My Husband Says He’s Not Ready To End His Affair. What Should I Do?
By: Katie Lersch: Many wives aren’t sure what to do when their husband is dragging his feet or stalling when it comes to ending his affair. Many of these wives feel that it might be possible to save their marriage if he would just end things once and for all. But, when he is reluctant to do that, the process can become much more difficult. One might say: “I read some of my husband’s emails and it became evident that it has been having an affair for the past four months. I immediately confronted him. At first, he indicated that he would break things off. However, a week or so later, I began to see emails going between them again. I immediately confronted him about this and he admitted that he wasn’t ready to end things with her. He said that the relationship had become special to him and he felt that he needed to see what might become of it. He said that it just needed to run its natural course before he could truly let her go and then commit to saving our marriage. He said that he was very sorry about this but he felt that he needed to be honest with me about it. Well now I am at a loss about what I should do. Part of me says that I should give him an ultimatum and tell him that he ends it or I will walk out the door, divorce him, and take all his assets with me. But another part of me says that if I force him to end it, he will only resent me so that our marriage is virtuously destroyed worse than it already is. What should I do?”
Although I couldn’t decide the wife’s course of action for her, I could give her some things to consider. I will share those things with you below.
It’s My Opinion That You Can’t Force Him To End His Affair, But You Can Make It Clear That Until He Does, A Relationship With You Is Off Limits: I know that you probably wish that you could say some magic words to make him want to end his affair immediately. But often, when a man is in the middle of an affair, the feelings can be intense and it can feel as if it’s impossible to just abruptly break it off. And sometimes when people attempt this, it’s quite painful and it just feels odd. So rather than sticking it out, they will often tell their spouse that they just aren’t ready or capable of ending things. As frustrating as this can be, it is preferable to them agreeing to end the affair and then continuing it behind your back while lying to you.
It’s often very tempting to tell him that he must end the affair or else you are going to make him regret it. But while this may give you some temporary relief, it often won’t work in the long term. He will often resent your ultimatum and because he thinks he never had any closure, he may well long for her more than he would have if he had chosen to end things on his own. So I believe that the best course of action is to tell him that the choice is his but there are consequences of such a choice. A suggested script might be something like: “ending the affair has to be your decision. But until you end things for good, I can’t be in an active relationship with you. I can’t be intimate with you. And I cannot trust you. You can let me know when you have come to a decision or when the affair has ended. But, until then, we can’t move forward in our marriage. I just want for you to be aware of this. But the decision is yours.”
Know that this might not get you the immediate results that you want. It may take him a while until the right choice becomes clear to him. But at least you will have made yourself clear in the meantime. I would suggest doing whatever you need to do in order to support yourself and help yourself heal in the meantime. You do not need to wait for his decision before you start being kind and supportive to yourself. His choosing to end the affair should be separate from your personal healing. Yes, you may need to wait in order to work on your marriage. But you do not need to wait even a second before you begin to work on yourself as an individual.
So to address the question posed, it is my opinion that you can’t really force him to end an affair if you want to save your marriage in the right way. But you can make it clear that he can’t participate in both relationships. And, if he is even remotely still invested in your marriage, making this clear should help to give him an incentive to make the right decision quickly.
I believe that to the extent that it is possible, you should allow your spouse to make their own decisions. Because if you do not, then you will always have some insecurity as to whether they are with you willingly or if you had to use excessive force. As hard as it can be to wait and allow him to decide to end the affair on his own, I feel that this is the best course of action because it lets you know that he chose you on his own. Because healing from the affair is going to require for you to believe that he truly wants you and the marriage. Without this, you are always plagued with doubt. I know this first hand. If it helps, you can read my story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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