Do Husbands Try To Minimize Their Affair?
By: Katie Lersch: If you are trying to find your way through all of the details of your spouse’s affair, you likely already know that the truth is important to you. Most of us want to know exactly what we are up against, even if this knowledge is most certainly going to hurt us. However,we get the information, we want all of it. But this can be difficult when we suspect that our spouse may be minimizing what the affair meant to him or how extensive and serious it was because he is trying to either spare us pain or spare himself the consequences.
To demonstrate, I might hear from a wife who says: “I suspect that my husband is only giving me glimpses into the affair. But these are only glimpses meant to show him in the best light as is possible and her in the worst light as is possible. He’s trying to make it seem like she pursed him while he just innocently tried to ward her off for the longest time until he finally gave in. Then he has tried to say that the relationship wasn’t meaningful in any way to him. But I have read some texts between them and in one of those texts he says things like ‘you are the only thing keeping me going.’ So I would say that there was a time when she meant a lot to him and that he’s just trying to minimize this because he knows that if I knew the truth, I might not be up to the task of saving our marriage. When I express these concerns to my husband, he tells me that I am trying to find issues where none exists. He says that he has been honest about the affair, but that I am making it bigger than it actually was. Could this be true? Or do men minimize the affair most of the time?”
Some husbands most definitely minimize the affair. And they do this for various reasons, some of which I’ll go over below. Sometimes, they are doing this to be selfish. And, some of them are trying to make things easier for themselves. To be fair though, sometimes they truly do believe they are doing this for you because they think that it is going to spare you some turmoil or that it will help you to heal faster if you do not have hurtful knowledge that might not make a difference now.
Not All Husbands Minimize it: Just to give a bit of perspective though, not all husbands minimize the affair, especially the ones who aren’t sure that they want to give up the other woman. Some will actually make the relationship even more than it was. They truly believe that the relationship could and might be lasting because they believe that they have found someone who understands them and is actually good for them at this time in their lives. Some husbands are invested in truly believing this because they need to justify the affair in their own minds.
I bring this up because the fact that husband might be minimizing this could show that it is more important to him to restore his marriage or spare you pain than the justify his actions or to continue on with the relationship.
Some Reasons Behind His Trying To Make It Seem Less Than It Might Have Been: As I alluded to, men who minimize the affair often do it in order to lessen the fall out. Some do this for selfish reasons because they don’t want to face the full consequences of their actions.
However, it would be unfair of me not to mention that other men might be just starting to realize that perhaps the relationship wasn’t exactly what they thought it was. Sometimes, people only see the true reality of the affair (and of the other woman) until it is finally over.
It’s not impossible for him to have actually thought that she was “keeping him going” at one point only to look back now and realize how stupid he was to believe this. Once the affair is over, many men are able to see it in a more realistic light and this is one reason they will minimize it – because they feel really stupid when they see just how mistaken they were.
But to answer the original questions, yes men (and women) will minimize what the affair meant at the time. This doesn’t always mean that they are trying to deceive you, however. But it is quite common for them to not disclose everything, especially when they are more motivated to attempt to save their marriage.
Often, you will have to make it very clear how important the truth and full disclosure is to you. If it helps, you’re welcome to read more about how I attempted to handle this on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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