Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: It’s not unusual for wives to feel pressured to offer forgiveness after their husband cheats or has an affair. And many of the wives struggle with this. Some really want to save their marriages. They want to move on. But, they are still very angry about the whole situation. Some feel rage every time they think about their husbands being with someone else while they was caring for the family or doing chores alone. 

So, every time some of them consider the thought of forgiveness, they get a mental picture of their husband’s deceit and decide that they just can not forgive right now. 

A wife might explain it this way: “My husband is pressuring me to forgive him after his affair. Granted, I know that he has really been trying to work with me in good faith. He is really trying to heal this marriage. I will give him that. But, I’m just not ready to forgive just yet. I feel that it is too soon. But when I tell him this, he gets annoyed and pressures me to give him a time frame. I can’t. I don’t know. The weird thing is, I know that I still love him. Is it possible to still love a cheating husband and not be able to forgive?”

I think that it is. Below I’ll tell you why.

I Believe It’s Possible To Love A Person While Despising Their Actions: Sometimes, people confess to me that they feel like the second they find out their spouse has cheated on them, they assume that the love immediately leaves. Many people see infidelity as the deal breaker that negates all love. 

But, when this thing happens to you, it sometimes doesn’t work this way. I was one of those people that made these types of assumptions. But, despite my beliefs, when infidelity happened to me, I didn’t just stop loving my husband and I wasn’t able to turn off my feelings like a faucet.

I believe that some people very much continue to love their cheating spouse even if they loathe and despise the act of cheating and what that same cheating has done to their marriage. This is what happened in my situation and in others that I know of. 

However, I know some people who have had the opposite occur and swore that the second they learned about cheating, every ounce of love also left. I’m sure the response is as individual as the people involved. All responses are valid.

I Believe That Love And Forgiveness Are Two Different Things: The husband in the above situation was obviously equating forgiveness with love. He asserted that if the wife loved him, then she must forgive. I don’t necessarily agree. Forgiveness is an individual choice that often requires a few things to be able to offer it with an open heart and without any doubts.

In order to forgive, most people will need to understand why the cheating happened. They will need to know that their spouse is sorry and remorseful. They often want to know that their spouse still loves them and isn’t putting on a show. And they want to see some changed behaviors and some safeguards that have been put into place. 

These things will often eventually bring about the confidence and peace of mind to go ahead and forgive.

The wife in the above situation had not yet gotten all of these things. Yet, the husband was demanding that she just gloss over what she needed and forgive anyway. Not only do I think this is unfair, but I think it could potentially be setting things up to backfire. 

If the wife gave in and forgave before she was really ready, issues may go unresolved and this conflict could continue to show itself in negative ways.

Forgiveness Truly Is More About You Than About Your Cheating Spouse: In the above situation, the husband was presenting forgiveness as something the wife should give him. But honestly, I don’t believe that this is really the way that it works. It’s my experience that the cheated on choose to forgive because they know that doing so will release them from all the negativity that they’ve been carrying around. 

For me, it felt so good to decide to let this go. Sure, it made my husband happy. But this was secondary for me. It was about me, not about him.

There’s Nothing Wrong With Delaying Forgiveness While Continuing To Love: In the above situation, I didn’t see anything at all wrong with the wife stressing that while she DID love her husband, she just wasn’t ready to forgive at this time. That didn’t mean that she wouldn’t be ready to forgive in the future. It just meant that right now, she didn’t have what she needed to freely offer this.

She may consider telling her husband what he could do to provide her with more of what she needed. Or, she may choose not to do that for now. But there is nothing wrong with being honest and not allowing yourself to be pressured. 

I do believe that it’s possible to love someone very much and not be able to forgive them for cheating initially. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you will never forgive them. It just means that you are being honest about how you feel during the present time.

I believe it is more important to focus on getting the healing you need rather than putting a deadline or time frame on forgiveness. It will happen when you are comfortable that the time is right.

You can always just be honest and explain that your not be ready now doesn’t mean that you won’t be ready in the future and the best way for him to speed the process is to show you patience and understanding.