Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: If you are a wife who is dealing with a cheating husband or an affair, I can reasonably guess that you’ve spent a lot of time lately trying to figure out what your husband is thinking and what has motivated his actions. This can be true even when the affair is over. If your husband abruptly declares the affair over and leaves any and all shreds of a relationship with the other woman, you can certainly ask yourself why.

Is it because he is caught? Is it because he has chosen you and wants to save your marriage? Is it because that the discovery of the affair has made it less exciting? Is it because the other woman broke it off? If you have never been through this yourself, all of these questions might sound a bit silly to you. But if your husband has had an affair, I’d suspect you’ve asked yourself at least one of these questions and maybe many of them. I know that I did.

One of the questions that I get asked a lot is why the husband abruptly breaks off the affair as soon as the wife finds out. Someone might say: “after doing a little digging about my husband’s affair, I was horrified to learn that it had been going on for almost nine months. The first couple of months were really just flirtation. It didn’t seem to be too serious then. But at around month three, the other woman started to demand more of commitment. She started to want my husband to tell her that he would one day leave me once our kids could handle it. From looking at the texts and emails, it is obvious even to me that my husband was reluctant to do this. But she kept pushing. And finally he relented. At around month six, my husband actually tried to break things off with the affair. He never mentioned me. But he told her that he did not want to break up his family because of the kids. That’s better than nothing, I guess. But the other woman would not let it go. She intensified her campaign to get his undivided attention. That worked for a while, but from the tone of the communication, it does appear that for the last couple of months, my husband was not as enthusiastic as he once was. Still, he kept right on going with the affair. He kept right on lying to me. Until I caught him. I can literally look at the communications and I can see that on the day I confronted him, he literally immediately cut it off. And although she’s tried to goad him into communication, he has ignored her. I am glad of this, but I do not quite understand it. And I don’t quite get why he would hold on to the affair for all of this time and then drop her the second that I found out. Because he still had the kids and myself to think about for all of those months. And not just on the day that I caught him.”

I get your confusion. But, at least the way that I see it, when a man is caught in his cheating, all of a sudden, many unpleasant realities become impossible to ignore. Suddenly, he realizes that he is not going to get away with this. He realizes that he won’t be able to fix this issue on his own and have it just go away without your finding out. (Because this is what many men hope – that one day they will end the affair and no one will be hurt because no one will find out.) He also realizes that despite his hopes, you are VERY hurt by the affair and very affected. In short, he realizes that his plan didn’t work and now he is going to have to pay some very dear consequences for his actions.

And suddenly, what is truly important becomes 100% apparent. Yes, he’s been flirting with this separation from the other woman all along. He’s been trying to back out of the affair. But now a real sense of urgency emerges because now he is on the verge of loosing everything. And he has the very abrupt and dramatic revelation that none of this is worth it. The affair isn’t worth the risk to those people he truly cares about. And finally he can say that he doesn’t care what tactics the other woman uses. Because he is really and truly done. There is no going back because now you know and you are going to hold him accountable if he continues on with the relationship.

In short, he has had to choose between the hope of saving his marriage and keeping his family or the affair. And he has chosen you. Of course, you also have a choice. His choosing you doesn’t mean that you have to choose him. You can weigh your own options as you watch his behavior, get more information, and gauge your own feelings.

But I hope that I have answered the question. Much of the time, the husband drops the affair and the other woman abruptly because he sees the writing on the wall and he sees his choice. And there is no need to delay. He knows that his choice is his family.

My husband chose his family also.  I wish I could tell you that things magically fell into place.  They didn’t.  We had to fight for our marriage.  But in the end, we recovered.  And we are still a family now.  I have never regretted that decision. You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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