Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Believe it or not, very few of the wives that I hear from want to give up on their marriages. Most of them are very hurt, confused, and injured over their husband’s affair, but they still want to find a way to save their marriage. Many of them tell me that although their husband claims to be sorry and remorseful, he’s often not willing to do the work necessary to save the marriage. He’s often not willing to have difficult discussions, to go to counseling, or to do the rebuilding necessary to make the marriage work again.

I often hear comments like “he says he’s sorry for having an affair and he still loves me and wants to work things out. But, when I try to get him to go to counseling or to actually work on our marriage, he always has excuses or tells me that I’m just wanting to dwell on things when I should be letting them go. But I feel like I’m entitled to want him to work on the marriage with me since his affair is what brought us here. It’s almost as if he thinks I’m doing this to punish him, but I’m not. I just want a healthy marriage again but I don’t think we can do it on our own.”

I understand all of these concerns far too well. In the following article, I will discuss some tips and strategies on how to effectively handle it when your husband claims he wants to save the marriage after his affair but just doesn’t seem willing to do the work.

Some Reasons Why Men Aren’t Willing To Do The Work After Their Affair: Sometimes, wives assume that their husbands don’t care enough or aren’t sorry enough to stand in there and do the work necessary to undo what he created. I suppose that sometimes, this turns out to be true, but it can be risky to make this assumption.

Many times, men don’t want to go into counseling or have difficult discussions because they don’t want to prolong their dwelling on their affair, their mistake, and their behavior. They figure that their best-case scenario is to push you to move on as soon as possible so that everything will return to normal. What they don’t understand is that you aren’t able to turn your feelings and your doubts off and on like a light switch. And, if you don’t do the work, you won’t have the confidence to trust and have faith again.

And, many men who horribly frightened of counseling. They are afraid that the counseling is going to paint them as an awful person or tell them that the husband is to blame for everything. I’ve even had husbands tell me that they were afraid the counselor was going to tell the wife that she should just leave or divorce him. Now, I do have to say I don’t find that counseling is always the solution to every problem. Many couples work things out without a counselor because neither feels comfortable in that environment. But I also feel that if one spouse wants or needs it, the other should be open to it.

Finally, men often tell me that they feel that doing all of this “work” is really just dwelling on the affair and continuing to draw attention to all of the negative feelings and all of the wounds. They figure the sooner you move on, the sooner you will heal but they don’t understand it’s very difficult to heal without a new foundation being built.

How To Convince Your Husband To Work With You To Save The Marriage After His Affair: Now that I’ve gone over why he might be dragging his feet on doing the work, we’ll talk about convincing him to overcome his objections and get to work. It’s important that he understands that although your goal isn’t to punish him, you need these things to happen to help you heal. And, until that happens, you’re not going to be able to put this behind you.

But, if he works with you as you’ve asked, that is going to go a long way toward showing you his sincerity and his willingness to strengthen the marriage which will ultimately make the BOTH of you stronger and happier in the end. Another thing that sometimes works is to ask your husband to just try a certain technique. In other words, ask him to try one counselor or technique once and then listen to his feedback on which he likes better. It’s all about compromise because if you can get him comfortable and enthusiastic, this benefits both of you. And often, when he sees his fears weren’t warranted, he is more willing to roll up his sleeves and get to work.