The comments that have been offered on this posting are heartrending. I am so sorry for the unresolved relationships with adulterous spouses who refuse to tell the truth, empathize with the betrayed & take responsibility for healing. I know the pain of that as my unfaithful wife lied to me for many years about the extent of her adultery & then when I stumbled on it resisted exploring the realities & the reasons. The result was, as Rick memorably puts it, sweeping away the cobwebs without killing the spider. I finally realized that our marriage was languishing amid the secrets & lies, so I confronted my wife with an insistence that we deal with the history fully. That was a risk on my part, but it paid off when she realized I was serious & would not be put off by her self-pity & emotional bullying. Since then we've done a lot of work & there has been substantial healing. Insights from Esther Perel that I & we have found especially helpful: Often people stray not out of unhappiness with their spouse but because they're trying to find a version of themselves they lost & feel the need to rediscover. Or, people stray because they're trying to fix something broken in themselves, often broken by experiences in their family of origin. Both were true in my wife's case. She recognized this alongside giving up her previous tendency to blame me for her adultery.
Finally, here's a very good & very brief book that I recommend: "How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful" by Linda MacDonald, published in 2010 by Healing Counsel Press. I got a copy for my wife & gave it to her after reading it through myself – at that point she was still resistant, but she ultimately found it helpful. It's really terrific & it's only 96 pages long!
Why People Cheat
The comments that have been offered on this posting are heartrending. I am so sorry for the unresolved relationships with adulterous spouses who refuse to tell the truth, empathize with the betrayed & take responsibility for healing. I know the pain of that as my unfaithful wife lied to me for many years about the extent of her adultery & then when I stumbled on it resisted exploring the realities & the reasons. The result was, as Rick memorably puts it, sweeping away the cobwebs without killing the spider. I finally realized that our marriage was languishing amid the secrets & lies, so I confronted my wife with an insistence that we deal with the history fully. That was a risk on my part, but it paid off when she realized I was serious & would not be put off by her self-pity & emotional bullying. Since then we've done a lot of work & there has been substantial healing. Insights from Esther Perel that I & we have found especially helpful: Often people stray not out of unhappiness with their spouse but because they're trying to find a version of themselves they lost & feel the need to rediscover. Or, people stray because they're trying to fix something broken in themselves, often broken by experiences in their family of origin. Both were true in my wife's case. She recognized this alongside giving up her previous tendency to blame me for her adultery.
Finally, here's a very good & very brief book that I recommend: "How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful" by Linda MacDonald, published in 2010 by Healing Counsel Press. I got a copy for my wife & gave it to her after reading it through myself – at that point she was still resistant, but she ultimately found it helpful. It's really terrific & it's only 96 pages long!