Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Unfortunately, many wives are faced with the other woman in the affair. Sometimes, the wife seeks her out and, other times, the other woman seeks out the wife. Ideally, it would be wonderful if the wife could shut her down before having to hear anything that she can’t get out of her head. But this isn’t always the case.

Sometimes, I swear the other woman has the full intention of unleashing every bit of hurtful information that she can – whether it is accurate or not. And once the wife hears this, there is really no way to un – hear it. The other woman will often try to make the affair into this colossal, special relationship that can never be forced to end. In essence, she is trying to sabotage the marriage as best as she can. So she’ll tell you that she and your husband had big plans – or were planning a future together.

Here’s an example. A wife might say: “I was minding my own business in the grocery store the other day and my heart stopped when I saw my husband’s ‘other woman’ out of the corner of my eye. Honestly, I was going to leave the groceries in my cart and just run out of there. But she literally closed the distance between us in seconds and grabbed my arm. Then she hissed: ‘I want you to know that your husband and I had our entire future all planned out. He was planning to leave you as soon as your son turned five. We have been looking at houses. If you don’t believe me, I’ll bet if you look around your house, you will find a brochure or two. That is how serious it was. I don’t know what he has told you. He may be downplaying it as though it was nothing serious. But I want you to know that it was very serious indeed. We were planning to spend the rest of our lives together.’ At first, I blew this off. I assumed that she was sour grapes because my husband ended things. But then, I searched the glove box of his car and what did I find? Two brochures for new custom-built homes. Now I am starting to think that she was telling me the truth. It’s ironic that I’ve been after my husband to upgrade our home before I learned about the affair. My husband and I have been struggling to save our marriage. I’ve been having a hard time forgiving and trusting. And that’s when I thought that the affair was nothing special. But now that I know that he was planning to leave me, I have no idea how I will ever move past this.”

You are assuming that she is one hundred percent correct.  I suppose that  it’s somewhat possible that she could be telling you the truth. But make no mistake. She has her own agenda. Like you said, she may desperately want your husband back, so she is going to do everything in her power to undermine your marriage and your attempts at a reconciliation.

It could be that your husband was looking at homes for YOU, since you have been asking him about it. Or maybe he did look at homes with her, but that might only mean that he was trying to make her THINK that he was going to leave you. (Many married men do this. They paint a whole picture for the other woman just to keep her happy in the affair. But they have NO intention whatsoever of leaving their wives.) The other alternative is that she is being truthful. Perhaps she is completely right and he did intend to leave you. And yet, he is still there – in your home and working hard to save your marriage.

So from this, you can deduct that somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. I know that it’s hard to process this. But sometimes, it comes to a point where you decide that you can focus on the past or your can focus on your future.

I would most definitely discuss this with your husband. You were not doing anything wrong. You did not seek her out. You did not ask for the information. But now you have it and it is going to bother you until you ask him for clarification. You might try: “I was totally minding my own business while shopping and the other woman was there and insisted that the two of you were house hunting because you had every intention of leaving me when our son turns five. Is this true? And if it is, why are you here now?”

See what he says. If he denies it outright, then you will have to decide if you want to talk about the brochures that you found. But give him the chance to be honest with you first. He may have a plausible explanation. He may admit that this is what he told her, but that he had no intention of going through with it. Or he may tell you that he DID intend to be with her, but that he changed his mind once the affair was discovered (which is very common.)

Of course, you will have to process what you discover. But try to keep in mind that he made a choice to be with you. Only you can decide if this matters to you. Regardless of whether you choose to save your marriage, healing from something like this takes time. It can be a while before you are in a position to weigh all of the information and then determine where you want to go from here.

Take your time. You didn’t ask for any of this and you deserve all of the information so that you can make an informed decision.

And don’t beat yourself up about the trust issues.  Recovery takes time.  Every time that I would get impatient with myself after my husband’s affair, I would try to remind myself that I didn’t ask for any of it and I was doing the best that I could.  What more can anyone ask? You can read more about my own recovery on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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