What is it about the holiday season that seems to bring out the worse in cheaters?
I will never forget the winter flight I took home alone with an empty seat next to mine. My cheater had decided that she could not emotionally hack a Christmas with my family.
Instead, she stayed with a “Brutus friend” and couple.
My theory about the cheaters behaving badly over the holidays is connected to how cheaters do not do social expectations well.
They are cheaters, after all!
Being kind and loving to one’s spouse is an expectation on the holidays. However, this is an expectation that does not flow to the cheaters direct benefit. So, they may resent it.
Like a spoiled, petulant child only interested in presents given to himself and not in giving any to others, the cheater resents the social expectation of being generous at this time. So, he is not.
Hence, cheaters often make Christmas a crummy time for the rest of their family.
As someone who was once a recipient of a Crummy Cheater Christmas, I am hear to testify that it does get better. With the cheater out of my life, I am finding Christmas is truly a wonderful time of the year.
Most adulterers are abusers of some stripe, although the intensity of the abuse can vary from moderate to horrific depending on the person. It’s well known in my family that my dad planned his most hateful abuse to occur right before holidays, birthdays and Mother’s day. Like clockwork. I look at it this way… an abuser’s goal is to weaken the victim through disruption, disrespect and deprivation. The holiday abuse is like a specific torture method.
Please bear with me on this point, if I can make a comparison using a person’s need for *restorative sleep*… it is a scientific fact that people need a certain amount of sleep in order to remain healthy and functioning. There is a form of torture that includes disrupting a victim’s sleep over and over again, so that they can’t recover and become very debilitated, which can ultimately result in death if continued over a long period of time.
Holidays and birthdays should be a special time of restoration to the soul and spirit, the way sleep is meant to restore the body. Holidays should be a time to get a refreshing jolt of joy, love, fellowship, honor, comfort and recognition within our own circle of loved ones.
So if an adulterer (abuser) can disrupt our holiday time, and cause us to feel deprived, in despair or destroyed instead, they have achieved their goal… to emotionally and psychologically weaken us and get the upper hand of power in the relationship. That’s my personal theory anyway, for what it’s worth.
Re: Song of Joy – that’s a totally legit theory in my book, too. I wouldn’t say my cheater did it intentionally, per se, but he was absolutely willing to reap the “benefits” of being able to more easily abuse me in my overstressed, under-rested state (which he caused), especially around holidays.
I totally agree! Happened to me like clockwork.