Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: It’s absolutely normal to be furious with a cheating spouse. It’s even normal to find them repulsive after the affair. As a result, many faithful spouses have no desire to be loving or intimate with the cheating spouse. For some, this could mean no sex, no hugging, and no kissing. And for others, it can mean absolutely no touching at all.

A wife might say, “I probably haven’t touched my husband in any capacity in over three months. I know that sounds awful. But ever since I found out that he cheated on me, I just can’t bring myself to show him any sort of physical affection. I think of him betraying me and showing extreme physical affection to someone else, and I’m just not inclined to be affectionate to him. Last night, he actually broke down and started crying. He asked how long we were going to continue acting like angry strangers in our own home. I told him that I had no idea because I’m still angry and I still feel incredibly resentful. Why should I show him consideration when he didn’t show me the same? He tried to reach out his hand to me, and I pulled my hand away. I admit that I felt sad after I reflected on this. There is a part of me that wanted to respond to him. But I just couldn’t allow myself to do it. Am I wrong to not want to touch him?”

Why I Think That Your Feelings Are Justified But Potentially Limiting: I certainly wouldn’t say that you are wrong. I understand how you feel. After my husband’s affair, I told him straight away that I was taking sex off the table for a while. I needed time to process things (and to determine what I wanted moving forward) without having to worry about anything else.

I believe that my stance was fair, and my husband agreed to it. That said, I don’t think that you would want to live this way for the rest of your life regardless of what happens with your marriage. I hope this article will offer something valuable to help you move forward – even a little bit.

Don’t Try To Put The Cart In Front Of The Horse: I think that the biggest reason that I could not tolerate a physical connection with my husband was that I was still so injured. I was still reeling. Trying to touch or even to be emotionally connected just felt fake and insincere. I would have felt taken advantage of if I did something that I didn’t want to do. And I was also still too angry to reward him with anything at all coming from me. That may sound petty, but it was just the truth at the time.

But do you know what else is the truth? It takes so much energy and is so painful to be this wounded all of the time. So even if it is only for your own well-being and ability to feel at peace, you’re going to want to heal and eventually move on in whatever way works for you.

Healing doesn’t mean that you have to forgive your husband if you can’t or don’t want to attempt that. It is not something that you do for him. It is something that you do for yourself.

Even better, after you have made some progress with healing, you can begin to let go of some of this anger because you won’t feel as angry and out of control anymore. When that happens, you may feel differently about what you can and cannot do.

But remember that this is always your choice. Don’t feel pressured to do anything that you are not ready for or to give anything that you do not feel has been earned.

A Tiny Place To Start: This wife said that she did feel a tiny bit of compassion toward her husband and felt a tiny inkling to reach out to him. This tells me that she is a bit conflicted and not 100% on board with continuing to offer him no encouragement or kindness at all. I completely understand keeping him at arm’s length when you are this shocked, betrayed, and angry. But I have to be honest with you. This situation is not going to be sustainable in the long term.

One day, you will want to feel compassion and empathy again, even if it is not your husband who is the most frequent recipient of that empathy.

Tricks And Tips: I found a couple of tricks that made that possible for me while I was still trying to decide what I wanted to do about my marriage. First, I made it clear that I was taking married behavior off the table until further notice. This way, I did have to deal with expectations or pressure. However, this didn’t mean that my husband and I didn’t communicate. We did.

Second, since my husband was not going to mistake any compromise for reconciliation, I was free to try to at least be cordial. As I said before, it got very tiresome to remain so furious. If I wanted answers, if I wanted lengthy and honest explanations, then I was going to have to be open and listen. And I couldn’t do that if I turned him away.

And one way that I tried to be open was to separate the behavior from the person. Yes, the affair was deplorable and deserved all of my contempt with no redemption possible. But did my husband deserve this personally? Yes, he did a horrible thing. But he’d also done some wonderful things. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to be my husband anymore, but I couldn’t pretend like he was an evil person either. I could at least give him the courtesy of listening to what he had to say so that we could both say our peace to see if anything could eventually be salvaged.

Free Yourself From This Perpetual Prison Regardless Of What Happens With Your Marriage: Regardless of whether you want to stay married, you will want to eventually effortlessly show compassion and empathy when it is appropriate. Otherwise, you’re sentencing yourself to a compromised life for something that was never your fault.

I’m not saying that you need to get physically close to your husband tomorrow. You never have to if you don’t want to. I’m just saying that while I understand what you are going through right now, I think that you deserve better than that in the future – whether you are getting that from your spouse or from someone else. And in order for that to happen, give yourself permission to heal. You deserve that.

Giving myself permission to heal was the kindest thing I did for myself.  Because at the end of the day, this process was about me.  Not about him.  You can read the rest of the story at https://surviving-the-affair.com

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