Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: It’s pretty common knowledge that spouses who have been caught cheating will sometimes do everything in their power in order to minimize the impact of their cheating. They will claim that the other person meant nothing. They will claim that they now see undesirable things about the other person that they didn’t see before. They might even go so far as to claim that now the other person turns them off or makes them sick.

For example, I might hear from a wife who says: “my husband had a three month long affair. Over the past week, I’ve been pouring over his emails and texts and what I have been reading has literally made me sick. He and this woman talk about what they want to do to one another and how much they want to do it. One thing that is very obvious in reading all of this is that the other woman is very sexually aggressive and adventurous. These are both things that I am not. And although my husband is now swearing to me that he wants our marriage and wants nothing to do with her, I have a hard time believing this. Because it is clear that at some point in the very short term past, he couldn’t get enough of her. But when I tell him this, he claims that when he looks back at her now, he feels repulsed. He says that he just sees her aggressiveness as a turn off now and an attempt to control him. He says that everything about her is just ‘too much.’ I find this very hard to believe even though I’d like to believe it. Is it even possible for a man to find the other woman repulsive after the affair is over?”

I completely understand why you have your doubts about this. You think that he is only making this claim in order to convince you that he would never cheat with this woman again because he’s not only not attracted to her anymore, but he finds her a bit disgusting. And you think that this is complete hogwash, meant only to alleviate your worries with untruths.

I can’t know if your husband is telling the truth or not, (although I’d be willing to bet that you can watch his actions very closely and find that this tells you more than his words ever could.) And I can not tell you that men caught cheating never lie in order to make things better for themselves. They do this all of the time. And sometimes, they think that they are doing you a favor when they do this. They are hoping to spare you some pain. They are hoping to alleviate your worry, even if what they are saying is not exactly true. They might not actually find the other woman repulsive, but they are vowing to stay away from her just the same.  So they figure that exaggerating just a touch won’t hurt anyone.

At the same time though, it is also not uncommon for men to see the other woman quite differently once the affair is over. I have had many men confess to me that they didn’t really see the other woman for who she really was until the affair had been over for a while. And, without the veil of the excitement and secrecy of the affair, she doesn’t look nearly as good to them once they have come back down to reality. This is different from finding her repulsive, to be sure, but this is what many of them say.

And I do think that it’s possible that he could certainly be repulsed by what his cheating relationship has done to his life. He may now be hit with the harsh realization that he has damaged his marriage, devastated his wife, and shown himself to be very weak natured. And of course these realizations are going to be upsetting and repulsive to him. And he maybe projecting these very negative feelings onto the other woman because it’s a little easier to blame her than himself. Either way, he may believe that he’s completely being sincere and truthful when he says that he finds her repulsive.  And it is also quite possible that since his feelings are gone, he can look at her now and not see her in the way that we did before.  How many of us look at our exes and wonder what we ever saw in them?  I look back at the boy I lusted over in high school and I can see that I was, in a word, stupid.

I know that the accuracy of what he is saying is important to you. And I understand why. But quite frankly, it often takes a little time before you get a real handle on what is real. He can and will say any number of things. But his actions and his behavior doesn’t lie. If he really finds her repulsive, he will stay away from her and he will do everything in his power to heal his marriage. If time goes by and he is doing what you have asked him to do with enthusiasm and without complaint, then you will likely feel much more comfortable believing his claims.

I know that you want to believe that he finds her repulsive. And frankly, he might.  But it is much more important to place your focus on yourself, your marriage, and your own healing. If it helps, you’re welcome to read more about how I attempted to handle this on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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