Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: There is a real assumption that once a married man cheats, he has checked out of his marriage and is no longer connected to his wife. So, people often assume that a man who would cheat on his wife certainly doesn’t feel sincere and true love for that same wife.

Unsurprisingly, it is sometimes the other woman who makes these assumptions. To be fair, though, this is often the impression that the husband will give her. He may complain about his wife or his marriage or refuse to talk about either one. Whether it’s the husband who gives off this impression or it is the other woman who wants to believe it, both can have quite a shock when feelings for the wife surface.

In particular, the other woman might say something like, “I have worked with the man I’m dating for over seven years. When I first started my job, he talked about his wife and his family all of the time. However, for the past six months or so, he hasn’t talked about her much. And when he does, he complains. It was around this time that he and I began to become close. One thing lead to another and eventually, we were in a relationship. I thought that things were going pretty well. In fact, I started to fantasize that he would eventually end his marriage and we could be together. Well, a couple of weeks ago, he started to say that he could not see me anymore. I asked him why, but he would not get specific about it. I kept at him about this, though and eventually, he blurted out that he loves his wife and he just cannot do this to her. Since when does he love his wife? He has spent the past six months complaining about her and not going home right after work since he was with me. One of our mutual co-workers said that maybe the affair made him love his wife more. But this doesn’t make sense to me. How is this possible? Wouldn’t the affair make him love her less?” I’ll try to answer these questions in the following article.

First of all, I have to disclose that you’re probably not going to get an objective answer from me. Because I am a wife who has been on the other side of the fence. With that said, I do know that some husbands present a situation that is not reality. This is not the other woman’s fault – even if she willingly believes it because she wants to. Nonetheless, below I’ll tell you some reasons why he might seem to love his wife more after the affair begins.

He Realizes What He Has Put At Risk And Feels Terribly Guilty: It can be thrilling to fantasize about an affair. However, sometimes the reality is not as promising as the fantasy. Once you cross that line and you realize that you might be caught cheating, your spouse may be devastated, and you might end up separated or divorced. Suddenly, your hands feel clammy, your stomach feels sick, and none of this feels right. So yes, in those circumstances you will cling to the idea of your spouse with everything you have and you realize that you don’t want to lose her. So yes, this whole process can elicit both panicked and loving feelings. You might start to make deals with yourself that if you can just make it out of this with your marriage unscathed, you will do everything in your power to be the best spouse possible. Because you didn’t realize how much you love your spouse until you are faced with the possibility of losing her.

The Affair Didn’t Solve The Husband’s Problems, So What’s The Point?: Many husbands who are unhappy in their lives and therefore vulnerable to an affair will convince themselves that it is their marriage that has them in a funk. So, they have an affair. They think that this is going to make them feel better and turn things around for them. While it may give them a momentary thrill, this sort of life improvement very rarely happens since the husband changed nothing. So, yes, the husbands are let down and they realize that their wife wasn’t their problem after all. When this happens, the same process as described above happens. They simply want to keep what they had – their wife.

He Never Really Stopped Loving His Wife: I honestly believe that if you asked honest men about this, they would tell you that, in truth, they never stopped loving their wife. Yes, they may have convinced themselves or the other woman of this, but it was never true. In reality, they were simply struggling with aging, their jobs, their health, their vulnerability, their own complacency in their marriage, and a slew of other things that aren’t their wife’s fault. None of this changes their feelings for their wife. It may appear to others that they suddenly love their wife that much more, but the truth is, everything pretty much remained the same. It was only their actions that were different.

When Compared To The Other Woman, The Relationship With The Wife Feels (And Is) More Real: Once the novelty of the affair wears off, both people can actually look around and realize that they are pretty much strangers and their relationship is very superficial. On the contrary, the husband’s wife likely knows him better than anyone else. They share a life together, they’ve been invested in one another for years, and can likely finish one another’s sentences. When the shine of the affair wears thin, it just can’t compare to the depth of the marriage and so that is the relationship he wants to keep and his wife is the woman he’s going to pour his feelings into.

The other woman can take this personally, but honestly, it can go like this over and over again, regardless of who the other woman is or the state of the marriage. You can look up the statistics and see that the vast majority of marriages eventually carry on after the affair. And relationships that start as infidelity rarely make it as long-term relationships, no matter what happens with the marriage. It typically doesn’t matter what the circumstances of the affair were because he was just looking for a diversion. With that out of the way, he’s going to go back to what he’s known – his wife and his marriage as he’s still invested in both.

There’s more about my own story with infidelity at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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