When Your Spouse Claims The Affair Is More Than Just Sex
I sometimes hear from wives who have recently learned of their husband’s affair. Some find out about it well before their husband confesses, and all sorts of scenarios go through their head before they confront him. Many assume that he will he horrified to be caught and will try to minimize the affair. This isn’t always what happens, though. Some husbands will actually maximize the affair – meaning that they will try to build it up or to justify it in some way. Some husbands will even claim to have deep, lasting, and meaningful feelings for the other woman.
A wife might describe it this way, “when I found out that my husband was cheating on me with the woman who teaches our son karate, I could not believe it. Yes, she is younger and she is somewhat pretty. But she is also uneducated and I can’t imagine what she and my husband have to talk about. So my assumption was that this was all about sex. However, any time that I allude to this assumption with my husband, he will get defensive and will tell me that their relationship is centered around ‘much more’ than sex. He says that they will talk for hours and that they actually have a lot in common. He also stresses that this woman cares a lot about my son, which makes me sick. Actually this whole thing makes me sick. It’s as if my once-smart husband has suddenly turned very stupid. Of course it’s about sex, isn’t it?”
You might not believe this, but, in a sense, I don’t believe that it’s all about sex, at least not entirely. And I don’t take this lightly because I’ve dealt with infidelity too. But let me explain. It’s more about the fact that the husband perceives that the affair fills a perceived void. Many wives will feel bad and assume that the void has something to do with them or with the marriage, but this is not always the case. Often, it is a void within him. It’s no coincidence that it’s common for men to cheat as they face the challenges of aging or loss. Simply put, the affair makes them feel better about themselves or like a contender again. It shakes them out of their funk and they come to believe that they feel “alive.” This is all a trick, though. Because once the affair ends, (as it almost always does,) then their life is actually worse off, so they not only have to pick up the pieces, but now they feel worse about themselves because they betrayed those closest to them. I have spoken with men in this situation for my articles and many are quite embarrassed by their behavior (once the affair has been over for a while and they can see things more clearly.) Of course, sometimes when they are right in the middle of it, they can’t see this.
When they are actively caught up in the affair, they will sometimes make it into this special, unique relationship. They do this partly to justify their actions. If they betrayed their family for someone who just wasn’t that great, well then, they are really stupid. But if they betrayed their family for a once-in-a-lifetime relationship, well, that feels a little better.
The truth is, though, an affair doesn’t exist in the reality where most of us live. And you can only shield it from reality for so long. Yes, an affair can feel magical because it exists outside of real life. No one is having to do the dishes or watch the kids or worry about their aging mother. So sure, it feels intense and special. But that can only go on for so long. Once one person has to eventually address real life, the spell is typically broken. It suddenly becomes obvious that this relationship will eventually have the same issues as all relationships. As a result, it becomes obvious that it’s just not worth it.
Look up statistics about the longevity of affairs if you doubt this. The vast majority of them end very quickly and yet, many of those men were also convinced that they were in a special relationship that wasn’t just about sex. But ask them again in a year, and you will often get a different perspective. The truth is, they don’t want to see that perhaps the other woman had ulterior motives or that they looked quite silly in their “special” relationship. They wanted to believe that things were getting better for them.
If you can see it in that way, your husband suddenly looks pathetic rather than defensive. I am not trying to be mean about it, but many wives find that it does help to think of their husband in this way. Sometimes, you have to put aside what he is saying right now because he is reacting to both your anger and his struggles combined. The man you see before you right now is often not the man you saw a year ago or will see next year.
I am not defending your husband or insinuating that his reasons for the affair need to make a difference. Cheating is cheating no matter the cause. And it might be a deal breaker regardless. But I do want to stress that a man who insists that the affair is different is often just grabbing onto a defense mechanism. If he talks truthfully about this in six months, you will often get a very different answer.
Of course, all that most of us wives care about is how this affects us and our day-to-day lives right now. I know that it is frustrating, but usually your husband will change his stance and come back to reality if you just bide your time and focus on yourself for a while (assuming that you are still invested in your marriage.) You can read more about how I did a variation on this at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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