Stop Blaming the Affair Partner — She Made the Choice

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching, courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person. Real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. A lot of men that I've talked to have endured, unfortunately, infidelity on the part of their wife.. And one of the things a lot of the guys do is really frustrating to sit back and watch. And that is he will not put any of the blame on his wife, but number one, he will put the blame on himself for things that he did to quote, cause the infidelity. And thing two is he will project all of his anger on the affair partner, like the gentleman that wrote into Dear DSO today. And you can submit your own story to deardso.com. The subject line is Anger at the Affair Partner. He says, hi Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer. Well, hello there, John, we'll call him. He says, big fan of your podcast. Thank you for your work. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. I have two parts to my story that are somewhat related, though I'd love your thoughts on them. Three years ago, my wife had an affair. I found out and she ended it. We tried counseling for about a year and a half and then she moved out. She still lives close by and we have two small kids for context. I don't know the affair partner. He used to work with her and as far as I can tell, their relationship took that turn after we moved out of state. I've never met him and know very little about him besides what she has told me and limited social media, but I remain extremely angry at him and I have a very hard time with any reminder of him. I weirdly don't feel that anger towards, towards her, and when her role in the affair comes up, I feel guilty about any issues I had in our marriage. I've heard you talk about affairs on the podcast before, but I would love your perspective on anger towards the affair partner. My second question is regarding my separation and likely divorce. My wife has said that she wants a divorce, but besides moving out 18 months ago, she has taken no action. In addition to that, when I bring up divorcing with a "let's get it over with" tone, she gets very upset and she cries, etc. But she is also adamant that she does not want to get back together. I would also appreciate your insight into this as well. Well, Mr. John, let's start with the first part. Getting mad at the affair partner, I think, is a perfectly natural, normal response to such a thing. But after a year and a half, I think with some, especially with time apart, you've had time to reflect on all of this and really look at the complete picture here, and you will realize that all of your anger should not be directed at the affair partner. In fact, it could be argued that affair partner dude is just doing what affair partner dudes do, which is wait for opportunity and pounce on it. But dude, your wife— ex-wife rather— had to be the one to present said opportunity to the guy. I've often said you can think of it like wolves always circling the prey. They're always there. The wolves are always there circling. It takes your wife to say, "Here I am, come get me," for them to finally pounce. So don't blame the wolf for being hungry, so to speak. Blame your wife, ex-wife, for not having the boundaries necessary to keep such predators at bay. It's a relatively easy thing to do to keep away those type of people out of your life. And away from you and your relationship, but she chose not to. In other words, she frankly chose to do this guy and to have the affair. It's not him, it's your ex-wife. She should know better. You may be surprised at how many women are hit on on a relatively regular basis. Depends on their professions and where they're at on a, on a regular basis, day-to-day socially. You know, women that are bartenders and things like that probably get hit on a lot more than school teachers. But still, a lot of women will say there's quite a bit of, quote, opportunity to connect at an inappropriate level with men if they were to choose to do so. But most women that are married have boundaries and say, oh, no thank you, even to the most handsome, charming guy in the world. At most, most women are flattered by attention and giggle and go about their day. But your wife took the attention and ran with it and formed a complete inappropriate relationship outside of yours. So again, if there's any anger here that should be directed, it's towards her. She didn't live up to her end of the bargain. So what I see here is a combination of some, I guess you could say, absolution of her responsibility or guilt in all of this. That is something that a lot of, quote, nice guy types like to do, is to say, to sanctify the spouse, to say that she can't possibly be capable of such horrible evil acts. I must find another person to blame for this. Often they will blame a fair partner. And then what you did, you just kind of hinted at blaming yourself. You say, I feel guilty about any issues I had in our marriage. Now here's the thing, you're not completely infallible. I'm sure you had some fault in, you know, how your marriage ended up somewhat. You may not have been the greatest husband in the world, but that doesn't excuse what your wife did. And it frankly doesn't, you know, help you move along in this whole process of healing and getting better after enduring, yes, a trauma that you endured. So stop beating yourself up so much. Recognize that your wife is a fallible creature capable of some awful things and let her go and move on. It could be argued that the anger that you're feeling towards the affair partner and absolving her of guilt and so forth is a method of kind of hanging on in the situation when you should just kind of wash your hands of it and move on in life. But moving on to your next question here about the wife not seeming to want to move on even though she has physically moved away from you, and she's pretty adamant about, and we ain't ever getting together, and yet she doesn't seem to want to follow through with the divorce. Well, number one, dude, my first thought is, um, aren't you aware that you don't really need her permission to divorce? You can just go do it. I mean, the woman, number one, cheated on you. Number two, left a year and a half ago, all signs are go for Mr. John here. Better be proactive and go talk to an attorney. So go do that if you haven't already and say, Mr. Attorney, here's what's going on. Here's assets, here's debts, here's the kids situation, here's this infidelity thing. I doubt it will have any kind of bearing on anything, but you never know. And all this other good stuff, put it on the table, draft a divorce agreement or however it works wherever you're at, and just say, okay, ex-wifey, here you go. This is what I came up with. Meet with your own attorney or whatever. You have officially been served, you know, divorce papers. Sure, she may cry and yell and be dramatic or do whatever, but don't lose yourself so much in the why, what's going on, what does this mean exactly. You can't fathom, because you're not in her head, the storm of stuff she has going on in her brain right now. I find myself saying this to a lot of guys. A lot of guys just try to understand, and they're trying to search for a little crumb of hope within, uh, the ex-wife's behavior. I, I gather from you, I bet you if the wife, um, said to you tomorrow, um, let's work on us, let's get back together, you will probably say, oh, hell yes. And, uh, dude, not very good. You gotta let this one go. And the fact that you haven't moved forward and been proactive in this divorce and, and gone through with it and filed and everything else shows you're still hanging on. Again, also indicative with your anger towards the affair partner and absolving her of any guilt and so forth. You really have some issues of hanging on to a person who has rejected you pretty forcibly. And the fact that she's hanging on like this can probably be explained away by she has a very comfortable thing going on right now. I would assume, is there some financial something going on that you are helping her in some way with her new place that she's at? Is there something logistically with kids that remains in place by you two remaining married? Is it just a fear on her part of moving on to the next chapter of her life? Maybe being a single mother is kind of scary to her. And so you are, in essence, her security blanket. You're there for safety and familiarity. And when you come and say, I'm about to pull the rug out from under you, let's talk about leaving, she sees all that safety, security, familiarity, everything else going out the door, and she gets scared, hence crying and everything else. But guess what? When she cheated on you and gave up on the relationship and moved out, she gave up on all of that. She's a big girl, dude. She's an adult. Don't soften the blow of her horrible life decisions. She has to grow up at some point and realize this is what happens when people do these things. You have to live with it. So be it. And you can genuinely wish her all the best and say, I hope it works out for you. Maybe you and new guy or whatever it is, but you need to move on. You need to take care of yourself. And realize you're not responsible for her anymore and let her live with her emotion and everything else and move on, dude. Turn the page on this chapter of your life. It is over, my friend. And if you'd like to talk about it further, you can always reach out to me and we can chat one-on-one, or better yet, join the Brotherhood, our support community for men only. We have the forums, which are private. We have live Zoom meetings, which are very frequent every single week. We have over 1,300 hours of audio recorded at this point. You have all my books. We get together in person, coaching courses. Dude, there's a lot, and the cost is only $27 a month to join, or you can do the annual plan or even the lifetime plan. And if you are a military veteran, you get 40% off of all of those plans. So check it out, help4men.com/join and the HFM Brotherhood. And Mr. John, thank you so much for reaching out. And guys, we will catch you on the next one.