Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: You don’t always need a fully detailed confession to know your husband is having an affair. Sometimes, you have evidence, Sometimes, you have a confession from the other woman. And other times, you just know in your gut and no one can convince you otherwise.

The emotional distance doesn’t lie. Nor does all the signs that so clearly point to an affair. But sometimes, no matter how you ask, demand, or plead, he remains mum. And that denial was almost as devastating as the betrayal itself. And it speaks volumes.

Why You Feel Like You Have To Have The Truth: When your husband betrays your trust by cheating, you need to understand exactly why the affair happened. For this type of deep understanding, you need and want clarity. You need something to help you make sense of the confusion and pain swirling inside you.

But when your spouse won’t admit to the affair, you’re left in a kind of emotional limbo. There are big holes in the story. There’s no closure. No acknowledgment. Just silence. Denial. Or worse — the implication that it’s you who’s imagining things. Or the nudge that you are imagining this all in your head and accusing him of something he didn’t do. This is gaslighting, and it can hurt your sanity and self-worth if you let it. Don’t let it.

Why Waiting For A Confession Is A Painful Kind Of Trap: I learned this the hard way – waiting for a confession keeps you stuck and feeling like you are in quicksand. You can’t process. You can’t move forward. You are simply churning water. And then you are stuck thinking about how to handle this on your own  or wondering if you can you come at it in another way.

Is there more evidence you can produce? Or, if you show him how hurt you are, will it change things?

But guess what? Despite all of these attempts on your part, sometimes, the answer to these questions never comes. And the longer you wait and go without an answer, the more powerless you feel.

What You Need To Ask Instead: Sometimes, you have to change the question from: “What are the details of the affair?” to: “What do I need to heal with or without him?”

You Don’t Need Him (Or His Admission) To Focus On Your Own Healing: Don’t let me fool you. An admission helps. It is the gold standard. It allows you to know what you are dealing with and allows you to get accountability, dialogue, and the ability to eventually repair your marriage. But healing is still possible FOR YOU even if you never get the words you’re waiting for FROM HIM.

Forgiveness doesn’t have to start with his honesty (although you would hope that he would eventually offer it.) It can start with your clarity (which you can get from yourself.)

How To Move Forward Without His Cooperation: Despite his refusal to cooperate, you can validate yourself. You know what you’ve gathered. You know what evidence you have. You don’t need anyone else to give you permission to know what you already know.

Don’t focus on him and his silence anymore. Focus on taking back your own control and giving yourself what you need to heal. You may want to seek counseling on your own or give yourself permission to do the things that bring you peace and joy – even if they do not include him.

When he sees you moving forward and acting “as if” he has confessed, the attraction to deny may begin to wane. But if he doesn’t, you don’t need his permission or cooperation.

You Don’t Need Him For Closure: One of the biggest misconceptions about infidelity is that the faithful spouse needs cooperation from the cheating spouse for closure. You don’t. You can create or claim closure for yourself.

You can say to yourself: “I may not know everything, but I deserve and will get healing, peace, and happiness nonetheless on my own.”

Sometimes, that will mean leaving your marriage behind. And sometimes it won’t. You get to choose.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with telling him you are moving forward as if he confessed and then proceed to do exactly that.st

I know this hurts. I know you deserve his honesty. But we don’t always get what we deserve from those we love, so we must give it to ourselves. In my own situation, my husband was reluctant to come totally clean at first, but I figured out how to deal with him – over time to get the entire truth. You can read about my own healing and how I did it on my blog at https://surviving-the-affair.com.

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