I Am Married To A Cheating Husband But He Says He Loves Me
Wives who have recently caught their husband cheating are confused on many levels. But one of the most perplexing things that they face is a husband who insists that he still loves them just the same. This seems to be a huge contradiction. Here is a man who cheated on and betrayed you. If he loved you as much as he is claiming, then why would he cheat?”
A wife might say, “my husband literally burst into tears when I caught him cheating on me. Frankly I have never seen him so upset. He kept saying ‘please don’t leave me. I love you so much. I can’t lose you.’ It was a little pathetic, actually. If he’s told me that he loves me once, he has told me one hundred times. I’ve questioned him about this. I’ve asked ask him how, if he truly loved me, he could cheat on me. His response was that this had nothing to do with love and that if he loved the other woman, he could be with her if that’s what he wanted. But he insists that he doesn’t want that, since he wants to be with me. This doesn’t make sense. And yet, each and every day, he’s so desperate for me not to leave him. If he doesn’t actually love me, he’s working quite hard. Why would you cheat on someone you supposedly love? And is love enough at this point?”
Only you can decide what is enough. I am by no means a therapist, but I have been through this myself. Because of my articles and the research that I do for them, I do believe that the majority of people who cheat believe that they are being truthful when they claim that they still love their spouse. They all say the same thing over and over again – that they had absolutely no intention of leaving their spouse, their marriage, or their family. They will insist that they never stopped loving their spouse. The rationalize that if they didn’t love their spouse, they could have simply walked out of the marriage, had the affair in the open, or took up with a new partner relatively guilt-free, since they would have been very honest with everyone involved.
I am not saying that I buy these claims. Nor am I defending them. I’m just telling you that I do believe that the people who make these claims sometimes actually believe this in their own heads and hearts. And I can also say that many will follow up their declaration of love with action that seems to show that their claims are true. You will often see a cheating spouse stay put even when the faithful spouse does everything in their power to push them away. The faithful spouse can kick them out of the house, tell them that their is no hope for the marriage, and basically completely shut them out. And yet, the cheating spouse will still cling on for dear life because they just don’t want to let their marriage go. You would not imagine that someone would do this if they did not love their spouse.
Many cheating spouses go through weeks or months of very emotionally difficult counseling where their behavior and mental health is placed on display for all to see. This is often quite humiliating and humbling. Still, they do it for a chance at their marriage again. I am by no means saying that they don’t deserve what they are experiencing, but I’m suggesting that many are still extremely invested in their spouse and in their marriage or they would not be willing to jump through all of the hoops.
I am well aware that the faithful spouse has to go through hell also. I was the faithful spouse. My path was no bed of roses, either. But my husband had a very long path of going through counseling, rehabilitating his behavior and habits, and proving to me that he could be trusted. I did not make any of that easy on him. If he did not love me, he likely would have told me to jump in a lake because none of what I required was worth it.
Of course, no one would have to jump through these hoops if your spouse had not cheated in the first place. But most unfaithful people will tell you that the cheating is their biggest life regret. They would give anything to take it back. But all they can really do is to do whatever they can to gain another chance.
I do not know if any of this makes you feel better or not. But I am confident that my husband loves me. I am also confident that he never stopped. I wish he had not make the mistake that he made. But if he did not love me and our kids, he would never had withstood what he went through with my wrath after the affair. His life might have been easier at that time to walk away. He did not. He just took what I threw at him with patience.
I have no way of knowing what your husband feels. But I know that you can often watch his behavior to tell you what you need to know. If he’s doing what you asked and is present, patient, and willing to walk through healing with you, then it’s probably a safe bet to think that he wouldn’t go through all of this if he wasn’t very deeply invested and still in love with you. But it is ultimately your decision as to whether this love is going to be enough.
Believe me, I know that it’s hard to be buy his claims of love at first. I didn’t believe my husband in the beginning either. But I believe him now because he has proved it to me over and over again. There’s more about that on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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