My Spouse Doesn’t Deserve My Cheating. Why Am I Such A Jerk?
By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from people who are grappling with overwhelming guilt from cheating on their spouse. Many of them would give anything to turn back time before they could damage their marriage. Many of them are fully aware that their spouse deserves better. So not only are they mortified by their behavior, but they don’t understand it, especially when they admittedly have a good spouse who did nothing to justify the cheating.
I might hear from a husband who says: “my best friend says that this is my guilt talking. But I don’t think that he is right. I don’t deserve my wife. When I look back on our marriage, she has been nothing but loyal, loving, and supportive. That’s why I have no idea why I had an affair. Once I came to my senses, I broke it off, but now I know that I have no choice but to confess what I have done. She deserves a husband who doesn’t lie and who doesn’t cheat. I am so angry at myself. And I don’t understand what would make me do this to someone who has only supported and loved me. She is beautiful and sweet. She is the best wife that anyone could ask for and yet I’ve been cheating on her with a very low quality person who isn’t even fit to wipe her boots. Why am I such a jerk? I am considering telling her that I won’t fight her in a divorce because I am well aware that she deserves better.”
Give Credit Where Credit Is Due: I think that, in the end, it’s going to be up to her to decide what she wants and deserves. I also think that you have to give yourself some credit for standing up and taking responsibility and for not trying to justify your cheating. Many people take the easy way out and try to blame their spouse for choices which were ultimately their own. You may have realized too late that the cheating was a mistake, but you DID realize it and you are willing to own up to it. This may mean something to your spouse.
Consider Self-Sabotage: As far as to why you cheated on someone who was by all accounts a very good spouse, I am not a therapist, but I’ve witnessed that it’s quite common to self-sabotage when you don’t feel deserving of your spouse or you think that your spouse is too good for you. Rather than working on yourself, trying to improve, or just seeing if your spouse shares your perceptions (because many do not,) you will subconsciously participate in behaviors that put the thing that you value most (your wife and your marriage) at risk. I know that this sounds crazy, but it is by no means rare.
Going Forward: Once you tell your wife, your options are really going to depend on what she wants moving forward, as you will want to respect her wishes, since she truly is innocent in all of this. If she is open to saving the marriage, then in my opinion you’ll want to have two goals in this regard. You want to figure out exactly why someone in a happy marriage with a supportive spouse would need to cheat. If it is indeed self-sabotage, low self esteem, or the like, then you’ll need to work very hard to overcome whatever issue is driving the risky behaviors. You will need to eradicate these behaviors so that your spouse doesn’t have to go through this again. This really can become a vicious cycle – with your participating in the undesirable behaviors and then becoming angry at yourself so that the behaviors just keep cycling. This cycle isn’t an excuse for your behavior, but it is most definitely a good idea to be aware of it so that you don’t repeat it.
The second goal should be to become the person who your spouse deserves moving forward. It won’t be beneficial to anyone if you walk around with low self esteem, just waiting for your wife to realize that she could do better. Instead of waiting for the shoe to fall, why not actually become better so that you no longer think in those terms. Since this person is your wife, you likely know that is most important to her. You know which traits she most values. Your job is to encompass those values so that in time, she knows that she can count on you to be her safe place to fall. Make no mistake about it. Getting to this safe place after infidelity takes a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a lot of time. But it’s worth the effort because it minimizes your risk of more infidelity in the future and we have already established that your spouse deserves better than this. You deserve better, too, which is why it’s important that you evaluate and move forward rather than just allowing the guilt to keep you stuck, which doesn’t benefit anyone.
Recovery from an affair is definitely possible, but I would never tell you that it’s easy or fast. Neither is true. However, most people that I know who have been through it believe that it was worth it, myself included. You can read more of my own story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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