Stop Calling It "Cheating"
Is marriage a game? Are there winners and losers? Are there also cheaters and sore losers? Is that why a sex addiction treatment practitioner calls it “cheating”—they treat primary relationships like a game?
Hmmmm. Maybe that’s also why they seem to focus on helping you become a better loser going forward!
Let’s just poke around a bit here. I wonder if calling it “cheating” is about diminishing the entire truth right at the start. Then the effect on us can be trivialized, shamed, as something more to do with our weaknesses as “sore losers” than a rational expectation of trauma symptoms.
But what these men do is way more than cheating at a game—because your primary relationship isn’t a game.
That’s right. Your primary relationship isn’t a game of winners and losers. It’s not a game at all. Cheaters cheat at card games, board games, sports games, and other games. Your marriage or life partnership and family life wasn’t a game. It’s a partnership, a covenanted relationship, a contract, a marriage, an agreement for living together as a couple and a family, a common life sharing gifts and resources and responsibilities, and more. It’s what you have done with most of your adult life. It’s not a game. And after discovery of his secret life, you are a traumatized human being, not a sore loser.
So why do so many sex addiction treatment practitioners start using the “cheating” word right out of the gate?
Just this week I listened to one of them talking on their video for wives and partners and right from the start they put on their best “sad for you” face about how hurt you are from “his cheating.” Then I read a recent blog from another practitioner cautioning us about being spiteful after discovery—you know—like a sore loser would be. These examples are not exceptions. This seems to be pretty standard operating procedure. It’s all a game. He cheated at the game. She caught him. Offer your best sad face for a few sessions and then tell them it’s time to “move forward” because she’s starting to sound “spite-ish”—like a sore loser.
The “cheating” vocabulary seems to be part of the gaslighting program for wives and partners—another containment strategy to diminish and neutralize the specifics of his actions and their impact on you. That creates leverage to start blameshifting. Practitioners may help you feel bad for a while because you’re only human (and it’s hard to lose, isn’t it?) But, wait! They’re going to help you learn how to be a better loser! That way, the next time and the next time and the next time, you’ll tell yourself not be a sore loser. Eventually you will become numb to “losing” and just accept that you’re a loser and this is what it means. Once you were a person with hopes and dreams and commitments and meaningful work. Now, with help from the industry you’re a good loser.
That’s the way it looks to me. Putting a frame of “cheating” in place helps to stop you from trying to articulate true things more accurately, like the following:
My husband is someone I don’t really know.
It doesn’t bother my husband to hurt me or our children.
My husband put my health at risk.
If he did this stuff while I was pregnant or nursing our children he put their health at risk, too.
He put our health at risk and denied me the chance to protect myself or them, or get treatment because I didn’t know I might be at risk.
He broke vows to me and promises to our children.
He robbed our children of the money we saved and they need to go to university or college in order to fund his betrayal of our family values and security.
He disenfranchised me from our partnership and used me to make him look normal and protect his secret life.
He denied his children of his fatherly companionship so he could pursue other priorities more important than their company.
He never told me he wasn’t happy in our relationship or asked for relationship help.
He is modeling misogynist beliefs and core values to me and to our children.
He watched me give up my own security in life and my ability to support our children and still took risks with our financial security in his own job.
He was rude and belligerent if I asked about simple facts that weren’t adding up.
He cut me off emotionally and sexually and refused to talk about it.
He tried to blame me for our problems and made me defend myself when I was the one who kept our vows.
When I began to uncover bits and pieces of his secret life he lied, blamed me, told me I was crazy, attacked my appearance, threatened me, and more.
He has no interest in getting any help and I have to do everything about finding some help.
Even now that I know he doesn’t seem particularly worried about consequences. He thinks we’ll just keep going.
If he cries it’s not because of the impact on me or the children. He cries because he’s afraid I won’t protect him from wider consequences about which he does care. Me, the children, not so much.
He treated me and our family in ways I wouldn’t treat anyone—with selfish cruelty, contempt, reckless irresponsibility for the health and wellbeing of our lives, and profound disrespect.
Newsflash to all those flashy and pricey sex addiction treatment practitioners (especially the ones who cluck-cluck about their partner care):
Our primary relationships were not and are not games.
Family life isn’t a game.
Stop characterizing his actions as “cheating.”
Use specific language to accurately identify his behaviors.
Name the impact on us and sometimes children, too, correctly —trauma from overt and covert abuse.
Why the fuss about this?
Because the goal of wives and partners and children in getting support should never be about becoming “better losers.”
with you,
Diane
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