Why Does My Husband Say He Doesnt Love Me After His Affair?
By: Katie Lersch: I often hear from wives who are confused as to why their husband is suddenly claiming not to love them any more after his affair has been discovered. I recently heard from a wife who said, in part: “the affair is still pretty fresh. I only found out about three weeks ago. And I am in such pain. I’ve been repeatedly asking my husband why he had an affair. For a while, he kept telling me that he doesn’t know. But yesterday, he finally blurted out ‘because I don’t love you.’ This hurts so much, but it also confuses me because, just three days ago, he was proclaiming his undying love for me and begging for my forgiveness. And, three months ago, we closed on a home that we are having built. Why would a man who doesn’t love his wife make plans for the future? And why would a man who doesn’t love his wife repeatedly tell her that he does while asking for her forgiveness? None of this makes any sense. I’m not saying that we didn’t have problems in our marriage that contributed to the affair. But I don’t believe for one second that he doesn’t love me. Why would he claim that he doesn’t?”
There are many potential reasons that a husband might claim he doesn’t love you after his affair. I will go over some of them in the following article.
Your Husband Might Say He Doesn’t Love You After Cheating Or Having An Affair As A Defense Mechanism: Many husbands know full well that what they have done is terribly wrong and that they deserve your full wrath and extreme anger as a result. They don’t look all that forward to this process, even though most realize that they were in the wrong and this is pretty much all their fault.
Still, they sometimes want to avoid your looks of disappointment, your continuing questions, and your potentially telling him that you can’t love him or continue on with the marriage anymore. So, he figures he will beat you to the punch. If he can proclaim that he doesn’t love you before you can tell him the same, then he feels a greater sense of control.
He May Not Have An Answer For You As To Why He Cheated. He May Feel Like Not Loving You Is A Reason That You Will Not Question: Many husbands aren’t being completely untruthful when they tell you that they aren’t quite sure why they cheated. Often, one reason that they cheat is because of personal issues, flaws, or disappointments that they just don’t want to (or can’t) face. In that sense, they are almost in denial. So, when you ask them what would make you do something like this or what in the world they were thinking, sometimes they truly do not an answer for you that is going to make any sort of sense. And so, they cling to the one thing that is the most likely to get you to stop asking questions – the claim that they no longer love you. Even if this isn’t true, they might hope this declaration stops you from continuing to ask or to look too closely at them. In a way, he’s hoping that this stops you in your tracks and inspires you to stop pushing.
Sometimes A Husband Will Tell You That He Doesn’t Love You After His Cheating Or Affair Because He Is Shifting The Blame Onto You: Believe it or not, dealing with the aftermath of the affair can be somewhat painful to the man who cheated. It can be very difficult to analyze, admit to, and then answer for his behavior. Sometimes, in order to avoid this discomfort, a man will become defensive. Because it can be uncomfortable and painful to take full responsibility for such horrible and dishonest behavior, a man will look for a way to shift the blame. Sometimes, men or husbands will give you the line that you didn’t understand them and weren’t there for them. Other times, they’ll just proclaim that they didn’t love you as this excuse possibly makes more sense than any other – even if they (or you) don’t fully believe this.
He Might Actually Think Or Believe He Doesn’t Love You (At Least For Now) Often, a man has to alter his thinking in order to carry out cheating or an affair. I often hear comments like “the husband that I know would never cheat.” Or “the man that I loved had integrity and wasn’t a liar or a cheat which is why I don’t understand why he did this.” And it’s for reasons like these that men often have to put up defense mechanisms to quiet those doubts and those feelings of guilt that are constantly plaguing them during this process. As the result, they will sometimes attempt to close themselves off to those things which used to matter a great deal to them. They might back away from old friends, their jobs, their kids, or even you because remaining in close contact while they are being so dishonest is very difficult.
So they may actually convince themselves that they are happier or more themselves while they are cheating. They might actually think that they’ve developed loving feelings for the other woman. They might tell themselves that for the first time they are happy, thinking about themselves first, and living the lifestyle that they have wanted all along. And since you are part of their old life, they may try to distance themselves from you and proclaim that they don’t (or perhaps never did) love you.
If there’s any silver lining in all of this it’s that usually, with some time, many men do eventually realize how flawed their thinking and their actions truly were and they begin to see things more clearly. It’s not at all uncommon for them to later realize that they do in fact love you and they did in fact make a colossal mistake. Sometimes, this realization comes too late and sometimes, their wives are willing to give them one more chance to make things right. But there really are countless reasons that a man might claim that he doesn’t love you after an affair and many of these reasons turn out to be invalid or just not true.
My husband didn’t necessarily claim he didn’t love me after his affair, but he did initially make underhanded comments that implied that the affair was partially my fault. With the passage of time, and with my making it very clear that I would not tolerate this kind of blame shifting, he eventually backed off of that stance and became more himself. After a lot of work and healing, our marriage did recover after his affair and is pretty fulfilling now. If it helps, you can read more about how we healed on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com/
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