Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: There’s no denying that the time period after learning about a spouse’s affair can be extremely volatile. People say things that they later regret. They mutter things that are only meant to hurt. They spew things that they would never say during moments of calm.

And once things calm down, both parties will typically try and dissect the argument or conversation in the hopes of figuring out what their spouse might have meant by his venomous words.

A wife might say: “when I found out about my husband’s affair, I called him home. I didn’t tell him why. And I may have lead him to believe that there was an issue with one of the kids just to get him home so I could confront him. But I feel that this was justified. Because I wanted to be able to read his expressions. When I finally got to confront him, he was furious. In fact, things got so heated that he told me to get out. He told me that I should just leave. This is particularly interesting because we both own the house. It was his house when we married but he added me to the deed. So he can’t force me to leave. But I’m not so interested in the legalities of things. I’m interested in why he wanted me to leave. Does he care so little about me and our marriage that he wants me out of his sight? Does he think our marriage is a lost cause? Has he developed real feelings for the other woman and he wants to be with her?”

I’m sorry that I can’t possibly accurately answer these questions. All of us can speculate. And I can and will offer some reassurance about typical behavior after an affair confrontation. But, you usually aren’t able to get to the truth so quickly after the affair is discovered. It usually takes a while for things to calm down before the truth is revealed.

People Often Exhibit Extreme Emotions After The Affair Is Discovered: Many people posture when they’ve had an affair. They act outraged. They try to blame their spouse. They can play the victim. Do they really believe all of the things that they are trying to sell to their spouse? I doubt it.

I think that it is more likely that they are shocked and ashamed and embarrassed and are trying to dig themselves out of a hole or at the very least they are trying to come up with air. We’ve all that horrible feeling when something unexpected and awful happens and we become flustered and act in ways that we are anything but proud of. If we’re lucky, we can put it behind us before anyone notices or finds out.

But that can’t be the case when your spouse is right in front of you, trying to get a reaction and not willing to back down until you they get one. When that happens and there is no escape what do you think your spouse is going to do to make it stop?

They are going to make a stink. They are going to show anger or outrage. They are going to try to turn the attention away from themselves. And one way to do this is to ask you to leave.

Did he mean that he actually and truly wanted you to leave. I have no way of knowing that. But I’d suspect that he was trying to back you up a little bit just so he could have a moment to think and plan some sort of strategy. The whole: “you should leave thing” could have been a quick ploy to get you to say that you didn’t want to leave and were hoping to save the marriage. Sometimes, anger or nastiness is a way to try and call your bluff.

Again, you often can’t possibly know in the beginning. But you can try to diffuse the situation if you think that he’s just posturing by saying something like: “I have no intention of leaving because this is my home too in every way that matters. If I was going to leave, I would have done it before you ever got home and avoided this entire confrontation.”

With that said, I never advocate escalating the situation or getting into something where either person might lose control of themselves. If you see or feel it escalating to that level, the best thing to do at the point is to remove yourself from that situation, even if it means just talking a walk or doing something else.

You can always revisit things later when both people calm down. If it doesn’t appear that calm is going to return, then sometimes the best route to start is to use a counselor to facilitate working through it in a more calm and meaningful way. Because often, just exchanging insults doesn’t solve anything. And it makes a situation that is already very painful just that much worse.

My husband and I said all sorts of nasty things to one another after his affair.   We didn’t sleep under the same roof for a bit.  But we eventually realized that the nastiness wasn’t helping anyone.  So we changed the way we interacted with an eye toward relating in a healthier way.  And this lead to us eventually saving our marriage. You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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