Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: It’s not optimal when your husband, who is already in great trouble due to his cheating, can’t seem to be discrete about the fall-out from the same. As if an affair or cheating isn’t a painful enough scenario for a wife to have to deal with, many wives have to juggle much more. In some cases, the wife is now dealing with people who are now interested in the state of her marriage because her husband blabbed about the struggles of that same marriage.

A wife might say, “I will admit that my husband’s life hasn’t been great since I caught him cheating on me. I gave him no time to explain himself. I don’t want to hear it. I’ve told him all along that cheating was a dealbreaker, and he cheated anyway. So I kicked him out pretty quickly. He’s saying with his family, and he’s telling any one of them who will listen that I’m heartless and unyielding. His sister called me yesterday and tried to argue his case. It made me furious. Of course, he has downplayed what he did. To me, his affair makes every behavior of mine justified. There’s nothing he can do or say where he comes out as this good guy in this. However, he seems to want me to take some of the blame, and not only do I refuse, but I greatly resent that he’d even allow his mind to go there. I have no fault in this whatsoever. And he’s got another thing coming if he believes I’m going to sit silently and let him say whatever he wants. At the same time, I don’t want to spend my time and energy defending myself. This is only injuring me more and making my resentment larger.”

I agree that it takes too much energy and effort to talk about your marriage to others. This is a time when you need to protect yourself and your own well-being as much as possible. You don’t need any extra things to deal with.

Know When to Draw a Protective Line Around Yourself:

When I dealt with infidelity, someone gave me what I found to be good advice for my situation, and I’ll share it here. What worked for me may not work for you, so keep that in mind. But I was told that it’s best not to unload on mutual friends or family because you can’t be sure how things will look six months to a year down the road.

At that point, I’d already told a couple of people. But from that day on, I kept much of my marital issues to myself, and some of the people who I told just could not let it go later, so I regret sharing personal matters with some. Those people still bring up the affair even as I’ve long moved past it. So telling them actually prolonged my pain.

That said, I found it helpful to talk to people who didn’t know my husband. Those people could therefore be completely neutral and only wanted to help me. But I wasn’t able to say this about the mutual family and friends who did know both of us. For those folks, I would tell them that while I appreciated them pulling for me, I’d prefer to talk about something other than my marriage.

Understand What Your Husband’s Trying to Gain By Involving Others:

I am not going to tell you that your husband doesn’t deserve your wrath. He does. But I think it can help you deal with his behavior if you understand the motivations behind it. It’s possible that he’s relying on other people to get your attention on his behalf since he’s not having much success on his own. In other words, he thinks that having others go to bat for him might help him get back into your good graces. Yes, his logic is definitely flawed. But he may feel desperate because your actions have made your feelings very clear and things don’t look good for him.

Understanding this doesn’t mean that you don’t have a right to your anger and frustration. You absolutely do. But understanding his motivations might make it easier for you to let other people’s opinions roll off you. Putting your marriage up for debate from others is emotionally exhausting, and you’d be well within your rights to take the high road and refuse to engage with that.

If it feels wrong not to defend yourself, you can try something vague like, “Clearly, he hasn’t told you the whole story. And you won’t hear it from me. But, not surprisingly, I deny fault and that’s all I’m going to say about it. What do you say we talk about something else?”

Then change the subject. I always found it helpful to make it clear that I was more than willing to talk about other things. I didn’t want to lose the support of my family and friends. I just didn’t want to talk to them about my marriage. That said, I made sure that I had other places where I could go for support because everyone needs an outlet.

Not wanting others to talk about your marriage doesn’t mean that you don’t want to still foster the relationships. It just means that you don’t want the relationship contingent on discussions about your marriage. That’s a private matter between you and your husband. Admittedly, he’s chosen to take it public, but that doesn’t mean that you need to take the bait.

You can choose to rise above it and protect yourself from having to always explain and defend. In your heart, you know that you aren’t the one who cheated and aren’t the one at fault. You shouldn’t need to repeatedly defend it. This takes too much energy and emotion at a time when both are running low.

Set the ground rules and then go right back to making yourself the priority. The people close to you will eventually get the message. You may choose to confide in some people and not in others, but the choice should be yours.

Right now, you should be free to focus on your own healing and not caring what other people think.  If it helps, you can read about my healing at https://surviving-the-affair.com

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