SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have seen this in almost every forum — whether in JustFoundOut, Reconciliation etc. — the betrayed wanting to know why the spouse/partner cheated.

It appears as though many cheaters blame the spouse. I know mine did. And like an idiot I believed him. I believed he had reasons to cheat on me b/c of things I said or did.

Here’s a brief rundown of what I heard:

I never loved him and married him for other reasons (he had no $ so that wasn’t it )

He harbored grudges over minor issues I thought we resolved and discussed and came to an agreement together

I never say "I’m sorry" or apologize for anything

I make decisions without him (yes when you are in another country working (for weeks) there are times I have to make decisions - but I mostly consulted him first)

The stupid list goes on and on.

I know why my H cheated. I knew as soon as he told me he was D me why he cheated. Big ego boost for a guy turning 50 to have a GF who is 30. Funny thing is I was in better shape and prettier than her. I had a good job and lots of friends, good social life etc.

Wondering if anyone else has/had insight into the "why" their spouse/partner cheated? Also curious if the cheater ever figured out why they cheated (beyond the obvious "b/c they wanted to" and never thought they would get caught).

Well, my XWH is a diagnosed covert narc. People are objects for him to manipulate. He did it because he felt entitled to have his cake & eat it, too. It also fed into the porn he was habitually using. He didn't think I'd ever find out and he didn't care about how it would make me feel.

He didn't figure it out because as somebody with NPD, he's fine and the issue is always somebody else.

At first, I thought his AP groomed him (it was easier to blame somebody else). Learning from this site and from Not Just Friends, he's just a crappy person with crappy boundaries. He had opportunities to do something else & didn't do it because she was stroking his ego.

My WH has listed several reasons.

One was "a need for autonomy", in that he was craving a sense of freedom from the life of work, routine, chores, and the like.

Boredom, because it was the lockdown and he spent way too much time alone, isolated.

His EA was with someone from a time in his past when he was in a band, and they began the EA by reminiscing. So it was fantasy about that. And she was very sexually forward in her youth, so those long ago behaviors were part of the fantasy.

Aging - just the general process.

He had lost his mom, and she was the last of his family of origin. There was a measure of grief in this, and his AP had a spouse in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, who passed away. There was that shared experience.

Porn. He was using porn a lot, and this was a contributing factor in his thoughts that what he was doing would not hurt if I never knew.

Alcohol. He was drinking a lot, and this also contributed to a "what the hell, who cares" mindset. Dropping his inhibitions.

He says there are likely more reasons, he’s still working on them.

Notice something?

None of these have anything to do with me.

The 'why's' for my WH seem to simple but I honestly believe it is simple?!

My WH and his whole family, have very low emotional intelligence. They are all self absorbed, only talk about themselves when trying to have a conversation, can be very insensitive and inappropriate in conversations and out of the 5 siblings only my WH is married or have a long term relationship. His sister used to verbally abuse and ridicule me (until I distanced myself this year) and another brother is close to being an alcoholic and has just given up rights to his new child as it 'was too hard'.

I always though my WH was better than this but turns out the quiet one was just as fucked up as the rest of them. My WH was always arrogant and only did what he wanted and would tell lies if he knew I would not agree with what he was doing eg buying another TV. He would quit or not do things if he didn't get his own way. His counsellor said it was like he was still a little child trying to hide when he is being naughty or running away when things are too hard (low EQ). His personality traits paired with our marriage going to shit and him not getting sex was enough for him to tell himself that he was allowed to have an affair.

He tried to blame me and the sexless marriage for the A in our initial conversation after D-Day, but I put him straight and told him if he ever tried to blame me for his A ever again our M would be over. I reminded him he was not a very good husband either but I never cheated on him. I took responsibility for my part in our marriage being shit but no way in hell was his A ever my fault.

My WS's reasons for his LTA has evolved over the two years since disclosure. First it was "love" and then "limerence" and then "narcissistic ego supply" and then "mental health/addiction" and problems from how he was raised. He did hold onto some negative things about me during the affair and for a while after dday, but he also admitted fairly early on that none of those was a real justification for his affair. For the EA from 10 years ago, he says it was the intoxication of someone being into him and he "was weak and craved the attention." Maybe it's some combination or all of the above. I have gotten so many reasons from him that I no longer know what to believe.

I had come in here to post about the addiction narrative because I see it a lot. I will take that to a separate thread.

I honestly dont know. Wish I did. To this day I can only postulate that immaturity, horribly weak character and a lack of actual love for me (not sure she even knew the definition of that term...we obviously had far different meaning for that word). She had a very fractured upbringing, not as much as my own and we shared a pain-bond over our similar stories which she may have mistaken for affinity/romantic love but beyond that, I dont know. That said, to sleep with my then best friend was beyond the pale. She burned everything down and I foolishly stayed in the ashes far too long before it all ended.

Its all terrible. Sure, I had young children at the time but I now know, that coparenting should have been the way to go. I deeply regret not divorcing her, it delayed the much needed reset of my life which has since taken place and am in a great place with my now-wife and have built the life I always dreamed of.

Heres the question that really haunted me for years and I spent a lot of time in therapy which was why I chose these people in the first place? What did I miss to let traitors into my inner circle and put my faith and trust in them? Needless to say, I am far more selective about who I let close to me today. Nothing like being burned to teach you about the darkest side of human behavior and lack of character.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 9:03 PM, Monday, January 6th]

One of the first things my WH said to me when I asked him "why" within days of Dday was …

"That’s the point where WE were at…"

My response …

"Oh really … if that’s where WE were at, then why didn’t I cheat?!"

Seriously, those initial conversations and reasonings that vomited out of his mouth after Dday are quite comical when I replay them in my head. Typical WS bullshit talk … trying to pin the blame on anyone and anything other than themselves so they don’t have to take that long hard look in the mirror and face the truth.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again … our M was complete shit and for so many reasons. Both of us played a role in that. However, I had zero part in and take zero responsibility for his choice to cheat and destroy our family.

I think to some degree my WH felt entitled as "man of the house." Over the course of our M, it’s like he developed this "1950s" mindset. He thought his job was to provide financially and mine consisted of household and familial responsibilities (plus I had also worked for a few years during this time too). Talk about resentment buildup. Essentially this "divide" cost us our M and it turned us against one another.

I’m very close with my family and have a few close friends that I talk to regularly, as well, my relationship with my kids are both extremely loving and strong. Essentially, I didn’t need him for love, support, connection, etc … much of my bucket was filled from all of these wonderful relationships in my life.

My WH on the other hand doesn’t have what I have in this regard. He’s not really close with his family, he has zero trusted friends and his relationships at this point with his children were practically nonexistent. He had not even one other relationship to lean on for support, when he clearly could have used one. So when a coworker decided to give him some extra attention, compliment him, stroke his ego and make him feel "desired and wanted" he gave into his insecurities and his surmounting depression.

He describes himself as being in a dark place during that time. And then once he crossed the line, he didn’t know how to get out of it without me finding out and it blowing up our family. When it came to light and he had time to reflect on that period of his life he had no choice but to face his truths.

So to simply put it, he was starved for attention, was vulnerable and lacked emotional intelligence and maturity. He had hit rock bottom where he lost sense of control and his self … he just stopped caring about life at that point. It was his escape.

[This message edited by Heartbrokenwife23 at 7:25 PM, Monday, January 6th]

I think it's too personal of a question to generalize beyond it feeling good/wanting to do it.

That's the underlying motivation.

There are other environmental factors at play, but that's mostly blameshifting bullshit.

The other part that's important is the why did you do it (it feels good), but why were you willing to lie to me? Was that just to get the good feels? Was that some other psychological block? What was the thought pattern that weighed the options and said, "I'd rather lie to my partner than be honest about my feelings"? Those are very individual and the big work of the WS to becoming safe.

For my wife there was a lot of FOO about sharing pain and mental struggles (because of how her mom and dad operated). She felt more willing to share that with her AP. I'm not accepting any part of blame, but I do confess I'm not a naturally good at sitting and listening to problems and honestly saying something like, "That sounds really hard" without offering solutions/advice. But my deficiency in this area is no excuse for her to go create an intimate emotional bond with another man.

What did I miss to let traitors into my inner circle and put my faith and trust in them?

I think every betrayed spouse feels this way.

How did I become involved in a relationship that was "so bad" 😡(the cheater’s words) that I didn’t even see it was that bad? Those were the questions that haunted me.

Until one day I realized our marriage wasn’t bad. He had a life most people would kill for. He traveled the world with no complaints from me. I treated him like a king. He was the priority - not me. Him!

I worked for a D attorney and thought I saw it all. What I didn’t see was the manipulative crap the cheaters pulled on their spouses. I only saw the betrayed spouse with their hurt, pain and devastation

People are good at pretending. Especially the OW who pretended to be my friends.

I think the why comes from- why did you want to? And it interplays with how could you do it? And while there are themes we see play out here, I think that puzzle is highly individual.

I wanted to because it felt good, I had let my martyrdom lead to resentments which led to entitlement. I simply didn’t care what happened to me. I was avoidant, didn’t believe I could affect change in my life or marriage and I think I unconsciously wanted to blow it up rather than deal with it.

It’s no coincidence that many ws you learn about here are highly avoidant, often people pleasers. I am both. The issue is a people pleaser is secretly selfish in their motives. It doesn’t start out that way, or it didn’t for me. For many years I genuinely wanted nothing more than to add value to my husband and kids life. But somewhere along the way I lost my sense of self because it became about earning their love rather than knowing I had it no matter what.

Eventually, I became very depressed, feeling unseen, and unappreciated. I have read by more than one expert that people who have affairs are often just not ready for suicide. I can see that was the case for me. It’s irrational, but someone like me goes along with everything until I painted myself in a corner. I didn’t want to lose the perks of being married or have to work on anything, because that would require having hard conversations and I felt we had had them many times. It made me feel old and tired and stuck.

I did what I always have done and that is escape. This time it was an affair, other times in my life it was other crutches. I never really was proactive in designing a life, so I think some of it was ignorance and laziness. Things happened to or for me all the time. That’s professionally and personally. Because I am a high achiever on the outside I looked like a successful career woman with a thriving marriage and family. Inside I felt like a piece of shit, far before I ever really earned that status.

Someone with more coping skills (of which I have had to practice and some of it I still struggle with) will start working on it. They will see the problem and they will work through it. They will do so living their values and assessing it against what they want. They often have a vision or a goal.

Me- it was like I didn’t care about anything, not really, and instead I started making this narrative in my head where I was happier, younger, sexier, funnier, more interesting. The more the ap seemed to buy it the better I felt. I became even more avoidant blocking out everything including responsibilities at home and work, my husband traveled and worked a lot and I found I had plenty of time to just lead this other life.

There was never a plan, though I did fantasize about moving into one of our apartments. But that fantasy didn’t even include being with the ap, it just meant that those responsibilities that were piling up could be totally ignored.

There are no reasons I believe that would make a bs say "okay then, I get it" and being full acceptance. But I think like most ws I didn’t understand how connection works, yet it’s what I wanted more than anything. I thought it was being denied to me, but the entire time I can see that I deprived myself of it. I didn’t feel worthy of it, nor did I have the tools, language, or self awareness to bring it forward.

My affair had nothing to do with our marriage or my husband. It had to do with my avoidance, lack of character, lack of vision, selfishness, martyrdom, lack of self awareness, numbness, etc. I didn’t have a relationship with myself that included self love, self respect, or even any self preservation. I followed what made me feel better not what was actually better for me.

And as for how you can do it to your spouse- when you don’t have respect, love, confidence in yourself, how do you give that to others? You don’t have it to give. It doesn’t mean you never will, but at that point in time the depression and numbness extends towards your spouse, and likely most ws blame the spouse at the time it’s happening at least on some level.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:34 PM, Monday, January 6th]

Thank you hikingout.

This is the most insightful post from a former wayward I have ever seen and it explains everything you experienced and thought.

It’s nice to see people who are willing to do the work and the positive results / outcomes.

Thank you for sharing.

OK, hiking. You wrote 'lack of character'. You have certainly shown 'good character' for the past several years. Did you develop character or change your previous character. (I may be splitting hairs here, but something good may come out of my question.)

My W cheated 1) to feel good about herself, 2) to prevent the outcome promised by ow (that sex with W would prevent ow's suicide), and 3) W thought she was a terrible person; everybody else thought she was a good person, so she wanted usto know 'reality' - I don't know how to characterize that - self-sabotage because she thought life was too good?

Sissoon-

When I say lack of character there is a lot there-

I think our character comes from living our values. I don’t think I had a big awareness of my values, moreso doing things you think good people do or because it’s what you should do rather than having strong feelings about why it’s important.

By having an affair as a married person, that is clearly not carrying out of one’s values. By getting married you are saying certain things are important to you, and by having an affair you are saying none of those things are very important to you. This is lack of character. No one thinks it’s good to cheat and lie, and it takes someone of weak character to do it.

So I do think I had to get clear on what I value and why and be cognizant of how my actions, decisions, thoughts, align with those values. And I have learned a lot of why living the right way is important to me.

thought she was a terrible person; everybody else thought she was a good person, so she wanted usto know 'reality' - I don't know how to characterize that - self-sabotage because she thought life was too good?

I can’t speak for windsong, but this is my interpretation:

People like us carry shame from a young age. It’s not a coincidence that the vast amount of women who cheat are survivors of sexual abuse. Not all of us of course, and there are CSA folks who never cheat. But it’s a culprit because of the shame it creates.

I spent a lot of my life feeling I am inherently bad. Here I was a CEO, earning great money, experiencing success. My teams all loved working for me. I had the kind of husband that any woman would wish for, and kids that thrived. Shame creates this imposter syndrome kind of thing, you secretly feel you do not deserve these things and after some time the pressure of that can be heavy. Someone in this position finds it harder and harder to be authentic, vulnerable, and you push your feelings down until you get to the point that you can’t stand what your life is, and mostly in a vague way because I don’t think a lot of this is conscious.

Becoming more self aware, rebuilding your life to be what you want and learning to care for yourself in a way that you become aware of shamed bast thoughts, decisions, and behaviors, one can turn it around. And I think a lot of this discovery happens as you realize what your values are, what you want, and you are living in a more authentic way so you can put away the perfectionism that you were using to mask the shame.

The problem with having an affair to feel good about yourself (because I think that was my number one train too) is it does the opposite and it magnifies the shame and feeling of being worthless.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:40 PM, Tuesday, January 7th]

I echo The1stWife's thanks for hikingout's insightful input. I have read much from her over the last few years and it has helped me piece together some plausible wayward mindsets that my own first wife may have possessed. Though still a giant question mark, it has helped.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 11:20 PM, Tuesday, January 7th]

Funny thing. At dday2 I realized my H’s affair never had anything to do with me. Even though he blamed me for "his unhappiness" and I initially believed him, I was a very different person at dday2.

He has the character flaws, not me.

And HO explained something I struggled to define or put into words.

That post is a "must read" for all betrayed people.

Thank you all. I am glad my insight can help and it’s a big reason why I stay (also I still work on things and ponder them). I just wish I didn’t have this insight at all, so it’s humbling to say the least.

Hikingout, thank you for the thoughtful post. The things you are describing about your thinking and mindset at the time of the affair are eerily similar to what my WH has said to me (or what I can read between the lines in his comments). Sadly he's fully in the mode of blaming me, the marriage, the kids, and everything and everyone for his choices. And he's focused on his needs and soothing his hurt rather than addressing the hurt he's caused everyone else.

I'm divorcing him and moving on, but it still helps to read your comments to get to some greater level of peace...and so I can support my kids. Appreciate your wisdom.

Hey Hiking --

I wanted to because it felt good, I had let my martyrdom lead to resentments which led to entitlement. I simply didn’t care what happened to me. I was avoidant, didn’t believe I could affect change in my life or marriage and I think I unconsciously wanted to blow it up rather than deal with it.

I'm pretty sure this sentence above could be written by my wife -- she always appreciated you being so articulate and able to communicate so well about your thought process. My wife is better about being able to explain things now, but every post she read of yours a few years ago, my wife would simply point at your post and say, "This."

But that was part of my wife's why, no one in her family ever, ever talked about feelings. In her existence, only one of her parents asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up -- one time in a throw away conversation. It's the most conflict avoidant family I've ever seen, the hot topic at Thanksgiving is sports and the weather.

I also know people don't like to talk about 'perfect storms' -- but I think they happen to the best of us.

Perfect storms, tough childhoods don't really change the real choices being made, I just think it helped my to understand so much more about what happened.

I think I've mentioned it before, my wife was the perfectionist's perfectionist -- she had to compete for attention as a kid -- as her parents had one golden child eldest son, and two daughters they had no idea what to do with. Her sister turned to drugs, my wife turned to the opposite. She never missed a class in school (even in college), never missed a Sunday for church (until the A, I should have noticed that then), and was a scholarship winning over-achiever. She did everything exactly as the world expected of her, and she awoke one day miserable and feeling powerless over her existence.

Anyway, never any good reasons to take that path, but for people who haven't yet developed coping skills or without many known boundaries, they seem to be at greater odds of seeking additional validation than others.

I can empathize with my wife, because my childhood was also uphill (amazing that any of the latchkey kid generation lived to talk about it)!

I don’t know that I’ll ever have a completely satisfactory "why" for my husband’s affair, but in addition to the simple "it felt good and he wanted to," I can identify several factors that converged. 1) he was in a bad place emotionally because he was a caretaker for his dying sibling and that sparked loads of midlife anxiety about death, the arbitrary nature of fate, the brevity of life, etc. 2) he had weak boundaries. 3) opportunity. He traveled abroad with a colleague, they got close, and she confessed her love to him as soon as they got back, 4) he’s an analytical thinker who sees philosophical complexities and moral ambiguities in everything, which meant his values were malleable and he could come up with excuses all along the slippery slide into a full blown affair, and 5) he’s relatively passive and lacked the courage and will to extricate himself once he was in it.

Edited to add: he never said it was me or our relationship. We weren’t in the closest, most connected space at the time of his affair due to caretaking and travel and stressful jobs in the pandemic, but we had a two-decade strong relationship that we both saw as a strong, mutually fulfilling romantic and practical partnership.

[This message edited by Grieving at 2:09 PM, Thursday, January 9th]

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

-Anais Nin

This quote sums up my W's why. Her mental health was not good and it skewed her perception of her reality. I did/do love her and all that, but when she wouldn't get out of bed someday...I had to take care of kids, house, bills, cars all while working 50 hours a week. Oh, I resented her for that and was not always kind about it.

To my W's very incorrect view due to her mental illness I did not love or want to help her. I did and wanted to help. My IC said it sounded like I was ripe for an A not my wife. My response I barely have time to see him when would I have time for an A? BTW my W thought I was cheating too. I wasn't.

My wife got to a better mental health place and in therapy saw just how in the wrong she was on all levels. Remorse, once the shame spiraling lessend, helped her make amends, empathize, help me through triggers.

Today we are both happy. Very close emotionally, but the innocence is lost. We want the same things in life and both work toward the same goals. We built something that is less fairytale and more pragmatic. I know that sounds cold, but life is much easier chasing things that exist (pragmatism) versus things that probably don't exist (fairytale).

Anyway that quote has become one of my favorites even outside infidelity. It also speaks to my W perception of her life and our marriage at that time in our M.