Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from people whose cheating spouse truly wants to “even the score.” What I mean by that is that the cheating spouse has become tired of being the bad guy in the relationship. They are tired of their spouse bringing up how much they have been hurt. They are tired of the fact that it feels as if no matter what they do, the affair is always thrown up in their face. So, they often wish that their spouse would make their own mistake in order to even the playing field so to speak. And one way that they will attempt to accomplish this is to encourage their own spouse to cheat on them. Needless to say, not every faithful spouse is excited about this. Many would never even consider it. But they aren’t sure how to handle it when their spouse continues to insist on this.

As an example, I heard from a wife who said: “my husband cheated on me with our housekeeper of all things. He said it only happened a couple of times and it meant nothing to him. He doesn’t understand why I’m so hurt and angry. He doesn’t get why I don’t trust him and am always suspicious of him now. And he has no patience with this process. He gets angry at me when I question him or ask for concessions, as if I don’t deserve a little bit of extra attention and consideration. The other day, he got angry at me when I asked him why he came home late. And then he blurted out that he wanted for me to cheat on him because he wants us to be even so that I will back off about his cheating. I told him that this was ridiculous, but he continued to insist. I was very mad about this. And then when the anger ended, I was hurt. I wouldn’t and couldn’t cheat on my husband. This just isn’t in my make up. What kind of man tells his wife to go out and have an affair just to ease his own burden and guilt? Sometimes, I think that there is no hope for us. Is there?”

Well, I am not the one to answer that question, although I think that it always hope. This was a decision for the wife to make. But I agreed with her that her husband’s suggestion was highly inappropriate and in absolutely horrible taste. And if she did want to eventually save her marriage, she would need to make her husband understand this. I’ll offer some explanations as to why he might be doing this and then explain how I might handle this.

He May Know That You Would Never Cheat. He’s Trying To Take Some Heat Off Of Himself: It’s not at all unusual for a cheating husband to try very hard to posture in order to take the heat off of himself. Sometimes, he will be cooperative and remorseful in the beginning. But always having to make amends and always being the bad guy in the equation can get old fast.

So he starts to wonder what he can do to get you to back off a little bit. Some men will try to become more combative hoping that you will want to avoid the conflict and will therefore back away. This whole “go ahead and have an affair so that we’re even strategy” is an example of that. It’s likely that your husband knows you very well and also knows that you are not going to take him up on this offer. His hope is probably that you will reassure him that you would never cheat and then back off a little. In that way, he will have achieved his goal and he never really risked anything.

How To Handle This: If you don’t address this and you back away, then he has reached his goal and his strategy has worked. Only you know if this is acceptable to you. Because admittedly, there comes a point in this process where you just want to heal and you don’t need or want for everything to be full of conflict every day. But, there is also a point where you need to take up for yourself and let your husband know that you find the suggestion somewhat offensive and counter to his claims that he wants to make things right.

You might say: “I really want to hope that you don’t mean that. I hope that this is just your frustration talking. Because if you were really serious that you would have your own wife cheat on you just so you wouldn’t have to face the consequences of the affair, that would be extremely disappointing and that would say a lot about where you are in this process. In order for us to heal, we need to trust that we are both going to be faithful in our marriage from this point forward. If you don’t believe that and are not committed to it, then we are much further apart than I thought. We have more work to do than I thought. I’m willing to listen to what you have to say. Because I think that this is only your frustration talking, at least I hope so. ”

Then, listen to what he has to say. He may very well tell you that he didn’t really mean it. Or, he may be combative again, having not gotten the message the first time. This is one example of when you’ll need to decide where you stand and how you are going to communicate the same. But I agreed with the wife wholeheartedly. This suggestion was absurd. Being unfaithful to a cheating spouse isn’t “evening the score,” it’s creating additional problems onto an already problematic situation.

My husband also tried to posture a little when I first found out about his affair.  But I shut him down fast. You can read about my own healing process on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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