Christine Banfield Murdered Because Her Husband Didn’t Want a Divorce

On the theory that cheating is simply one manifestation of domestic abuse, I’m with others who suspect that virtually all cheaters harbor violent or murderous impulses towards chumps at some point or other but most remain ineffectual “Walter Mitty” versions of Watts/Peterson/OJ.

I also think this danger can be felt by those around people who harbor violent fantasies no matter how covertly these are expressed because I think humans are wired to intuit when someone in close proximity to them secretly means ill. But I also don’t think the ancient risk management ganglia at the bases of potential victims’ skulls can differentiate between mates’ “impotent” violent fantasies and burgeoning murder plots. That nearly telepathic part of the lizard brain only knows that f*ckery is afoot and will send of all kinds of nervous system signals in warning. But, because cheating is the ultimate “covert” expression of domestic violence, chumps often get their wires crossed because their rational minds simply can’t believe their partners want them harmed or dead much less might be actually planning their harm or deaths.

In any case, murderous cheaters like Banfield make me even more suspicious that many cheaters– particularly the ones who become coercive and abusive to chumps during affairs (which seems to be most)– are sexually wired as rapists and stalkers.

It’s just another one of my armchair theories but it’s particularly stubborn and everything I’ve heard, read and seen only increases the impression. In short, it may be that cheaters are often Walter Mitty would-be rapists who, for most of their lives, have had violent secret fantasies of taking victims by force (might explain the popularity of violent porn among cheaters). Sexual coercion might manifest somewhat differently in she-FWs where they develop violent fantasies towards those who reject them. But, either way, in order to avoid recognizing the violence of their own sexuality (and to stay out of jail), they simply channel the violent rage part of the rape impulse away from the momentary objects of lust and aim it at primary partners.

In the case of serial rapist killers, this bifurcation of sex and aggression might flip where the partner is “spared” while the rage and violence are channeled to outside targets. But, for domestic abusers, the rage is obviously aimed “in.”

I’m not a clinician but from the forensic research I read while training as an advocate suggests that affairs might be the predictabe expression of “splitting” in antisocial personality disorder– the tendency of disordered abusers to divide humanity into “black/white” extremes, radically idealizing some and radically demonizing others. This is said to be a result of traumatized cognitive fracturing in some abused children who, because consciously feeling hatred or expressing hostility towards an abusive parent/caretaker on whom they depend feels life threatening to infants and small children, will mentally separate the parent/caretaker into “good parent” and “bad parent” so that the child will still feel and display loyalty to the abusive parent while the parent is in “nice” mode.

According to some forensic researchers, those who internalize childhood abuse and end up as abusers in their own rights will, in adulthood, continue splitting people close to them into “good/bad” parts or will mentally cast some as “good” and others as “evil” though these polar designations can shift in flash.

So by that token, it seems that if the FW in question were single they would not necessarily have a handy scapegoat on which to project the hatred portion of their sexual aggression so that the object of lust might end up getting the brunt of both “parts” of FWs’ creepy sexuality. But partnered abusers can “split” the sexual object into two parts– one that gets the lust and the other that gets the rage. This way, if the object du jour resists the aggressor’s complete control in any way, the partner can be blamed and punished like the designated whipping boy for this resistance (due to being in the way of twu wuv or due to obstructing whatever the object seems to want).

Of course the problem for APs once chumps are out of the picture is that there’s no longer a scapegoat to absorb FWs’ aggression and it will all fall to APs. But while the triangle is active, I suspect that, for most witting affair partners, affairs are also about replaying horror show childhood scenarios where these individuals learned to sidestep victimization by throwing others in the family under the bus. I think people like this literally have to have a scapegoat to function in any relationship– a third party to absorb the hate and violence.

Anyhoo, until social science stops shying away from studying correlations between cheating and DV, it’s left to survivors and other concerned citizens to speculate if just to dare researchers to get the funding and data to prove us wrong if they can. But I suspect they can’t which is why the studies aren’t being done.