Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I often hear from wives who are gearing up to meet with or question the woman that their husband cheated with.  They often want to know how they should act or what they should ask her.  They often will rehearse for, plan out, and play out this meeting in their mind long before it ever happens.   They hope that having this conversation will give them some kind of closure or will mean that the woman goes away for good. They want for her to know that there’s a real person with feelings who is actually married to the man she was carrying on with.

I recently heard from a wife who had planned to approach the other women at a place where she knew this person frequented and was going to be.  She said in part “what should I ask this woman and how should I say it?  I want to know why she did this and want to compare her story with my husband’s story so that I really find out the truth. I want to know how she could do this to my family and what she was thinking.  I want to know what my husband told her about me and if he was lying to her also.  What can I say to find out the truth about all of this?  And how can I make her answer me directly?”  I’ll try to address these concerns in the following article.

What You Need To Understand Before You Question The Other Woman: I understand what you are probably trying to accomplish with this meeting.  You want answers and you don’t trust your husband to give you truthful ones.  You suspect that your husband is embellishing the truth either to spare you pain or to make himself and his actions look a little better than they actually were.

So you want to demand the truth from the other person who knows it – the other woman.  But here’s what you need to understand.  Many times, we assume that she is going to just come out with the truth, but I have to tell you that this rarely happens in the way that you want it to.

Think about it. She has just as many reasons to embellish the truth as your husband does (if not more) and she will often package things to make her less responsible and your husband more so.

She often doesn’t really have any reason to want to help you save your marriage or to give you closure.  Just like you, she will often be concerned about her own needs, her own self esteem, and her own well being.  So anything she tells you will often be meant to help her own cause rather than to help yours.

And sometimes, she’s invested in out and out hurting you rather than helping you. She has her own agenda and she often won’t take kindly to your accusations and questions.  I know that you are hoping that she will give you the information that you need.  But if you ask yourself what is her incentive or motivation to do so, you’ll see that the answer is often that she has none.

So any questions that you ask have to be carefully considered and asked in such a way that she has no reason to lie or become defensive.  Because if she does, your objective isn’t met.

Ask Yourself What You Are Really Hoping To Learn From Questioning Her And Then Determine The Best Way To Get The Results You Want:  My suggestion for determining any questions that you want to ask the other woman is to first ask yourself what you really and truly want.  What are you hoping to learn or get from this meeting?

I can tell you what many women are hoping for.  They are hoping that this conversation helps them feel better and that it gives them a clearer picture of what truly happened and whether it continues to happen.   They want to know what they are up against.  They want to look her in the eye and let her know that she can’t continue to cheat with someone’s husband and not have to face the consequences.

And the best to approach to getting these things will sometimes depend on what you have decided about your marriage. If you are 100 percent sure that you are done with her, your husband, and your marriage then what is the point of continuing on with this and allowing this meeting to cause you more pain?  If you just want to have your say, understand that she will want to have hers also, more than likely

And, if there’s some possibility that you might want to save your marriage,  then allowing her into your life, or opening yourself up to doubts and  insecurities as the result of meeting with her, will often not be your best call.

Ask yourself if there’s a more reliable or healthy way to get these answers.  Which of either of them knows you better, is more invested in your well being, and has the information that you want?  Often, the answer is your husband, although I know that this isn’t what you want to hear.

The point is, I really recommend taking a very hard look at your motivation and asking yourself what you truly are trying to accomplish before you ask any questions because this allows you to at least keep your focus on to make decisions based on what is best of you.

If You Just Have To Question Her, Here Are What I Think Are The Most Important Things To Know:  I fully realize that even though you might see the points that I making have some validity, you still might very much want to question her.  If this is the case, I urge you to keep it short and sweet or even to consider doing this in writing so that she does not have any chance to engage you or to attempt to make things worse by saying something that you can’t pretend that you never heard.

In my mind, the most important question to ask her is if the affair is over.  In truth, this is really what wives want to know the most.  And this is a simple yes or no answer.  Most wives also want to know if she is going to back off while you are trying to save your marriage or if she is someone who is going to continue to be in your life.

Now, many women will want to ask the why or how type questions.  Examples are: “why did you cheat with my husband?”  Or “how did you and my husband carry out the cheating and get away with it?” Another example is “how did my husband convince you to cheat with him? What did he tell you about me?”

I understand why you want to know these things, but before you ask these questions, make sure that you are prepared to know the answers and ask yourself if you are willing to validate them with your husband.  Because, as I said, this person is likely not invested in helping you heal.  She’s more likely invested in helping herself (even if she isn’t aware of this or isn’t trying to hurt you) and her answers are likely going to reflect this.

In short, my advice is to limit yourself to the questions that help you heal and move forward rather than blurting out the questions to which the answers might hurt you more or delay your moving forward.

I know that this is probably just one issue that you are dealing with, but always put your healing first. If it helps, you can check out my blog that explains how I healed in my own situation.  There are also some very good free resources on this blog.

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