My Husband Says He Didn’t Think Of The Consequences Before He Cheated
By: Katie Lersch: Many wives are very understandably outraged at their husband’s excuses for his cheating. One popular excuse (if you can call it that) which he will sometimes use is that he will tell you that he just wasn’t thinking when he cheated. Not surprisingly, many wives don’t find this excuse as one that is very valid.
A wife might say: “I caught my husband cheating about a month ago. He didn’t have enough integrity to admit to this himself. Instead, I saw text messages on his phone. I am so mad at him. And when I ask him what in the world he was thinking and how he could risk our marriage and our family this way, his response to me is that he wasn’t thinking of the consequences before he acted. What kind of excuse is this? I mean, what if I didn’t think of the consequences before I quit my job or before I did something destructive that might ruin our family? Why is he allowed to give such a lame excuse? Because regardless of whether he was thinking about the consequences, I now have to deal with them. Why would he even say this to me?” I will try to discuss these concerns in the following article.
Why A Man Might Give You The Old ‘I Didn’t Think Of The Consequences Before I Acted’ Excuse: Some men will give you this excuse simply because they believe it to be true. But other times, they say this because they hope that you understand that they didn’t act maliciously. In other words, they don’t want for you to think that they actually planned and schemed to cheat on you. They want for you to know that it wasn’t premeditated. They think that at least you will know that they weren’t intentional in trying to hurt you. Of course, you will need to decide if you want to accept this explanation and whether it means anything to you.
Does The Fact That He Wasn’t Thinking About The Consequences Absolve His Guilt?: Although some wives are willing to actually believe that he didn’t plan to cheat or to hurt them, this fact doesn’t really change anything for many of them. It doesn’t eliminate the cheating or make it not count. Because whether he intended to or not, he did cheat. And his cheating means that you have a lot of healing to do before you can move on. So to answer the previous question, no, I do not believe that his intentions have any implications in terms of his guilt. He may well not have meant to cheat or to hurt you, but he did. So it is now his responsibility to begin to fix this.
How To Respond When He Gives You This Old, Tired Excuse: Many wives quickly grow tired of hearing this and they want to know how to respond and how to stress that his intention doesn’t lessen his guilt. A suggested response might be something like: “I hear what you are saying. I hear you saying that you did not intend to betray or hurt me. And I understand why you are trying to make that distinction. However, regardless of the intention, you did cheat on me. Regardless of your intention, we are now in a situation where we have to deal with this and pick up the pieces. Whether you meant to or not, the reality is you have hurt me deeply and you have damaged our marriage. And, I am more interested in healing than in examining your intentions. What I want from you now is not excuses but action and healing. Can you commit to placing your focus on how we are going to heal instead of why you acted as you did?”
Of course, eventually, you are going to have to deal with the whys here so that it will not happen to you again. But in the beginning stages of healing, hearing his excuses gets old and it can make you feel as if he’s trying to offer up excuses when really, there are none. So it’s very important that you make it very clear that you are interested in the end results instead of being interested in the excuses. Because excuses don’t really change or improve your situation. But his taking responsibility and committing to rehabilitation and healing most definitely does.
My husband tried to give me lame excuses for his actions also. I had to make it very clear that not only was this not acceptable, but I had no intention of listening to his excuses. I had to make him understand that I was only listening to things that were going to move us forward rather than to keep us stuck in the past. If it helps, you can read about our healing process on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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