My Husband Says The Other Woman Was Just A Diversion. What Does This Mean? Is It Believable?
By: Katie Lersch: Many wives are trying to process their husband’s odd or silly excuses regarding his cheating or having an affair. One such excuse is that the other woman meant nothing or was just a diversion or way to pass the time. A wife might explain: “my husband cheated with a woman who was training him in martial arts. He told me about the affair and agreed to start going to another studio. But, even though it has ended, I can’t get it out of my mind and I can not let it go. Our marriage isn’t the same. I’ve even considered asking my husband to move out. When I share this with him, he gets frustrated and borderline angry. He says that this other woman meant nothing whatsoever to him and was a just a diversion to make him feel better about himself. He says the whole reason he took up martial arts in the first place was because of aging and low self esteem. Supposedly, the other woman was meant to address the self esteem issue or at least divert his attention away from it. I believe he thinks that this claim is going to make me feel better but I’m not sure that it does. Whether she was a diversion or not, he still cheated on me. I don’t think there’s any good reason for cheating. And I’m not even sure what these words of his are supposed to mean to me. What do these claims even mean? And how do I respond to them?” I’ll try to address these concerns in the following article.
His Claims Of The Other Woman Being A Diversion Are Meant To Reassure You That There Wasn’t An Emotional Connection: Often, when men insist that the affair meant nothing or that the other woman was just a way to make him feel better, what he’s really trying to say is that he didn’t have an emotional connection to her. This is meant to reassure you that the relationship is completely over and that he isn’t missing or longing for her. Whether you buy these claims or not or up to you. But men often intuitively know that women are particularly troubled by infidelity that has an emotional component. Many wives will tell you that they would rather their husband have a one night stand than for him to think that he’s found a soul mate in a woman other than his wife. So understand that he is probably trying to reassure you that there wasn’t a lasting emotional connection that you now have to continue to worry about.
Why Her Being A Diversion Doesn’t Mean That There’s No Rehabilitation Needed: I find that sometimes, husbands in this situation will hope that their reassurances are going to be all that you need. This is pretty naive and short-sighted on their part, but this is often how their thought process works. They hope that if they can make you believe that if this relationship is over and it never meant anything anyway, then you can just pick up the pieces and move on. It would be nice if things were this easy, but they are often not. Even if you believe that he is telling the truth, what happens the next time that he suffers from self-esteem and needs a diversion? Will he cheat again? He might if he never learns new ways of dealing with stress or if you don’t put safeguards in place to keep this from happening.
It’s my opinion and experience that you won’t feel secure in your marriage unless you believe that he is rehabilitated. He may well be telling you the truth when he says that she was only a diversion, but this really isn’t a valid excuse to cheat. And if your marriage is going to survive or even thrive, you will need to know that any issues he may have are fully addressed so that you don’t have to worry about him cheating again the next time he struggles emotionally or feels stress.
So to answer the questions posed, he may be telling you the truth about her being a diversion, but even if he is, this isn’t a valid excuse. And even if this is his reality, you will still need to do the work necessary to rehabilitate your marriage if you want the peace of mind of knowing this won’t happen again or if you want to rebuild your marriage and mitigate the damage that has been done.
My husband used the “diversion” excuse in the weeks following my finding out about the affair. I didn’t see this as valid and made it very clear that he wasn’t going to be able to successfully use this excuse. His excuses were much less important to me than swift and complete rehabilitation. Once he realized this, things got better for him and we did eventually save our marriage. If you like, you’re welcome to read my story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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