SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I notice a lot of posts with an enormous amount of attention devoted to betrayal, injustice, uncertainty, the meaning of the past, and the BS's or WS's psychological shortcomings.

This may sound a little trite, but there's often comparatively little about enjoying one's partner, being curious about them, having fun together, laughing, or creating pleasurable experiences.

Of course, this is an infidelity support forum, so it's entirely understandable that people come here to discuss their pain.

But I wonder whether we sometimes overlook something fundamental: what is it actually like to be in a relationship with us?

Do we make our partners feel liked, enjoyed, understood and appreciated? Do we take an active interest in their inner world? Do we contribute to making everyday life together pleasurable?

And how often do we ask ourselves these questions, rather than concentrating on what our partners are or aren't doing?

And how often did we do this before the betrayal(s)?

One partner's happiness doesn't establish that the relationship was mutually satisfying.

I'm not asking why someone cheated. I'm not saying every betrayed spouse or even wayward spouse shares responsibility for an unsatisfying pre-affair marriage.

I'm asking what it was like to be married to each of us, before and after the betrayal.

That's a different question, and I think it's worth exploring independently of who was responsible for the affair.

Look, there is a very fine line between healthy self awareness and enthusiastic, unprompted masochism. Plenty of unfaithful partners will happily hold their hands up and admit their spouse was kind, attentive, and thoroughly lovely, yet they cheated anyway simply because they were selfish, lacked basic moral fibre, or fancied a bit of illicit novelty on a grim Tuesday afternoon. In those circumstances, sitting around wondering whether you should have injected more whimsical banter into the breakfast routine is just inventing fresh ways to beat yourself with your own stick.

If I hold that mirror up to my own seven year relationship that ended in betrayal, what was it actually like to be with me? Well, I can be rather argumentative, to the absolute astonishment of nobody, and living with me back then was almost certainly much the same as living with me today. But the great, blinding epiphany I dragged out of the wreckage was not that I had failed to be a sufficiently delightful companion. The real issue was that my partner picker was utterly knackered.

I chose someone who had monkey branched straight into my life from her previous relationship the second she grew bored. Naturally, with clockwork reliability, she eventually pulled the exact same trick on me. If you welcome someone in knowing they treat people as convenient stepping stones, you cannot act utterly bewildered when they hop to the next lily pad. We simply coasted on great fun and physical chemistry until it congealed into a serious commitment, without ever having a proper adult conversation about boundaries or checking whether our moral compasses were pointing in remotely the same hemisphere. That was where my real mistake lay.

The lesson was never about turning myself into an entertaining one man circus just to keep a partner faithful. You cannot charm, amuse, or cajole someone into possessing basic human decency. You can learn what is important to you in relationship and find someone who shares those values moving forward though.

So by all means, self examine away. It is good for the soul. But I would wager that in an astonishing number of cases, the only thing a betrayed spouse actually needs to adjust about themselves is what they will tolerate, and who they deem worthy of sharing their life in the first place. It sounds terribly simple on the surface, but looking at the frankly staggering pile of wreckage in places like this, getting our vetting right is clearly the hardest lesson of all to master.