When most people see a single mother, they presume that the man abandoned his roles and responsibilities. Often, this results from infidelity. However, it also excuses the woman from any responsibility or involvement in the maintenance of her own relationship. Sometimes people create their own purgatories and set the stage for bad things to happen to them. Such is our story today, a story of infidelity in which the wife denies any role but in which she arguably has one.
I once knew a woman about a decade ago that we’ll call Lisa. Lisa complained a lot about her husband neglecting her and her daughter to chat online, play online games after work, and play poker with his buddies rather than interacting with them or tending to responsibilities around the house. I consider that a legitimate grouse. However, rather than discuss it with him, confront him with the reality of what was happening, Lisa lighted on a different strategy. She decided to ignore him completely in return.
Her logic in making this choice to return quid pro quo was that this would show him how she felt and inspire him to pay more attention to her. It had the exact opposite effect. Dinner was never ready when he came home; he had to prepare it himself. No gifts were given to him for birthday, anniversary or Christmas, but she expected them of him. And she cut him out of the marital bed completely and refused to be intimate with him. While it was possible that he would up the ante and work to repair the relationship, he retreated further from her instead.
At first, I’m sure it was mostly platonic. I imagine he gamed more, complained to his poker pals, and watched more streaming shows online. Eventually however, he found a sympathetic female ear who first was just kind but eventually one that was welcoming enough to offer him what his wife refused, and he decided to act on her invitations, or maybe he brought it up. If you ask Lisa about her story, she’ll just say her husband cheated on her, and she won’t tell you about the decisions she made that paved a perfect path that made it easier for him to make the choice.
While I disagree with Lisa’s husband, I also disagree with Lisa. Ultimately she did not force him to cheat, and he made those choices to ruin his marriage. It did not have to end that way. She could have made other choices. I know this because my own ex wife also cut me not just out of the bedroom but out of her life entirely. She would just leave whenever she liked, spend money whenever she liked, and even invited strange men into the master bedroom, where I was forbidden. A sympathetic female coworker listened to my plight, but I did not indulge in that behavior. Ultimately I found a different solution and dissolved the marriage through divorce.
I confronted Lisa about this one day. She of course refused my spin on her life. Eventually I got tired of her playing the victim all the time and ghosted her essentially. I could not escape the fact that she played a role, and she refused to accept that was even possible. You can’t argue with idiots.
People paint themselves as the protagonist in their autobiography. They are seemingly never to blame. However, I know that Lisa’s decisions helped make it more likely and more possible for her husband to chart a new course. In a sexless marriage, without any concern let alone intimacy, what did you expect him to do? He was a husband without benefits. Rarely however do people seem to ask the woman what led to the infidelity or how she ended up a single mother. They are simply supportive of the woman, molly coddling her even if she was in the wrong, and the man is slandered and libeled. So was I. People just presumed that I was responsible for destroying my marriage, but if you ask my bishop at the time, maybe he’ll remember that I was the one making an effort and that she never welcomed them.
It takes two people to make a marriage work and it takes two people to destroy one. If we only assume that the husband and his other lover are the two who destroyed it, sometimes we’ll be wrong. And people who are innocent will be convicted in the court of public sentiment. That makes us wrong twice.
No comments:
Post a Comment