SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It is always easier to see errors when someone else makes them and a lot harder to see the same error when you make them yourself. Seeing other people make a mistake, makes it easier for me to see it in myself. Recently I have realized that I have worried more about my WH's emotional health than my own. I have sucked up my emotions and not expressed them because I believe I can handle it better on my own than my WH can handle hearing them.

I have noticed lately with many of our JFO SI members they are making the same GIGANTIC mistake.

They are reversing roles with their WS. They are allowing their WS to become the poor victim and they, the BS, are bending over backwards to try to allow for the WS's feelings.

NO!!! That has to stop!!

Your WS is not a victim. They made choices. They were not unwillingly inflicted with a disease.

One of our BWs feels guilty about offending her WH by insisting he take a polygraph. NO! She should not be worried about his feelings. Shouldn't HE be worried about HERS???? If he were, he would be happy to take the poly to make her feel better. But he is not. He is acting as if he has been put upon unfairly.

Another WH wanted his BW out of the marital home because he had to mourn the loss of his OW and decide what he wants to do. NO!! Why are his feelings more important? Shouldn't he be leaving the marital home so she can mourn the loss of her M and decide what SHE wants to do?

I see this over and over again to varying degrees. We the compassionate BS are concerned about the feelings of the WS, but they are not concerned about ours (remember it is selfishness that usually gets them into the A). We are showing more empathy than they are.

This allows for role reversal. The WS gets to behave like the victim and the BS panics, starts trying to earn the WSs love back and ends up in a perpetually defensive role.

Any time you find yourself in role reversal, you are not in R and you are not in a safe relationship. You are in the same place that made you a BS to begin with. You are usually in a relationship where your partner is controlling you with emotional blackmail.

Sometimes, when we get busy investigating the A and trying to figure out WHY our WS cheated on us, we can easily get sucked in to putting their emotions before ours, because we are spending so much time trying to get in to their heads. We start to understand and then we start to feel pity. But then we can err and start to put their feelings first.

I firmly believe in investigating and talking the A to death. I am definitely one of those people who has to beat a topic to death, then get bored with it and then I can move on. But I have to do this keeping in mind it is for ME. I am investigating to exhaust the topic so I can move on. I am not doing it to have even more empathy for my WS. I have to be my number one focus.

Thoughts anyone? WS? BS?

Mods, if I have this in the wrong forum, please feel free to move it.

Holy cow THANK YOU! I really needed to hear/read that. I have been in a rough spot the past couple days. My WH was doing all the surface stuff transparency, remorse, saying sorry ect.. All when it was convenient for him. Or if I was bawling curled up on the floor. He is not getting it and I was letting it go thinking ok he starts IC here in a couple weeks I need to be patient. Well no more! I am the damn victim because he made me one. He is not the victim hes a selfish, screwed up ass. Sorry I just put my bitch boots on so Im on a roll And seeing this post feels almost like a sign I am making the right choice. Again thank you.

I have done this since DDay over a year ago. I'm still ok with that choice. I don't think WH is still ready to deal with things. I just don't care anymore. Any feelings I need to express and deal with on my end will be between me and IC. For the last month I have been exploring the possibility he will never understand so why bother.

I think everyone has to make their own mistakes and find their own solutions.

But sometimes seeing the truth in others stories helps - it did me. Only if to acknowledge that I needed to help ME.

I'm not sure I would be married now if I hadn't told my fwh just exactly how it was going to be when I found out.

Luckily for me, I did it, as I didn't yet have the guidance of SI, it was a gut reaction on my part.

So many bs's don't draw a line in the sand and dare the ws to step over it. I get very upset when I see someone so afraid of what might happen next, that they are getting walked all over, and nothing is getting solved.

I know we all have different reasons and personalities, so I don't fault anyone, in any way for how they handle it; but feel so much for them.

On DD, I found my bitch boots, thank goodness! We were both scared to death, but those boots gave me the strength to decide at that very moment, if my marriage was strong enough to save. I never in a million years thought I would be able to take him back; Over, Done.

But, when the unthinkable happened, the strength I showed him, forced him to make a choice right there and then and saved us and our beautiful family from more devastation.

But, when the unthinkable happened, the strength I showed him, forced him to make a choice right there and then and saved us and our beautiful family from more devastation.

Bingo. You didn't allow him to reverse the roles and be the victim who has to have time to sort out what he wants.

You immediately said "No", I won't live like that and he understood you were not going to assume the defensive role.

Great post!

The only allowable role reversal is asking the WS how THEY would feel/act if they were the BS.

Thank you for putting all that good advice out there for us all.

Awesome post. One BS I knew personally allowed her H to blameshift to the max, and also agreed to rugsweep by promising that if he kept the family together she would never throw the A in his face.

What did she get for her sacrifice? He took his A underground for another year, treated her like dirt, and when he got bored with one MOW he openly took up with another. And that is just what I know about - there may have been more.

She (who had been a successful, confident woman) became a shadow of her former self. Her health suffered, and she died prematurely last year. Big surprise - the jerk was remarried within 6 months. I know widowers often remarry soon, but given this guy's history it's hard not to assume the relationship existed prior to the BS passing.

Sorry, guess that was sorta t/j. Moral to the story is Put Your Bitch Boots On!!

Great post! I let the role reversal play out - even though I told him to leave on the 2nd D-day I still begged him to give our marriage a chance.

Finally, after the D, when I stopped seeing him as a victim, he wanted to come back. But it was WAY TOO LATE for me.

It all has to play out for each individual, but this should the BS something to at least think about.

Bravo!

NL

Thank you for this post. Honestly, thank you!

Whenever I start to feel blue, I read these forums to help me through this.

I am currently in the midst of a role reversal.

This is SO true!!!

I have been trying to understand why this happened and why I was so blind and naive to my husband's infidelity.

I have FINALLY stopped blaming myself for his prostitution. As he kept blaming me and this was all my fault.

I finally realized that HE is the one with depression. He is the one who has something that drives him to self medicate his depression through whores and a few moments of self gratification.

He has NO shame and tries everything he can do to make ME feel bad for the whole situation.

We the compassionate BS are concerned about the feelings of the WS

There was not one second post Dday that I gave a shit about my WH feelings.

Compassionate ~ Not me, not once.

The day that I found out about his skanky affair was the day that I told him, "If you don't like life here then get the f*&k out" ~ and I meant it...ever single time that I said it.

Never once did I kowtow to my WH. He destroyed our M, he was left to pick up all of the pieces and fix it and if he did not like it he could get the F*&K out!

He never left, he worked daily to fix it, he made me his priority 24/7, he worked to become a better person, and we survived this nightmare.

I honestly believe that the WS must want R more that the BS.

[This message edited by RidingHealingRd at 1:28 AM, July 4th (Thursday)]

Good post...thanks for taking the time to put into words what I worry I have done.

Too bad I found SI much later after my DD...lots of good info here.

Josephine --- thank you!

This strength is FOR us but usually is the only thing that will wake up a WS from the fog. Hand-wringing and not standing up for ourselves rarely saves the marriage.

I don't see it as so much of a role reversal as a magnification of the already existing inequality of the relationship that was previously overlooked or not realized by the BS.

the BS, are bending over backwards to try to allow for the WS's feelings.

What I notice is that the BS is doing what is supposed to happen in 'normal' relationships without fully understanding that the relationship is nowhere near 'normal'. In normal relationships, each party is free to bring up a concern, have a discussion, work out a compromise, reach an agreement and life goes rolling along. And that is most likely the type of relationship that the BS's believe that they have been in.

The BS is still acting under the assumption that it's "you and I" against the world. But once a 3rd party is brought into that equation...all bets are off.

Your post struck a chord with me because I was uber-compassionate on Dday and for a long time afterwards because of Sultan's FOO issues. *I* identified Sultan's issues pretty quickly and he 'head-nodded' along with my observations. The problems became apparent when I wasn't receiving as much compassion as I was giving. *I* was the 'injured' party, yet *I* was the one that was providing the support and it wasn't right. I was still acting as a 'partner' without realizing that the game had changed into "every man for himself."

There's a good post in R that I read today. It's author is sri and the title is bitchboots. She had her Dday and she was too 'forgiving' and malleable.....ended up in a hellacious false R in which she ended up getting stitches in her head. After that she put her bitchboots on and stood her ground and is currently attempting R which has so far been going good for her. Her post and *pointers* is a really good read and spot-on.

You are absolutely correct. I have done this since DD, not wanting to offend him or make him feel awkward. I get paralyzed when I want to look at his phone, in fact I've never done so without sneaking while he slept. Even then I felt guilty for invading hiss privacy. My ic called my attention to it when I casually mentioned I was afraid he would be lonely when I make him move out. She said back up, did you just hear yourself. It's crazy and.I am working on it. Seems.I have issue with people facing their consequences. It makes me very uncomfortable. It's a daily struggle that I'm trying to fix.

[This message edited by Ostrich80 at 3:15 AM, July 5th (Friday)]