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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Question is: What do you do if your wife cheats on you with her own cousin? Do you forgive her or kick her to the curb.........isn't that a rather humiliating thing to have occur?
I have a fairly unique situation and would really love some input. I have been married for 21 years. I thought it was a happy marriage. Then I lost my 25 year old son to drowning in our bathtub. He had been staying with us temporarily after a serious head injury. Within a few months of his death my husband began an affair with a local bar fly who used to proclaim to be my friend. I admit that I didn't respond well to my son's death. I isolated myself, drank too much and just wanted to die. But what I really wanted was for my husband, my best friend, to show he cared. To talk to me. To hold me. To let me know I wasn't alone. Instead, he went out to the bar several times a week and was giving her OUR money and spending time with her. They ultimately ended up in the sack together. When the truth came out I had been sober for many months yet found out he was still carrying on with her even after I entered treatment. I suspected something for months and asked him many times but as is par, he lied. I have such anger at him for first abandoning me during the worst pain a mother can endure and then making it worse by deliberately inflicting the second worse pain a woman can have within a year! I feel it would be understandable if I just went crazy. She has obviously dumped him and now he is claiming that he is sorry and wants to make things work. How can I possibly believe crap he says now? It is the first time that he screwed around on me that I know of. But....he does very little to repair this damage. I'm ready to dump this loser.
Had to give a womans response here. If you've been married for a while it's hard to keep up that "orignal" flame and appreciation for your wife..and visa versa for a husband. I think all too many times it boils down to us women not feeling appreciated and wanted by our husbands/partners. Then someone gives us attention we desperatly need to feel alive and attractive again, and many times crossing the line occurs. I'm not saying this is right or even forgivable..that's up to the individual couples, but I am saying this is how affairs gets started more times than not.
My wife and I have been married for two years this month. Since we got married she had never really wanted sex. She says that just cuddling is much better. I have seen no changes in her until this last Friday night. She had been a wonderful wife, we are looking to buy a house and all is right with the world. Friday night she started acting very strange. She usually just lays her cell phone down on the table or anywhere really, but Friday she started keeping it with her, and she was texting all through the night. I got up early and while she was sleeping, I looked at her text messages. I was just blown away to find out that she was starting an affair with her married supervisor. There were no texts between them on Sunday, so I thought she had come to her senses, but monday morning she was texting a friend and told the friend that they had both gotten throw away trak phones to use do that his wife and I wouldn't see the texts. She has no clue that I know about it, and I am at a loss for what I should do. Do I let it go for a while? Do I confront her? Do I confront them both? How should I handle this?
Robert, These situations getting really complicated really fast. As soon as you have this set of questions answered you'll have a new set of questions. Find a professional counselor to guide you through this because you're most likely going to need some ongoing support. I don't have the space here to explain everything, but I can say to focus on your wife, not the other guy. Your problem is with her, not him. -Kurt
You may be an LMFT and what not but you are wrong!!! Confront her ASAP. STOP this b4 its too late. And YES Kurt the problem is with him too. To many times I hear "take two to tango" Or shes the slut that spread her legs. No if left alone and or laws were in place the home wrecker would have less chance to ruin peoples lives. They need to be held accountable. In my book castrated. YES I said that! They are an evil that needs to be eliminated. They waltz into peoples lives, then force the spouse....the victim to have to deal with the pain. I never asked to be hurt. Then the home wrecker walks away? Not even an ass beating because the law says I cant? B.S. in my book kill em!
Mike, "They waltz into peoples lives, then force the spouse....the victim to have to deal with the pain. I never asked to be hurt." You're exactly right. But a hard truth about life is that we all have pain come into our lives that we have to deal with but never asked for. How we choose to deal with it is where we have to focus our energy because that's the only part we have control over. I understand your anger and hope you find a way to work through it without causing yourself more heartache (that's the point of this article). -Kurt
I have been there and understand your feelings towards "the other man", but he is not the one you are in the relationship with. If your partner can't rebuke the advances of othe rpeople, she is ultimately responsible for the impact on your relationship, not the man she chooses to cheat with. Trust me, nothing you could do to him is going to make you feel better about your relationship.
I caught my wife with her latest affair partner, in January 2013. I just wanted him to take her with him but found out he was also married. He thought I just needed an encouragement to just keep my mouth shut. I had just come home from three years of rehab, from MRSA in my spine, I was leaning on my cane hard and as I walked past he swept it, started laughing and told my wife what a pathetic looser. I did not focyuus on my wife, everything narrowed to a place that said this man was going to be shown what a looser was as my cane fractured his scull after flying across my living room, I remember my wife grabing my arm a few minutes latter screaming I was killing him, every time he even got a few of hits wits back I flattened him again yelling who is the looser now. I ended up in a stress center for two weeks, went home and decided I was taking total control of my home and marriage, I forced the issue of sex on her after she kept me from a marital life for decades, yet allowed another to have her. I decided I was going to have my rights as a husband.
She had promised my father, mother and my fathers friend she would go to a political fund raiser that evening, And I decided they needed to start knowing what it was like to have her not keep promises to them as she had not to me for decades. I left her without a stich on, hurting and crying that I have become a brut.
Went and cried that I had taken liberties after she had said no, I threw the ADA the journals she had kept since we started dating and told her to decide who was the most damaged here. She told my wife I had raped her once, with the help of my father she had kept me as a slave for 31 years.
What I did was in revenge, I admit it, she is also free to put her feet on the road and pick a direction, The ADA said I proved that my wife has only taken from the marriage, returned nothing for what she took so she should is she seeks a divorce walk away with what she gave, nothing!