Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I often hear from people who are right in the midst of cheating on their spouse and who are well aware that this is a huge and ill advised risk. Often, they know that they should stop the cheating or the affair because they have put everything that they love at risk. But they often aren’t sure how to do this and sometimes they are sort of paralyzed by fear and anxiety.

Common comments are things like: “I am currently cheating on my husband with man from work. I have been married for five years and I have two children. I love every member of my family. I love my husband. But I also have developed real feelings for the other man. My husband is a stay at home dad and I am so grateful that my children can have a parent at home. I respect my husband for putting our children first. Both of us agree that our first priority is truly our family. I have considered ending the affair and telling my husband everything. But I am afraid that if I do this, he will be so angry with me that he will take my children from me. Not only that, but as the sole breadwinner, I would lose a lot of money and assets in the event of a divorce. I am not sure how the other man would react if I broke it off. I don’t think that he would tell my husband in retaliation but I don’t know that for sure. What can I do? My worst case scenario is losing my family and my wallet.”

I don’t mean to sound insensitive. But it seems pretty obvious that in order to even begin to make this situation right, you need to break off the other cheating relationship immediately. You have much less of a chance of being able to save your marriage and your family if you continue on with the affair knowing full well that you are putting your family at risk. Your spouse likely is not going to be happy about this situation, but, generally speaking, the longer that the cheating relationship goes on, the harder it is to recover from it. In my opinion, the sooner that you end the relationship and place the focus on your marriage, the better.

Turn Your Focus Away From Finances And On Your Spouse, Your Marriage, And Your Family: No one wants to give away money. That’s a given. I understand being concerned about your finances, but this should not be your motivation. Your priority should be on your spouse, your marriage, and your family. I believe that the best thing that you can do is to end the cheating relationship as quickly, decisively, and as kindly as you can. You do want to give the other person the chance to leave the relationship with their dignity intact. You don’t want to place all of the blame onto them. And you don’t want to make the break up sound like a personal attack on them. It’s better to just tell them that you’re very sorry to have involved them in your mistake and that you are going to focus on your marriage. Wish them well, but don’t give them any hope that you are going to change your mind or that you can be convinced to continue on with the affair.

I can’t tell you whether you should tell your spouse about the cheating or not. That has to be a decision that you make for yourself. I can tell you that it would have meant something to me if my husband had been honest. He wasn’t honest at first and this was very difficult for us to overcome, although we eventually did. Once the cheating relationship is over, immediately turn your attention to restoring your family. You must become the best spouse and parent that you possibly can. You must make it your life’s work to invest in your marriage and in yourself. And you need to do some serious soul searching and self work to determine what might have made you cheat in the first place. You need to work on and remove any issues so that you don’t cheat again. If you need help with this process, please get it. You owe it to yourself and to your family to have the security in knowing that you aren’t going to have to repeat this process. Overcoming a second affair is even more difficult than overcoming the first.

But to address the concern posed, it was obvious that this woman cared about her family and wanted to do the right thing. But she appeared to be stalling a little bit. I felt that it was vital for her to take immediate action to end the affair and to aggressively restore her marriage. After all, you can replace money relatively easily. But you can not ever replace your family. And when your family is at stake, I believe that you should do whatever is necessary to restore your home life to a happy and secure one as soon as you possibly can.

If my husband had delayed in ending his affair, I am not sure if I would have allowed him to stay.  I am not sure that I would have wanted to save my marriage.  He did take swift action and this meant something to me.  We did eventually recover.  If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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