My husband cheated on me – with four different women – and the experts say it was at least half my fault. And this is where my reason #1 comes in. In time (all in all, nearly three years) we – he, I and our marriage counselor – learned something: Affair recovery programs are created by and for civilian couples, not military couples. That’s not to say that they’re worthless, they most certainly are not. Most of the exercises and the information in those programs are extremely helpful. But they are written for couples who have very different marriages than many of us in the military community. You know, people who get to see each other every day and talk frequently.
My husband deployed nine times in 10 years. He was never home for more than three months at a time. We were always either reintegrating or getting ready for the next deployment. And so, two and a half years of weekly marriage counseling sessions later, I still refused to accept half of the responsibility for what went wrong. And, you know what? My husband also refused to lay half of the blame on me. We were united in that. He stood up for me in counseling, again and again, and said, “That’s not fair. It wasn’t her fault.”
Am I perfect? Of course not. Do I bear some of the blame for him finding comfort in other women? Yes, I do. I can accept that. But not fifty percent, not even close. In a civilian marriage both people are home most every night and they can see the distance as it grows between them. They have equal access to communication (Meaning: each spouse can call the other – and expect the call to be answered or returned – when they need to talk). These things are not true for military marriages.
You know what else most civilian couples don’t have to deal with that many military couples do? War and trauma. My husband has a TBI. It happened before he cheated, during an explosion in Afghanistan. I’m not making excuses for him – he is still responsible for his actions – but it would be unreasonable for me to not at least consider his brain injury. Likewise, many times when he would call home from war, I would hear war in the background. Gunshots. Mortar rounds. A robotic loud-speaker voice calling out, “Rocket Attack.” I spent every second of his deployments in fear. Every. Second. And though it has never been diagnosed, I’m pretty sure I had some form of PTSD.
Our marriage and his infidelity were very different from civilian marriages and affairs, so why shouldn’t our recovery be different, as well?
