no making it up to me, acting like nothing has happened, not allowed to ask questions , as he accuses me of making a drama,. The last straw was he has been ringing her and texting her whilst I have been at home on lockdown, and he has been in his hime office, she is a slut who put an advert on a website 13 yrs ago, they met and had unprotected sex in a country lane for 6 months , roll on 13yrs later she contacted him again even though she knew he was married. I managed to get her number and text her and she had the gall to tell me all about my marriage , apparently we have not slept together for 15 yrs, so he is fair game. Which is obviously not true. He is making out everything is my fault , he has not once come to me in 21 yrs to say he is not happy, he says I am unapproachable, which is crap because he has never come to me , he keeps everything to himself is incapable of showing any emotion , he can’t cope with problems so he creates a fantasy world , when my 10 yr old son was in hospital miles away , having to have he leg amputated due to cancer, my husband was at home searching dating websites, he of… Read more »
I’m not perfect and I take half the blame, but you guys forgot one. She says she wants a divorce and nothing can fix it. Someone came on to me and drunkenly I said sure, she wants a divorce anyway.
Was I wrong? Of course! But it wouldn’t have happened had she not wanted a divorce to begin with. It’s not an excuse, I take responsibility for what I did, but I feel like she should take partial responsibility for giving me the idea that we were no longer married.
Am I wrong for thinking she’s partially responsible?
My husband had an online affair with a woman from a strip room . I discovered it in Dec 2019 (it had been going on for > 6 months) he said he stopped it after being confronted. I found out that it was going on again in Oct 2020 (I have since come to find out that it really never stopped -slowed for a bit). He has told her he loves her, but tells me that he didn’t mean it – “it was a game”. He tells me with one breath that HE is responsible for his actions/not my fault and then says that have have “neglected him” in our 31 year marriage and never gave him enough sex or was attentive enough. To add to that he said it started because he was having ED issues and went onto “sites” to prove to himself that the issue was “me” not his body. I forgave him the first time and now he wants me to “move forward” and leave the past behind to build trust – but I can’t get him to even admit things/tell me things unless I am asking specific questions or he is agreeing to something that I already know. I feel like this is a lost cause (and my friends are telling me to kick him out) but it is hard when we have been together since we were 20/21. He refuses counseling . Any advice would be appreciated/
Cheating is inexcusable. Someone who cheats is breaking their promise. Even worse when they’re married because they are breaking a promise made before everyone. If some one cheats on you, it’s ultimately up to you how to handle it, but don’t dismiss it. They lied and they lied about the lie. And even claims like biological desire won’t work after the first time. Especially if they don’t admit it to you immediately. They can promise all they won’t but after they do it once, how can you know they won’t do it again? Scientifically, you can’t prove a negative. A relationship requires strength, but it should be a natural strength. Love isn’t something you learn or prepare for. It just is or isn’t. I’m married and my needs go unfulfilled, but never would I ever consider cheating. No. I just let her know how I’m feeling and she tries her best and I respect that. I’ll take any pain before I’d even consider hurting her. Especially like that. Yes, I do mention how hot a woman is when I see one but I don’t stare. I don’t fantasize. I comment to myself and move on. Anyone who doesn’t think that’s easy is weak. If you’re in a relationship with a cheater, then you’re in a relationship with an undeveloped child. Whether or not you want to end the relationship or seek therapy, make sure to teach them their ABCs first. And never blame yourself. You are NOT responsible. You are NOT their parent. You’re their equal and even if is was a moment of weakness, in that moment, they treated you as their inferior. Dogs don’t easily let go of bones once they get their teeth around them, and you can’t just take it away without getting bit. There’s a… Read more »
Although we need not take responsibility for our partners actions, there is always something to learn from the experience. It is arrogant to think that we couldn’t all change a little for the better after something like this happens to us. I’ve been on both sides, cheated and cheated on, and I can tell you nothing is black and white and yes I believe in Karma.