Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from wives who are hearing conflicting stories from their husband when it comes to his feelings about the other woman in the affair. Sometimes, when the affair is first discovered, the husband will express real feelings for the other woman. Often, he thinks that having legitimate feelings will make the cheating at least somewhat justified. But as some time passes and he is able to reflect upon the situation and see the pain that all of this is causing his wife, he may change his tune sometimes. Or, he may have legitimate feelings for both women and may therefore flip flop on his claims. Often, his loyalty understandably lies with his wife, with whom he has a commitment and history. Unfortunately, usually once he has admitted feelings for the other woman, this is hard for the wife to forget, even if she believes that her husband also loves her.

I heard from a wife who said: “when I first caught my husband cheating, he refused to discuss the other woman at all. Eventually though, he realized that he owed me some answers and he agreed to go to counseling. During one of those sessions, the counselor started probing his feelings for the other woman. He answered that he had real feelings. The counselor asked him what he meant by ‘real feelings’ and he stated that he loved her. Needless to say, this is the last thing that I wanted to hear. After thinking about this and struggling with it for quite some time, I decided that our marriage didn’t stand a chance because I just can’t be married to someone who is admittedly in love with someone else. However, when I told my husband this, he said that upon further reflection he didn’t really love the other woman. He claims that just thought that he did. He says that now that he has had more time to be away from her and to think about it more objectively, he realizes that what they had wasn’t really love. To take it even further, he said that he realizes that what we have is love. In short, now he is doing a complete about face and saying that it is me who he loves. I want to believe this quite badly. I would fight hard for my marriage if I believed that my husband loved me. But how can I believe him when not too long ago, he was telling me that he was in love with someone else. How am I supposed to believe him?”

Deciding If You Want To Wait And See How This Turns Out: I know that this is a difficult situation. I know that he is asking you to take a huge leap of faith. I know that sometimes, you question yourself as to how you could be so foolish as to even consider believing his changing claims. Of course you want to believe that he loves you. But how are you ever going to know for sure? I’ll tell you my answer, but I have to warn you that I doubt you’ll find it to be the perfect answer. I’m not sure that there is any such thing as the perfect answer in this situation. I think that you just have to make a conscious decision as to whether you want to give this some more time to resolve.

Here’s why. You can’t possibly know if your husband is telling you the truth. Because he may not even know if he is telling you the truth. It’s quite possible that he has many conflicting feelings happening simultaneously. He may well love you very deeply. Men who love their wives can and do cheat. The real question is where he is going to go from here. Because quite frankly, love isn’t enough. It’s hard work to recover from an affair. And love is a wonderful first step. Because love can inspire you to work tirelessly to fight for your marriage right now – even when it’s future isn’t certain. Without love, this process is much more difficult.

Why Time Will Often Give You More Information: As I said, love will only get you started. You’ll also need a commitment, a willingness to figure out why this happened, and then to a plan to heal your marriage and then prevent this from happening again. These are the things that will make up the commitment that will pull your marriage through. So no, you may not be sure if he really loves you right now. And that is a scary place to be. But frankly, in the weeks after the affair, very few things are clear. There aren’t any guarantees. You often just have to decide what you want to happen tomorrow and then you make a conscious decision to give it more time to wait and see. Because if he truthfully does love you, then he will be there tomorrow and next week. And next month. And next year.

It is over time that he is going to prove his love for you. He can say any number of things. But only his actions coupled with time is going to tell you whether or not those things are true. Frankly, men can both lie and tell the truth in this situation. And if you watch closely and wait, then the time and the circumstances will help you to sort it out. I know that’s not a perfect answer, but it’s an accurate one, at least in my experience.

Of course I doubted my husband’s love for me after the affair.  And, I wasn’t prepared to just blindly believe his words.  That would have been very naive of me.  Instead, I made it clear that he would need to prove this over time.  And he has.  If it helps, you can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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