Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: When someone is cheating, they might think that their worst case scenario is having their spouse find out. But often, it gets even worse than that. And they often figure out very quickly that the worst case scenario is when the wife and the other woman begin talking.

I might hear from a husband who says: “I was the one who confessed my cheating to my wife. I ended the affair and I still noticed that it was affecting my marriage. So I suspected that having this huge lie between us was going to corrode our marriage over time. I decided to come clean because I felt that it was necessary and the right thing to do. Well, my wife found it very important to know who the other woman was. She would not stop asking until I finally told her. I now understand why she wanted this information. She has been calling the other woman. I assumed she did this because she wanted to hear from the other woman that it was over. But that must not be it because she continues to call almost every day. I have asked her to stop, but she won’t. I don’t talk to the other woman anymore. But now the other woman texts me every time my wife calls her. I am not sure what pay off my wife is getting from this but she will not stop. I can’t imagine that it’s making her feel any better. Why does she refuse to stop?”

There are a couple of potential reasons, which I will go over here. And I’ll try to offer some ways that you might attempt to handle this.

Calling Gives Your Spouse A Sense Of Power And Control: I can tell you from experience that when your spouse has an affair, you can feel a big lack of control. It seems as if your spouse is able to do what they want and then say they are sorry and you are left cleaning up the mess. Plus, sometimes, it feels as if you are at the mercy of your spouse to figure out what is going on. Because you can’t rewind and look into the past, you kind of have to hope that your spouse is being truthful with all of the facts that they are giving you. Contacting the other woman may make your wife feel that she is able to reclaim some of that control. She’s able to get information for herself. She doesn’t have to rely on you.

The problem of course is that the other woman doesn’t always tell her the truth. She has her own agenda sometimes.

Your Wife Is Trying To Compare Two Versions Of The Same Story: Your wife may be contacting the other woman to see if her story and your story are the same. Because we all know that there are two versions to every story. By comparing them, your wife is trying to make sure that she is getting as close to the truth as she can possibly can.

They May Be Commiserating About Your Faults: Let’s face it. It’s highly possible that both of these women are quite angry at you. They may look at this situation and decide that you have hurt them both. So they maybe getting together and making jokes at your expense. Or comparing notes. This doesn’t always happen. But it’s not all that uncommon either.

How To Approach Your Wife To Try To Convince Her To Stop: Probably the best thing that you can do to stop this is to give your wife complete and accurate information. She’s less likely to check back with the other woman if she knows that she can trust you to tell her everything that she needs or wants to know.

If the two of you are in counseling (which I highly recommend,) I would also make your counselor aware of this. I can’t imagine that your counselor would not discourage your wife from continuing on this way. It’s very difficult to heal your marriage when a third party is still in it. And, things coming from the counselor are going to carry more weight than things from you. Plus, continuing to talk to the other woman only keeps the issue churning along. Essentially, it keeps your wife ruminating and thinking about this all the time. Less contact with the other woman means less churning thoughts about the affair over and over again. But, a counselor is going to have a much easier time making your wife understand this than you might.

I know that it might be tempting for you to appeal to the other woman to stop taking your wife’s calls. But it’s probably best that you do exactly as you’ve promised – which is cutting off all contact.

I would suspect that over time, this will become old to your wife. Once she figures out that no new information is forthcoming and the conversations aren’t really helping her, she will likely stop. The problem is that this may not happen for a while and in the meantime these conversations may cause a lot of additional damage.

I will admit that there were times that I was tempted to contact the other woman, but I think that I knew it would create a whole new set of problems.  There were enough issues to overcome without adding in that one. You can read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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