Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Many people don’t realize that life is not easy for either spouse after an affair. People often understand the faithful spouse’s difficulties, but they don’t think about the cheating spouse. Granted, it’s understandable that there wouldn’t be much sympathy for someone who made this type of mistake. And I’d never defend a cheating spouse (since I’ve been the faithful spouse.) But, I do often hear from cheating spouses who are trying to make things right but who are having difficulty. Sometimes, they’re trying to be forthright and forthcoming, but they aren’t believed anyway.

One of these spouses might say, “I understand why my wife might doubt me. I lied to her during the affair. I misled her. And when she suspected me, I lied again. So she honestly has a right to doubt me about fidelity matters. And I accept that I am going to be questioned and doubted. I just keep telling the truth and hoping that eventually, she will feel more secure. But the problem is that she doubts every single thing. If I tell her I had a cobb salad for lunch, she starts interrogating me as if she thinks I’m lying about what I had or where I ate. She even shows suspicion toward some of my male coworkers. It’s as if she thinks I’m a liar about every single aspect of my life, as if I’m looking to deceive her at every turn. This makes me hate to confide anything to her or talk about my day in any way. She’s just going to doubt me anyway. Is it going to be like this forever? Because I don’t know if I can take it for a lifetime.”

It typically won’t last forever. It generally ends once the trust returns and healing is complete. And that can take time. I can give you some insights as to why your spouse has doubts about things that don’t seem important – like the lunch/restaurant and coworkers. 

Why the Faithful Spouse Doubts Everything: She’s looking for evidence of wrongdoing in simple, everyday things. For example, she’s worried you’re making up a lunch outing that didn’t happen because you had lunch with the other woman instead.

And she’s expressing doubt about coworkers because she wonders if they knew about or helped you carry out the affair. Or she may think that perhaps they too are cheating and are normalizing this behavior at work.

So it’s not necessarily that she thinks you are a pathological liar about every aspect of your life. It is that she is digging for more evidence because she is afraid that you may still be cheating or will cheat again.

And before you judge this too harshly, consider the pain of being cheated on. It’s something that no one ever wants to feel again, so of course, you’re going to keep an eagle eye out to protect yourself from a repeat. 

How to Handle the Questioning: You may not like what I’m going to say, but healing and trust are going to take some time. And the best defense that you can have is to tell the truth for even the most minute of details. Don’t give her any reason at all to question your responses. Don’t keep things from her thinking that you’re sparing her from something or you are avoiding more questions.

Because if she does find out that you are keeping things from her, then you’re going to go two steps backward, and you’ve sentenced yourself to much more questioning for a longer period of time.

Tell her the truth, be as patient with the questions as you can, and work with her to heal your marriage and restore the trust. This is very important. If she sees you willing to put in the work and go through the steps, she will have more confidence that you are committed to the marriage and not looking for anything outside of it. And eventually, as she gains that confidence, she won’t always be looking for the cracks in your narrative.

She’s looking for the cracks now because she’s afraid they are there and she doesn’t want to deal with the pain of this again. Try to see her questioning as fear. See her as someone who is afraid and injured rather than accusatory and that might help with your patience.

It might make you feel a bit better to know that I, too, questioned and doubted my husband about the tiniest details after his affair. And, I must admit, I did this for quite a while. It took some time for me to be secure again. That said, I rarely do interrogate him today. So my husband did not have to endure this forever. But he helped himself by doing mostly what he said he was going to do, and telling me the truth. He was also willing to do whatever I needed to help me move past it. So, as weird as it sounds, I was eventually able to see him as my ally and not my adversary. 

I know it might feel like you won’t ever get there, but if you hang in there, one day you will. Just see your wife as someone who has been injured and therefore is reluctant to put herself out there again. She needs time to process and then to begin to ease back into trust and intimacy. You can’t expect her to force the trust before she is ready because that just leads to more distrust. Give her time, your honest effort, and support, and you will likely be rewarded with her trust eventually.

If it helps, you can read about some of the things that helped me heal at https://surviving-the-affair.com

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