A man whose partner cheated asks why she'd go so far to hurt him. The host explains that infidelity often masks deeper patterns: gaslighting, manipulation, and deliberate cruelty that suggest borderline or narcissistic traits. His advice is to stop trying to make sense of it and step away to heal.
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I understand if you want to leave me as a result of this. I don't blame you one bit. We'll do all we can to raise the child successfully. I'm so sorry that I hurt you. That was not my intent, blah blah blah." But that's typically from what I see, You guys can back me up on this. David, it's typically not what happens, is it? It's usually, I committed this act and I see that you're hurt, let me kick you while you're down. Let me further, as I often use the metaphor, you know, shove the knife in into your gut a little further and twist it while it's in there. And you're like, why are they being so cruel and mean and sadistic? And, and they see they hurt me, why are they, you know, further lashing out at me? Why are they trying to ruin my reputation with others? Why are they denying what I see right in front of my face? Why are they are they rewriting history? And this is why my contention is that often how I look at this is, for the men that I attract, certain type of dude, and the certain type of women that they seem to attract to them and that they bond with, it would seem that the infidelity thing is kind of a tip of an iceberg of not-so-good shit lurking under the surface. And that is further exemplified when this infidelity is discovered and all hell breaks loose. And you're like, what is this? What is this crazy person? Well, she's kind of been lurking in there the whole time. A lot of personality disorders. I'm not a psychologist. I can't, you know, diagnose anyone, but we see a lot of borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder. That's way over subscribed or prescribed to people, whatever the term is. That's very not common, but we see it. Probably more so in the guys and their partners that, that are attracted to me and my stuff. So it sucks. It would be easier if we had the adult way of doing it. It would still hurt. It would still, you know, we'd still cry ourselves to sleep and all this other stuff, but still it would be easier to digest and easier to expedite the process of healing if it wasn't for the fact that they just seem to want to hurt us so much more on the way down. That's what we can't understand And that is Exhibit A for they're just very, very broken people. But, and with hindsight, we look back on that and we go, well, duh, of course they're broken people. I saw this all along. Jeez, what was I thinking? Well, you were in love. Welcome to the club. Guys and gals do stupid things for love, right? And then, uh, David says, yeah, you understand the ability to give in to temptation and fuck up. It's the months of the gaslighting. The gaslighting does the thing that you can't understand. Yeah. And there's so much evidence and she would rather just run away from it all than confront it. Well, Because what does confronting said evidence do? It, um, she has to, you know, put the mirror in front of her face and, you're a very broken individual. You're a broken little girl that's done some broken little girl shit and you've destroyed a family over this. Look. And she's, mm, it's much easier to say, I'd rather not. And sometimes they go as far as to say, I'd rather not and in fact let me recreate all of the past and just make shit up. That makes her not feel so bad, you know, to face all that stuff. Can you imagine doing that to your family? Can you imagine everyone knowing what you did? Um, it's tough. It's scary as hell. Scary as hell. I know a lot of men that don't want to face their demons, so to speak, and they'd much rather brush it under the rug than, you know, look at it. It may be in the form of substance abuse. The guy may say like, yeah, I drink 12 beers a night, but I don't have a problem. You're like, Dude. And then wife confronts him and he's like, you know, you're seeing things. There's no 12 beer cans in the trash. That's from last week. She's like, oh, okay, so that's 2 weeks worth. That's not so bad then. He's gaslighting her, in essence. It's kind of what your spouse is doing with you. And Jack makes an excellent point here, David. And this has been my overall lesson here, is that you as the quote unquote victim in all this, You're kind of— I was gonna say the rational one in all this, the one that is not, um, swimming in all of these emotions and thoughts and chemicals that are going on in your, your wife's soon-to-be ex-wife's brain. Um, or is she officially your ex-wife? Let's call her ex-wife. Ex-wife's brain. You can't comprehend that, nor do you want to, because it'll drive you nuts. Like, she's being pulled this way, that way. She's living a lie basically with, you know, recreating things, yet she knows what's the truth, and it's spinning and spinning. And it's nuts. And the more you try to understand it and you're like, I don't get it, what's with the gaslighting, what's with that? Eventually you get to the point of just going like the old dealers in blackjack, I'm out. Like, stand back and go, have fun with your crazy. I can't, this is nuts, I can't deal with this. And so you back away. It's really the only way to heal properly and get over this is to get the hell away from the crazy. You'll never ever, ever understand it, trust me.
