Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch:  It is just common sense that once you have dealt with the pain of an affair, you are naturally going to be on high alert for another one.  In a way, this is unfortunate.  It’s no fun to be this suspicious all of the time.  But, with that said, it’s also no fun to be blindsided by infidelity.  So this suspicion is quite understandable, but it can certainly cause some damage to your marriage.

It’s exhausting for the faithful spouse to always be in such a state of high alert.  And the remediated cheating spouse may resent always facing the implication that they have done something wrong – or are getting ready to – even when they are innocent.  But, you can almost rest assured that if there is even the slightest bit of evidence of an affair taking place – the faithful spouse is going to want to rule it out.

The most logical way to rule this out is to just ask the other spouse.  However, 99.9% of the time, there will be a denial.  The faithful spouse usually really wants to believe that there is not another affair.  But sometimes, self doubt takes place.  Other times, friends and family are telling her that she can’t trust the words of a cheater.

A wife might say: “I really want to believe that my husband isn’t having another affair.  And I have to admit that I don’t have any concrete evidence that he is. It’s just that he’s acting very similar to the way that he was acting when he had the first affair.  I can’t really describe it accurately.  It’s just a feeling that I get.  He’s a bit standoffish and cold.  He’s distracted.  He moves at a faster pace. But when I confront him about this, he gets somewhat angry at me. He says that he has done nothing to make me suspect that he’s having an affair and that it’s not fair that he automatically gets accused of something that he is not doing.  And of course, then I sound silly trying to explain that it’s more of a feeling I have and that it’s the same feeling that I had before.  He feels attacked and I feel belittled.  Then I tell my friends that maybe I’m being paranoid and overreacting and perhaps I should apologize to him.  They tell me that I am crazy to say this.  They ask me if I know that once a man has cheated on you, then you can never trust his claims again. They tell me that everything out of a cheater’s mouth should be seen as a potential lie.  Stupidly, I recounted this conversation with my husband.  He became pretty defensive and asked if he was going to have to live under this cloud of suspicion for the rest of his life.  He then insisted that if he was going to have to live like that, then he didn’t know if he could live with me anymore because he didn’t want a lifetime sentence of being the bad guy.  So now I’m very torn.  Obviously, my life would be so much easier if I could believe my husband.  But I can’t ignore what my friends have said about a cheater’s words never being trustworthy.  Are they right?”

I would say that in some situations, they would be right.  And in some situations, they would be wrong.  Certainly, not all men who cheat once will cheat again.  Some do.  Many do not.  I have known of instances where a faithful wife gets paranoid of a second affair that never happened and her inability to “let this go” ultimately destroyed the marriage, even though the husband was faithful the second time around.  I have also known of a wife’s suspicions ultimately turning out to be true, despite her husband’s firm and repeated denials.

It can be very hard to know which scenario you are facing initially, but an affair usually does have a way of being hard to cover up forever.  I believe that you have a couple of choices here.  First it makes sense to sit down and write out – as objectively as you can – anything that is at least persuasive proof of an affair.  We all know concrete proof can be hard to come by.  But sometimes, you do have little crumbs that are undeniable.  If all you have right now is a hunch or a gut feeling, you can certainly be on the look out for proof.  But until you have it, I don’t think I’d go accusing.

Once you’ve determined how much information you really have, then there’s a choice as to whether or not you want to press your husband even more or if you just want to wait and watch.  I chose to wait and watch, and in my case, there was nothing amiss.  Basically, my own insecurities lead to false suspicions.  Of course, this will not always be the case. Sometimes your suspicions have merit.  But in my case, I decided to give my husband the benefit of the doubt while watching closely — unless he gave me a reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt.  I was never going to blindly trust him – well, at least until years of fidelity had passed.  But I wasn’t going to accuse him – and potentially ruin my marriage – unless I had a concrete reason.

This “towing the line” strategy worked well, but of course it isn’t for everyone.  Some wives just need a firm answer and they aren’t going to get that without a confrontation, regardless of the risk.  And some wives realize that because of the first affair, they are going to be more likely to see wrongdoing where it’s possible that none exists.  As a result, so they are going to make sure that their suspicions are correct before they accuse.  This was certainly true in my case.  Since I am still married today, I am very glad that I didn’t make accusations that simply weren’t true.  It was worth it to wait. But that’s just our situation.  Yours may be different. You can read more at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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