Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from wives who have a husband who is trying to turn the tables on them after his cheating. Typically, the husband is the one who had the affair. And the wife has every right to be suspicious of him moving forward. But this doesn’t matter because all of a sudden the husband is suspicious of his wife and acts as if the thinks that she will cheat on him, perhaps in retaliation for his own cheating.

I might hear a comment like: “my husband had a three month affair with his sister’s best friend. I found out about it from his sister and I demanded that he end the affair immediately. He did this. But now he’s acting as if he suspects me of wrongdoing. I go out with my friends a lot now. I don’t necessarily want to go out with my husband or even stay home with him. I’m not sure what I want to happen with my marriage. I will admit that I’ve been avoiding my husband. But when I go out with my friends, it’s all innocent. I just want to have a girl’s night out and escape my problems for a while. But when I get home, my husband accuses me of being with other men. He says that he just knows that I’m going to cheat to get back at him. He says that he just knows that I am hiding something. I’m not hiding anything. I have no intention whatsoever to cheat. I think that people who cheat lack integrity and are liars. I would never put myself in that category. And I very much resent my husband saying these things and acting as if he has a reason to be suspicious of me when he absolutely does not. I almost feel as if he is trying to take the attention off of him and turn it around on me. Not only is this not fair, but it absolutely infuriates me. How do I handle this?”

I think that this wife was probably right in her assumption that the husband was trying to take the heat off of himself. That is very common. Sometimes, he is not even aware that he is doing this. All he knows is that it’s painful to have to stand up and take responsibility for his affair. He also knows that he probably wouldn’t blame you if you were to figure out that you can do better than him and cheat in retaliation. This can be true even if he is well aware that you are not normally the type of person who would cheat.  I know this first hand.

Understand What Is Motivating Him: Frankly, this behavior is based on fear. He knows that this is all his fault. He knows that what he has done is wrong. And he knows that you would be well within your rights to cheat on him. Also, he often acts this way when he knows that you are desirable to other men and that any other man would be lucky to have you (and perhaps more worthy of you also.) But, even if you understand why he’s doing this, none of that makes it fair or more bearable. You have every right to address this and to put a stop to it. Now, I will discuss what you might do about it.

Directly Addressing The Issue: Many wives will handle this by angrily denying that they are doing anything wrong and demanding that he stop with the accusations. Sometimes, this will only get him fired up even more. So I think it is worth it to try to address this in a direct and calm way and without all of the anger and energy.

So the next time he gives you one of his accusations, you might respond with something like: “we need to talk about this right now. This isn’t the first time you have accused me of inappropriate behavior or perhaps even cheating. I am going to say this one more time and then I don’t want it brought up again. I am not cheating on you. I have no intention of cheating on you. I know that you are acting this way because you don’t know what’s going to happen with our relationship. I don’t know what’s going to happen either. But I do know that I wouldn’t begin a relationship with another man until I ended the relationship with you. It’s just not in my make up to cheat. And seeing how hurtful this whole process is, I would never add to it by adding another incidence of cheating on top of what we are already experiencing. If I want to see someone else, I will tell you because I will end the relationship first. I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. But I do know that these accusations aren’t doing anything at all to help us. All this does is add more negativity to a tough situation. So please stop this. Take the energy that you are spending accusing me and put that energy into making our marriage better so that neither one of us has to worry about cheating again.”

You may have to repeat this conversation a couple of different times in a couple of different ways before he finally stops. And you may have to bring his attention to this a couple of more times before he finally believes that you aren’t going to accept these accusations. Once he sees that there are negative consequences for this and that it is not going to alter your behavior and might actually make things worse, he will have more incentive to stop.

I know that this is very frustrating.  But keep your chin up and know that you haven’t done anything wrong.  And, stand your grand.  Don’t let him take your attention away from what really matters, which is your own healing.   If it helps, you can read more of my story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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