My Spouse Is Not Doing Enough To Repair Our Marriage After His Affair
By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from people who are very disappointed with the way that their spouse is handling the aftermath of the affair. Often, their spouse has promised that they will prove their love and commitment. However, the reality of this is quite different than the promises. In short, they haven’t made good on the improvements that they implied were imminent. And this can lead the faithful spouse to wonder if their marriage is going to survive when the cheating spouse hasn’t even begun to step up the marital plate.
I heard from a wife who said: “when I caught my husband cheating on me, he begged me not to leave him. He said that if I would just give him one more chance, he would move heaven and earth to make sure that I would never regret it. I hesitated at first, but my husband kept right on pursuing me and begging me to allow him to prove to me that he could be a wonderful and loyal husband. Eventually, I gave in and I committed to giving him that chance. And I was anticipating him doing all sorts of sweet things to make this up to me. I thought he might actually do regular things to show me his love and commitment. Well, I am still waiting on these things. Because he hasn’t done very much. He may tell me that he loves me and he will sometimes give me a tentative hug. He hasn’t worked on finding a counselor. We don’t regularly talk about what might lead up to this. I don’t feel as if he is doing nearly enough. And I am seriously considering leaving my marriage. If I had known that he was going to make this sort of half hearted effort, then I honestly would have left from the very beginning.”
This is a very common situation. It’s very normal for a spouse to make all sorts of promises in order to keep their spouse from leaving them after their infidelity. But unfortunately, few people have the knowledge and the know how in order to facilitate complete healing all on their own. And sometimes, they are tentative because they are afraid of rejection or because they don’t really have a firm handle on what their spouse expects or what they can reasonably and realistically offer. None of this means that this situation is hopeless though. Sometimes, in order to truly get what you want and need, you have to be very direct and ask for it. I will discuss this in greater detail below.
Be Willing To Define What You Want And Expect: As a spouse who was cheated on, I identify more with the wife in this situation. And I do not think that it was unreasonable for her to expect more from her husband. She absolutely had the right to expect for him to step up and to at least attempt to make good on his promises. It can feel unfair for you to have to baby sit him and to lay out exactly what you want or expect for him to do. But unfortunately, sometimes if you don’t do this, then you will still be waiting for him to take some action.
So before you just give up or walk away, it makes sense to try to ask him for exactly what you want. That way, if he doesn’t comply, then there is no question that he understood what you expected and needed. A suggested script might be something like: “we need to take a couple of minutes and discuss something. After your infidelity, you promised that you would make this right. So far, this hasn’t happened on the scale that you promised. I don’t want to live the rest of my life with a damaged marriage that has never been repaired. I need for you to do what you said that you were going to do. By Friday, I would like the names of the counselors that you have found. By next week, I would like to have some standing appointments with one of these counselors. I would also like for you to plan some outings for us to do together. And I would like for you to give me more affection and reassurances. I am not trying to be overly demanding. But this is what you told me that I could expect. And so far, not all of what you have promised has actually happened. I made a commitment not to walk away until I gave you the chance to make this right. I have given you that chance. So I have done what I promised. But you haven’t. I don’t want to walk away from our marriage. But I need more from you.”
Some spouses will get a little defensive after this conversation. But, once things calm down, at least he will be clear on what you expect from him. That way, if he is still falling short, you know that it is by choice instead of by ignorance. I believe that a lot of the time, remorseful spouses do have good intentions, but they do not have the knowledge or skill. And they are not sure how their overtures are going to received. They are understandably concerned about being rejected. That’s why it’s so important that you define what you want to see.
I also feel strongly that you shouldn’t assume that a spouse who haven’t lived up to all of his claims isn’t sincere or doesn’t love you enough. My husband had trouble with repairing our marriage at first because things were very awkward between us. But once we opened the communication a little more and I defined what I needed, this almost gave him the red light to go ahead. If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog http://surviving-the-affair.com
Filed under: Uncategorized by admin
