Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Many wives dealing with infidelity have countless questions about their husband’s affair. Not surprisingly, many of them are unsatisfied with the answers that they are receiving and the resistance that they are meeting when they ask these questions. 

You might hear a comment like, “I deserve answers about his affair. There are many details that I want to know and many questions that I have. But, I doubt that he’s telling the truth, and it’s like pulling teeth to get any decent response. How can I ask the right questions in the right way to find out what I need to know?” I will try to answer these things in detail in the following article.

Wait Until You Can Be Calm And Define Which Questions Are The Most Important To You. (Know That Your Responses Will Potentially Influence Future Answers:) Finding out that your husband has been unfaithful is a huge blow that can send you reeling. To this end, you will generally want to begin filling in the blanks almost immediately. It’s completely natural to want to know who she was when this happened, how long the affair lasted, who knew, whether it’s still going on and whether he loved her. 

These are probably the most common questions that are asked.

But, if you fling these out all at once in the heat of the moment, what you get is sort of verbal dodgeball. You’re flailing accusations and anger, and he’s doing his best to think quickly and deflect things as best as he can. 

Things are typically moving so quickly that neither of you is really processing what is happening or which answers are coming forth. And, although he doesn’t mean to, he’ll sometimes tell you what “sounds right” rather than what is really true.

Although I know that it can be very difficult, it can help this process a lot if you can take the time to define which questions are the most important to you. These are the questions you know that you are going to dwell on if you don’t get them answered to your satisfaction. 

You’re going to ask these first because sometimes a husband’s patience will become short when he’s having to disclose things that he would rather not. It really can help to write the questions down. 

Once emotions start running high and the conversation switches subjects, it’s easy to forget some of what you wanted to say.

You might want to start by telling your husband that you’re going to do your best to be calm so that you can both get through the exchange without emotions causing an abrupt end. 

Tell him that you need these answers to help with your assessment of the situation so that you’re better able to decide where you want to go from here. Tell him that his honesty is vital to begin restoring the trust. Continuing to lie to you is going to be a strong indicator that he is not serious about righting this wrong.

Once these things are said, begin asking your questions. Try to let him finish his response before you interrupt in anger are indignant. Because if he feels overly judged and criticized, he’s going to clam up or walk away, and then you will still have those questions you need answered. 

Remember that your first criterion is to get those answers for your own well-being. You can debate the rest later, once you have the information that you need.

Consider Skipping Over The Questions To Which The Answers Might Deeply Wound You Or Won’t Matter Anyway: I’m speaking from experience, and I certainly don’t make any judgments when I say that women whose husbands have had an affair tend to obsess over the small details that don’t really matter to the situation. 

However, these things appear to matter very deeply to us. We want to know those small issues like what type of lingerie or perfume she wore, where they met if they had pet names for one another, what was her job, or was she smart or funny?

This list can go on and on. And sometimes, a husband will patiently try to answer these questions, until he realizes that the answers seem to only make you more and more angry and make you retreat from him even more. 

Over time, he learns to zip his lips as a form of self-preservation. Know that if you continue to ask the questions that cause pain and don’t really matter, you run the risk of him closing off this process altogether.

Always try to ask yourself if what you’re asking is going to help you heal or will help you accurately evaluate the situation to feel better. Because many times, this information is only going to make you feel worse and is only going to lead you to have more issues that you want to address. Sometimes, it can become an endless and destructive cycle that just feeds on itself and gets you nowhere.

What I Consider The Most Important Questions That You Need To Know About Your Husband’s Affair: I absolutely understand why you have the inquiries that you do. But, looking back with a bit of distance, it’s my opinion that the most important questions have to do with moving you forward toward a healthier future rather than keeping you stuck in the past.

Often, the things you really need to know (assuming you are still interested in your marriage) are things like: where was our marriage vulnerable, and where can we fix it? How can we safeguard our marriage from going through this again? How can we reconnect and restore the trust? How can I restore my self-esteem so that I don’t always have these doubts that sabotage me? And, how can we craft a new marriage so that we are not living in the past?

Admittedly, there are a lot of important inquiries here. And, you do deserve answers. But, it’s so important to prioritize and focus on those things that move you forward in a healthy way rather than ensuring that you remain in pain.