Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Sometimes, when a spouse is confronted with the indisputable facts that he is having an affair and there is a demand for more an explanation, one of the justifications or excuses that he will give you is: “but I didn’t mean to have an affair. There was nothing malicious about this.” And he will say this quite seriously and he will be completely sincere. Which will leave you evaluating if this fact means anything at all.

A wife might say: “I caught my husband cheating on me with our hair dresser. We have both been going to this woman for years. I have always liked her. I do not understand how this could have happened. Since she cuts my hair, she knows me very well. She knows that we have a family. There are times when I feel like I hate them both. My husband can not give me any plausible explanation as to how and why this happened. He says that it has only been going on for about a month and that he has no problems ending it. One thing that he is saying over and over is that he didn’t walk into the salon with the intentions of having an affair. His phrasing about is something like: ‘I want you to know that I didn’t mean to have an affair. I didn’t intentionally set out to hurt you. I still don’t know how I let it happen but I did not plan it or intent for it to ever happen.’ He says this like it’s a very important fact and like this should make him less culpable. Honestly, it doesn’t matter all that much to me. Should it? Should I take this into account?”

Well, I suppose if we’re all being honest, we would rather the affair have “just happened” than having the knowledge that our husbands have been on one of those websites where both parties are trolling the internet and actively looking for someone with whom to cheat. Or, that our husbands have been going to bars in the hopes of picking someone up. So I can see why husbands will throw this out there. They want you to know that they were not actively pursuing cheating.

However, I have to tell you that very few people wake up in the morning and think: “boy, just look at the weather outside. I think that this is a good day to cheat. I think that this is the day that I will turn my life upside down.”

Most men will tell you that they didn’t intend to cheat, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t do it. And that doesn’t mean that their lack of intentions means that your marriage is less damaged. Regardless of what they meant, they did cheat and you are now dealing with the aftermath of infidelity regardless of anyone’s intentions.

So while it might be a little comforting to know that he never meant for it to happen, it did happen. And it happened more than once. Which means that he had time to process the first mistake and then instead of telling the other woman that they crossed an awful line and they must stop immediately, he went back.

I am not saying that you can not heal from this. People do it all of the time. I am just suggesting that his intentions (or lack of them) do not change your bottom line. If you wish the communicate the same, I’d suggest something like: “I hear what you are saying and I believe that you never intentionally set out to cheat on me. But regardless of your intentions going into it, you still cheated. And you cheated more than once. So you may not have gone into it wanting to be unfaithful. But once you were unfaithful, then you did it again over the course of an entire month. We have to deal with this regardless of what you intended to happen. We have to uncover why you did it once and you continued to do it. And we have to deal with why you’d go into a salon with no intentions of doing anything inappropriate and then come out being unfaithful. The damage is done. I know that you didn’t maliciously set out to hurt me, but I am still hurt. The lack of intentions do not mitigate the damage, which we still must deal with. I appreciate you sharing the information with me, but it doesn’t make much of a difference. We still have to deal with it and overcome it regardless of what your intentions were at the time. Frankly, I’m more worried about your intentions moving forward as it is going to take a lot of work and commitment to fix this.”

Honestly, once you begin the healing process, it should become clear that his intentions are not a huge factor into the equation. I understand why he is trying to make this distinction. He’s trying to show you that he wasn’t a bad person initially and that he would never intentionally hurt you. But at the end of the day, he did. And now it’s time to deal with that.

Frankly, when you break it down, healing is what matters most.  Not the reasons for the affair.  Not how it happened in the past.  But what happens now. You can read more about my own process on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

Filed under: Uncategorized by admin