Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch:  A good number of women struggle with their husband’s feelings for the other woman with whom he had an affair. Women often see through these feelings much more than men assume. Often, he will tell his wife that he wants to save his marriage and that he is committed to her, but somewhere deep inside, the wife knows that he can’t simply turn his feelings off and on. The wife suspects that he still has very strong feelings for the other woman, no matter what he might claim to the contrary.

And sometimes, it comes to the light that although the husband swore he would break off all contact with the other woman, this just isn’t the case. Although he may no longer be sleeping with her, he sometimes finds that he just can’t stay away and he will continue to be in contact even though the affair is over.

I recently heard from a wife who said: “my husband swears that his commitment is to me and our son. He says being a father is more important to him than the other woman with whom he had an affair. And he does come straight home and does whatever it is that I ask him to do. He is making an effort in our marriage. I can’t fault him for his actions where our family and our marriage are concerned. He does appear to sincerely be trying to save our marriage and to make this up to me. And yet, there are times when I will catch him out of the corner of my eye and I see a huge sadness in him. I am almost certain that he misses her. The other day, I logged onto his email. I admit that this is wrong, but I had to know if he was still in contact with her. Of course, there was an email between them. And he did tell her that although they will no longer see one another, he wanted for her to know how much she will always mean to him and what she taught him about himself. He said that no other person had ever understood him and valued him in the way that she did and that he will always be grateful to her for this. Reading this email broke my heart. It didn’t make me angry like I thought it might. It actually made me sad. It made me feel guilty that I am keeping him from her when maybe she truly does make him happy. My husband and I are very different people. I do love him and I know that he loves me, but sometimes I feel that we are not that suited to one another. Maybe he has found someone who can truly make him happy. I can’t help feeling that maybe I should just bow out and let her have him. Am I crazy?”

I certainly didn’t think this wife was crazy at all. I thought that she was selfless and unbelievably kind. And I also thought that it was too early in the healing process for her to make these types of decisions. I will tell you why below.

Don’t Assume That Someone Else Can Make Your Husband Happy. Give Yourself A Chance Before You Give Up And Hand Him Over: The wife was making a very dangerous assumption. She was assuming that she could not make her husband happy even if her marriage was rehabilitated. It was way too early to make that call. She wasn’t even giving her marriage a chance to recover. And she was assuming that she and her husband weren’t suited to one another before she even gave her rehabilitated marriage a fair chance.

The thing is, there is no way for you to know what your marriage is going to be like 3, 6, or 8 months down the road. Many people find that their marriages are actually stronger and more authentic after the affair (assuming that they do the work to make this so.) Don’t sell yourself short before you give yourself the chance.

I’d like to make one final point. The sweet wife in this situation was so worried about what was going to make her husband happy. But what about what made her happy? Or her son happy? Didn’t they count just as much?

Understand That Your Husband’s Feelings About The Affair And The Other Woman Are Still Fresh And Therefore May He Amplified And Likely To Change: This wife was making the husband’s affair into this great star crossed love story and this was likely giving it more credit than it deserved. People tend to develop very strong feelings during the affair (or they mistakenly think that they do) because they need for this to be the case in order to justify their actions. Who is going to risk their marriage or their family for a relationship or another woman who is nothing special? Of course it has to be made into something more than it is. That’s what makes it possible or even worth it, (at least in the minds of the people who are doing the cheating.)

But guess what? With a little time and rehabilitation, it often becomes clear that the perception of the relationship and the reality of it are two very different things. Many husbands will look back a few months after the affair and realize that it was all built upon a deck of cards. They realize that it wasn’t all that real or special at all, which is why just handing your husband over to the other woman without giving yourself or your marriage a fair chance is the wrong call, at least in my opinion.

I think it’s a mistake to make assumptions about your marriage this early. In the weeks following my husband’s affair, I never thought we’d make it, but we did. It wasn’t always easy. But it was worth it. Our marriage is very solid today. If you like, you can read that whole story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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