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I've been reading about this. It seems to explain, to my satisfaction, all of the behaviours I've been seeing in my crazy-soon-to-be-x-wayward-wife (CSTBXWW)

Every single bit of marital re-write, blameshift, accusation, crazy making and bullshit is done to reduce her cognitive dissonance to acceptable levels.

It is self fulfilling; it's what keeps them in the affair and explains why they often just never have a satisfactory answer as to why.

I've been googling this term all day and everything fits.

Of course, it doesn't explain away the lack of boundaries which enable the affair to begin in the first place, but it does explain how the betrayed ends up being blamed for everything.

You are a student of life, my friend!!

I too did a lot of reading on cognitive dissonance and discussed it at length with my IC.

Yep, explained so much about my XH and his cruel/selfish/perplexing and uneven behavior!

Bingo! It actually accounts for much human behavior and was absolutely the driving factor for my XWW's rationalizations. She believed she was a good honest person. Good honest people do not cheat on their spouses and lie, therefore she must have had good reasons for doing so. I must have somehow caused her to act this way. It had to be my fault. She was justified. That is the only way she could reconcile 2 such dissonant concepts.

I had never heard the term before DDay.

It was a revelation to me and help me get through my FWHs complete breakdown whilst we were working on R.

I would like to thank the posters in this forum for exposing me to the concept and advise newbies to research it.

By the way Allatsea, you are traveling well. Once you get the connitive dissonance stuff down you are getting to a real understanding of what happened.. Now it's up to your ex wife to find out what has led her into this dark hole and why she needed the attention.

Thank you,

It does provide a lot of clarity to me as to how she can blame me.

Unfortunately, this revelation is only for my benefit as we are not reconciling. I doubt she will ever look inward to her own choices and behaviour and continue along her chosen path.

I have also recognised that her parents have their own form of dissonance. They cannot reconcile how their perfect little daughter could have done this so they are more than prepared to believe her version of events.