I Hate Myself For Taking Back My Cheating Husband
By: Katie Lersch: Many wives are as angry with themselves as they are with their cheating husbands. Many have taken him back more than once and while they may have good intentions of stopping the cycle or of making demands on him as a condition of being able to come back, many fall just short of this. And they can begin to hate themselves as a result. One might say: “my husband has cheated on me twice. The first time, I took him back pretty easily because it was his first indiscretion and he seemed so overwhelmingly sorry. We had small children at that time and it never ever occurred to me not to take him back or not to try to save my marriage. Well, fast forward about five years. He did it again. This time with a different woman. And he apologized profusely once again. But he would never successfully pinpoint or explain what made him keep doing this. Neither of us understands what is really going on here. It infuriates me not to have any answers. And then I look at my kids and wonder how I can remove their father from their lives on a full time basis. So I let him stay. But I hate myself for doing so. I feel like I have no backbone or self esteem. I almost feel as if my husband is having a good laugh behind my back because he knows that I’m never really going to take a stand. And I just kind of wait for the day that he is going to cheat again. How can I make this better? Because I can hardly stand to look in the mirror.”
I really felt for this wife. She was almost under the impression that she was the one who had done something wrong, which obviously was not the case at all. Often, you can feel very trapped and panicked in this situation and you can turn this frustration back onto yourself instead of onto your husband where it belongs. There were some tips that I could offer with this wife, which I will share now.
It’s Not Too Late To Reevaluate: Many wives feel that once they make a mistake and don’t react in the way that they had wished, it is too late to do anything to change this. It’s my opinion that you can change your mind or have new needs at any time. You aren’t stuck with your initial reaction if it no longer works for you. If this is bothering you so much that you are beginning to hate yourself, then you have every right to reevaluate what you need moving forward. There is no reason to be stuck or hurt by your past decisions. You always have the right to change your mind or to move forward in a different way if your current situation is no longer working for you (or has never worked.)
This wife did not want to break up her family. This is extremely commendable and I completely understand this as I felt the same way. But nothing says you have to keep your family together at the expense of yourself. You can certainly keep your family together but at the same time carefully define what you are going to need to be happy and secure. To be honest, one of the first steps in no longer hating yourself is asserting yourself and to stop putting yourself last. You might one to say something like: “lately, I’ve been evaluating my life and what I need in order to feel happy and secure. It’s become obvious to me that we’ve never fully addressed what caused the cheating and what we need to do ensure it doesn’t happen again. You know that I want to keep our family together but I also want to be happy and secure. In order for that to happen, we’re going to need to do the work that we should have done in the very beginning. I can no longer turn a blind eye to this and still respect myself. I can no longer be the wife and mother I need to be when I know that I put myself last.”
Do Whatever Needs To Be Done To Uncover The Underlying Issues: The truth is, it’s very hard to feel secure and at ease when you are always worried that your husband is going to cheat again. You can never really be happy or at peace. You’re always waiting for the next betrayal. And this isn’t going to change until you get the help you both need to undercover what might be contributing to the cheating. Once you figure that out, you will need to address and remove any issues. This isn’t always an easy process but it is completely necessary. Because once you insist on this, your self esteem will rise because you will know that you put your own needs first for a chance. And you will be able to begin to look at yourself in the mirror again. And I know that you may not believe this, often when you stand up for yourself, your husband will respect you more and will actually be less likely to cheat. Of course, you will need to do additional work to safeguard your relationship, but an important first step is to put yourself first.
You have no reason to hate yourself. You have done nothing wrong. Sure, you may have made some decisions that you’d like to take back. But the good news is that it is your prerogative to reevaluate and to act accordingly. You aren’t bound to the decisions that you made in the past. You have the right to build the life and the marriage that you both want and deserve.
When my own husband cheated, I hated myself for even hesitating to kick him out. But I eventually realized that there was more at stake than my own pride and my own wishes. However, defining what I wanted and needed and then demanding it of my husband helped to restore some of my self esteem and self worth. And this actually made quite a difference to me personally. If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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