Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from folks whose spouse is attempting to make a very big distinction about his affair by claiming that sexual intercourse never took place. The spouse isn’t denying that there was inappropriate contact and emotional infidelity, but he is insisting that the relationship was never consummated and that this should count for something.

To that end, I might hear a comment like: “I caught my husband sending pictures to his coworker. The phone pictures were suggestive and obviously inappropriate. He was caught red handed, so he really couldn’t deny it. But after we started talking about this for a while, be began to insist that there was never any sex between them. He admitted that they have been sending inappropriate photos and that they have been sneaking away for lunch together. He says that they have kissed and cuddled. He even admits that if I hadn’t caught him, intercourse would have eventually have happened, probably. But he says that it hadn’t happened when I caught him. He admits that his behavior was risky and wrong. But he feels that it should matter that he didn’t have sex with her. Does it really matter?”

Well, probably the only one who can decide if it matters or not is the wife. The real question is whether it matters to her. In my opinion, she was still dealing with infidelity. To me, infidelity is when you get something that you should be getting from your spouse from someone else while being secretive about the same. This “something” might be emotional support. Or flirtation. Or sex. But if you are hiding any of this from your spouse and you are doing these things on the sly, then in my opinion, that is a betrayal.

And whether sex occurred or not, the recovery is going to be the same. You are going to have to figure out why your husband did this. You are going to have to address and fix whatever problems or issues that you uncover. And you are going to have to place safeguards in place to restore the trust. To me, these things are necessary whether there was sexual intercourse or not.

Admittedly, not having to deal with mental images of your partner having sex with someone else is a positive thing. But you still have the images of them kissing and sending one another suggestive emails to deal with. Sure, the whole thing stops short of sex, but just short. The husband had admitted that sex was probably eventually going to happen. So it’s not as if the husband is in the clear.

Many of this wife’s friends were telling her that her husband was probably lying. They said that he probably knew that she would come unglued at the thought of her husband sleeping with someone else. So, he was lying in order to spare her this kind of pain. That was a possibility. But he had admitted to so much additional inappropriate behavior, that it makes you question why he felt that the sex issue really mattered, especially since he’d already admitted to many unsavory things.

My suggestion for this wife would be to make it clear that you consider his lying about this as bad as the intercourse itself. And stress that if he isn’t telling you the truth, then he needs to do that right now. If he still insists that no sex has occurred, then you might consider just moving forward with rehabilitation with the knowledge that the truth generally has a way of coming out eventually.

But to the question of whether it matters if there was no sex, only the wife can make that call as to whether it is significant to her.  No one else’s opinion should matter.  He is her husband.  Not anyone else’s. It might provide a little bit of comfort that you’re not dealing with a sexual indiscretion (assuming that you believe him,) but you still need to address the other indiscretions. And this is generally enough to handle.

I probably would have been a bit relieved if no sex had happened in my husband’s case.  But I still would have been devastated by any betrayal.  And I still would have insisted on rehabilitation. If it helps, you can read about my own recovery on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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