Wendy was a good wife, but her husband was having an affair and he wasn’t about to stop. If this sounds like you, let me help you understand what to do in such a marriage crisis.

So what was the best way for her to deal with the infidelity in her marriage? How could she respond to her cheating spouse in a way that could save her marriage?

Wendy’s Background and Initial Struggles

Let me tell you about Wendy, her situation and how she came to work with me. Wendy was in her mid thirties and had two young children. She suspected her husband was cheating on her and researching the internet led her to my book on preventing and ending men’s affairs. She was reading through it when she decided to contact me for help.

She was married to someone she believed was a good man, but a bad husband. That he was a bad husband, was painfully clear to her and her friends. What she had doubts about was what she should do While her friends recommended her to divorce, she had made a promise to herself long ago that she would not divorce like her parents did for another thing.

Although she was angry at his betrayal and coldness, she still loved him.

She didn’t feel like that was the real him. She felt mad, sad, hurt, and confused all at the same time. When I asked Wendy what she wanted to do, she didn’t really know. She thought she should divorce, but it wasn’t what she wanted.

What she really wanted was to have her husband back and to be happy again. She doubted that was possible, but discovering in my book that many women do reconcile in this situation gave her some hope.

Choosing Coaching Over Therapy

Wendy didn’t know, but by choosing to get coaching with me, she was already on a very different path than if she had chosen a therapist.

A therapist would’ve spent the session helping Wendy to talk out her feelings and to feel validated and supported as a reconciliation coach, my approach was to help Wendy to understand the dynamics involved. Help Wendy to see all of her options and to make a plan for reconciling if that was what she chose to do.

This is the most common goal for people who work with me.

Once people decide on their goal, they then need a plan. If a coach or counselor cannot tell you in the first session how they can help you go from where you are to the goal you want to achieve, it is a waste of time to continue with them. I discussed this in my first book, Therapy Beyond All Expectations.

Your choice of therapist or coach is a large factor in what outcomes you can achieve.

Developing a Plan for Reconciliation

I helped Wendy to make a plan based on her goal. It wasn’t as emotionally satisfying as her crying her way through a box of tissues, but it could help her to feel more in control when everything felt like it was spinning out of control.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against crying. I’m just against crying only, without doing anything effective to improve things.

Do you know where to get started?

Analyzing the Infidelity

The starting point for dealing with infidelity in marriage is organizing information. It’s not reactive, it’s not dramatic. But it is important. I helped Wendy to consider her situation one piece at a time.

We needed to separate personality factors from relationship factors. How much of her situation was a result of marriage problems, and how much was a result of her husband’s personality? To figure that out, we had to look at whether her husband had always been unfaithful, distant, or deceitful.

Did he suddenly become that way? Did that happen off and on, and if so, what triggered it? Was there a gradual transition in their marriage? And why was Wendy getting help just now? If the problem had gone on for a long time? If you are in this situation, take the time to put together these pieces of information and you will know better what to do from there.

In Wendy’s case, as it’s true for many women, she didn’t have serious problems with her husband until a few years into the marriage.

So we knew it wasn’t a personality issue. It was likely that Wendy’s intuition was right. She had a good man who had become a bad husband. That meant there was a potential for him to become a good husband again.

Over time, Wendy’s husband had become gradually more distant and was less interested in spending time with her. That suggested a failure for both of them to maintain their emotional connection. Wendy confirmed that their talk had become more focused on practical issues, and they spent much less time together after having their first child.

By the time Wendy realized they needed to work on their emotional connection, her husband agreed, but with no follow through. And when she pushed, he resisted. Thinking that more time was needed, she was patient.

But when nothing improved and her husband continued to seem disinterested in a one-on-one relationship with her, she started to wonder if there was another woman.

Confronting the Cheating Spouse

She felt ashamed to do it, but she looked through her husband’s pockets, checked his wallet, cell phone messages, and sometimes made an excuse to call him when he was supposedly working late. What she discovered was that she was being lied to. Her husband was frequently texting other women, and his overtime wasn’t really spent at the office, although she didn’t know where he was.

Wendy told me that at first she had kept this information to herself. She didn’t know how to respond to a cheating spouse. Finally, she decided to ask her husband if he was satisfied with his relationship with her, and if he thought that he might be happier with someone else.

Her husband had told her that was a ridiculous idea and that everything was fine.

It was then that Wendy confronted her husband about the text messages and lying about the overtime. Her husband had become very angry, protesting about the invasion of his privacy and blaming his wife for making too much of a few harmless messages. As for the overtime, he said that sometimes he just needed time for himself, that she didn’t own him, in that it was none of her business.

Anyhow, he told her that after several years of marriage, she should trust him, and that if she couldn’t, then something was wrong with her. Fortunately, his gaslighting didn’t work with Wendy.

Unfortunately, they got into a pattern of heated arguments, followed by more extreme distancing. The arguments helped her husband to justify being emotionally unavailable and more secretive about his behavior.

Their relationship became worse than it ever was.

Realizing the Need for Change

Wendy came to the realization that things were not going to change unless she did something. That’s when she started looking for answers and got my book. Having a sense of the way things had progressed, it was obvious that Wendy’s feelings were quite appropriate and matched the circumstances.

She was being gaslighted by her husband, who blamed her, while contributing to be distant and secretive. Her husband was not motivated to work on a better relationship, and couples work would not be a good approach. It was also apparent that Wendy didn’t need to work on low self-esteem or to overcome an emotional problem.

Nor was she unreasonably suspicious.

Her feelings were a normal reaction to a bad situation. That meant changing the situation would be a better first step than Wendy going to a counselor to work on her thoughts or feelings. She had been overly patient, which was likely due to her fear of divorce.

I helped Wendy to look at the information that we had.

We knew almost certainly that her husband was having an affair and that possibly there had been other women as well. We didn’t know when the infidelity started, though. It probably started after their marriage had remained distant for some time. His infidelity was likely a way he had supplemented their marriage and gotten more emotional connection for himself.

He obviously was not trying to replace his wife because he was making no attempts to leave and was still involved in family activities.

He had two motivations.

One was to keep his family intact and the other was to continue to pursue outside relationships. That was why he behaved as he did, and as long as he could he would continue to do both. He was not about to do anything to improve his marriage.

So far, Wendy had put all of her efforts into convincing her husband he was wrong and to work on their marriage. She needed a different approach if she was going to save her marriage. Otherwise, she would have to stay in a broken marriage, which would eventually end.

If things were to change, she would need to be the force behind it. It was either that, divorce, or just live with a distant marriage, which she believed to be better for the kids.

But I think that is debatable.

Implementing the Reconciliation Plan

I told Wendy that she did have a chance to save her marriage and rebuild trust for both of them, but it would require her to follow a plan that would achieve that. She would need to stop any damage she was doing and take advantage of family time or meeting time to use good skills to improve her husband’s experience with her.

She would need to work on her own desirability, happiness and security, so her husband would feel that she loved him but didn’t need him, and she would need to use good boundaries to get her husband to respect her. Those changes would put her in a good position to make her husband choose between her and his unfaithful behavior.

This is necessary because…

People only give up something they value if it is the only way to keep someone else they value even more.

Programs that help women to be more valuable to their husbands, but don’t make him choose, don’t end affairs. Men will simply enjoy their marriage more while continuing to be unfaithful.

Her success with this plan depended on a few other things.

First, it depended on how much her husband cared about losing her.

Secondly, it depended on her willingness to put her anger aside and see her husband’s behavior as a problem he had rather than as his attempt to hurt her.

Thirdly, it depended on her willingness to help her husband to respect her, rather than just demanding that he respect her.

She would help him to feel loved, but only when he was behaving well, or at least when he wasn’t behaving badly. This would require relationship building skills as well as good boundaries.

My coaching package for ending a spouse’s affair would help her with all of these things. Wendy agreed to this plan as we started our work together.

Challenges and Progress

Wendy had good days and bad days. No one makes progress in a straight line, whether on their own or with a coach. Perfection isn’t required, perseverance is, just as with everything else. I helped Wendy learn how to put a quick end to the arguing without creating more distance.

When she did that, she learned she did have real power–to listen or not, to walk away or not, to fight or not, to be in the relationship or not.

Her husband also discovered that she had this power.

This change started both of them down the path of better communication and more respect. I’d like to tell you that it was a smooth ride and that everything just got better quickly, but real life isn’t like that.

Things did get better, but it took time. It always does. There’s no quick fix to a longstanding marriage problem. One challenge for Wendy was an emotional one. She had to resist using her new power in the relationship to hurt her husband. Wanting to hurt people who hurt us is natural, but not loving. It’s also not conducive to a good marriage, and it’s not the Christian way.

Wendy came to understand that her husband would always be tempted to contact other women no matter how good their relationship was.

It’s an important biological truth that many women find difficult to accept and so deal with poorly. One reason her husband would continue to be tempted to contact other women was because men are naturally attracted to women. The other is because her husband had good experiences doing that.

Positive experiences increase future desire.

What her husband had also come to understand was that while he could cheat on her again, that it would result in his losing his wife.

A strong relationship and a secure wife are the way to keep men faithful.

Although it may sound bad to you that her husband would still have the same temptation to cheat, the truth is that we are all tempted by something–the temptation to hurt those who have hurt us, for example. We also all fail in some way.

We’ve got to see our spouse’s humanity if we are to love them.

Lessons Learned and Final Thoughts

Today. I shared Wendy’s story with you, not just as an example of how to deal with an affair. There are other lessons to be learned in this case example.

Wendy’s husband broke her trust by seeing other women, by being deceptive, and by treating her in an unloving way.

But there are many ways for spouses to break trust and hurt us.

Addictions, emotional neglect and abuse, lying, prioritizing children or friends are just a few of the ways people betray each other. In each case, the principles and our choices are always the same. We can fight, avoid, divorce, or we can help.

We help by seeing our spouse as having a problem and learning how to help them overcome it.

Affairs are best viewed as addictions and they require the same kind of help to stop.

Another thing to learn is that loving someone sometimes requires being tough with them. Toughness which is not balanced with love will not be effective. So we are only tough when it comes to boundaries and are loving otherwise. We earn respect that way.

Love is a gift. Respect must be earned.

One additional lesson is that forgiveness is required or there can be no reconciling. God has forgiven us in Christ Jesus. Otherwise, we could not have a relationship with Him. Here is a link you can use if you would like me to help you make a plan that will take you down the path, from where you are now, to the destination of a restored marriage.