Serial Cheaters

The term serial cheater gets thrown around a good bit. Often I think people misuse the term. How do you know if someone qualifies as a serial cheater, and if they do, how can it be handled?

What is a Serial Cheater?

I've searched, but not found an official definition. So I've compiled one by adapting the definition of a serial killer. The standard definition of a serial killer is:

A serial killer is, traditionally, a person who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time (a "cooling off period") between the murders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer

My adaption would read:

A serial cheater is a person who has committed acts of marital infidelity--against a person they are bonded to physically and/or emotionally--with three or more people separated by time-gaps between each one.

This would differ from a cheating spree where a person commits infidelity with three or more in rapid succession, or from mass cheating where affairs happen concurrently.

There is a little more gray area, however. When someone is murdered, the fact the victim died is pretty black and white. He either is or he isn't. While the definition of cheating is fairly well held, there are a lot more variations. There are boundaries one can cross that tend to lead to cheating but in and of themselves are not.

I'll use a personal example. I frequently had lunch with a female coworker for a period of time. Neither of us wanted to eat alone. Frequently it would just be me and her at a restaurant.

Strictly speaking, we were crossing a boundary that often leads to cheating. Yet, we never discussed any marital problems, or anything about sex, or ever went any further with the relationship other than being friends who worked together and ate lunch together often. I never cheated, but a third party might have decided we were cheating because so many in that situation easily fall into it.

So even though I have a definition, people could differ about whether a particular person fits this definition based on their understanding of what cheating is.

Why Do We Need to Label People with the Term?

It shouldn't be for the sake of labeling someone, rather to know how to treat and help the unfaithful spouse. There are different types of cheating and the type of solutions that will address it will vary.

One night stand
Prostitution
Online chats, text or video
Phone/chat sex
Sharing photos or other intimate things online
Phone/Skype emotional relationship
Physical, sexual play
Adultery
Multiple affairs
Serial Cheaters

The motivation for serial killers easily applies to serial cheating:

The motivation for serial killing is usually based on psychological gratification. Most of the killings involve sexual contact with the victim, but the FBI states that motives for serial murder include "anger, thrill, financial gain, and attention seeking".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer

Let's look at the FBI motives in more detail.

Anger

Anger derives from feeling your "rights" have been violated. What one considers their rights comes from how they were raised, their own experiences, as well as expectations that have developed as they grew up. Often these are informed by parental influence. It derives from the violation of one's sense of righteousness.

In terms of serial cheating, ongoing anger with one's spouse could be prompting a serial cheater to continued cheating. Whenever things aren't going exactly as they'd like, their response to dealing with it is anger, and then lashing back in a passive-aggressive manner by cheating on their spouse. It becomes the means to sooth the anger in them.

If this is the motivation, learning new responses to anger via anger management help can break them out of their cycle of destructive response patterns.

Thrill

There are several types of thrills that could fall under this motivation. In all cases, it involves a person succumbing to the temptation of an addictive thrill, and repeating it enough until it becomes a psychological addiction. Following are three of the common thrills.

The "new relationship" thrill is well documented. Otherwise known  as infatuation. Often mistaken for "true love," given time the excitement dies off, and the serial cheater becomes vulnerable to the next opportunity when "chemistry" shoots the thrill-factor red-lining again. Then it's onto the next person that provides that thrill.

Another common thrill is the sexual thrill. Often, especially men, the serial cheater is addicted to getting the next sexual high. The longer they have sex with someone, like their spouse, the more "ho hum" it becomes. Due to the Coolidge Effect, a new sexual partner can provide a sexual high that the long-time partner can't hope to compete with. Someone addicted to this thrill will always need a new partner if they hope to get the sexual high they crave.

Some serial cheaters are addicted to the sense of power provided by the affair. One, the desire, and often manipulation of the affair partner to keep them on the hook. Two, the power over their spouse based upon pulling off an affair behind their backs. The thrill of secrecy gives the serial cheater a sense of power over their spouse who is kept in the dark. Knowledge is power. To get away with it without being caught provides its own sense of superiority.

The solution in this case will require extensive help to break the addictive pattern, establish boundaries, manage temptations, and restructure one's thinking patterns and life to find alternate means of satisfaction.

Financial Gain

For cheating, the most obvious financial gain is prostitution or the porn industry. A popular motivation for women, but affecting many men as well. Selling one's body and getting paid for it can fuel continued cheating for a spouse desiring that money.

But that isn't the only way. Some people seek out affairs, especially with a person who has some disposable income, in order to get financial help from them. They've discovered that when someone is deep in infatuation, they will "loan" money more readily, or flat out give it away for a perceived need. The affair partner will buy them things, take them out to eat, and lavish other gifts, often without asking.

Serial cheating in this case can also be long cheating sprees and/or mass cheating. The more they can juggle, the more money they can get. The solution to heal this type of cheating is a reordering of priorities, and learning how to adequately take care of financial needs through legitimate means.

Attention Seeking

This one is a bigger factor in serial cheating than it is in serial murders. Even non-serial cheating often starts with this desire. Based upon a low self-esteem, such people find the interest and desire of others for them exhilarating. It could be listed as another type of thrill mentioned above.

Such a serial cheater craves the affirmation of others that they are worth something. To have someone admire their body, pursue them, thus indicating that they can sexually attract someone, is affirming to their self-worth. The spouse's affirmation is often insufficient because they have been that way for maybe several years. It is old news. However, the continual stream of new people who find them desirable is exciting.

The end result of frequent flirting and encouraging this type of relationship with people is some are going to take the flirter up on it. Not only is someone saying they want the flirter, but they are ready to do it with them. It creates a more intense attention-seeking response from the cheater, making an affair hard to resist and inevitable. If you play with fire, you will eventually get burned.

The route to healing this type of serial cheating is through building a stronger self-esteem, establishing firm relationship boundaries, and seeing the need for attention as a negative impact upon their life and desire to change that thinking pattern with help.

Not All Cheaters are Serial Cheaters

Some people sling the label "serial cheater" around too freely. There are two dangers to doing so.

One, the diagnosis of a stranger on the Internet based upon little information can label someone in such a way they don't believe there is hope for themselves. Someone who has cheated once, or even twice, doesn't fit the profile of a serial cheater as defined here. I'd also include multiple on-line emotional affairs grouped into a limited time period as not being a serial cheater. It might classify them as having had a cheating spree, but not necessarily serial. But I often hear someone labeled as a serial cheater because they cheated twice, often with the same affair partner.

Two, even if the label applies, its use can denote to the cheater that their situation is hopeless. A serial cheater is just who they are, so they might as well go with the flow. Many of them have given up fighting it a long time ago if it has been chronic. The label confirms in their mind that they are hopeless, so why even try to do something about it?

If the label applies, they need to realize they can change. With a lot of work and dedication, they can break out of the serial pattern of behavior if they seek out help and dedicate themselves to the process.

If the label doesn't apply, applying it can cause someone who isn't one yet to become one by giving up and accepting the meaning of the label as who they are.

While one can talk about serial cheating in general as I've done here--to help someone realize they need to get serious help--it is best to leave the diagnosis of specific individuals to qualified therapists and psychologist. It is too risky to become responsible for contributing to someone's lack of healing through applying defining labels that do little to help the other person.

How would you define serial cheating?

The Stages of Grief and Infidelity

This is a chapter excerpt from our book, Healing Infidelity: How to Build a Vibrant Marriage After an Affair. You'll find not only other helpful articles in that book, but our story of how she entered the affairs, how I found out, and how we successfully rebuilt.

------------------------

Both the hurt spouse and the unfaithful spouse go through the stages of grief. Sometimes one or both will get stuck in these stages for various reasons. I am taking the classical stages of grief and applying them to the loss of infidelity to help both hurt spouses and unfaithful spouses understand what they are going through, so you aren't blindsided when these emotions and feeling arise. They are part of the healing process.

These are usually associated with tragedies of various kinds like a death in the family, someone getting cancer, loss of functionality due to an auto accident, etc. The loss of an affair is a little different in that the beginning of grieving toward healing may not be able to get fully underway until the parties involved feel fairly confident that the affair is over, which for some couples can be months, years for the determined, or never.

Hurt spouses suffer the loss of trust, the loss of security in the relationship, the loss of innocence, the loss of who they viewed their spouse to be, loss of feelings of love, if not loving commitment, and other related losses. Many suffer loss of self-esteem because they feel the affair was some deficiency in them, and the spouse must not love them as much as they thought because they chose someone else over them. Additionally, if it ends in divorce, the loss of the whole relationship itself.

The unfaithful spouses will, upon hitting discovery day, at least experience the loss of their secret life, and if they successfully cut off contact, the loss of those relationships. Additionally, they'll experience the loss of their marital intimacy and the trust of their spouse. They'll also experience the loss of their self-respect and self-esteem for what they did (many respond to this in various ways, including denial, shifting guilt, acting like everything is okay, or not wanting to talk about it because they don't enjoy being whipped up on). If it ends in divorce, they also can experience the loss of that relationship.

There are five general stages of grieving most people who suffer loss go through. Not everyone will experience all of these, and they can overlap, or one may feel they've gone beyond one stage only to find themselves back there again. There aren’t any neat lines and boxes when one goes from one to the other. You can experience two or three of these things all in one day. But there is a basic progression, and how well you heal from it for yourself (not taking into account any exterior circumstances that could delay or prevent it, like the unfaithful spouse having another affair or the hurt spouse leaving, never to return, etc.) will vary on successfully progressing through these stages.

Denial

This is the usual first stage. The event doesn't seem real. It can't be happening. There must be some explanation. She would never do this to me. Hurt spouses are especially vulnerable to "gas lighting" during this phase, because they are already predisposed to doubt what they are realizing has happened, even with solid proof sitting in front of them. At this stage, the hurt spouse wants to believe there is a reasonable explanation.

I remember my first reaction upon reading Lenita's online confession. I said, "No! No! No!" I had to look away from the computer and sit in a chair, trying to take in what I had just read. It was just so out of character for her, I couldn't believe it was true. Yet, there it was, staring at me in black and white. Though I knew inside it wasn't likely to be the case, I hoped like wildfire that when I confronted her, she would go, "OH! You must have read what I wrote last night to that guy! I was just saying that to play along with him. It was all a big joke." Or, "I knew you installed that key logger and wanted to get back at you. Ha ha! Got you good!" Which would have been a very mean trick, but I would rather that had been the case.

For the unfaithful spouse, the denial may be more along the lines of not believing they'd been caught, and the gig was up. They had convinced themselves that they would never be caught, that they could keep this hidden. Suddenly, that's all falling apart, and for the first time perhaps, they are thinking about what discovery means and its ramifications. But they don't want to consider that. It is what they've hid from for the length of the affair, thinking the two lives could remain separate and not affecting the other. Initially, they may not have wanted the affair to end, and deny that it has, even if he also, at the same time, wants to rebuild with his spouse, which is where much of the ambivalence comes from. They don't want to let go of either life, lose either life, and they are in denial that it has come down to that choice.

Anger

Once it sets in that the affair has happened, and denial is more an emotional disconnect than a mental reality, the anger sets in. For the hurt spouse, the anger is obvious: How could you do this to me? I thought you loved me? You broke our vows! You deceived me! How dare you put my life at risk with unprotected sex behind my back!

The unfaithful spouse can experience anger, even if it appears irrational from the hurt spouse viewpoint: Don't talk about him that way! He is a human too. Why do you keep whipping me about this over and over, I said I was sorry! Why don't you work on yourself more, the marriage isn't all about me? I had needs too! He met them! Pride can easily keep an unfaithful spouse defensive rather than cooperative. He can also be angry at himself or the affair partner for allowing the discovery of the affair.

The point is, both experience loses, and anger is one reaction for many in dealing with the causes or perceived causes of those losses. How easy it is to get over that anger can be due to several factors, including the repentant attitude of the unfaithful spouse, the personality of the hurt spouse, and whether one or both can empathize with the other's feelings of loss. The ability to do the later is usually the opposite of being angry, so the more one is able to look past their own pain and be concerned for the other, the less anger will have a hold.

At some point, the anger begins to feel pointless, as it becomes evident that it is doing more harm to the one who is angry than it is to the other. But in the beginning, the hurt spouse especially feels almost an obligation to be angry, to not appear to let the spouse off "easy." But if it is held onto, it can prevent the hurt spouse from moving toward healing even if the unfaithful spouse does all the proper steps and heals.

Bargaining

One stage some go through is bargaining. This is traditionally thought of in a death loss, usually the person saying something like, "God, if you'll just bring her back, I'll go to the mission field," or some other deal.

In an affair, this is more likely to be reflected in an attempt to get back to the pre-affair life. In hurt spouses, it may be along the lines of "If you'll do these things, I'll stay and rebuild the marriage." Or in drastic cases, the hurt spouse might even say in not so many words, "Just don't flash it before my face, and I'll look the other way. Do what you want as long as you don't leave." Sort of a mixture of denial and bargaining. Or, "God, why did you let this happen to me? Fix him and I'll be the best wife ever."

An "in the fog" unfaithful spouse may think, "If I tell him this much of the truth, I can keep the affair going," or "If I don't tell him everything, I won't have to deal with his hurt and pain, and my shame and guilt." Post-fog unfaithful spouses may say in effect, "If I do everything she wants me to do, be the best husband I can be for a week, six weeks, six months, [insert whatever perceived time frame], then she'll stay and things will go back to 'normal'." Of course not realizing that this is called "rebuilding," not "remodeling" for a very good reason. What is built back won't look like the original, and it will take a good two years minimum to accomplish under the best of conditions.

Depression

Once the hysterical bonding dies down, and the reality of what is appearing to be the new normal has set in, depression can start to build. Fostered by changing identities, unresolved issues from the affair, or marital issues magnified by the affair, the hurt spouse or unfaithful spouse begins to feel that these are never going to get resolved or fixed. This grows even worse if the hurt spouse discovers continued contact with the affair partner, a new affair has started, or the unfaithful spouse hasn't told him everything and more truth trickles out. The things he thought would "fix" the marriage don't seem to be working, and during this time it can seem the hurt spouse and/or the unfaithful spouse take ten steps back for every step forward.

But even in good rebuilding, when things seem to be going well, there can be a time of depression. It can be experienced early in the process when you are unsure if he is going to break contact with the affair partner, or he doesn't seem repentant, commit to rebuilding like he said, or other related issues. Likewise, later in the process, as you gain perspective with the movement of time, you will look back and lament the losses you've sustained, and that will end up being expressed as depression.

It is in this stage that many couples in rebuilding can hit a wall. The one in depression will appear to have suddenly gone from being hopeful and happy about the marriage to despairing that it will ever work. They lose hope either from being tired of the constant effort and struggle of the rebuilding process with no seeming signs of things getting better, or have unrealistic expectations of how long the rebuilding process would be and how hard it is to go through.

Some will end up giving up at this point, fearing things will never improve or work, and getting out of the marriage is the only solution left. Others can get stuck here for months, even years, effectively halting a full healing and restoration of the relationship. If the couple realizes this for what it is, a natural part of the grieving process, and are patient with each other through it, and work to get past it, it usually leads to the final stage where a fuller healing can begin in earnest.

Acceptance

Here, both parties have come to terms with their losses, and accepted them. They no longer are obsessed with them and desire to look ahead rather than focus on the mess behind them. They are tired of being angry and depressed over it. A new "normal" is on the way to being established and identities formed that offer security and trust strengthened to functioning levels. They have let go of the hurts, that even though they are still there, aren't allowed to guide their lives and rule their thoughts. Forgiveness plays a part in reaching this stage, as injustice and anger is released and replaced with a more optimistic outlook for the future.

The key point becomes, that though it will always be there, the hurt and events of the affair are now considered "in the past" and the focus is on the future, whether one is rebuilding or in a divorced situation. That usually allows the couple to more fully focus on themselves, or the individual on a new relationship to spend their future with.

Hopefully this will be helpful in understanding some of the issues being dealt with by both sides of the affair, and strengthen the chance for healing and rebuilding to be successful.

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?

Defining Evil

Am I evil?

This question tends to be asked by some unfaithful spouses, either outright or in more subtle ways. This often stems from an attempt to deal with guilt, and perhaps the seeming lack of control the unfaithful spouse experienced.

Punishing one's self can also be an outgrowth of this view. It can be compounded in frequent affairs, creating a vicious cycle of feeling shame for cheating, which lowers one's self-esteem, which causes them to find someone who makes them feel better about themselves, which leads to more cheating.

Then you have, in many cases, hurt spouses fresh from the trauma of discovering the unfaithful spouse's affair confirming that assessment. If a hurt spouse gets into punishing mode, the unfaithful spouse in some cases gets the clear message: "you are the devil."

But is the unfaithful spouse evil? Is even a serial cheater doomed to be labeled such all their life?

There is no getting around it. Betraying your spouse is a damaging action. One could rightly label the act evil. But one could label gossip as evil as well. True, infidelity has more serious consequences than most gossip, but that doesn't negate the fact that both activities can be called evil. As could many other damaging decisions and actions, even when such is due to human error, like a doctor making a mistake on the operating table, or even no human input, like a hurricane.

But you'll notice a key difference. We can freely label activities as evil, and most of us have committed evil acts, but are humans inherently evil for doing evil? Or is there a sickness of humanity that makes some of us evil and destined to evil works continually?

At this point, we could delve into the theological aspects of anthropology as it relates to creation. Humans were not created as evil but became corrupted and thus prone to evil. The question still to be asked, however, is the unfaithful spouse evil for having betrayed the trust and love of their spouse?

It depends upon whether you allow evil to define who you are, or allow who you are to conquer evil. 

This is more than a nifty turn of phrase. When self-esteem is based upon your value as a person instead of what you've done, as we discussed in the two previous articles on the topic, you do not allow the evil actions to define you as evil. Instead, you seek ways to conform your actions to who you know you are as a person, thus overcoming evil instead of giving into it.

But you will be tempted to give into it. Why? Because giving in is easier than fighting. Because giving in justifies that you cannot change, that you have no control, and are a victim of the uncontrolled evil person you are. Because giving in means you'll settle for the familiar patterns of interactions instead of exploring new ways of living. Because if you are just an evil person, you don't have to change. Fighting for improving yourself is viewed as a lost cause.

We've all made bad decisions. I've not paid back some money I've owed on more than one occasion. Does that make me a serial money stealer who is destined to not pay back bills, or someone who has made bad financial decisions but can do better if I address the issues that lead me into that situation?

To accept the former is to say I can't change. To accept the later allows me to take responsibility and do something about it.

Are you evil for betraying your spouse? No. Did you allow yourself to be put into the position to be tempted to commit an evil act and give into it? Yes. That, however, can be overcome and changed.

Are you using the "I'm evil" card as an excuse to continue? Something to think about.

The Path to Self-Esteem

As we detailed in my last article, "Self-Esteem: Infidelity's Biggest Trigger," a low self-esteem often plays into the underlying reason that a person falls into infidelity (there is something missing in me that the Affair Partner completes) as well as getting in the way of successfully rebuilding once the affair is in the open (He's rejected me for someone else; I'm a horrible person for doing what I did; motivates blame-shifting and  rug sweeping mindsets). I pointed out how bad self-esteem does not equal low self-esteem, but that good or proper self-esteem removes a focus on self from the esteem equation. If you've not read that article, I encourage you to click the above link and do so.

The route most people suggest to build one's self-esteem revolve around the band-aid treatment of making one's self feel more important, more respected. Often the list includes things like treating yourself to something special, doing something for yourself, demanding more respect from others, adopt some beliefs that make you feel better about yourself, etc. These are band-aid treatments because they treat the symptoms, not the root cause. Doing those things are a temporary fix until the next message you receive from a source that you're a failure, and it all takes a nosedive again.

I suggested last time that the "cure" for an improper self-esteem is humility. Before we dig in to what this is and how to get it, first we need to clarify what it is not. Because when someone brings up humility, they tend to associate it with the following self-esteem destroyers:

Doormat

True humility is not to become a doormat for people to walk over. The real source of this unhealthy relational model is pride, not humility. It is based on believing if I do the right things to make him happy, he'll like me. Hold onto your questions; I'll explain why in a moment.

Codependent Relationship

True humility does not result in a relationship where fixing the other spouse provides the spouse's esteem. It does quite the opposite, freeing the other person to be responsible for themselves, even while you are cheering them on.

Passive Aggressive Behaviors

True humility will not result in underlying resistance while appearing cooperative and agreeable in order to maintain control and get what you want. Instead, it seeks to truly serve others for the betterment of all, including one's self.

Some will look at a truly humble person and believe they are exhibiting one of the above traits. But the key difference is in the above traits, one is seeking to feel better about their self through some attempt to control the situation or manipulate people. That is always a form of pride, not humility.

Humility, on the other hand, results in not focusing on self. On not seeking to control or manipulate others to feel good about yourself. The goal of humility is to place one's self on an equal plane of worth with everyone else.

The base definition of humility in the ancient Greek is "to lower oneself in relation to another." Likewise, the base definition of pride is "to raise oneself in relation to another." In order to put yourself on equal footing with everyone else, you must view their lives and needs just as important as your own. Any attempt to focus on your own self while using others to make yourself feel good is pride. It is putting your self as of more worth because you are using others to satisfy your desires and wants.

Keep in mind what humility is lowering one's self to. It is not inherent worth. All men and women are equal. It is not respect. It is in a focus of meeting needs and desires. If we are truly equal in worth, then my needs and wants are no more important than anyone else's. So the focus of our efforts cannot be on meeting our needs and wants above others. The moment we do, we put self in a position of worth based on what we do.

How Do We Foster True Humility?

You don't become humble by trying to be humble. The moment you seek it, you end up in pride, because you are doing it to lift self to a higher level than others. "Ah, look how humble I've become!" Then we're back to putting self in the esteem equation.

The key to answering this is control. At the heart of pride is making self important by controlling others or a situation. This is true of the doormat, the passive aggressive victim, or the narcissist. Pride says, "I want to control this for my maximum self interests."

To gain humility, we do the opposite. We give the control to others. I know, I know. This goes against our ideas of proper self-esteem. Seems to open up the door to being treated as a doormat, or abused by an abuser. But not really. Here's the difference.

For a doormat person, they meet any and every need because they hope to be liked and appreciated. Or they do it to control the other person in codependent manner or subvert them through passive aggressive behaviors. For a humble person, they do it purely to meet that person's true need, with no expectation of benefiting from it. Self is out of the picture, so there is no doormat to walk on. If they are unappreciative or don't reciprocate, that is no skin off their back since they didn't do it for that reason.

What loosing control means in practical terms is obedience. We become obedient to one another in love. When you are merely being obedient, you don't have the satisfaction of being prideful.

For example, when I was a teen, I decided on my own to clean out the garage because I wanted to surprise my mother. My motivation was to see her shock and praise me for being so considerate and helpful. It became a source of pride for me to say, "See what I did!"

Now back up. Let's say before my mom left that day she told me, "Rick, would you please clean out the garage for me?" Would I have been nearly motivated to do it? No, because self wasn't going to get kudos for deciding to do it. She might say it was a good job, but she would have expected that. Because I was only doing what was expected of me, I wouldn't have been able to take pride in what I'd done inappropriately, at least easily.

What am I saying? Don't surprise your loved ones with gifts? No. Rather, if you want to remove self from the esteem equation through humility, it is done through obedience to one another.

But we need to make one more point on this to avoid confusion. It is not an obedience to their demands and wants, but to what is in their best interest. To put it in obvious terms, if they say, "Give me a gun, I want to go shoot some kids at a school," you'd be obedient to everyone's best interest by not giving him that gun. A doormat would give him the gun. A humble person with proper self-esteem would not.

So, let's put this in marital terms, which is what our focus is here. What if your spouse is abusive, manipulative, etc.? Do you just obey him?

That will depend, but as pointed out, you are obedient to his best interest. Such types of relationships are not healthy for any involved, including the abuser. Obedience in that instance would be to leave in hopes he'll get a clue and seek help to change his destructive relational patterns. It would be obedient to the best interest of the kids, if any, who might suffer emotionally under such an atmosphere, to leave.

It would also be obedient to your own protection. "But I thought you said self doesn't enter the picture?" As a motivation to control others for your own ego boosting needs, yes. But if you do not protect yourself, there are needs other than your own that will go unmet. If mom is an emotional mess because of an abusive husband, she won't be able to fully meet the needs of her kids as their mother. Taking care of basic needs for yourself is being obedient to the needs of others. If you can't function in a healthy way, you can't help others.

"But what about a spouse who is simply not humble to me? Am I to continue to obey him when he doesn't respect me?" Yes and no. Yes, in the sense his lack of desire to meet your needs doesn't affect your reason to meet his needs. You aren't meeting his needs, if it is from true humility, because you want him to return the favor. So when he doesn't, you don't stop. To do so would indicate it arose from pride and a damaged self-esteem you are trying to shore up.

But, to continue in that type of relationship for long is not good for either of you. It needs to be addressed. It needs to be dealt with an healed. You might need to force the issue at some point by making it clear the situation cannot go on without forcing you to take some extreme measures, like separation. However, letting it go on and on would be an indication of pride rather than humble obedience.

In the end, you are simply being obedient to him/her by doing what is in the best interest of all involved. By so doing, your own needs are not front and center, though your basic needs are getting met that keep you going and healthy. But you are focused on other's needs not to use them for meeting your own, but because their needs are just as important as yours.

The end result is self is removed from the esteem question. You know your esteem is equal to everyone else's. Because of that, what others think of you or your performance matters little as it has no bearing on your self-worth. With self out of the picture, you are free to respond to others and be obedient to what is in their best interest out of genuine love for them as a person of worth.

Fostering humility becomes the path to proper and healthy self-esteem that will not only allow a hurt spouse or unfaithful spouse to heal quicker, but will prevent any self-focused decisions to have an affair to happen in the first place.

Self-Esteem: Infidelity's Biggest Trigger

Self-esteem and infidelity are like wind and fire. They both feed off each other.

Low self-esteem is often cited as a core issue within the unfaithful spouse in deciding/allowing an affair to take place. Makes sense, since a lot of the draw for affairs is that the affair partner makes the unfaithful spouse feel good about himself in ways either their spouse isn't or can't do.

Likewise the discovery of a spouse's affair leads to self-esteem issues of competency on both sides of the fence. The sinking of self-esteem by an affair often leads a hurt spouse to be embarrassed, as if its presence was a statement on his ability as a marriage partner to keep his spouse "happy." It leads the unfaithful spouse to avoid dealing with the fallout of the affair in a productive manner because being reminded of it is evidence of their failure and being a "bad" person.

Therefore, it is an important topic to explore in relation to healing infidelity, not only for the above reasons, but because so many people don't know the correct way to think about this issue, and so head down paths to deal with it that never fix it, only put a band-aid on it.

First, let's establish what we are talking about when we use the term self-esteem. It refers to the perception of worth an individual believes they have. There are two primary sources we tend to derive this perception: how we believe others perceive us and how competently we believe we have accomplished a given task. The two sources often overlap, as we may believe a person thinks we have done a good job or a bad job.

Often, the diagnosis is we have low self-esteem, and if we developed some high self-esteem, it would fix the problem. However, it doesn't tend to work that way. As long as our perception of our worth is based upon our belief of what others think and our accomplishments or lack thereof, our self-esteem will shoot up only to fall back down. We can always find someone who doesn't like us or thinks we don't know what we are doing. Most of us cover that up by acting like we don't care and/or putting on a "macho" attitude. But inside we are wilting.

The real solution to this problem isn't to work to make yourself feel better, but to base your self-esteem, your self-worth in reality, not on what others think or how well you can do something. It goes back to forming a foundation of your own belief in your worth as a person divorced from our perceptions.

The reality is most fameously enshrined in the United States Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

The fact is no one person is inherently worth more or less than another. It is the belief that some are worth more than others that accounts for many of the ills in our society, past and present. It used to be a popular belief that the color of one's skin made a person worth less. Used to be women didn't have the right to vote; their voice was not worth as much as a man's. Still is if a woman doesn't have a particular set of dimensions to her body, she is not worth as much. Still if a man is not perceived to be manly enough, he is looked down on in some circles. Still is that certain sins are seen as making one less of a person.

Therefore, the goal of healthy self-esteem is not merely avoiding a low one, nor to raise one's self-esteem, but to get the self out of esteem.

That is realize and believe that our esteem is based on being a member of the human race and not on what we believe others think of us or what we succeed or fail at. It is not founded on the good or bad choices we make in life. In short, the route to healthy self-esteem is to take your focus off of "me" and put it on "us." When you are no longer the center of your worth as a person, your worth will be based upon the whole group of which no one is worth more or less than another.

You'll notice I said your self-esteem is based in this reality. It isn't that the other things won't affect one's self-esteem, but they won't serve as the foundation for it. Your worth as a person won't change with each failure or when the boss chews you out. No one likes those things and they make us feel bad, but it is a mistake to treat them as forming our worth as a person.

It is when those things form the foundation of our self-esteem that we can feel good about ourselves one day and bad the next. It creates the vulnerabilities to be swayed by someone treating you special, or want to run when not everything is sunshine and roses. It allows your self-esteem to go into the pits when your spouse has an affair because your first thought is, "What did I do wrong?" Especially if blame shifting goes into high gear. 

For those in Christianity, there is an added reality. Not only did God create us all as inherently worth the same, but the message that He came and died to redeem us says a lot about what we are worth to God. The core of the gospel message is that God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son to redeem us from death. For the Christian, that is the basis for our esteem.

I honestly think this mindset is the reason my self-esteem, while it did take a hit due to my wife's affair, wasn't severely wounded. Rather, I focused on the fact that my wife was in danger and how could I help her. Not on myself. Not on how this would look to others. I evaluated my failures as a husband without feeling less of a man or person, or accepting the blame for my wife's bad choice to cheat on me. Those things don't define my worth, as bad as they are.

The road to a healthy self-esteem is to take the self out of the esteem equation. How to do that? Next time we will look at an approach that at first may sound counter-intuitive: humility. "The Path to Self-Esteem." Trust me, it isn't what you think.