Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from wives who either innocently discover their husband’s affair by accident or find out through a little spying. Often, their husband doesn’t have any idea about the wife’s discovery because she doesn’t come out with this information or doesn’t confront him right away. And there are times, when the wife discovers the affair when it is already over. Perhaps she finds correspondence or a text that breaks the relationship off. Or maybe the other woman tells the wife about the affair, but assures her that it’s long over. This often leaves the wives with a decision to make. Does she confront him about the affair or does she just try to move on without making even more problems for their marriage because the affair is already over?

I recently heard from a wife who said: “I found Facebook messages on my husband’s computer which clearly showed me that he had an affair last year. However, I was able to follow all of the messages and determine that the relationship has been over for months. Our marriage was struggling at the time he was cheating, but it is much better now. So now I am wondering whether I should confront him about the affair and ensure that we struggle all over again. Or do I just continue trying to work on our marriage and be grateful that things are better between us?”

I can’t answer this question for anyone, but I can discuss some things that you may want to think about if you’re in this situation, which I will do below.

If You Don’t Confront Him About The Affair,You Likely Won’t Ever Have Closure And Will Always Have Questions. This Is Usually True No Matter When The Affair Ended: The wife in this situation fully admitted that her marriage was in trouble when her husband had an affair. So there wasn’t a lot of mystery as to why he cheated. But there was some question as to why he wouldn’t try to discuss the issues with his wife rather than go out and cheat with someone else.

These questions were likely to nag at the wife and would probably cause some resentment somewhere down the road. An affair is a big secret to keep and a big problem to swallow. Of course, this is a personal decision, but many wives in this situation tell me that not confronting their husbands about the affair (even though it was over) caused a lot of stress and heartache.

You Don’t Always Have To Confront Him In A Nasty “All Or Nothing” Way: The wife in this situation assumed that she had to confront her husband in a dramatic way that was sure to damage their marriage. That’s not always the case. She appreciated that they had made so much progress in their marriage. So nothing said that she had to ignore this. She could acknowledge their progress, but then tell her husband that she had learned something which had to be discussed. Her husband might have actually felt relieved to get the affair out in the open.

And who knows? Maybe this conversation would lead them to commit to being more open as problems were occurring. The discussions that come out of an affair can sometimes be very painful, but they can also sometimes lead to breakthroughs in your marriage that will bring you closer. In my opinion, there was a good chance that even if the wife chose to ignore the what she knew about the affair, it was likely to come up at another time in the future. Something this serious and detrimental is not usually something that you can just brush under the rug and hope for the best.

And nothing says this wife couldn’t wait until she was sure her marriage was back on solid ground before she brought it up. But as a wife who has been cheated on, I have to tell you that I can’t imagine sitting on this kind of issue and not saying anything. Knowing about an affair is too painful and it brings up too many questions that only your husband can answer. Plus, you want to make sure that you work on any unresolved issues so that you don’t have to worry about him cheating on you again. To me, whether the affair is over or not isn’t really the point (although it makes healing easier.) Because the very presence of an affair (even if it’s in the past) brings about certain issues and open wounds that will need to be addressed before your marriage is able to fully recover. And you deserve an open and honest marriage where you don’t need to pretend to be in the dark about something you already know.

As I said, I don’t think I could have kept the affair to myself. I just needed answers too badly. But the good news is that the affair didn’t ruin our marriage. After a lot of work, our marriage today is actually better in a lot of ways. If you think it might help, your welcome to read the whole story of how I got through my husband’s affair on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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