There’s no question that discussing cheating is an emotionally charged conversation, here's what to expect.
Part 3 of 3
There’s nothing more painful than finding out your spouse has cheated on you. The betrayal and hurt can feel unbearable and seem impossible to overcome. And trying to figure out what’s next if you caught your wife cheating can make your head spin. Do you confront her, confront him, leave, ask for a divorce? The list goes on.
Trying to determine the best next steps if your wife is caught cheating isn’t easy by any stretch and shouldn’t be a decision made in haste. So, before you make the wrong move, continue reading.
So what should you do when your wife is caught cheating? Read the story of Sharon and Robert. Marriage therapist Gail Saltz tells the story of this wife caught cheating in the article, Could You Be Having an Emotional Affair?, published in The Oprah Magazine.
Find out how innocently the affair started when Sharon started working with Todd in part one of this series, A Cheating Spouse - How an Emotional Affair Starts. Then find out some signs of a cheating wife in part two, Cheating Spouse Exposed - Warning Signs of an Emotional Affair.
Now here's what to do when your wife is caught cheating:
Increasingly, I find people are already enmeshed in an affair of the heart by the time they contact me, and they are terribly torn. They have a very hurt spouse but can't bear to lose their "friend." Marital implosion is close at hand. My approach seems like tough love, but I'm convinced it saves a lot of grief. The first and most important task, from which all the other things these clients must do will follow, is to take responsibility for the affair - same as if they'd had a sexual liaison. Denying it or blaming their partner's inattentiveness prevents the couple from reengaging. The only cases where it might not be best to fess up are the rare ones where the partner has no suspicions: Revealing hidden feelings just to absolve guilt is not a great idea.
Second, the affair must end. Yes, it hurts. And no, it's not possible to disengage partway and still be pals. Things get trickier if the infidelity began in the workplace, but all future interaction must be purely professional and kept to an absolute minimum.
Third, I try to help clients unearth the reasons they got over involved. Was their marriage failing? Did they need to build their self-esteem? Were they repeating the pattern of a parent who cheated? To prevent an encore, they must be brutally honest with themselves.
Finally, they have to build back the trust, which is the biggest obstacle to saving the marriage. I'm constantly telling people that it requires a lot of time, openness, and accountability (for example, being clear about whereabouts and coming home right after work).
What I find to be remarkably consistent is that most people don't appreciate the relationship they do have until they're about to lose it. This is what happened with Sharon. When Robert found her e-mails to Todd ("I miss you so much…I can't wait to see you," along with complaints about her home life), he was shattered and wanted a divorce. As soon as Sharon realized her husband might leave her, Todd didn't seem quite as thrilling. But saying goodbye to him, which she ultimately decided to do, was wrenching, and Robert isn't sure whether he can forgive her. The three of us are still working on understanding why the affair happened and whether they can agree to rebuild their relationship.
It's much more difficult to make your way back from a betrayal of intimate feelings than to try to refresh a marriage that may have become flat and distant. When you ignore anxiety-inducing thoughts like "I feel stuck - I wish I could run off and have fun or I feel old and dumpy - if only someone would make me feel young and sexy again," you cannot examine or deal with them in a productive manner. Instead, you unwittingly act them out, with potentially devastating results. Any good relationship takes an investment of time, effort, and emotional energy. What few people want to accept is that we can all become Sharon and Robert, and that marriage, while potentially tremendously gratifying, is always a work in progress.
The short answer is, yes. Many relationships survive cheating, but it takes a lot of work to rebuild the trust that’s been destroyed. And it takes a commitment from the both of you to do so. Yet it can be done.
The big mistake many couples make when they’re trying to make things work again is feeling like they need to try to get back to normal and “get past” the problem as quickly as possible. Cheating leaves scars and they won’t go away by just ignoring them. You can’t pretend it didn’t happen and just put on a happy face, you have to work out the issues that got you here and the fallout that results from the infidelity. It’s not an overnight process and trying to force things to be “normal” will result in resentment, anger, and larger problems down the road.
Dealing with a wife caught cheating is very difficult and complicated. Don’t make the mistake of responding without the expert guidance of a marriage counselor. Also, be careful that your emotions don’t cause you to react in a way that just makes things worse. It’s understandable to feel hurt and angry when you have a cheating wife, but allowing those emotions to affect how you respond is a big, big mistake.
Read how it all started in Part 1: A Cheating Spouse - How an Emotional Affair Starts; what the signs of a wife cheating look like in Part 2: Cheating Spouse Exposed - Warning Signs of an Emotional Affair.
* This is the third of three posts examining a wife caught cheating. Sign-up for our Blog at the bottom of this page and be sure not to miss the other posts about an affair and a cheating spouse (you can get notified by email when the next article is published).
Editor’s note: This post was originally published July 11, 2010 and has been updated with new information for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
There’s no question that discussing cheating is an emotionally charged conversation, here's what to expect.
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I've been married for a little over 6 months to my husband. Our families don't know we're married because we did it for me to have insurance but we're planning a real wedding. We live across the country from each other because of my job and family situation. I love my husband so much, but I found myself missing so much from him. He's not encouraging and supportive of me and makes me feel like I'm nothing more than a convenience. Anyway, I ended up having an affair with a married man that's 12 years older than me. Horrible, I know. I ended up coming clean to him about the whole thing because he'd encouraged me to cheat. But after it became a reality, he decided he didn't like it and called me a cheating w**** and everything else he could think of and now may leave me, which I wouldn't blame him for. But the thing I'm scared of most is that everything would surface and my family would find out about the secret marriage and the affair. What should I do?
Jess, you have a lot going on. This sounds like a very complicated situation. You have several things here that really require more detail and time than this forum provides in order to be of real help. My recommendation would be to find a professional counselor to speak with and help you sort through the multiple issues you are facing. If you would like to speak with me I would be happy to help, and my contact information is listed at the top and bottom of the page. -Dr. Kurt
I am your side and take your comments as positive
My wife and I have been together for 25+ years. We have three children. We are close with an old school friend and his wife, who also have three kids. My friend's wife cheated on him with a co-worker, and he had confided in me how painful it was, but they were trying to work through it. Last Fall while I was away caring for my elderly father my friend contacted my wife wanting to confide in her about his marital problems. My wife had recently lost her job. Long story short, they got together, got drunk and had sex. She tearfully confessed this to me a couple weeks after the fact, and has showed remorse, and asked for forgiveness. We are doing better then ever. My problem is that I want to maliciously wound the dude who made moves on my wife while I was away caring for my father rehabing from surgery. It's been 7 months now since I found out, and I still want to take some kind of diabolical revenge on this jerk. It's overwhelming me. Not sure what I can do and not end up in Prison, but doing NOTHING is not an option
I caught my wife cheating a few days ago. She does not think its cheating as they had not met in person yet. It has been an online thing for 3 months now and there was sexual aspects and emotional aspects, as well as plans to finally meet up and be together ect... He lives in another state that warrants a flight to meet, which is probably why it did not happen yet. However they did plan next month to finally make the trip, which she brought up to me. Essentially this guy was her boyfriend/husband for months and I was not aware or included in any decisions she made or anything you would share with a significant other. Obviously thats what led me to open her phone and expose so many lies she has told me over the past 3 months. I confronted her right away, I wish I took a day to process first. Either way without going too far into it, I am not sure where I am right now. She says now she wants to make our marriage work and she wants to put a real effort in now... However, i can not help but feel she is only doing it because she got caught.
I am not sure if anyone will read this anymore but it feels good to get it out, thanks.