The Devil Made Me Do It

The phrase, "The Devil made me do it," became popular back in the 1970s. No doubt the concept, if not the words, have been with us for our entire history. Indeed, the earliest recorded instance of the phrase comes from Genesis 3:

And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. (Gen 3:13 KJV)

When all else fails, blame the Devil. This is known as blameshifting. In that chapter, when God addresses Adam about his actions, he blames God and the woman:

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. (Gen 3:12 KJV)

Then the woman blames the serpent. None of them take responsibility for their actions. Men and women have been committing this same sin ever since.

It is part of our fallen nature to avoid the shame and guilt of committing a wrong.

Most of us will attempt to justify it in some manner. The easiest way is to point the finger at someone else. "If he didn't berate me so often, I wouldn't have hit him." In other words, the devil made me do it.

Blameshifting happens in three ways when dealing in the aftermath of discovering an affair.

Victim-Blaming

This occurs when the unfaithful spouse shifts the blame for their affair onto the hurt spouse. This is a typical response to any abuser-victim scenario. With infidelity, the action or lack of action can be varied. Whether lack of respect, lack of being made to feel important, lack of sex, or passive-aggressive behavior, the unfaithful spouse will often attempt to point to a deficiency, real or perceived, in the hurt spouse as to why he ended up in the arms of another woman.

I dealt with that specific topic more in depth in my article, "The Blame Game." Good to read it, but I'll summarize it here. Problems in a marriage, and every marriage has some, are rarely the fault of just one spouse. Both usually share in the blame to one degree or another.

The decision to have an affair, while it might be in response to a deficiency, is still fully the unfaithful spouse's responsibility.

The hurt spouse might have increased the temptation in some cases, but just like Adam and Eve didn't get off the hook for taking and eating the fruit they knew they shouldn't, neither does the unfaithful spouse.

Some unfaithful spouses may feel they never made a decision to have an affair. My wife would be one of those. She never intended to have an affair. By the time she realized that's what she was doing, she didn't have the will power to extract herself from the desires raging within her. Yet, she still made a decision.

The first time her initial affair partner flirted with her via text, she told me about it. She said it was just a fun game and nothing more. I told her no, it was not a game. Maybe to you, but to him, he's getting the signal that you're available. If you are, that's cheating. If you're not, that is mean and stringing him along. I specifically said it is inappropriate for a married woman to be flirting with another man. She confessed it to our priest and he told her the same, that she should end all contact with him.

At that point, she had a choice. She would either respect that boundary and not cheat, or she would violate it and choose to cheat. She elected to continue the flirting. She made this decision before the addictive pull of desires kicked in. In so doing, she had initiated an emotional affair with that man. It wasn't too long before he started sex-texting, sending a dopamine rush in her, and she was sucked into the current, still believing it was just a fun game, that she wasn't cheating nor would she ever cheat, believing she could handle it. But the affair was underway.

She made a conscious decision to cheat even after having been warned by me and our priest.

Sometimes it is true that a spouse will think to themselves, "I'm not happy in my marriage because of X, Y, and Z. I'm tired of dealing with it. I'll go find someone else who will treat me right." While that may be a valid consideration in certain circumstances, there is a valid route to that and a destructive route. The valid route is after discussions, reading books, going to marriage counseling, you give up, then if it is a deal-breaker, you prepare and file for divorce. Either that or you accept that this is the way it is going to be as long as you're married to him, and put up with it.

If you have sexual intercourse with the affair partner, you are physically divorcing your spouse.

Most emotional affairs also involves emotionally and spiritually divorcing your spouse. The only thing saying you are married is outwardly you live like you are and a legal piece of paper says you are. Cheating undercuts your marital relationship. The deception is damaging to the unfaithful spouse, the affair partner, the hurt spouse, the family, even if they never find out. You hurt everyone much less by not pretending your still married to him when in reality you are not.

But many unfaithful spouses are like my wife. They cross boundaries, believing it is innocent fun. Sometimes these can be fueled subconsciously by feeling a lack in the marriage, but almost always boils down to something making a low self-esteem higher knowing someone desires you, treats you important. Comes across as wanting the unfaithful spouse. But they aren't looking for an affair. They often don't believe it will happen, even when it is happening at the time. Once raging desires take over, they feel out of control, as if they are being carried through the rapids and the only solution is to ride it out and hope for the best.

For these unfaithful spouses, they tend to look back, after it hits them that they are cheating, and viewing the marriage through affair-fog eyes, then point to areas in the marriage that justify their path, causing them to feel like the victim. Yet is is obvious this is an attempt to justify actions they know are wrong after the fact. They demonstrate the need to blame anyone but themselves.

The more prideful (narcisistic) a person is, the more likely they are to blameshift. The more humble a person is, the more likely they are to not get involved in an affair in the first place, but if they did, they'd confess and take full responsibility for it.

Event-Blaming

A second type of blame is when the unfaithful spouse blames the affair on circumstances that caused them to lower their guard, become overwhelmed, or any other number of reasons. A common example is a spouse going to a bar, getting drunk, then due to lowered inhibitions and slowed thinking, end up cheating.

Another popular one is blaming the affair partner. They'll attribute it to the seduction of the affair partner, or getting him drunk and snapping a picture of the unfaithful spouse in a compromising situation, using it to blackmailing the unfaithful spouse into a real affair, etc.

However, like victim-blaming, events only increase our temptation. The unfaithful spouse is still responsible for their actions. Boundaries were still chosen to be crossed. If a person knows they do stupid things while drunk, guess what? Getting drunk is not an option. It is a boundary you don't cross. If that is hard, move the uncrossable boundary further back. Refuse to go to a bar with friends. Avoid parties where drinking occurs. Crossing those boundaries means you accept responsibility for your actions, no matter the degree of temptation you have.

One common reaction of a hurt spouse, in order to make some sense of their spouse's infidelity, is to assist in event-blaming. If the hurt spouse wishes to rebuild, a third-party to cast the blame on gives the hurt spouse a target to take their anger out on, instead of the unfaithful spouse. The affair partner is an easy target in most cases. Easier to blame and hate since you don't plan on living with them or reconciling with them.

However, this can be a problem. Mainly because an affair takes two people. Both are fully responsible for initiating it and continuing it. The affair would end if either of them said, "no" and followed that up with actions reflecting that decision.

The percentage of blame is not divided between the two, but both the unfaithful spouse and the affair partner are each 100% to blame.

The only time this may not be true is when the unfaithful spouse lies to the affair partner about their marital status. The affair partner isn't to blame for the affair other than general immorality in that case.

The main reason that event-blaming should be avoided is because it avoids dealing with the real cause of the affair:  the unfaithful spouses inability to face their sin, repent of it, and take proactive steps to heal so that the cycle doesn't repeat. So that you go and sin no more. Victim-blaming and event-blaming are methods of hiding from the real problems that are more difficult to face, and require real change to address.

If the hurt spouse assists the unfaithful spouse in event-blaming, whether on the affair partner or some extenuating circumstance, they are simply asking for another round of cheating. You'd be more forthright to say, "Awe, that's okay honey. You go ahead and cheat as much as you want. I don't mind."

Self-Blaming

The third type of blaming is when a hurt spouse blames themselves. Sometimes this is a result of an effective victim-blaming by the unfaithful spouse that the hurt spouse accepts as true. Most often it is the natural reaction of a hurt spouse upon discovering an affair to assume the unfaithful spouse is doing this because of some deficiency in them.

The night I first found out my wife was having an affair, some of my first thoughts was how could she be cheating? I thought she was happy with our marriage. I took the fact she wanted sex frequently to be a sign she wasn't straying. Why would she need more? But my first thought is that she no longer loved me. Or that she'd been hiding the fact that she wasn't satisfied with our relationship.

The hurt spouse will tend to see the affair as a rejection of them. To a large degree, it is, even if the unfaithful spouse doesn't feel that way. The actions mean more than words. Someone who loves you wouldn't hurt you like that. It's the equivalent of preparing to punish your child for misconduct, so you stab their shoulder with a knife. Saying, "I love you" to the child is meaningless.

If you have a strong self-esteem, as I describe in my articles here and here, those will be temporary thoughts. If you have weak self-esteem, however, it is easy to allow those doubts to fester into full blame-fests. Especially if the unfaithful spouse is supporting it with victim-blaming.

This is a big problem for several reasons. One, it isn't true. Rarely is it the case that a hurt spouse is responsible for decisions made without their knowledge or consent. As we've explained above, you may be responsible for marital problems, but you cannot be held responsible for the affair of your spouse unless you were holding a gun to their head, forcing them to cheat.

Two, tt also falls into the problem above: causing the unfaithful spouse to avoid dealing with why they allowed the affair to happen and fixing that. As long as they can point to someone or something else to blame, they can avoid the unpleasant task of healing themselves and therefore, your trust in them.

Three, the biggest problem that self-blame feeds is enabling. Focusing the blame on yourself ends up enabling the unfaithful spouse to continue in their infidelity. After all, if it is your fault and not theirs, they can't help it if they are continuing to be attracted to the affair partner. Not until you get your act together.

The reason this is such a temptation for hurt spouses is control.

When you discover the affair, you feel out of control. Your whole world has been turned upside down. Chaos reigns. The wrong was committed behind your back. How do you regain control?

You know you can't control the unfaithful spouse, but you can control you. If you can place the blame for the affair on yourself, then you feel you have control over fixing it. You can stop it. Accepting that the unfaithful spouse is to blame is to give up control. To feel insecure. To feel helpless.

Because self-blame is a misdiagnosis, the hurt spouse is treating a disease that doesn't exist while ignoring the one that does. While it may be scarier to trust your unfaithful spouse again with the healing process and the rebuilding, that is the only way to actually fix the relationship.

Love requires taking that risk. Because the truth is in 99.9% of the cases, them having an affair has little to do with you, and all to do with what is going on in them. If they don't deal with that, you can bet they'll do it again. By focusing on your issues as the blame for the affair, you enable them to continue the affair lifestyle because they won't change.

In each of the three types of blameshifting, the common problem is it becomes a way for the unfaithful spouse to ignore the real cause of the affair--themselves--by pointing the finger to influences exterior to them. By so doing they hide from addressing their issues, refuse to accept responsibility, fail to repent, give themselves victim status that really belongs to the hurt spouse, thus ensuring that any rebuilding efforts will fail and more rounds of cheating are in store for the marriage.

Don't allow blameshifting in any of its forms. The relationship will not heal if the real causes of the affair are not addressed.

No, the Devil didn't make you do it.

How have you dealt with these forms of blameshifting?

Rebuilding Intimacy

In discussing marriage, I listed several levels of marital bonding: social, emotional, legal, spiritual, and physical. I pointed out that the sexual union consummates, or fulfills, the other levels by converting them into a marital reality, demonstrated biologically, biblically, socially. Meanwhile, consummating a marriage via sex without the other levels of marriage in place devalues the bond it creates and abuses it by treating it as not intimate.

Except for the legal bond, which is more about protection, benefits, and responsibilities under a specific legal system, these levels of marriage represent levels of intimacy between two people. This illustrates not only why infidelity destroys these marital bonds of intimacy, but also the focus of rebuilding that intimacy.

First, we need to define intimacy, so we know what we're talking about. Intimacy has different levels. We usually think of these in categories of acquaintances, generic friendships, friendships, close friendships, and best friendships. Properly speaking, spouse should fall as the most intimate after best friends.

Intimacy is based upon how much you share of yourself and how many people to whom you share that reality.

Sure, you may find exceptions, but that is going to apply in most situations and people. The more you let someone into your life and the fewer who abide there, the more intimate it becomes. Here is a simple example that most who've experienced infidelity will readily get.

During an affair, usually only the unfaithful spouse and the affair partner know the affair is going on. Only those two share that secret. No one else is privy to that part of their life. This creates a deep intimacy in that area between the two.

Then the hurt spouse finds out. Maybe one of the participants told their best friend about it. The cat is out of the bag, and now more people see this intimate part of your life. There is still a high level of intimacy, but now that  more people know about it, it becomes less intimate than it was before.

Then you tell or they find out, your family/extended family about it. Now it becomes a "family secret." While still retaining a level of intimacy, it has been greatly watered down. A whole group has had a peek into this area of your life.

Then you do something like what Lenita and I have done: write a book about what happened and put it out for anyone in the world to pick up and read. More commonly for celebrities like Tiger Wood, the news reporters find out about it and it is broadcast all over the world. Now some dude in India may know all about your affair, who you don't even know exists. That makes the information about the affair the least intimate. Everyone can know about it.

Now lets apply this to the four levels of intimacy in marriage: emotional, social, spiritual, and physical. You may notice a correlation between these four and the article on the four loves in our book: philio, storge, agape, and eros respectively, roughly so.

Emotional Intimacy

This type of intimacy is characterized by the closeness of best friends. You get to know your spouse or potential spouses' dreams, goals, struggles, history, family, accomplishments and failures. The more of their life they share, and the fewer people with whom they share it with, the stronger that emotional bond.

There is an important part of your life that you share with such a best friend that is a huge measure of your emotional intimacy with a person: your time.

Both time spent together and time spent thinking about them and their welfare. You have a limited amount of time, especially discretionary time. Who you decide to spend that time with most says a lot about how emotionally intimate you are with that person. It designates who are the most intimate relationships in your life.

This is an intimacy that naturally runs high at the beginning of a relationship, but as it becomes familiar, and new shiny things attract our interest, we stop spending as much time together. The time we do spend together, tends to be on necessary mundane things that demand our attention. Over the years, what started out as a burning desire to spend most of your discretionary time with a person, dwindles to when you're required to, because you are interested in spending that time in other areas.

That person gets the message that they are not as important to you. You are not that emotionally intimate to share your life, your time, together with them. This happens all too often in marriages. It happened in mine.

When an affair hits, it should be obvious why this further destroys this intimacy. Yes, to many an affair is at least encouraged by a lack of emotional intimacy. This doesn't justify it or blame the other spouse for having one, but it is easy to understand why someone starved of emotional intimacy in their marriage would be attracted to anyone offering a buffet of attention and interest and wanting to spend their time with them.

But it is a death spiral for the marriage. Whereas before, that emotional intimacy was waiting in the wings to be taken, now it is no longer available because it has been given to another without the hurt spouse's knowledge or consent. Intimacy that properly belongs to the one you are united to in marriage has been given to another. As long as that continues, that is emotional intimacy the hurt spouse cannot have.

Likewise, to rebuild emotional intimacy post-affair involves reversing that process. Going no contact with the affair partner cuts off what is feeding the emotional intimacy with him: your time given to him. Going no contact also means cutting off time spent thinking about him.

But you don't cut that off by simply stopping, but by reinvesting that time in your spouse. By purposefully spend time thinking about your love and desire to be with your spouse, and planning to spend your free time with them, no matter what other "priorities" you have on your plate.

That is why a book like His Needs, Her Needs is so critical for rebuilding. You don't just let the emotional intimacy of the affair partner die off, you replace it by reviving your marriage, by making each other important again. By restoring the emotional intimacy with your spouse where it belongs, and not given to another.

Social Intimacy

Social intimacy corresponds with a sense of comfortableness being around each other. It provides a sense of stability and support to one another. It overlaps with emotional intimacy in that social activities are shared and time spent doing them together and being with each other are sought and longed for above any other relationship.

This doesn't mean other relationships, like the kids, are not attended to and important, but that the marital relationship maintains a priority position above any other relationship, even one's children. For the well-being of the children rests in the quality of the marital relationship.

Social intimacy can include several areas. Living together. Financial unity. Inlaw relations. Child rearing. Social activities. How well these and related areas of your life are integrated between two people indicates the degree of social intimacy you have.

Some of these, like living together, may appear easy. You either are or aren't living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed. But are you really living in the same house, or just existing in the same house? Maybe you have an integrated checking account where both of your monies reside, but are you jointly making decisions on how it is spent? The kids might be disciplined, but are you both involved and communicating about how discipline is handled?

Being socially intimate is for both of you to be involved in the decision-making processes, refusing to cut your spouse out of the picture to get your own way. Being the head of the household does not equate to being a dictator. That is the opposite of intimacy. That is cutting your spouse out of your life.

Gaining social intimacy means not expecting to get your way all the time. It does mean acknowledging each other's expectations and being wiling to compromise in order to obtain an "operating procedure" you can both agree to and adopt in any area of your social lives.

If you are having trouble in your marriage with these issues, seek marriage counseling. In addition or if counseling is not a viable option, I'd suggest you both read: The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Don't settle for allowing the lack of social intimacy to continue, because it can come back to bite you in the end.

Spiritual Intimacy

If you are one that does not hold to any religious beliefs, you may think this section doesn't apply to you. Yes, if you have religious beliefs, it is best they be compatible, and that you can worship as a family. Living your life religiously divided would be a lack of intimacy. That would apply equally if an atheist and a Muslim were married as it would a Catholic and a Jew (I've met a couple like that before).

But spiritual intimacy is more than religious intimacy. This intimacy involves two things: humility and sacrifice.

Humility in that pride shuts the other person out of our inner person. Pride is wearing a mask. Pride is the fence we build around who we are for fear they won't like what they see. Humility breaks down that wall and says, "Here I am, warts and all. What you see is what you get." Humility exposes the man behind the curtain, trying to act macho to hide how weak and small he feels.

Spiritual intimacy involves seeing each other as you truly are. No secrets. No pretense. No masks or walls. Just who you are in all your vulnerability.

But the other leg this intimacy stands on is sacrifice. Being humble opens yourself up to the other person. Sacrificing your own agenda for their needs gives of yourself to each other. Letting each other into your lives and sacrificing for each other fosters a spiritual intimacy that exist at the core of your being.

How does that type of intimacy grown? By submission to one another in love and obedience. "But I don't want to be seen as inferior, as some type of slave." That's not what we are talking about here. We're talking about mutual obedience to each other in humility, doing what is beneficial for each other. I spell this out in my article on using humility to gain self-esteem.

Failure to do this, however, will mean a lack of spiritual intimacy, no matter how often you attend church together.

Physical Intimacy

Most would understand this to speak of being sexual with each other. Certainly it involves this. As I've said in other places, by the time many people get married, sexual activity is no longer that intimate. Or not as intimate as it should be. Remember our definition of intimacy at the start? The more people you share your body with, the less intimate it becomes.

But this intimacy goes beyond general sexual experiences. It focuses onto the one sexual act that forms the basis for marriage as I discussed in my July articles on this topic: sexual intercourse. This is the most intimate of sexual acts in that it joins two people into a union with the potential to create life together. It is this specific sexual act that turns the other types of union into a marital union. Without it, you're left with an intimate friendship, but not a marriage.

This also explains why an affair that results in adultery, whether mentally or physically, create such a cancerous illness in a marriage. For the unfaithful spouse is divorcing his spouse and marrying his affair partner in having sexual intercourse with them. Likewise, if he is having sex with his spouse too, he is continually divorcing and remarrying each of them over and over again. Doing so with no intent to foster the other types of intimacy devalues the marital bond and commitment that sexual intercourse inherently contains. When it is used merely for recreation and entertainment, the marital bond it creates is cheapened.

Yet, it goes beyond this. Yes, in the proper context, sexual intercourse is an intimate act. The most intimate physical activity we can do with someone. Any involvement of sexual activity, for most of us, isn't something we invite just anyone to join with us in. So unless we run around naked and participate in sexual activities with anyone who will have us, the number of people we are involved with is a limited number, and so has some level of intimacy, even if not the ideal of one.

Doing the act, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily foster full physical intimacy. For the physical intimacy to be complete means the previous intimacies above are firing on all cylinders, and a commitment to make each other the most important person in each other's lives is manifest. Then the intimacy inherent in sexual intercourse and other sexual activities are fulfilled and meaningful, making physical intimacy complete.

It should be coupled with emotional intimacy, keeping that romantic spark alive. Social intimacy lives out the reality of the physical intimacy. Spiritual intimacy keeps love as the motivation, and its purpose a giving of yourself rather than merely taking. Only then does physical intimacy rise above bodily intimacy and become a complete marital intimacy.

The quality of one's sexual intimacy should be worked on as well. Few of us take classes on this topic, but there are some good books. A book I've read and recommend is Sheet Music. Sometimes problems in the bedroom need a counselor to untie issues you are too close to see or deal with.

We should also note that physical intimacy is much broader a category than sexual intimacy. While a hug or even kiss is not nearly as intimate as sexual activities, it is a selective act. Rubbing a shoulder, scratching a back, massaging a foot can all be very intimate to a person and make any sexual intimacy that much richer. It should be considered a problem if the only physical intimacy that happens is during sex. That indicates a lack of intimacy physically.

As you can see, building intimacy in a marriage takes a holistic approach. It isn't as simple as tweaking a thing or two, or going out to eat together more often. It requires a complete evaluation of the dynamics in the marital relationship and a willingness to modify and/or adopt some core values that foster this intimacy rather than fight against it. I hope the above will give you a decent start on doing just that.