What Does It Mean When He Won’t Talk About The Woman He Had An Affair With?
By: Katie Lersch: I find that it’s very normal for the wife to want more information about the other woman. Even if you wish this woman never existed or that you could put her out of your mind, you might find yourself constantly being curious about her.
You figure that you should educate yourself on what kind of hold she had on your husband and why. You wonder what the attraction was and how she was able to get her hooks into your husband. Getting this information isn’t always easy, though. Because much of the time, you don’t know her and you don’t have much intel about her. And so you are dependent on your husband for that information. Unfortunately, not all husbands are very forthcoming with these types of details.
To that end, a wife might say: “all my husband will really say about the other woman is that they met at the gym and that she doesn’t live in town. He insists that I would not know her and that information about her does not matter because she is completely out of our lives. I will try to ask him what she looked like and he will tell me that she was nothing special. He won’t tell me where she works. He won’t tell me her age. He won’t tell me what the attraction was all about. In short, he shuts me down every time I try to get information about her. Why is he doing this? What does it mean when a cheating husband absolutely refuses to give information about the other woman?”
There are many possibilities. I will list some of them below. Some of them might ring true. And over time, he may release his grip on some of that information. He might eventually come to realize that you deserve the information and that keeping it from you doesn’t do much good and only makes things worse.
Possible Reason Number 1. He’s Ashamed: This is a very common motivation. He’s not telling you information about her because he is ashamed of that information. Men sometimes cheat with women who are not their type or who aren’t particularly pretty or intelligent. In a sense, he is ashamed of her and embarrassed that he took a risk over someone who truly wasn’t even worth it.
Possible Reason Number 2: He Thinks That More Information Might Feed Your Insecurities: Sometimes a man keeps this information from you because he honestly believes that he is protecting you. Maybe she is younger or has some other attribute that he knows you are going to cling to and hold onto for dear life. In short, he knows that the information is going to make you feel badly or insecure about yourself and he wants to avoid all of this.
Possible Reason Number 3: He Doesn’t Want For You To Seek Her Out: Many husbands are afraid of their wife confronting the other woman. They don’t want an ugly scene. They don’t want for the two women to compare notes. And he doesn’t want the other woman to say or do anything to hurt you. So he figures if he withholds information, this will keep you from finding her and this will keep any hurtful confrontations from happening.
Possible Reason Number 4: He’s Withholding Information For His Own Gain: I hate to even bring this one up because I don’t think that it’s correct to always assume the worst. Some husbands who won’t talk about the other woman truly are trying to protect you and don’t have sinister motives. But occasionally, a husband doesn’t want you to know much about the other woman because he is still seeing her or stringing her along. Or, he doesn’t want for her to tell you information that is going to make you very angry at him. In other words, he knows that keeping the two of you apart is going to benefit him in some way.
Now by saying this, I am not trying to insinuate that you should want to meet with the other woman. I firmly believe that she is not the best place to get your information because her motivations are very different from yours. She is going to want to make herself appear to be the innocent party and she is going to want to present the affair as more than it was because it will help her to justify her actions.
I honestly usually discourage the wife from contacting the other woman because I never hear of it turning out well. And it gives her power over you. Plus, it sometimes places your focus in a place where it shouldn’t be.
With all of this said, it’s not fair for your husband to withhold all information from you. I think it helps to define what you most want to know. Some information truly doesn’t add anything – like minute details about her life and her personality. Those type of details just don’t matter and tend to muddle things up. But information that lets you know how real the relationship was and how they met and carried this out are important details.
So you might try a conversation like: “listen, I am not asking you for a biography on her. I don’t need to know her life’s story. But it’s not fair for you to not share what I need to know. I need to understand how and why the affair happened and I can’t do that when there is a big, gaping hole in the story. I know that you might think that you’re protecting me, but it almost feels like you might be trying to protect yourself also. I don’t intend to go and confront her or cause a big scene. I just feel that I need more information about all of this. And just because you refuse the information, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop trying to get it. I think that you can save us both a lot of time and anguish by telling me what I need to know so that I don’t have to waste time continuing to search for it.”
Hopefully, common sense will prevail and your husband will realize that he can’t keep everything from you if he truly wants to try to maintain the marriage. In order for healing to take place, you have to know what you are dealing with. And if he doesn’t tell you, then you may just make up your own version of the story that is worse than the reality.
As painful as it can be to hear the truth, it’s sometimes preferable to making up your own reality in your own head. Because you’re hurting, you’re likely to go to pessimistic places that may not have been reality. I know that this was the case initially with me. You can read more about my story on m blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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