What Does My Spouse Think About Me Since I Cheated And Had An Affair?
I sometimes hear from people who are extremely remorseful for cheating on their spouse. They try very hard to express this sorrow to their spouse, but they are often met with resistance and silence. It can be difficult to break through to a spouse who is so angry, so the cheating spouse often wonders if ANYTHING that he is saying is getting through or having an impact.
Someone might explain, “honestly, two months ago I think that if you had asked my wife who her favorite person in the world was, she would have said me. I know that my wife has always respected me and has thought that I am a good person. I feel the same way about her. However, I made the huge mistake of cheating and she found out. When she looks at me now, the expression on her face is completely different. The respect and admiration is not there anymore. I am afraid to ask her how she feels about me now. I worry that like she is going to tell me that I am the scum of the earth. She has not left yet, but I feel like she could leave me at any time. It crushes my soul to think that my spouse will never think that I am a good person. I have talked to my brother about this and he said that if I am patient, she may one day respect me again. Is this true? Because if it were, I can wait as long as it takes. Or is she always going to think that I am a low-life?”
I can’t speak for your wife, but I can speak for myself. I think that the answer to your questions depends in part upon your behaviors and actions moving forward. I can also tell you that a faithful spouse’s perceptions can greatly change throughout this process. For example, after my husband cheated, I reacted in a way that sounds a little like your wife. I thought that the man who I’d been married to for many years no longer existed. I thought that I had misjudged the decent human being who I thought my husband to be. Like your wife, I greatly respected my husband, but I have to tell you that this all came crashing down when he had an affair. I thought that maybe I didn’t know him after all. I thought that the man who I assumed had large amounts of integrity actually had none. For a few months there, I thought that he was a huge liar and a cheat. I worried that I would never be able to trust him again. So yes, my view of him changed considerably.
Weeks went by. Then things started to calm down slightly. He asked me to go to counseling with him. And he showed a great deal of patience and courage during some of those sessions. He made a lot of promises, which I doubted. But he came through with them all. He hung in there even when I tried my best to push him away. In other words, not only did he take responsibility for his actions, but he took responsibility for cleaning up the mess and he just waited patiently for me to respond. He never pressured me. He did get frustrated at times, but he assured me that he was frustrated with his actions, and not with my response to them.
Over time, I had to take my hat off to him because I am not sure if I would have hung in there if the roles were reversed. He was endlessly patient. It was at this point that my respect returned. Eventually, I realized that what I REALLY hated was the situation that he had created, but I did not hate him. I hated what he did, but I didn’t harbor any hated toward him. There is a HUGE difference between the two. I think that you can loathe the affair without loathing the man who created the affair.
At the end of the day, I discovered that my husband was still the same person that he had always been. He’d made a huge mistake, that he had owned up to. But he was still the person who hung with me as my grandfather was dying, who paused his life to care for a sick child, and who worked two jobs while I attended school. One action does not negate these things, although I did not realize this at first. (There’s more about our recovery here: http://surviving-the-affair.com
The point that I am trying to make is this: Yes, your wife might be bitterly disappointed in you right now and she may wonder if she ever knew you at all. But if you conduct yourself with integrity and patience, she may come to learn that you are the same person. If you rise to the occasion and take responsibility for your actions, that does sometimes matter. Standing with her, holding hands, and walking side-by-side during one of the most difficult curves that life might throw your way will often show a couple what they are made of. And that will often bring back some of the respect and admiration. But of course, that has to be earned first. So there is hope. But you have to be willing to have the patience, to do the work, and to be deserving of her respect.
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