Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: If you are a wife who is struggling to find her way after her husband has cheated on her, I feel that you and I are somewhat kindred spirits.  I feel pretty certain that I have some understanding of how you feel and I’d be pretty comfortable guessing that one of your biggest wishes right now is to just to feel somewhat normal in your day-to-day life and in your marriage.

You want to look at your husband and feel confident in his feelings for you and in his commitment to you.  But this can be very difficult if he is not acting in the way that he used to act.  I can tell you with full confidence that in the weeks and even in the months following a husband’s affair, we wives watch our husbands extremely closely.  We analyze everything he says, everything he does, and even those things that he doesn’t do or doesn’t say.

So when we notice a change in his showing of affection toward us, we worry. And we desperately want to know if this is normal and what it could all mean. A wife might have a concern about her husband’s affection level.  She might say: “my husband has ended his affair.  I know this for sure and I do not have any doubts about this.  He is doing most everything that I ask of him. But the affection is just not there.  He always used to stroke my face, rub my hair, and hug me.  This wasn’t planned or asked for.  He just did it because he seemed to want to express his feelings for me and I always loved that about our marriage.  We were always very demonstrative with our affection – always touching.  I always felt that by doing this, we were staying close and giving our kids a good example of how to share feelings for those you love.  Unfortunately, my husband never does these things anymore. There is no more touching. And if there is, I am the one doing it.  Often, I will reach out and grab my husband’s hand in the hopes that he will follow my lead and show more affection.  He does not.  I have mentioned this to him.  I have told him that his lack of affection for me makes me think that he is not attracted to me or doesn’t want to be close to me.  He says that neither of these things are true.  He says that he is often reluctant to show me affection because he fears rejection.  But I think that there is more to it than this.  I think it says something about his attraction and commitment.  Is what I am seeing normal?”

In my experience, it is.  And honestly, what your husband has told you – that he fears rejection – is extremely common too, and may be one hundred percent valid.  From what I’ve experienced and seen in other marriages, in the weeks and months following the affair, the spouses can almost be circling one another, afraid to act, watching and waiting for the other person to take the lead.  This can be especially true of the cheating spouse. My husband and I circled one another like vultures, quite frankly.

The Doubts Your Husband Might Have:  Husband express the following when they write to me.  A husband may say that he often doesn’t know how you really feel about him and how receptive you truly are.  If he tries to initiate affection, are you going to be angry? Defensive?  Are you going to think that he is genuine or will you think that he is only trying to get back into your good graces?  Are you going to reject him so that things are incredibly awkward between you?  Or you going to reject him to get back at him?

One very common thing that happens for both people is that they wonder (and they worry) about what the other person is feeling.  They assume that there is anger. They worry that there might not be any love. And they worry that they are the only one who is having these troubling thoughts.

Quite honestly, your spouse often has the exact same worries that you do.  Neither of you wants to feel as if you are the only one who cares and that you are the only one who feels affection.  So understandably, you hold back.  Much of the time, both people are waiting for the other one to be the initiator.  And when this doesn’t happen, people can assume that their spouse is not feeling love or affection when this isn’t true.

What Happens Next? Well, you can have patience and you can promise yourself that you are not going to just assume things.  You can continue to show affection to your spouse and you can be receptive when he shows you affection, so that over time he feels more safe doing so.

And you can try to accept the fact that there is bound to be some awkwardness in this process.  Until time has passed and work has been done, neither person knows where they stand, both people feel fear, and both people can hold back on their feelings and on their affection until it feels a little more safe to do so.

This feeling of safety often comes with time and it happens more frequently as you make progress in your healing.  It often doesn’t make a lot of sense to put more pressure on your spouse about it, as this can make the awkwardness worse and mean that you get less affection instead of more of it.

During my own recovery, I was constantly worrying that my husband didn’t really still want me.  Neither of us were very affectionate.  And most of that was because of fear.  In time though, we got through this.  Today, we are both very affectionate. You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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