Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from women who are understandably very fixated on the deception their husband used to get away with his affair. And some women feel that the deception was the worst part of the whole thing.

I heard from a wife who said: “my husband deceived me for no less than seven months. I was going through some medical treatments and I was often so sick that I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed and wait for the pain to be over. My husband would ask if he could do anything for me, and when I would tell him that I just had to wait it out, he’d say that he was going to his mothers or to the gym. I always believed him. I never had any reason to think he wasn’t exactly where he said he was. Well, one day I was on the computer and as I went to type in my email, the computer must have memorized his log in information because suddenly I saw an email account that I didn’t recognize. It turns out that he had created an entirely new email to communicate with the woman he cheated on me with. I later learned that he had a cell phone that looked exactly like his old one which he used only for her calls. I also learned that they planned their trysts when they knew that I would be sick. My husband is now saying that he didn’t have any emotional connection to the other woman. I believe that he thinks that the emotional connection is my greatest concern. Much to my surprise, it’s not. What bothers me the most is the level of deception. He participated in a whole alternative life meant to deceive me and to cheat. How can I ever trust someone like this ever again?”

This is a tough question to which I have no easy answers. I completely understand being outraged by the deception. I’ve been there myself. To a certain extent, every one who has ever dealt with infidelity must face this deception. But some cheating spouses take it further than others. And this wife’s husband had taken it quite far. With that said, there are couples who are able to recover from this, although both people must want to and must be willing to work very hard for the long haul. It’s usually not something that can fixed in a short amount of time. It takes a while before the faithful spouse feels that it is safe for them to trust again. And, until that time, a new foundation must be present. I will discuss this more below.

Why I Believe In Complete And Continuous Disclosure: I will tell you up front that not every one agrees with my stance on this. But, I believe that while you are healing from an affair and trying to restore the trust, the cheating spouse must become an open book. They must hand over the passwords and information regarding any cell phones, computers, passwords, or other things that was involved in the previous deception. In other words, the faithful spouse must know that they can check up any time they feel that they need to. Because this is the only way that they are going to have any peace during this process.

People will often respond to these suggestions by saying something like: “either she trusts him or she doesn’t. Does she plan to check up on him for the rest of his life? Does he have to report back to her like she is his mother?”

My answer to this would be that no, she doesn’t plan to do this forever. But she might do it for as long as she feels that it continues to be necessary. It’s probably not going to be fun for either of them, but it is sometimes the only way that she will even be willing to stay or to even try to save her marriage. Otherwise, she is always going to be suspicious that he is deceiving her once again.

I’m not going to tell anyone this is an ideal situation. It isn’t. But, the goal is always that once the trust is restored, it will no longer be needed. But your marriage is going to have a hard time surviving if your spouse is constantly suspicious and afraid. Full disclosure is a way to ease their mind while you are still healing. Once healing is complete, this type of disclosure shouldn’t be needed anymore.

The last point that I would like to make is that full disclosure is only the tip of the iceberg. You will also need to rebuild your marriage. Because the whole idea is the get your marriage to a point where you are both happy and confident that the infidelity and the deception happened to a marriage from long ago that is completely different, and completely healed, today.

The deception of my husband’s affair really weighed on me also.  And I did insist on full disclosure for quite a while.  I no longer need this.  But at the time, I needed to know that there was no way that he could deceive me and this allowed me to focus on other things, like my own healing.  If it helps, you can read that story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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