Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Most of the people who reach out to me are women. However, I occasionally hear from men or husbands. I’ve come to believe that many of them are sincere in their requests for information. It must be obvious that my inclination is going to be to empathize with wives. Yet, some men still reach out because they’re looking for information to help their wives (and their marriages) to heal.

A common question from them is something like this: “I made a huge mistake and cheated on my wife a couple of years ago. My wife calls it an affair, but I believe that it was just cheating. I did not consider it to be a long-term relationship. I did not care about the other woman. I did not intend for the cheating to have any meaning or impact on my life. When my wife found out, I very willingly ended things. And I cut off all contact without hesitation. None of this was difficult because I didn’t have that much attachment to the woman or to the affair. So I’m a little surprised that here we are nearly two years later, and my wife is still thinking about the “affair.” She doesn’t even try to hide it. She still asks questions about the relationship and the other woman. She still becomes withdrawn sometimes. She still acts as if she can’t trust me. I’ve stood by her for these couple of years and vice versa. I’ve been faithful. And yet, she still lives in the past sometimes. I don’t understand why she can’t move on. Why is she still thinking about this two years later?”

I will try to answer this as clearly as I can, but I do concede that it is sometimes difficult for cheating spouses to put themselves in the shoes of the faithful spouse. Because doing so can be painful. When you see the world through your spouse’s eyes, you have to admit how much pain your actions may have caused. I bring this up because what I am about to write may be painful in the same way. But I’m going to be honest because, from my own experience, I’ve come to believe that you can’t heal something that you don’t acknowledge. I hope that something I mention here will help to turn the lightbulb on so that you understand what you are dealing with, and hopefully can turn the corner so that both you and your spouse feel more peace and contentment.

Your Wife May Be Still Thinking About The Affair Because She’s Still Struggling To Process It: I find that the spouse who had the affair often underestimates how much it alters the world of the faithful spouse. I know that it is very difficult to put yourself in your spouse’s shoes. But just for a few minutes, please try. The view you have of your life on the day before you find out about the cheating is very different from the view you have once you find out. Because on that day, your whole world changes. You suddenly have to question the marriage you thought you had, and the spouse you thought you had, and the life you thought you had. It can feel as if your whole life was one big lie. This can make it difficult to trust others, and even to trust yourself. You worry that everyone you love has the potential to betray you. Worse, you begin to doubt your own ability to evaluate what is actually happening around you.

Make no mistake. This is an event that can make it feel as though your life is falling down around you and there isn’t much that you can do about it. So of course you’re going to continue to think about the cause of that. You’re trying to protect yourself from allowing this to happen twice, because you don’t know if you could handle this more than once.

Your Wife May Be Ruminating Because Not Enough Improvement Has Taken Place: Now that I’ve disclosed the depressing side of this issue, I want to offer some hope. In my experience, once you’ve healed, you are much less likely to dwell on the affair. You find that you only think about it when something happens to bring your attention back to it. Thankfully, for many of us, this no longer happens all that often.

If your wife is still ruminating, you want to ask yourself if you’ve done enough work to help her turn the corner. Because when you’re not making progress, you have nowhere else to turn your attention other than the negative. You keep running it over and over in your mind because you still aren’t getting any relief.

Ways That You Can Help Your Wife: I know that you want your wife to stop thinking about the affair, but have you ever stopped to consider how painful it is for her to revisit it day after day? I can tell you that with a great deal of confidence that she doesn’t enjoy continuing to think about it. She very likely wishes that she could stop. So what can you do? You can approach her with an offer of help rather than asking why she’s still going on about this. You can listen to her without trying to pressure her or insinuating that she hasn’t made enough progress. Ask her what she needs from you and sincerely listen to her response. Think about her pain rather than your own. I know that you are tired of this, but try to imagine how tired she is of this.

I hope I’ve answered your question in a way that makes many of the possible answers more obvious. She’s still thinking about the affair because it was such a shock and because it knocked her world off its axis. She’s still struggling to right herself and the world around her. Asking yourself how you can help her do this is going to be much more effective than continuing to wonder why she can’t let this go.

If it helps, there’s more about what it takes to move on from an affair once and for all at https://surviving-the-affair.com

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