Does my spouse love their affair partner?

This question comes up quite a bit and with good reason. Especially if your wife was the one who cheated. Many women, like my wife, have to believe that they love someone to have sex with them. Even in a fantasy like an affair, they allow their heart to “love” so that they can justify their sex with the other person.

Further, women give sex to get that emotional, feel-good feeling that they’re looking for from an affair.

Today, my wife opened up to me about her affair partner even more. 

I am very intuitive about my wife. We’ve been married for 18 years and no one knows her like I do. Since finding out about their affair, I have never heard her say a negative word about her Affair Partner (AP) named Mark.

I mean nothing. Now that we are over a month from “D-Day” I am starting to get more details. Her sorrow and shame is starting to grow as the reality of what she actually did is settling in. So during those moments, I am hearing more and more about her affair, her feelings and her attraction to this other man.

You see, before this affair, I was my wife’s one and only sex partner. She was a virgin when we got married. So, I know that this has to be deeply affecting her. Perhaps with other women, it isn’t such a big deal, but I know it is for her.

I asked her today if she was still grieving the relationship with Mark. Her answer, without hesitation, was “yes.” I will tell you below whether that bothers me or not. I also asked her if she wasn’t with me, would she want to be with him? She said that she would. She said it would be most convenient to be with him.  Keep in mind, he’s married with four children.

I say this to tell you that the deep fantasy in her mind may last much, much longer and I have to be prepared for that. In her mind, it would still be okay to be with this man — even though he has a family and a wife. She told me that she really had feelings for him.

Does this bother me? Right now, not really. I guess that when you’ve been through the most devastating news of your life, it is very difficult to be bothered by what was already true during the affair. Here are some simple truths behind women cheating on their husbands. Accept them because you really can’t change them or do anything about them.

  • She was attracted to him
  • She thought about sex with him LONG before having sex with him.
  • It didn’t just happen accidentally
  • She has “real” feelings for him which will last long after the affair. Heck, they may never go away.
  • She will always remember — most likely fondly — how he treated her and the time they shared together.
  • She already pictured a future with him even though it would mean giving you up.
  • She probably told him that she loves him.
  • She won’t feel sorrow for it all at once. This will come in increments over time.

What can you hold onto during this tumultuous time? 

I hold onto this fact. I KNOW who I am. I know that my decisions are based on values that I hold sacred. While the entire world goes crazy, doesn’t remain faithful, does stupid stuff, I will hold onto my integrity, my honesty and my ethics. I will NOT lose those, no matter what other people do — including my own wife.

Knowing WHO YOU are is so vitally important. I actually had a revelation the other day and had the happiest day since March 20, 2018. That revelation is that what she does or did wasn’t my choice, and I didn’t have any say in it. Thus, I will not and won’t feel any shame for her actions and behaviors. Those are hers and hers alone.

As her husband and best friend, I will be here for her. I will love her. And I forgive her. I may never trust her again and our marriage may or may not be reconciled. But I will offer those three things to her to help her heal from this. After 18 years of marriage and three children, she deserves that. Even though I didn’t deserve what she did to me.

Hold tight to your morals

Your morals, your character and your values are what you have. Those are things that you have direct control over. You do NOT have direct control over other people and their behaviors. So, in this time, hang on to what YOU have rather than worrying about what others have or don’t have.

Read this quote from Billy Graham. Leave the questions of your spouse to them for now until they’re ready to open up to you. Once they’re ready, they will talk. Let them. Don’t take it personally. Don’t get upset. Don’t get angry. Forgive them. Not for them, but for you. Bitterness will kill you.

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.

~ Billy Graham

The Deathblow To Marriage

Having an affair is a deathblow to a marriage. As a matter of fact, it has a high possibility of being the final nail in the coffin so to speak.

I was reading this article today on Focus on the Family’s website. The author is a wife who cheated on her husband and subsequently got divorced. (She describes the divorce here) As a husband who has been cheated on, this article resonates with me. The author, Cheryl, says this:

“I quickly developed a deep emotional connection with a man I barely knew”

You know, that kind of sums up the sheer pain that the faithful spouses go through in all of this. Our wife has shared intimate emotions and intimate sexuality with a complete stranger. And for no good reason. I mean, all cheaters have their “reasons” but affairs don’t even mimic dating. In dating, my wife and I were cautious with our hearts, our emotions, and our physicality. We waited for all three. We spent time with one another and learned about one another. I remember that we didn’t kiss for about 60 days after we’d first started dating. My wife was (supposedly) a virgin and we were cautious with that part of our lives. We broke a few months before our marriage and she shared her virginity with me. We spent 3-4 months before marriage making love and it was beautiful. We even had a private “ceremony” before our real ceremony so that she knew my intentions were to always be with her and her alone.

Just 12 short years into our marriage, Allie had affair #1 with a man she didn’t know. She’d met him mountain biking. Just a married stranger she met on the trail one day. Soon, they were texting back and forth and Allie found herself telling him how much she was falling in love with him. They had several encounters, but Allie claims that they never had sex.

I gave her another chance. And here we are another six years later, Allie has had another affair. This time, sharing everything (and I do mean everything) with another married stranger.

Sure, they spent a lot of time talking on the phone and texting. And they met up a bunch. But for all intents and purposes, he is a complete stranger. She doesn’t know him, they’ve never dated. They never spent any real time getting to know one another. Yet, Allie “fell in love” with him. We all know it is fantasy and Allie is supposedly becoming more and more remorseful every day, but for those two months, she was at it with this guy.  If this were a dating situation, she wouldn’t do that. It is COMPLETELY out of character.

Now that Allie is saying that she’s super-remorseful and claiming to want things to work out in our marriage, I spend a lot of days very confused. I am thankful that she says she is remorseful and very upset with herself that she did what she did. BUT, I am having a nearly impossible time getting over the fact that she did it in the first place.  She did it. No stopping her.

This is possibly the deathblow to our marriage for me. I have found myself wondering, even looking outside of our marriage. For the first time since that private ceremony where I committed my lifelong sexuality and faithfulness to her. I am considering other women. Even somehow welcoming the thoughts. Would I go through with it? Not sure.

Allie opened a door to our marriage and it’s like opening a porthole underwater. The water just keeps coming in. Even if you happen to get the porthole to close, it has already flooded the room you’re in. You’re going to be wading through water for a very long time. Every step you take will be in the flood waters and you’re going to be constantly reminded of how the water got there in the first place.

“It never crossed my mind to be cautious about my relationships with other men because I never realized I could be so vulnerable”

The author in the above linked article says that it never crossed her mind to be cautious about her relationships with other men. Interestingly, I warned Allie about being cautious with Mark. I saw the two of them laughing about something in the Crossfit class and I said that she needed to be very careful not to give off the wrong impression. The problem was that Allie was ALREADY looking outside of our marriage for affirmation.

Mark is a narcissist. (so is Allie) That narcissism gives him the enviable ability to complement others and make others feel good. But those complements and affirmations are a means to an end for a narcissist. They aren’t genuine. Rather they are manipulative, cunning and sly. They are simply to satisfy themselves. Narcissists will freely give complements, attention and affirmations to get what they want. For Mark, it was sex with my wife. He used her. And she let him. She fell for the oldest trick in the narcissist book.  Flattery. Allie falls all too easily to the narcissistic people of the world. Her dad was the biggest example in her life. Completely into himself and himself ONLY, he used manipulation to exploit those around him.

But Allie is married to me. A non-narcissist. An empath. I am skeptical. When I first met Mark, I thought to myself “that guy is full of shit…and himself. If he’s full of himself and shit, then the two must be related.” Is Mark pleasant to be around? Sure.  In doses.  He’s pretty funny,  confident (as all narcissists are) and seems to be happy. But for those of us who can see through it, we’re quickly turned off by the superficiality of narcissists. Allie on the other hand, plays right into a narcissist’s hands. And as her husband, there is NOTHING I can do to stop it. If I try, I am just being an asshole.

There is the rub with the idea that our marriage can go on. I struggle daily with the idea that we can remain married. I am married to a woman who is completely vulnerable, easily tricked and willing to give herself over to another man. Scary huh?