Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: When your spouse cheats on you, one of the biggest problems you will need to overcome is processing the fact that your spouse had sex with someone else. Not only does this bring about a bunch of unsavory mental images, but it can sabotage your sexual confidence and seriously harm your own sex life – should you choose to resume it.

Many faithful spouses are curious about the sex with the other person. Many are tempted to ask for details. But most intuitively know that it’s a slippery slope. Still, it’s hard to willingly remain naive about the whole thing. But you often question if this knowledge is going to help or hurt.

A wife might say: “honestly, it is not like my husband to want to start a new relationship. I would not have pegged him of all people as a cheater. He has a hard time forging relationships with anyone. He’s very much an introvert. And for the most part, I have always been his closest friend. So the only reason that I can figure he cheated is for the sex. And I’d suspect the sex must have been pretty good because by nature my husband is not a risk taker. I have been flirting with the idea of asking him what was so great about the sex. Because I really want to know. But I’m honestly scared that he will start to tell me how wonderful it was and go in graphic detail. I know that this would be very painful. But I feel like I have to know what I am dealing with. Should I ask him if the sex was all that great?”

I understand why you want to ask, but I sense that you already know that the answer may be more trouble than it is worth. If someone cheated and it was more than a one night stand, it’s a decent bet that there was some pay off that brought them back more than once. Sometimes the pay off is sex. Other times, it is more emotional in nature. However, if the sex was a bad experience, then it’s less likely that he would have repeated it.

People often assume that affairs are all about sex, but I don’t believe that. Not exactly. I believe affairs are often a response to stress or crisis. There are usually an attempt to deal with something that a man is trying to avoid dealing with. In a sense, it’s an effort to run away from aging, or self doubt, or anxiety. Sure, it helps that sex is involved. And people will often fool themselves into thinking it’s all about the sex or that the sex is so great. But this is just a way to justify it or to keep it going.

The thing is, once you start to get details, you are able to more accurately paint a vivid mental picture. Once this picture is there, it’s extremely difficult to remove it. And once you have it, you begin to doubt every sexual encounter you’ve ever had with your spouse – or are going to have in the future.  So now in addition to the trust issues, and the hurt, and the resentment, you’re adding sexual issues onto the mix. I know it’s hard to avoiding asking for details about the sex, but I believe that this is the best thing to do because otherwise, the result is very hard to overcome.

Another consideration is this. What are his options for a response? If he told you that no, the sex was awful, would you really believe him? Most of us wouldn’t. As soon as we got a “no,” we’d start pestering him for the details. We’d start pushing for a different answer. And as soon as he tells us yes, then something awful has been unleashed.

It truly is a no win situation. I personally believe it’s better to go under the assumption that there was an obvious pay off and that sex may well have been a part of it – but it’s a part in a complex puzzle that must be overcome. Because when you get vivid details, you tend to cling and dwell. I tended to obsess. And you don’t want to give yourself yet one more item to cause pain.

You can already have a fairly reasonable assumption without needing the graphic details. But I think it’s overly simplistic to think that a man cheated simply because the other woman was a master in the bedroom. It’s often just not that simple.

In my own situation, every time I wanted sexual details, I would tell myself that this would only delay my healing progress. And I would know that once I knew, I may not want to have sex with my husband ever again. I also knew that although I didn’t plan to have sex with him any time soon, I didn’t want to destroy that possibility for the future. So I decided that the short term plan was to determine if I wanted to save my marriage. And, if I decided that I did, I was going to make sure to build a strong and stable marriage and I was going to work on making the sex good enough that neither of us were worried about the other woman.This plan did eventually work. But there were some hard times. Still, I have no doubt that the times would have been harder if the sexual details became an issue. You’re welcome to read more about how I juggled all of this on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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