Tim Arrigo tells someone drowning in guilt after his wife's infidelity that he's confusing feelings with facts. The betrayal stems from her attachment style, trauma, and defense mechanisms, not his failures. Stop rewriting the past and focus on what happens next.
So let me ask you this, and here's, here's the million-dollar question. Are you confus— confusing a feeling with facts? Are you emotionally reasoning right now that just because you feel responsible or you feel guilty or regret, how does just— how does a feeling of regret automatically equate to what I did wrong or that I caused it? Or that I could have prevented it, or that it— or that I, I had the power to alter the outcome. And I think what I'm hearing from you overall, because I keep hearing your ego creep in of, I— but I could have, I could have done it, I could have gone back, I could have, I could have. And what you're really struggling with, brother, what you're really struggling with is the fact that you didn't see, you didn't expect, you didn't believe, you didn't anticipate your wife would ever commit adultery, that your wife would ever betray you to that degree, that you trusted and believed her, that you were loyal in doing that, and that you were not in control of anything in that situation other than how you respond to it now, because you can't— you can't go back in the past and redo any of that. What I'm really hearing from you is that you have a hard time accepting that your role in this event was not as significant as you make it, and that this is much more about your wife's behaviors, her core beliefs, her defense mechanisms, her attachment style, her early childhood traumas, her communication, her conflict resolution, her emotional int— all of that. It has much more to do with that than it has to do with you, your behaviors, your responses, your day-to-day actions, and any of that. Doesn't mean that you didn't have a role in that, doesn't mean you don't play a part in that, because you do. But I think you're absolutely exaggerating your role, because when it comes down to it, if the role was reversed and you committed adultery on your wife, I would immediately feel regret and come back to her because you would feel like you did something wrong. Correct. But your wife doesn't.
