Contact Gaslighting Part 2 We are still exploring the topic of Gaslighting this week. Then we looked at the first two types of Gaslighting: the straight-up lie, and reality manipulation. This week we are looking at the final two types: scapegoating, and coercion. Scapegoating Scapegoating is defined by dictionary. For example, a man picks a fight with his wife and gets indignant and self-righteous in the argument. A more overt type of scapegoating occurs when the unfaithful individual directly blames his partner for his cheating behaviors. There is no question that we all bring deep imperfections and character flaws to our relationships. For betrayed partners, scapegoating can be particularly lethal.
All the rage this dynamic, your cheating partner is often working hard to minimize the damage caused by the discovery of his behavior. Mistakenly, he believes so as to the way to minimize damage after that prevent the loss of his affiliation is to continue lying and withholding information. Usually, he does this as he is terrified of losing the relationship. He sees the amount of pain and damage he has caused you, and he has great alarm about increasing your level of agony by revealing more information. As a result, he hides or lies, hoping the whole story will never be discovered. Moreover, because of the months, years, or decades spent lying en route for and manipulating not only you although himself, the instinct to lie, buckskin, distract, rationalize, minimize, and justify is so strong that he will a lot do it unconsciously in a kneejerk, habitual fashion. His long-standing pattern of deception has convinced him that decisive the truth is the most dodgy and damaging thing he could maybe do, and that lying and beating is the safest path. This is the exact opposite of what is actually true. Over and over by CRR , my team and I work with sex addicts and erstwhile unfaithful individuals who are convinced so as to telling the truth will end their relationship.
Femininity as Control, Amp It Up A lot of betrayed partners unconsciously or consciously aim to use sex as a approach to control the addict. I accept as true that what partners are really trying to control here is pain. The belief for many partners is but they will just provide the absolute amount or type of sex, their significant other will no longer basic or even want to go beyond the relationship. This belief arises as of a misunderstanding about what drives sexual addiction. The reality is that sexual addiction is not a problem caused by differences in libido levels before sexual preferences within a relationship. Those things can certainly be issues so as to a couple must face. But sexual addiction is another animal altogether.
All the rage No Sex for You , we looked at what happens when your partner is not interested in femininity or is only interested in porn or sex outside of the affiliation. And in Duty Sex and the Cycle of Dread , we looked at what happens when either the threat of danger from betrayal before pressure and manipulation around sex branch out you from your ability to associate to your own sexual desire. This week we want to turn our attention to the negative impacts these dynamics create for betrayed partners. All partner experiences the impacts of sexual betrayal in different ways, but about all partners report some degree of damage.