If I did nothing wrong, then why do I feel guilty?

As a child I often enjoyed playing pin the tail on the donkey’ at parties. Now that you are an adult and faced with the trauma of an affair, playing pin the tail on the donkey’ is not as fun as it used to be.

The infidelity version of that game is when you pin the guilt of the affair onto yourself rather than on the cheater. You may hate the idea of pain in your marriage so much, that you’d rather put the blame, pain and guilt on yourself rather than allow it to fester.

You’re action reduces the pain and tension, yet short circuits the needed healing.

The best course of action is allowing the pain to ‘do its magic’ on the cheater. Assuming the pain and guilt on yourself  gives you someone to blame, but it won’t solve the problem.

The cheater is  more than willing to blame you when you are one of those people to tends to take the blame and guilt for anything wrong in the world. Cheaters  sense when they are married to people like that.

They know that they can be rid of their guilt since you are willing to carry that guilt for them. As long as you take on the guilt of marital problems and the affair, they won’t have the motivation for making changes.

When you allow the guilt to do its magic, changes begin. Guilt and the discomfort it brings with it works on a person motivating them in making changes. When you allow the guilt to sink into the cheater, they start making changes.

Granted, some cheaters are hard headed and hard-hearted, so it takes them longer and larger amounts of guilt before they make any change.

Guilt isn’t a bad thing, unless it doesn’t belong to you. Guilt becomes destructive when it is either not yours or not dealt with.

If you have a history of childhood trauma, you may be accustomed to being a victim. When an affair happens, those old triggers are easily activated.

You soon find yourself blaming yourself for something you didn’t do. In this case, it goes back to the lessons learned in that early childhood trauma.

In the video, “Overcoming Affair Trauma“, you’ll learn what you can do that changes those patterns. There are ways of breaking the patterns and cycles of blaming yourself

Best Regards,

Jeff