He Promised To Tell Me If He Was Tempted To Cheat Beforehand. But He Didn’t. What Now?
By: Katie Lersch: Recently, I heard from a wife who had just learned about her husband’s affair. And, she was just as upset by her husband’s not following through on a previous promise as she was about his affair. The reason for this was that her husband had promised her that if he ever felt tempted to cheat, he would come to her first and allow her to address whatever problems that may have been contributing to this.
She explained: “a couple of years ago, one of our very dear couple friends divorced because of the husband’s infidelity. We saw first hand how hurtful this was to everyone involved. It destroyed a family right before our eyes. And today, both the husband and the wife have never recovered. After we watched our friends go through this, my husband and I made a pact. We promised one another that if either of us was ever unhappy and therefore tempted to cheat, we would approach the other and try to work things out before we took action and cheated. I believed my husband when he committed to doing this. However, last week, he came to me and told me that he had cheated. He said it was just a few times and that it’s been over for several weeks. My first thought was not that he cheated, but that he hadn’t made good on his promise to come to me first. Why would he do this?” In the following article, I’ll offer some possible reasons that this may have happened. And I’ll try to help decipher where to go from here.
Often, When People Cheat, It’s A Very Impulsive Decision That Isn’t Planned Beforehand: I firmly believe that most people don’t really intend to cheat. Admittedly, they walk a slippery slope where perhaps they should have seen it coming. In other words, sometimes inappropriate or questionable things happen before the actual cheating that should have clued them in that something horrible was about the take place unless he stopped in his tracks. But, people who cheat will often very convincingly tell you that they honestly did not leave their house in the morning without any idea or intention that they were going to cheat on their spouse or actually cross the line.
So, since they did not have the intention, it would be difficult for them to approach their spouse ahead of time. Now, I am fully aware that this isn’t always a valid argument. I know that some people start having lunch with the other person and then start meeting the other person on the sly and then they eventually start to cheat so that they are well aware that they are stepping over the line and have plenty of opportunities to come to their spouse. But when you go to the cheating spouse with this argument, they will often tell you that in their mind, they may have been harmlessly flirting or stroking their ego, but they didn’t intend to cheat. And therefore going to their spouse was only going to hurt her and only cause problems where none needed to exist.
They will often insist that the cheating was a very impulsive, last minute decision that they didn’t take a lot of time to ponder over very carefully. So they will tell you that there was no time to approach you because they didn’t take any time to consider the consequences of their actions. Whether you accept this as valid or not, this is often what you will hear from cheating spouses. I am not offering a defense. Rather, I’m trying to tell you what you might encounter from your own spouse.
Why Didn’t He Tell Me Right After The First Time?: As I suspected, the wife’s first response was “but he cheated twice. There were two incidents over the course of a few days with the same woman. I could almost buy there was no time to approach me beforehand, but then he went back and did it again. Why? Why not just come to me and confess without going back?”
I can’t really answer that question for the husband. I’m a wife who has been cheated on rather than a husband who has cheated. But, many cheating men will describe being in a panic and not thinking clearly. They will tell you that they were fully aware of how much pain you were going to be in. Not that this is a valid excuse either, but they will often say that they just weren’t thinking properly. And also, I would argue that this husband especially knew how devastating this was going to be since he saw his friends go through this. So, he knew how much of an issue this was to his wife. And, he knew that nothing was going to hurt her as much as this. So, he was likely in no hurry to tell the truth.
Many husbands vow that the truth is never going to come out. Many even want to tell the truth because they feel they might feel release some of the guilt. But they don’t want to unleash that sort of pain on their wives. As to why they would continue on with the cheating, again it’s not right to speak for this husband. But many will tell you that there was no way to turn back time and that the cat was already out of the bag so to speak. This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me or excuse the behavior, but this is often what I hear.
How Do You Move On From This Double Betrayal?: I completely understand why a wife in this situation would be so upset. She thought they had an unbreakable pact. So when he comes with news of cheating, not only must she deal with the cheating, she must let go of her belief that he had her back on this issue that was so very important to her. I really could not defend the husband. I could only tell her that people who cheat often do or say anything once they cross that line. Sometimes, this is to spare them some of the fallout. And other times, they are trying to spare their spouse pain. But the wife did have two issues to work through.
Luckily, there often is hope after infidelity. It is not always easy. But it is often possible. It often requires a husband who is more than willing to take responsibility and to take an active role in rehabilitation and a wife who was willing to allow him to do this.
I know that these reasons probably don’t strike you as valid. I agree that hearing all of these excuses can be maddening. But, it’s very important that you focus as much on your healing as you focus on the whys or hows of what he did. Because once you heal, the rest doesn’t matter as much or cause you as much pain, at least this was the case in my situation. If it helps, you can read my healing story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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