Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch:  Sex can be a major conflict between a couple who is dealing with infidelity.  Understandably, having sex after knowing your spouse has cheated on you isn’t always comfortable or appealing.  This is almost to be expected when you are the faithful spouse.  But the spouse who cheated can have some difficulties in being patient and in understanding this because its very existence can bring up feelings of defensiveness.  Getting on the same page sexually can take time, patience, and effort.  And it can be especially complicated when one spouse tries to pressure the other.

The cheating spouse might say: “I’m really at the end of my rope here.  I know that I am the one in the wrong because I am the one who cheated.  But one of the reasons that I cheated in the first place was because my wife wasn’t having sex with me enough.  And now that she has caught me in the affair, she wants to have sex with me even less.  I don’t blame her for being mad at me, but this is a real problem.  I am someone who needs regular sex.  It is going to be hard for me to be happily married if this becomes a repetitive problem.  When I try to talk to my wife about this, she gets mad at me for pressuring her and we both end up very frustrated in more ways than one.  Last night, she sarcastically asked me if I just wanted her to just go through the motions with sex. I didn’t know how to respond to that.  Of course, I want her to be comfortable and happy.  At the same time.  It’s sex.  How bad is it?”

Before we go any further, I want to be fair and want you to know what is ahead in this article.  I am a woman who has also been through an affair.  I will try very hard to be unbiased and reasonable.  But I can not help (at least somewhat) seeing this from the perspective of the wife.  If that doesn’t discourage you and you think that perhaps seeing things from a woman’s perspective can help (which I believe that it definitely can,) please keep reading.  I truly do want to help and I want EVERYONE to be happy here, but I also feel a responsibility to state what I think is very important to understand.

I understand wanting to have your needs met.  But right now, you have to understand your wife’s needs also.  I can tell you from experience that she is hurting quite badly.  Finding out that your husband has cheated on you is extremely painful.  It makes you doubt yourself as a woman.  It makes you feel unattractive.  It shakes your sexual confidence and your view of the world.  So it goes without saying that while you are a faithful spouse struggling with all of this, the last thing that you feel are immediate sexual needs.

From the perspective of the faithful spouse – sure, you know and you hope that one day, your sexual life will be back on track and truly enjoyable.  You want and need that as much as everyone else.  But at the same time, you know that that can’t happen until emotional healing takes place and the trust is restored.

For cheating spouses who feel frustrated about the lack of sex, please see this from your spouse’s point of view.  If your spouse had been the one who cheated and you were struggling, would you want your spouse pointing out how little sex they were getting and complaining about it?  Would that make you feel more sexy and and make you want to have sex with them even more?

Probably not. In fact, it might make you feel like they are more interested in getting their sexual needs met than in the feelings of their spouse. This would likely hurt you and make you even more uneasy about sex.  When you did feel pressured to have it, then it would probably be very awkward and uncomfortable, which would harm your marriage even more.  In the meantime, your spouse might continue to remind you about how unhappy he is about the sex situation and then you may start to worry that he is going to cheat again – so the situation continues to deteriorate over and over again.

I respectfully hope that the point is becoming clear.  By being impatient about sex, you are just making the situation worse.  Listen, I suspect that what you want is a willing and enthusiastic sexual partner, right? Well, I am going to tell you what is going to make that more likely. Most people need to be emotionally connected and to have trust and confidence in order to be confident and enthusiastic sexually.  It is hard to do this after an affair.  The trust is shattered and the confidence is gone.

That doesn’t mean that it will NEVER return.  But it can mean that there is work to be done before it can be restored.  If you want more sex, then you need to become the spouse who makes your spouse want to have sex.  You need to become the spouse who, just for a little while, puts your spouse’s own emotional needs before your physical ones and who builds your spouse up so that she feels comfortable and understood.  You need to become the spouse who is willing to work tirelessly to restore the trust.

Because I promise you that when your wife feels that she can trust you again, when she feels confident again, and when she feels safe again – THAT is when she will feel sexual again.  And that is when she will be a willing and enthusiastic participant – which I’ll bet is what you both want.

Between that day and this one, though, she’s going to require patience, love, kindness, and understanding.  Unfortunately, your affair made this all necessary.  So now is the time to step up and to be the spouse that your partner deserves.

I can tell you that my husband is probably very happy that he did the work to make me comfortable, confident and trusting again.  While we had very little sex initially after his affair, we have plenty of it now.  But there was work to be done before this could be possible.  The physical part of our relationship was not going to thrive until the emotional part was fixed.  My enthusiasm for sex came back because our marriage came back.  It’s as simple as that.  You can read more about my own journey at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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