When a marriage is rocked by an affair, there’s a common pattern: the adulterer will say, “Actually, we had a lot of problems in our relationship,” and then list all the conflicts and issues that have accumulated over the years…

At that moment, you may suddenly realize that our marriage has always had problems, and not just small ones. No wonder the marriage has reached this point, no wonder they betrayed me.

Is that really the case?

A man who betrays his wife, tells her, “Since we had children, you haven’t cared enough about me and have neglected my emotional needs, so I had an affair.”

A woman who betrays her husband says, “Once, when I had a conflict with my mother-in-law, my husband took her side. This made me feel unloved and ignored, so I lost faith in our relationship, leading to the affair.”

Would you accept such explanations if you were the one involved?

In fact, these are all just excuses or diversions. In other words, after the affair, bringing up past grievances has become a common tactic for adulterers.

Marriages will always have various problems, and these problems may leave emotional scars, but these unresolved issues do not necessarily lead to infidelity. If having problems and conflicts in a marriage inevitably leads to infidelity, then probably no marriage in the world is free from infidelity.

For the adulterer, bringing up past grievances is just a way to seek psychological balance. “See, it’s because you neglected me, even hurt me in the past, that I had the affair. It’s not my fault, it’s yours.”

After an affair, many people will look for reasons and find a past emotional scar, believing it to be the root cause of the affair, and then try to resolve this, in an attempt to prevent future infidelity.

The following story is an example:

When the two got married, the man was poor, and the woman’s parents had some reservations, which made the man feel hurt. Five years into the marriage, with a one-year-old child, the man had an affair. He said, “Because your family always looked down on me, I felt unhappy, which led to the affair.”

So, in this story, it seems that the problem arose at the time of marriage, and the fundamental reason was that the woman’s family looked down on the man.

Now, if we follow this logic and want to solve the problem, we have to make the woman’s family appreciate the man. At this point, the woman may talk to her parents in an attempt to save the marriage, saying, “You need to respect him in the future, or he’ll feel unhappy and might have an affair.”

Leaving aside whether the in-laws who look down on their son-in-law would ever change their views, from another perspective, if they truly do look down on him, does that mean the man can continue having affairs?

Thinking about this, you’ll realize how flawed this logic is.

The best way to deal with infidelity is to not justify or evade responsibility but to sincerely admit fault. Bringing up past grievances is actually an escape from taking responsibility.

For the betrayed party, if the person who had the affair keeps bringing up past grievances, you should be aware that these grievances are not the reasons for the affair. Especially, you cannot expect to salvage the marriage or the relationship by “repaying” these grievances.

Once you start bringing up past grievances, it becomes a bottomless pit, an endless draining battle. If a couple starts bringing up past grievances, they could spend a lifetime doing so without reaching the end.