Five Losing Strategies for the Injured Partner

Losing Strategy #1

Bring up the past often even though your partner can now do nothing to change what he or she did.

Losing Strategy #2

Twist the knife every once in a while to remind him/her how hurt your are. Make sarcastic, cutting remarks, gestures to get even with your partner long after the incident has occurred.

Losing Strategy #3

Refuse to accept or believe your offending  partner that he/she is sorry, that he/she feels shame over what was done, or that he/she has truly reformed.

Losing Strategy #4

Believe in the philosophy of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Getting revenge or getting even is a losing strategy. Some examples of this losing strategy I have observed through the years:

• Mother of 3 small children openly having an affair just to get even with partner for having had oner.
• Wife refusing sex to partner for exactly as many months as his affair occurred.
• Calling the husband of own husband’s lover to reveal the affair (and thus destroying that marriage) for no other reason than to get even.
• Writing a letter to all offending partner’s friends in a yacht club in retribution for what she saw as his shenanigans.
• Husband literally kicking wife out of house from resentment that she had gained 20 lbs, against their marital contact.
• Hurt husband after being told wife wants a divorce, assembled  teenage children in living room to tell them their mother had had an affair 30 years ago.

Losing Strategy #5

Not acknowledging any contribution to the problem or blaming one-self entirely for the problem. If you have been injured by your partner, how much of the blame should you accept for the situation? Some injured partners accept none of the responsibility for the problem.

Example:

I one had a middle-aged couple see me on the basis of an enraged wife because she had “caught” her husband looking at porn in the privacy of his bedroom. She had labeled him a sex addict. I then asked how long it had been since she had wanted sex with him or how long it had been since having had sex with each other. The answer: 5 years. I asked the wife what he was supposed to do with his sexual urges. She had no answer except that he was now cheating with the porn.