Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Many faithful wives have serious fears and reservations when it comes to their cheating spouse. Many worry that they will never be able to trust him again. Or they worry that their marriage will never recover. And some worry that if it does recover, it’s not going to be a marriage that anyone would want.

Someone might say, “I must admit that my husband has really tried to make things up to me after his affair. We’ve honestly really tried. We’ve gone to counseling. We’ve given this a lot of time. And we even spent a good deal of time apart. As far as my husband is concerned, we are on the mend. And I mostly agree with this, but I cannot pretend that things are still the same or that they ever will be. When I’m quiet and thoughtful, I still think about his affair. I still think about that betrayal. I know he’s sorry for it, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt me horribly. Yes, things are certainly better than they were. I can’t deny that. But I also wish – all of the time – that this had never happened. And sometimes, I wonder if I’m ever going to be able to get rid of this resentment and these feelings. If not, what is the point of staying married? Sometimes, I have serious worries that I am going to regret staying married after the affair. I am worried that I am sentencing myself to just more of these feelings for the rest of my life. Is this silly?”

I certainly don’t think it is silly. I had these concerns too. I was most concerned about my anger. I became a very angry, suspicious person for a time, and I was worried that remaining married would just reinforce that anger. 

But, I also worried that if I got a divorce because of the affair, I would regret that too. I had built a life with this man. We shared family. A divorce meant I would just be expected to walk away from all of this as if it never existed and didn’t matter.  

I also worried about being alone. I am the type of person who likes having someone with whom to share my life. Despite all we’d been through, my husband still wanted to share his life with me. And I still wanted to share my life with someone. I figured that perhaps I owed it to him and to myself and my family to see if he could once again become the person I chose to share my life with.

I didn’t give him any guarantees. He had to earn it. And I can’t tell you that I was always sure about my choice initially – or even months into it. 

But I can tell you that, now that a good deal of time has passed, I do not regret it. Now, to be fair, my husband has made good on his promises. He does not participate in risky behavior, and we are both invested in our marriage. We haven’t had to deal with the trauma of that period again, thankfully. So my level of regret may certainly be different if my circumstances were different. 

I do think there are things that you can do to minimize the chances that you will feel regret. I’ll list them below.

Don’t Be Shy About Defining Exactly What You Need: I find that many faithful wives (myself included) expect our cheating spouse to intuitively know what we need and want. They typically don’t. They know that we want them to make it better. They know that we want them to be remorseful. But they don’t always understand that we need them to clearly express themselves so that we understand what went wrong and what is needed to fix it.

They do not always realize that we need them to remove any dangerous behaviors and to check in and be accountable. They don’t understand that these necessities are open-ended. There’s no expiration date on these reassurances. 

That is why you’ll sometimes need to spell this out. And you may feel resentment for having to do this. I understand that. But spelling it out is the only way you’ll get those reassurances that you need so that you’re not having to constantly worry about going through this more than once. 

If You Begin To Feel Doubt or Regret, Speak Up:  As I alluded to before, anger was a problem for me. And often, I wouldn’t tell my husband what he’d done that had made me angry. I expected him to just know. So he’d continue to do the thing that was causing my resentment. And I’d continue to be angry. And it was an awful cycle because he felt that he could never win, and I felt I’d never get the marriage I wanted.

You have to be honest during this process. If his taking a phone call privately bugs you, tell him immediately. If his computer being turned off gets your senses tingling and makes you feel weird, tell him that this must stop for now. There’s no reason for you to continue to be uncomfortable and angry if your speaking up could avoid some of this. 

Tell Yourself That Your Life is Bigger Than This:  I found in my own life that I tended to make everything about the affair. And that is normal initially. But it’s not helpful when it happens for a long period. One day, I realized that I had other things in my life where I could place my focus – my work, my family, my friends, and my personal interests. Everything didn’t need to revolve around my husband and his cheating. Everything didn’t need to revolve around recovery because as it was, I was choking the lifeblood out of everything else in my life. 

Sometimes, you need a balance to have perspective. Yes, you want to give yourself every bit of the time you need to heal. But at some point, you’re going to want to live life past the affair. You want to give yourself permission to truly move on. And if the marriage isn’t working for you at that time, you can always make a different decision. You can always deal with regret appropriately if need be.  

That decision is individual for everyone. But for me, I wanted to give my marriage a fair try before giving up. If I regretted that, then I could always change things later. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do that.  I didn’t feel regret.  But I had to take a chance to get here.  You can read the rest of the story at https://surviving-the-affair.com

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