Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

People often assume that the wife on the other side of the affair feels only painful emotions like sadness, fear, and anger.  Would it surprise you to know that some women actually laugh sometimes after the affair has been found out?  It seems odd, I know.  But some wives just can’t help but laugh at the irony of it.  Or they will laugh because it forces them to see their husband in a unflattering (and somewhat humorous) light. Needless to say, the husband isn’t always a good sport about this humor, which can make it difficult to salvage the marriage.

Someone might say: “I know that this is going to sound weird, but I often find myself laughing in my husband’s face about his affair.  Yes, I am doing it to be mean, at least somewhat.  But also, there are parts of it that are genuinely funny.  Like, for instance, my husband met this other woman in an airport bar.  She is ridiculously young.  I can just picture my awkward, aging husband trying to stammer out charming, hip words to her.  I can’t get that imagine in my head without laughing.  Then I picture her all wide-eyed and trying to act like she is genuinely interested in him and genuinely cares.   That too, is funny.  Of course, as soon as I found out and I was tightening my grip on the finances and such, she broke it off with my husband because what good is a sugar daddy who can’t support you?  That made me laugh, too.  My husband says he wants to save our marriage.  Sometimes I want that too.  Other times, my anger gets the best of me and I think that maybe I will just leave him.  The thing is, I put a lot into this relationship and I worked a long time to be in a stable home.  I hesitate to throw this all away only to have to start over again. But then when my husband and I are trying to just communicate about our marriage and the affair, I will ask him questions again about how things went down and of course I will laugh again because I get this mental image of this old man in the airport.  He gets angry and says I portray him like an idiot.  I don’t want to state the obvious –  but he DID act like an idiot so why can’t he just stand up to it now?  I don’t know how to shut down my laughter.”

I do understand your dilemma.  But I think you need to ask yourself what you really want.  If you are no longer invested in your marriage, then there’s no harm in letting your feelings, and your humor, show.  However, if it could be remotely possible that one day you might want to repair your marriage and want your husband to remain faithful (and not cheat again,) then you have to be careful of how you phrase things.  Why? Because your husband likely cheated EXACTLY for the reasons that you’ve stated – he’s an aging man who is awkward.  So when this young woman (even though she was faking) pretended to be interested in him, it made him feel relevant and competent.  He responded BECAUSE he felt exactly how you see him – aging and unsure. When you highlight these insecurities, you just reinforce what made him cheat in the first place.  Does this mean that you have to build him up when you’re furious with him?  No, it doesn’t.  But I would let your counselor bring out these types of details so that you don’t have to.  That way, there is less of a risk of your laughing.

In truth, your husband likely knows deep down that what you say is true.  He knows that its a cliche that young women prey on older men for money.  He knows deep down that she probably did not think that he looked like a movie star or that he was as funny as a comedian. Yes, he WANTED to feel like it was all true.  He maybe even enjoyed pretending that it was true.  But deep down, he likely knew that it wasn’t reality.

I do get why it feels good to laugh at him.  I know how it feels.  You WANT him to feel embarrassed and ashamed so that he will think twice about cheating again.  However, those feelings of inadequacy are contributing factors to an affair. You don’t have the responsibility to build him up and it’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to, but I’d strongly encourage him to do individual counseling or self work so that’s he not continuously vulnerable.

I do understand why some of this is humorous.  I really do.  But if you do decide to save your marriage, that inclination to laugh will hopefully start to wane because you’ll have more important things to worry about.  In time, you may even begin to see that in a way, it’s as sad as it is funny.  It’s painful to feel old, irrelevant, and vulnerable.  Yes, he tried to ease these feelings in the worst way possible.  And one could see that as pathetic.  But one could also see that as sad.  Now he’s not only sad and aging, but he’s a sad and aging man whose wife is laughing at him for this.  I’m not trying to make you feel bad.  I laughed at my husband too at times.  But at some point, you have to be able to feel some empathy if you chose to save your marriage. I understand that none of this is easy and that it’s important to laugh if you can.  Saving a marriage after an affair is not for the weak at heart.   You can read more about how I managed to do it on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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Most of the people who I hear from are upset because their spouse has been cheating and they aren’t sure how to move forward in a healthy way. Sometimes, though, I hear from the person who cheated. They too want to move forward in a healthy way, but their spouse is often very reluctant to trust them or to even give them a chance. They are often looking for the best strategy to get their spouse to listen to them and to at least give them some sort of opportunity.

Many have tried completely falling on the sword and begging for forgiveness. They will make every promise under the sun. They will promise to go to counseling or allow their spouse to call the shots or do whatever it takes to get their spouse not to leave them. Still, many times, this is not enough for the faithful spouse. They are understandably hurt and are reluctant to trust again. So the cheating spouse may begin to explore other options. Sometimes, well-meaning friends and family will tell the cheating spouse that they are being too much of a “pushover.” This can leave the spouse unsure as to what type of stance he or she should take in order to get even a small chance to save the marriage.

For example, a wife might say: “I have literally begged my husband to not end our marriage. I can’t blame him for being angry. I cheated on him and that is inexcusable. If the roles were reversed, I am not sure that I could forgive him. But I want him to forgive me because I do not want to break up my family and do this to our children. I have told my husband that I will do anything to make this up to him. I will go to counseling. I will stay home every night. I will drop my friends that my husband doesn’t like and thinks are a bad influence. I will do whatever it takes. My husband hasn’t completely shut me down or anything. But he won’t give me any sort of commitment and he won’t tell me that he’s even thinking about forgiving me or letting me back in. It basically works like this. I sulk around being terribly sorry and he acts as if I don’t exist. I ask him if I can make him dinner or get him anything and he basically refuses to allow me to do anything while not even looking at me. He acts like I’m just a bother. When I discuss this with my friends, they say that I should play hard ball a little more and not be as much of a pushover or be as accommodating. They say that I am almost inviting my husband to be mean to me because I’m acting like I don’t deserve respect. They say that yes, I made a mistake, but I’m not a bad person. Are they right? Should I pretend that I’m going to walk so that maybe he won’t want to lose me and then be a little more willing to hear me out?”

I’m going to try very hard to help, but have never been in your position. In fact, I have been in the opposite position (as the faithful spouse,) but this is actually why I think that I can help. Had my husband tried to play hard ball or pretend that he was going to walk if I hadn’t been receptive to him, well, I have to say that I might have opened the door for him. I would not have had any patience for this type of game playing. Essentially, I was waiting for my husband to show me his sincerity, not his attempts at manipulation. I was waiting to see if he was going to give up and then not make good on his promises. I was not just going to blindly believe his claims or just believe in him without first seeing him do the work.

Once he did everything he promised, I did begin to trust him again. He proved to me that I did not need to break up our family because it was not in my best interest to do so. I suspect that your husband may be watching and waiting in the same way. He’s looking for continued sincerity. It’s one thing to say all of the right things. It’s another thing to do all of the right things when you aren’t sure that anyone is watching. This type of rehabilitation just takes time, unfortunately. An affair does an awful lot of damage and you can’t just expect to make it right through words and reassurances. You have to make it right through repeated actions. There is no way to rush this.

Trying to rush it by playing hard ball or not being accommodating is almost emotional blackmail. It also indicates that you care more about your own time frame than on reassuring your spouse. It’s just not a good strategy at all. If anything, it will make your spouse doubt you more. So if you sincerely want is a spouse who believes in you again, manipulating them is about the worst way to go about it. Be sincere. Hang in there. And know that it might be rough for a while. But if you’re serious about your marriage, what other choice is there?

I am sure that my husband did not think that his life was a picnic after his affair.  I did not make things easy on him.  But once he showed me (over time) that he was sincere and that I could trust him, we both worked together to save our marriage.  I believe that if you asked him, he would tell you that it was worth it.  He couldn’t change having an affair, but he could dig in, do the work, and make it right.  In my opinion, there is no other way.  Playing hard ball is just manipulation.  You can read more about how we eventually made it work on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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By: Katie Lersch:  Many people describe the fog that people walk around in while having in an affair as an “affair bubble.”  It’s described as a bubble because if you’ve ever been around someone who is actively having an affair, you’ll see that some of them have an existence where they are separated from real life.  They live in a “bubble” that is not reality.  They feel isolated from real, every day life.  They convince themselves that they’ve finally found the answer to all their problems and that they can now go through life feeling happy and fulfilled without real world issues interfering.  Of course, like most things that are too good to be true, reality is often revealed in a harsh way.  This is when the “bubble” burst.

Often, the start of this is when the affair is found out or when someone confesses.  When this happens, the two people having the affair can no longer exist in secret without having to question or to defend their actions.  Many husbands have their bubble burst as soon as they are caught.  They see the hurt that they have caused or they are now faced with losing their family and the life that they had, so they come down to reality really quickly.

Others don’t.  They still cling to the idea that the affair is worth all of the sacrifice because, for whatever reason, they need it right now. They convince themselves that this relationship just might be the answer for them. Needless to say, this can be extremely frustrating for the faithful spouse whose life is going to be impacted by whatever happens.  She might say: “I’ve been told that the affair bubble most always bursts.  My friends say that I just need to bide my time, but I am seriously starting to doubt that.  My husband is basically telling me that he needs time to sort out his feelings and he swears that he wants to keep our family intact.  But I always have my suspicions as to when he’s communicated with her because he comes home walking on air, like an addict who has gotten his fix.  When I press him, he will admit that the other woman brought out a side to him that he didn’t know existed and that he likes this part of himself, which makes me think that the bubble will never burst.  And meanwhile, I feel as if I have no choice but to just wait.”

I don’t think that you have to wait.  You have a life that is your own and that you can live without just treading water to see what he is going to decide.  You still likely have a job, an extended family, and friends, plus your own interests.  Nothing says that you can’t focus on those things while he is trying to sort himself out.  You certainly don’t have to put yourself on hold while waiting and no one would blame you for not wanting to participate in a marriage that has one too many people.  Until he can end the affair for good and get serious about rehabilitating himself and saving your marriage, no one can fault you for not allowing him to have his cake and eat it too.  That doesn’t mean that you need to make any rash decisions, but it makes sense that you’d want to protect yourself while he’s still in the bubble.

Statistics prove that most times, the bubble WILL burst.  The only question is when.  Very few relationships that start as affairs end in happy or lasting marriages.  The numbers are in the single digits, as far as percentages go.  Statistics also show us that it’s far more common for a cheating spouse to attempt to save their marriage.  So, the odds are on your side.  The question becomes how long you want to wait for the bubble to burst.

And really, that has to be up to you.  Some wives see unquestionable progress and have young children, so they choose to wait.  Others will basically ask their husband to temporary live somewhere else (or they themselves will stay with family) while he’s still participating in the affair.  They don’t make any firm decisions, but they continue on with their life while they wait to see what is going to happen.  They continue going to work, parenting their children, and doing the things that make them happy.  Sometimes, their husband comes to his senses.  Other times, he does not.  But at least they didn’t put themselves on hold while they were waiting.  Others will give an ultimatum and take their chances.  Still others know that eventually, the relationship is doomed and that it will dissolve under the weight of itself.

I can’t predict which outcome you might have.  You’ve said that your husband swears that he doesn’t want to lose his family. In that case, I would certainly hope that his behavior starts to mesh with this.  If it doesn’t, you can certainly call him on it and say something like: “for a man who says he doesn’t want to lose his family, you are sure acting like we don’t matter all that much to you.  I don’t think that you can reasonably expect me to just wait for you to make up your mind.  I only have so much patience.  Because of our kids, I’m not making any rash decisions right now, but I won’t put this off forever. I am going to continue to live my life while you sort it out, but that offer may have a limited shelf life.”

Only you can decide if this route feels right to you.  No one except for the people living in the situation have enough information to decide the best course of action. I do believe that in most cases, the affair bubble will burst because statistics gives us undeniable proof of this.  But it’s up to you what you are comfortable with in the meantime. I know how hard this is, but remember that you are not the one who made this mistake.  And you likely have plenty of other safe places to fall with family and friends in the meantime.

I was lucky that my husband’s affair bubble burst the second he was caught.  He immediately turned his attention to me and cut off all contact.  Still, we had plenty of work ahead of us.  It was not always easy by any means, but we did eventually make it.   You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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By: Katie Lersch:  I suspect that many wives who choose to stay after an affair are at least somewhat influenced by the impact that a divorce would have on their children.  I know that this was the case for me and many friends, acquaintances, and people who I hear from on my blog.   When you have kids, you not only have to think about what breaking up your marriage might do to you, but you also have to think about what it might do to them.  These thoughts cause many women who might have otherwise considered leaving to consider giving their husband a chance to prove that he can make this up to them and become a faithful, worthwhile husband.  For many of these women, the gamble does pay off and they are able to save their marriage, preserve their families, and move on with their lives.  If you check in with many of them five years down the road, many are content and will tell you that they are glad that they stuck it out.  However, this isn’t the case with everyone.  Some wives have husbands who cheat more than once.  For some, this becomes repetitive cheating.  And then once again, these wives have to consider their children.  And they wonder if they are better off continuing to stay for the kids or if they should just cut their losses.

Someone might tell you something like this: “I feel really stupid to say this, but years ago, when my husband promised that he would never cheat again, I believed him.  I always thought that if a man ever cheated on me, I would leave immediately.  However, that man was my husband and I had two wonderful children with him.  I asked him to leave the house after I first found out that he was cheating.  My kids were so upset when he was gone.  So when he begged me to take him back, I considered it because I saw how this was tearing my kids apart.  He promised me that he would work on himself and would never cheat again.  Well unfortunately, I recently found out that he has cheated for the second time.  Once again, he is begging me not to leave.  And this time, he is upping the ante by telling me that he will go to the counselor of my choice.  But I am skeptical.  I don’t want to keep going through this.  I don’t want to be one of those women who stays no  matter what her husband does.  My children are older now so maybe they could handle a separation or a divorce more easily.  But they are still children and I know that having divorced parents affects children.  I don’t want for my decisions to have a negative impact on my children.  At the same time, I don’t want my kids to be in a household that deteriorates.  I am not sure what to do.  Should I stay?”

You have to be the one to answer that question.  I can share my thought process on a similar situation and try to offer some insights, but no one can make that decision but you.   I did stay with my husband after infidelity and my kids had a lot to do with this initially.  However, I may not have been as open to this if I did not believe that my husband was sincere.  Of course, I had worries and doubts, so I made absolutely sure that we worked on ourselves individually and as a couple.  We did some counseling and it was helpful, but I do believe the work we did outside of counseling was just as important.   I think it is a combined effort much of the time.  I do not regret staying because my husband made good on his promises and our home life is now a stable, positive one for my kids.

Yes, research does show that living in a loving, two-parent household is best for children.  However, experts seem to agree that living in a negative household is not great for kids, either.  So that is going to be an important question moving forward: Do you and your spouse have the desire and the ability to really work exhaustively this time so that the environment is a positive one?  By that I mean that I would absolutely go to counseling this time.  I would absolutely make my spouse do individual counseling as well because he was not able to be successful on his own the last time.   People “repeat cheat” because they never addressed the issues that contributed to them cheating the first time.  Until they do that, they will be vulnerable to repeating the same behavior – which is cheating.  And until you know that he has done the work, you’re always going to worry that he will cheat again, which can’t be great for your home and family life.

I realize that there are no guarantees.  Some men cheat again even with counseling and with good intentions.  But having both of these things increases the chances that he will remove the vulnerabilities and not have the need to cheat.  I can’t promise that he won’t cheat again.  And I can’t make this decision for you.   But if you suspect that he didn’t address his issues the first time, you might have better results if you tried that this time.  And a counselor could help you to ensure that the environment at home is a stable and happy one regardless of what happens with your marriage.   That is ultimately what children need – an environment where they know that they are safe and loved.  Sometimes a marriage is the best place for that environment and other times, it is not.  It really just comes down to whether your husband can or will be rehabilitated and won’t keep repeating the same pattern.

I do not regret taking my husband back, but that is probably because he showed himself to be trustworthy.  That is why my best suggestion right now is to make absolutely sure that your husband really gets to the heart of his issues so that he can be rehabilitated and become trustworthy.  You both deserve that.  I do not regret staying and keeping my family together.  But trust is also very important to me.  You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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By: Katie Lersch:  In hindsight, many people come to believe that they cheated to boost their confidence or self esteem in some way.  Sometimes, they have  a revenge affair after they have been hurt in some way.  Other times, there is no revenge involved, but the person who cheated was suffering from low confidence or self esteem.  Sometimes, they do not even realize this until after the affair is over.  But in hindsight, they realize that the affair was an attempt to feel young and attractive again.  However, many are surprised to learn that the affair actually had the opposite effect.   They actually feel more insecure and unsure of themselves after having the affair than before it.  You might hear someone say: “I am extremely ashamed that I cheated on my spouse.   But I can’t claim to not know why I did it.  I did it because I could not resist when a younger, handsome man paid attention to me.  I was so used to being invisible because of being a wife and mother.  My children and husband always looked past me.  I felt like a ghost.  I felt old, fat, and ugly.   So when one of the workers at our home flirted with me, I just got carried away and the next thing I knew, we were in an affair.  I have never cheated on anyone before.  I am generally very loyal.  And I felt bad when I was carrying it out.  But I was also so hungry for someone to notice and appreciate me.   Things went well for a short time, but then I started to imagine the guy noticing other women that we passed.  And I wondered if he was just with me because of the gifts I gave him and the stuff I paid for.  I started to ask myself what a young and handsome man would want with someone like me.  So I broke it off.  The other guy didn’t even try to talk me out of it, which made me feel worse.  I did not tell my husband.  I don’t see the point.  Our marriage is the same.  But if anything, I’m actually more insecure than before.  I always worry that my husband will find out and leave me.  Or I worry that he will leave me because the kids are getting older and I am not needed anymore.  Why did the affair make me worse?  At least someone wanted me at some point.”

It made you worse because it was driven by personal insecurity.  No other person or relationship is going to fix personal insecurity because it must be fixed by the person experiencing it – which is you.  Sometimes when you do something that you know is wrong, this just reinforces the insecurity, like the affair did in your case.  Some people will have a string of affairs to try and mask or fix this.  Give yourself credit for recognizing what is happening before serial infidelity.   Since you know that this is all stemming from insecurity, the most efficient way to fix the issue would be to build yourself up.  Yes, you can and should ask your family for more appreciation and recognition.  However, at the end of the day, our self confidence must come from within ourselves.  So that is where I would start.  I understand where you are because I had dirt low self esteem after my spouse cheated.  So I took inventory about the things that bothered me (not my spouse, family or friends.)  And then I improved myself so that I liked who I was.  I went back to school, enlarged my circle of friends, and addressed a few issues about my appearance that I wanted to change.  I did not do a huge overhaul by any means.  No one would look at me and notice much difference, frankly.  But I felt different.  And I proved to myself that I cared enough about me to get healthy inside and out.  I have never cheated on anyone.  But during the period after my husband’s affair, I was often mean, sarcastic, and just miserable.  And part of this was that I felt horrible about myself.  Since the self-work, I am not as prone to this type of behavior.  That is why I think that working on your self esteem might give you some protection from risky behaviors like cheating.  But even better, it would make you happier and give a certain peace that you just don’t have now.  It’s very easy to blame our situation for our lack of self esteem.  We’ll tell ourselves that our family, friends, or boss treats us unfairly.  But the truth is, it all starts with how we treat ourselves and how we allow others to treat us.  When we think highly enough of ourselves, we are less likely to tolerate poor treatment.  And when we get it, we can shrug it off much more easily because we know that we don’t deserve it.

You can’t change the past.  But you don’t want to repeat the same behavior.  So take this opportunity to really address the problem so that you don’t repeat the same behavior.  If it helps, there’s more about my recovering my self esteem on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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By: Katie Lersch:   Often, when you catch your spouse cheating, he will swear that the relationship is over and that he is going to focus on the marriage.  You may or may not believe him, but he continues to make the claim that he would not possibly make the same mistake twice.  And then he does.   At first glance, the reason would seem simple – he lied about the affair being over or he was never sincere about the marriage in the first place.  But many husbands in this scenario will swear that they WERE absolutely sincere about the affair being over.  In fact, some of them will claim that they simply resorted back to undesirable behavior – sort of in the way an alcoholic might explain taking another drink.  They will use words like “relapse” or “fall” to imply that they misstepped in some way.  Of course, wives understandably don’t buy or care about this rhetoric.  No matter what words he’s used, he’s unfortunately been unfaithful again.   And even worse, he’s been unfaithful with the same person.

The wife can have a hard time making him understand this.  She might say: “when I caught my husband cheating, I wanted him to get out of the house right away.  I found proof on his phone.  And not only was it an affair, but it was a long term thing where he was promising her that he was going to leave me and be with her.  As soon as I confronted him, he quickly changed his tune.  He cried and pleaded with me not to leave him.  I asked him to move out, but did concede to go to counseling.  And I felt that we were making process.  I wasn’t ready to completely reconcile yet, but I did feel that we might talk about it in the future.  However, I had a strange feeling and went through his phone again and I found out that he’s been picking back up with her again.  This time, he’s not telling her that he’s going to leave me.   And he even said several times that he knows that he’s in the wrong and that he shouldn’t be seeing her.  But see her he did.   When I confronted him, he did not try to deny it.  He said that he was extremely ashamed of himself because he “relapsed.”  I told him that this was ridiculous.  He was talking like an alcoholic who had taken another drink.  Or someone will an illness who had symptoms come back.  I told him that these things were different because he chose his behavior.  He conceded this, but said it isn’t as easy as I think.  He said that he can’t answer why that he went back and emphatically claimed that he didn’t enjoy any of it and actually felt self-hatred doing it.  Honestly, I just don’t understand this.  He made a choice.  He acts like he had no free will.”

Your husband’s rhetoric is not at all uncommon, but I know that it is very hurtful and frustrating.  Men who have repeat affairs are those who either do not understand why they cheated in the first place, or those who do understand and didn’t do anything to fix or change their issues.   Although the people carrying out the affair can really want to think that it is about the other person, it’s often much more about themselves – and what is lacking within them that they are hoping to find – rather than about the other person.  Until they figure that out, they may keep right on repeating the behavior or the “crutch.” Which is why they may try to get you to buy lines like “regression” or “relapse” that mirror phrases of addiction.  If you know anything about addiction, you know that it’s not actually about the alcohol, or the gambling, or the shopping, or whatever the addiction is.  It is instead about escape, feeling momentarily better, or the addictive activity being used as a coping mechanism by someone who has never learned how to effectively cope with the situation in which they find themselves in.   Your spouse may intuitively suspect this, or they may be clueless about it.  But they may have a sense that something larger than an affair is happening and they are having trouble dealing with it.

Where you want to go from here is up to you, but if you do intend to try again with your marriage, I’d strongly suggest requiring your husband to work with a counselor or with very good self help in order to identify what he’s trying to escape from or cope with by having an affair.   It’s very rarely about the other woman.  It is most often about him.  Until he figures out what he’s reacting to and then removes that issue, he is going to be at risk of coping in the same way again (which is cheating) no matter how serious he is about your marriage or how much willpower he thinks that he has.  “Relapsing” is certainly not a valid excuse for repeat cheating.  There is no valid excuse.  But it can be a reasonably accurate description of how he feels when he’s not equipped to deal with his issues in another, more productive way – at least not yet.

Men don’t want to see that they are struggling, so they act as if they had no control or they pretend that they are powerless.  Sometimes, you have to make it clear that everyone has free will and that you expect him to learn new techniques to ensure that he doesn’t cheat again (if you are still invested in your marriage.) Some saw the work that we did after infidelity as overkill, but anything that you can do to not have to go through this again is worth it.   You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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By: Katie Lersch:  I often have people ask me how men feel when they are caught cheating.  And this is usually the way that it happens – that they are “caught” because the wife gets suspicious and she begins to snoop a little and finds evidence of infidelity.

Occasionally though, a spouse will show some courage and integrity and they will confess everything and come clean before the wife has any inkling or proof that something is wrong.  Many of these confessions bring about a lot of tears and apologies.  It can be hard for the faithful spouse to process this at the time of the confession. Because you’re so shocked and hurt by what he is saying, that, at the time, you can’t even think about his tears. It usually is not until later that you start to remember his sad reaction and ask yourself if it was real or just an act.

A wife might ask: “how does a man really feel when he tells his wife everything about the cheating?  Because quite frankly, my husband made a fool of himself.  He is a pretty stoic person in general, but when he told me he had been cheating, he could barely get out the words.  He was crying and carrying on and his nose was running uncontrollably.  I was almost embarrassed for him. We’ve gone through hard times before but I’ve never seen him act that way.  He could barely assure me that the affair was over because he kept choking on his words and sobbing. I was telling a friend of mine about this and she said that it was all an act.  She said that men just act sad and guilty so that we will feel sorry for them.  But she said that if there were any real guilt, he would not have cheated in the first place.  Is she right?”

At the risk of sounding like I am defending husbands who cheat (and I promise that I am not,) I don’t think that your friend is right for every situation.  It varies from marriage to marriage or from man to man, at least in my opinion.  Are there some husbands who will put on a fake display in order to gain your sympathy and in the hopes that you won’t be too hard on them?  Of course there are.  Without any doubt.

But I do hear from a good deal of men who ask about the right way to tell their wife about the affair and I can tell you that they seem incredibly sad, sorry, guilty, and filled with anxiety.  And they wouldn’t have any need to put on any sort of display for me because I do not know them or their wives.

Horrific Guilt And Shame:  I find that many men say they want to confess not only because they know that it is the right thing to do and that they want to save their marriage, but because they just can not take the guilt any more.  They would rather own up to their actions and take the consequences than to not be able to look in the mirror or sleep at night because of the guilt.

Also, you might be seeing some shame in those tears.  Many men are deeply ashamed of themselves and fully aware that this is a mistake like no other that is going to inflict a very special type of pain that is extremely hard to erase.

He May Hope That Honesty Might Matter To You:  Knowing the consequences of telling the truth, some cheating husbands go forward and confess anyway.  Why?  Many of them say that they now realize they want their marriage, but they know that this isn’t going to be possible with this big lie just waiting to be discovered. So they want to start out with a clean slate and a clear conscience in the hopes that their being honest will matter to you and will count for something.

With Some Effort, You Might Be Able To Feel A Taste Of What He Is Feeling Right Now: It may help to recall a time when you made a mistake that you knew was going to be a disaster and you had to confess it.   We’ve all done something like this – whether it is betraying a friend, messing up horribly in our jobs and having to confess our costly mistake, or confessing about wrongdoing in some other aspect of our lives.  Many of us will try to find another way because we know the confession is going to hurt.  But we know it is the right thing to do and so we do it, but it is painful.

I can remember several examples of this from telling my mother that I snuck out of the house and wrecked her car from confessing to a boss that I mixed up important documents that were going out to clients and would soon be discovered.

In every instance, I cried.  I blubbered.  I was ashamed and embarrassed and exposed.  We have all had these instances in our lives.  We can all remember something like this.  Now multiply that feeling.  Because the description that I gave above is very similar to what cheating husbands recount.  And he knows that his mistake is like no other.  He knows there is no erasing it and he knows it was made toward the most important relationship in his life.

To be fair, I am not a man who has cheated.  So I have never felt this exact thing myself.  But I do think that I have a good idea.  I think that we all have a good idea.  Because we have all had to confess embarrassing and shameful things we have done that we wish we could take back but now have to take responsibility for.  And this feels awful.  I hope that this has given you some insight into how your husband might have felt.

Frankly, shortly after I found out about my husband’s affair, I didn’t care how badly he felt.  I hoped he felt awful and ashamed.  But in time, I learned that in order for us to move on, we were both going to have to heal and try to move past the bad feelings.  There’s more about that on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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By: Katie Lersch:  It is every faithful spouse’s worst fear – that her husband is actually and truly in love with the other woman. Some husbands are quite honest about this and they proclaim their love very matter of factly.  Others try to deny it – either because they believe what they are saying or they are trying to not to hurt their wives.

Some wives suspect that their husband has strong feelings for the other woman regardless of what he claims.  Some wives do their own detective work and come to this conclusion and others have the other woman telling all about the relationship.  Many worry about what these feelings are going to mean for their marriage.  And this is even more difficult when your husband denies the feelings because you wonder how you are going to deal with this if he won’t even admit the truth.

A wife might have this issue: “the other woman told me about the affair.  If she had not come forward, I might sill not know about it.  My husband tried to deny it at first, but the other woman gave me letters in my husband’s handwriting that were obvious proof, so he finally had to admit it. The problem I have now is that my husband is trying to claim that he really didn’t care for the other woman and he’s perfectly fine with ending the relationship now.  I know that this isn’t true because I have those letters.  Plus, he is moping around here like he lost a limb.  He’s clearly miserable without her.  He says he was only saying what he thought she wanted to hear in the letters and he is moping around because he’s so ashamed of himself.  I asked the other woman about his claims and she says that he is in denial.  She says that he told her that he loved her all of the time. So I feel pretty sure that my husband was and is in love with this woman. But he firmly denies it and he gets mad when I mention it.  Both my husband and the other woman say that the relationship is over.  But I just can not move on until he admits the truth to me.”

Understand That The Husband And Other Woman Have Very Different Motivations: I understand wanting and needing the truth.  But please allow me to point out some things that you may be missing because you are so close to the situation.  The other woman may have her own agenda for painting a picture of love that may be only based on her own point of view.  I am not denying that your husband may have had feelings for her, but he may have seen his feelings very differently than she did.

What “other woman” doesn’t want to believe that the man she is cheating with truly loves her and thinks she is special?  This makes it easier to justify her cheating and of course, it strokes her ego.  So, naturally, she wants to believe that they were deeply in love.

And your husband has his reasons for wanting to downplay those feelings.  He knows that it is over.  And he’s said that he wants to be with you.  What good is it to dwell on the feelings which may or may not have been there?

I understand that you want and deserve the truth. But it is going to be much easier for him to tell you the truth once a little bit of time has passed and things calm down.

Where You Place Your Attention Is Very Important: Right now, it is possible you are devoting too much attention to his feelings for HER when you should be devoting his attention to his feelings for YOU.  It would be different if he wasn’t willing to give her up or the relationship was ongoing.  But even the other woman admits that it is over.  So now, assuming that you are open to saving your marriage, the attention should turn to the feelings between you and your husband.  There should no longer be any place in your lives for the other woman.

If you like, you can explore those feelings once healing has truly begun but right now, things are too fresh and your husband is invested in continuing with his version of things.  He may even completely believe he’s telling you the truth and so he isn’t likely to suddenly change his version of what he believes is the truth because you want him to.

Right now, what matters is what the two of you decide going forward and not what happened in the past.  At least for right now. Because if you consistently focus on the past, then you are more likely to stay there. But if you want to put this behind you and move toward the future, then that is where you must place your focus.

I understand needing to know the truth, but your husband may believe that he has already given you the truth as he knows it. And you may more success getting this through counseling.  Professionals are usually pretty skilled at cutting to the heart of the matter but they can also help you both to deal with it once it comes out.

For now though, I’d place my focus on the two of you and what you want.  As long as the relationship is over, dwelling on the past doesn’t propel you forward. I understand where your head is though.  I used to drive myself crazy wondering about the dynamic between my husband and the other woman.  But it did no good.  And I eventually taught myself to stop.   You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from wives and mistresses (or “other women”) alike who ask about the cheating husband’s behavior during the affair.  One behavior that tends to overlap for both subsets of people is that of crying.  Both the wife and other woman might want to know why they are seeing tears while the husband is carrying out or talking about the affair.

The other woman might say: “the first time that I ever slept with the guy that I am dating, he started to cry.  I was naive enough to think that he was touched by what we shared, but now I have realized that he cries often when we are together.  Recently, his child texted him while he was supposed to be at work.  He was missing his child’s event and was with me instead.  Then he started crying.  Sometimes when he talks about his children or even his wife, he will tear up.  It’s starting to dawn on me that all of this emotion has much more to do with his family than it has to do with me.  But if he’s so broken up about his family, why would he be cheating with someone else?  I do not understand that at all.”

On the flip side, once the affair is found out, you might hear a wife say: “my husband has always been pretty stoic, but we almost can not have a conversation about his affair without him turning into a blubbering mess.  He will try to explain or to give me an answer about the affair, but then he will just start sobbing.  At first, I thought that this was a tactic to just get out of answering my questions.  But sometimes, I will actually catch him staring into space or interacting with the kids and he has tears in his eyes.  This is a bit annoying to me.  I can’t find it in me to feel sorry for him.  If he did not want to feel this kind of pain, then he should not have cheated.  What are the crocodile tears all about it?  Why is he crying all of the time?”

I can only offer my theories.  I’m female and have never cheated on my spouse.  But I know people who have been unfaithful, including my own spouse.  So I think that I have a decent handle on the thought process that goes into this and the feelings that come to the surface afterward.  In my opinion, the tears are so many things rolled into one – they are guilt, shame, disappointment, and fear.  The husband is crying because he knows that he is better than this.  He knows that he has let down the people who he loves the most and involved another human being (the other woman) and brought her down with him.  He is crying because it hurts to look into the face of the family that he has put at risk.  It hurts when you have no answers to give that will make this okay again.  It hurts because you did this when you didn’t have to.  You did this out of nothing but weakness and poor impulse control.

Do you remember when you were a child and were caught doing something that you knew was absolutely forbidden for a very good reason?  You probably cried hot tears of guilt and sorrow.  And when you were carrying out the act, you likely felt a sinking, sick feeling in pit of your stomach because you knew that your actions were very wrong and yet, you still kept doing them.  This is the same feeling that your husband is experiencing now.

I’ve heard people say that the husband is just acting while crying and trying to elicit sympathy.  But frankly, I don’t know many men (other than professional actors) who are so skilled that they can pull off real tears over a long period of time just for show.

Does this excuse him?  Absolutely not.  But if you want to save your marriage, I find this to be a good sign, although it can be hard to watch.  It means that he feels remorse.  It means that he knows that what he did was very wrong.  And it will hopefully also mean that he wants to avoid feeling this type of pain again.  I’m sure that it’s quite embarrassing to be a crying mess in front of both your spouse and the other woman.  This will hopefully be motivation for him to become rehabilitated so that he does not repeat this behavior ever again.

With this said, the wife gets to decide how she wants to react to this.  She may decide that it is too little / too late.  Or she may decide that because of his remorse and his motivation to make this right, she might give him a chance.  It’s important to remember that she is also in a lot of pain.  No one needs to make an immediate choice about the course you want to take.  Since your husband is the one who cheated, he will have to wait for you to decide.  I hope that this article has been helpful.  The tears are usually several negative emotions – guilt, shame, frustration, etc. all tied into one.

I saw a few tears after my husband’s affair.  I certainly shed my own share of tears.  You really are grieving something that has been lost.  But like with any period of grief, eventually you just have to move forward.  You can read about how I did that on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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By: Katie Lersch:  When wives learn about their husband’s affair, many of them think that they’ve taken great pains to make it quite clear that they expect the complete and total truth.  After all, when you are caught in an affair, you’ve been caught telling the ultimate lie.  So if you have any hope at all of saving your marriage, it makes sense that your spouse would expect complete honesty moving forward.

You would think that this is a pretty straight forward concept and yet, in reality, I find that many couples are not clear on EXACTLY what is expected in terms of total honesty.  Many cheating spouses are trying to spare their spouses pain.  So yes, they will try to be truthful when they are asked questions about the affair, but at the same time, they are not going to go out of their way to spill any hurtful details that are not specifically asked about.  Of course, the wife or faithful spouse can take great offense to this and many consider these omissions to be nothing less than lies.

For example, a wife might say: “I am furious with my husband for so many reasons about the affair.  My life feels so different now.  And I’m not sure if we are going to make it, although I would like to try to salvage things for my children.  However, right now I just can not tolerate lies.  I detest lies and liars. And my husband has made me think that he is indeed a liar.  I told him after I caught him in the affair that he must tell me the truth about all things.  I told him that I wanted to know everything.  I felt that he was being somewhat vague on purpose, but he absolutely insisted that he’d come clean with everything.  Well, yesterday I was having lunch with a friend that I haven’t seen in some time.  I confided in her about the affair.  I was hoping that she would support me and commiserate with me once she got over her shock about my husband.  Well, imagine my own shock when she told me that she already knew about the affair.  Apparently, her husband saw my husband with the other woman and confronted him about it.  My husband assured both of them that he was going to tell me about the affair, so they kept quiet, thinking that my husband would confess.   I am so embarrassed that people knew about my husband and did not tell me.  This makes me wonder who else knew and who else is now pitying me behind my back.  Of course, I came home and told my husband off.  I did call him a liar because that is what he is.  He apologized, but insisted that I never specifically asked him if anyone else knew.  Do I have to ask?  Doesn’t common sense dictate that when I tell him that I want the whole truth, that is exactly what I should get?  How do I make him understand that not telling me about these sorts of things is the same thing as lying?”

I understand your outrage.  It had to feel so awful sitting there with your friend and once again feeling as if you were the last to know.  This probably doesn’t help all that much, but what you are going through is extremely common.  A man who wants to have a chance to save his marriage is going to hesitate to offer up information that makes his wife even more angry or humiliated.  He may have suspected that telling you about your friend would just make you more upset at him.  He may have been waiting for the right time to do it, hoping to spare you from getting so much upsetting information so soon.

I am not making excuses for him.  But many men in this situation will tell you that by not just blurting out everything all at one time, they are trying to spare their wife from overwhelming pain and from information overload.  Yes, by keeping some things from you for the time being, he is also sparing himself from your anger. But I don’t think that every man in this situation has selfish motives when he doesn’t immediate tell everything.

That said, sometimes, when you want him to give complete and full disclosure, you will have to spell that out in painstaking detail.  It helps to write down what you most want to know and then present that list to him and tell him to start talking.  Now, I have to disclose that I have done this and it didn’t necessarily give me the relief that I thought.  I wish that I had broken the questions down over time – spread out over days – because it CAN feel very overwhelming and painful to take all of that in.

If you feel that your husband isn’t going to be truthful, I’d recommend doing this with a counselor.  They can press your husband and ask for clarification so that you don’t have to.  And if your need for information is hurting you more than helping you (or you’re trying to take in too much too fast,) they can speak up and tell you.  They’re ultimately trying to help you receive the information that you need in the healthiest way possible.  And we ourselves rarely have the objectivity and restraint to do this for ourselves.

If you don’t like the idea of counseling or your husband won’t go, there are self help books that actually list questions where you can check off and write in his answer so that you don’t have to repeat yourself.  This way, you’ll know what has been covered and you will have a record of his claims.

But to answer the original question, to make him understand that omissions are as problematic as lies, you have to keep reminding him.  With repetition, he will get the message. And if he is serious about saving his marriage, he will begin to comply.

I did have to constantly remind my husband about full disclosure.  But over time, I came to realize that I really was beating a dead horse.  I was asking the same questions over and over because deep down, I was hoping for different and better answers.  I didn’t want to deal with what was in front of me.  All of the questions (and repeated answers) just kept us in the past tense, at least some of the time.  Over time, I just let them go.  I figured that I knew quite a bit and that my focus was best spent on the future.  This realization improved things greatly.  You can read more about that on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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