Here's What Will Happen When She Finds Out You Cheated

I am away so I'm reposting some of my most popular posts. This originally appeared in March 2020:

If you've thought at all about how your cheating is affecting her, you likely 
imagine just how angry she'll be.

And yes, she probably will be angry. She might throw you out of the house. She might empty your closets and toss your clothes on the front yard. She might call up your mother and let her know just what a scumbag she raised. That's probably what you're picturing, right? If you're picturing anything at all. If you've considered that you might get caught.
But you know what's also possible? What's likely? 
That her face will register utter bewilderment that the person she trusted with her heart has broken it. You might not be there to see it. She might discover your betrayal by stumbling over a message or a photo on your phone. Or she might get a phone call from someone who starts the conversation with "I don't know how to tell you this but there's something you should know..."
But then she'll ask you. Is this true? And if you man up and tell her the truth, you'll see it: bewilderment. Shock. And then a shattering. 
But that's just the beginning. This isn't a storm cloud that blocks the sun for a day, or two, or three. This is an entire climate shift, a new reality, that will change everything for weeks and months and, yes, even years. 
In the days following her discovery of your betrayal, she will cry a million tears. Just when you – and she – think there couldn't possibly be any more tears, they will fall.
They will fall when you try and hug her. They will fall if you refuse to hug her. She will fight them when she's tucking your kids into bed but they will come later. When she's still awake at 3 a.m., they will roll down the sides of her face and soak into the pillow. She will be wondering how she could have missed this, how you could have lied to her face. She will be rethinking every choice she made related to you, starting at the very first meeting. She will wish she'd never met you, never said 'yes', never said 'I do.'
She will be imagining what you did with the Other Woman. It won't matter that it wasn't like that at all. You've told her that. It was nothing, you've told her. It didn't mean anything. But she will still picture you two, like porn stars, doing things she can barely imagine. She will imagine you two laughing at her, taking delight in her cluelessness. She won't yet understand that you didn't think about her at all. And if you did, it was only to imagine how angry she'd be. To consider how you'd better be careful so she didn't find out. 
The tears will eventually stop, replaced by...what exactly? This isn't your wife. Your wife is warm and loving. This new wife, this zombie, will frighten you. Is she thinking about leaving you? Why doesn't she want to be touched? Why is she so...volatile? Or numb?
Her pain is there buried beneath a numbness that allows her to function without feeling. It's survival. Nobody can sustain that level of pain. We need a break from it. Our bodies and minds numb us. You didn't expect that, did you? If you thought about it at all.
But you didn't, did you? You didn't think about it. Except to justify it to yourself. To tell yourself that "nobody" was getting hurt. That "nobody" is barely recognizable to you now, isn't she? She's not the woman she was. She's distant and moody. She's thin.
Yes, she's very thin. 
She hardly eats because food tastes like the ashes of her burned-down life. You lit the match for that. She knows that. 
Which is why it's so confusing to recognize that she still loves you. That she wants to believe you when you tell her that it's over, that it was nothing. That she is who you love.
She wants to believe but how can she? You're a liar. Yes, I know you balk at that word. Just like you spark with anger when she calls you cheater. But you are those things, aren't you? A liar and a cheater. You hadn't thought about it those stark terms, had you? If you'd thought about it at all.
But you didn't. Think about it, that is. You really didn't think about it.
And even now you don't want to think about it. Which is why you're so damn tired of her wanting to talk about it. Of her wanting to know more. Always more. Where did you go with her? she asks. What did you talk about? Did you tell her you loved her?
How to make her understand that none of that mattered? That it meant nothing, even if you told the OW you loved her. You didn't mean it. It was a way to keep the fish on the line, so to speak. To keep the supply coming. You hadn't thought you were hurting anyone. You hadn't thought.
That's the truth, isn't it?
You hadn't thought about it at all.

The Most Baffling Post-Betrayal Question: Why Do I Want Sex with My Unfaithful Husband?

Seriously, right? You've found out your husband cheated on you, maybe once, maybe an ongoing affair, maybe multiple affairs. And sure, you're angry. You could take a sledgehammer to his testicles. You could punch him in his stupid face. You're furious. You're devastated. You're...aroused?
It's called hysterical bonding. Hysterical not in the sense that you'll be clutching your belly, which aches from laughter, but hysterical as in a consequence of hysteria.
Hysterical bonding, otherwise known as "why the hell do I want sex with this idiot of a husband", is one of the weirder responses to infidelity. Not weird as in unusual. Weird as in...unexpected. Even unwanted.
I shocked myself when I responded to my husband returning home upon demand (I had confronted him over the phone and told him he either came home now to find me here or came home later to find me gone) by unzipping his pants.
That was not, let's say, my usual greeting even when I didn't want to drive over him with a cement truck.
But there it was.
Over the following weeks, of which I remember very little except that I ate about 1 1/2 pieces of toast and maybe a bowl of soup, cried despondently through the day, stared a lot at the ceiling at 3 a.m. and tried to present a somewhat sane face to the world lest my children be removed from my care, I also found my libido in overdrive.
My husband was, shall we say, pleasantly surprised. He was also as baffled by this as I was.
In hindsight, it was a valuable reconnection during a time when it was abundantly clear how disconnected we'd been. It felt like a rediscovery. I insisted he look in my eyes when we made love (it was the only way I could stop the mind movies). We talked like new lovers. What did you first notice about me? When did you know you were falling in love with me? What's my best feature? and so on.
And then, after months of daily (sometimes more) sex, hysterical bonding suddenly ended. I felt disoriented. Betrayed by my own body. Him? Seriously? What the hell??
Another woman on another betrayal web site (I wish I could remember which and link to it), wrote about her intention to make love to her husband every single day for a year (I think?). And she'd kept to it, their liaisons varying from quickies to slow and sensuous. For her, it was a way of reconnection but also prioritizing her own pleasure.
Women on this site have also written about how reconnecting sexually with their partner was as much as about valuing their own pleasure as rebooting the marriage.
And that's an important consideration. Betrayal can make us feel powerless. Reclaiming sex with our spouse can be a healthy response to that and a way of focusing on our own sexual pleasure.
But it can also be an unhealthy way of trying to lure a wayward husband back. Sex as manipulation.
What's more, it can be unsafe. If your husband has been having unprotected sex with others, you are potentially exposing yourself to sexually transmitted diseases. Even if he says he's used protected (he's a liar, remember?), get tested yourself and use protection.
Like so much of our response to betrayal, it seems the difference between whether hysterical bonding can be a positive way to reconnect with your husband or an experience of manipulation or humiliation, is to check your motives and your expectations.
If you think frequent sex will keep him faithful, you're fooling yourself.
If you think sex will heal your pain, you're wrong.
If he thinks sex means that you've forgiven him, correct him of that delusion.
But, if you each can look at sex as a teensy tentative step toward reconnection, as a way to give and receive pleasure, and as a healthy escape from almost constant pain in the early days, then have at it, you crazy kids.

Guest Post: Unbroken

by StillStanding1

True healing is not the fixing of the broken, but the rediscovery of the Unbroken. 

~Jeff Foster

We can all be incredibly judgmental of ourselves, of our habits, behaviors, ability to handle situations, believing that we are too emotional or should just somehow be more healed, heal faster, be able to forgive. As if healing or forgiveness is a destination we can arrive at. Where suddenly, all that we perceive as broken, will be fixed, that we will finally be fixed for good and all. Or we believe that others are somehow doing better than we are. Many of us carry the belief that we cannot be whole unless we are perfect, so we always have to fix ourselves in some way.

What we don’t realize is that if we believe we have to fix something about ourselves, the message we are sending is that we are fundamentally broken. Embedded in that message is the idea that if only we were not broken, our lives would somehow be magically transformed, that we’d arrive at a place that felt like healing, or we’d suddenly experience some transformation and be able to forgive. We carry the idea that there is something that if we could just get over, or if we could be more or less of, we would be fixed. This feeling, if it already lay within us, becomes magnified many times over after experiencing our partner’s infidelity.

Maybe we are holding on to this idea that if we are fully healed, sooner or later, we will somehow feel complete, past this, or back to some pre-traumatic state where life was (looking back with rose-colored glasses) better. If this is our belief then we are missing something important – the truth that we are good enough as we are, right now. This can be a difficult idea. It means acceptance. It means letting go of the idea that there’s something we need to fix about ourselves or our situation.

It can be tempting, in the wake of discovery, to look for something to fix. It’s a job that masks our pain. It can look like the “pick me” dance (be more sexy, be less demanding). Or it can sound like “if only he…,” “if I could just forgive…” all of which distracts us from the grief and pain we need to feel and accept.

Acceptance of ourselves, where we are, of our reality paired with compassion, is the place where true change begins. You are not broken. You don’t need to be fixed. You are whole. You are complete exactly as you are. Like Dorothy and her ruby slippers, we’ve all had what we needed all along. If you can begin to believe this about yourself, think about how powerful you can be. And then, instead of trying to “fix” yourself, you can focus on being the you that you are.

The next time you start thinking about something you need to fix, replace those thoughts with, “I am unbroken. I am good enough as I am. I am worthy. I am unbroken.”

When he "doesn't believe in therapy"

Let's start with this: Therapy isn't something one "believes" in, like Bigfoot or fairies or alien abductions. We have data that therapy exists. So when someone says they don't "believe" in therapy, what he's really saying is he doesn't believe that talking with an objective person about his life and his problems is going to help him.
To which I say, "really? Tell me more about how therapy won't help you."
Therapy is, of course, a broad term for a whole lot of approaches to helping people move through problems that are getting in the way of leading a productive, healthy life. Not "believing" in therapy is a cop out. Far more truthful to say, "I don't want to go."
To admit that he doesn't want to go, however, opens your husband up to your disappointment or your anger and your frustration. He'd prefer to hide behind the fiction that therapy won't work for him so why not save time and money by not bothering with it at all. After all, he'll tell you, it's bogus. Or he doesn't like to talk. He'll refer to therapy as "woo-woo" head shrinking stuff for crazy people. Surely not for someone as sane and feet-on-the-ground as a guy like him whose only problem is that he violated his marriage vows, lied to his partner and risked losing a marriage that he now claims he never wanted to lose.
That avoidance of discomfort is exactly the kind of behaviour that got him into this situation. By not being forthright and honest, he created this shitstorm that he now wishes would just go away without him having to do anything that he doesn't want to do. Or rather, that he doesn't "believe" in.
I came to therapy reluctantly. I grew up in what my therapist calls a "distressed home" with plenty of addiction, depression, anxiety, suicide attempts and strife. When my mother got sober, I was 20 and launching into my life. She wanted me to go into therapy because she, correctly, saw that I held a lot of anger about my earlier years. I refused, insisting that I was "fine" and that I didn't need some stranger telling me how to feel.
A few years later, however, as I struggled within a highly toxic relationship with a man I couldn't imagine living without, I relented.
I thought she could help me figure out how to make this guy love me enough to stay. Instead, she helped me find the self-respect and strength to leave.
Which could be a big piece of why your husband doesn't "believe" in therapy. There's huge fear for many people in discovering just what's lurking in their own hearts, and that of their partners. For those people, pretending that everything is fine is preferable to knowing it isn't. They might even have convinced themselves that, all evidence aside, everything is fine. If only you could just stop talking about their mistakes, about the destruction they've caused. After all, they won't do it again.
Until they do.
Until they come up against something in their lives that they simply don't have the tool in their emotional toolbox to handle. All of us lack certain tools. I don't know a single human being whose parents were able to provide them exactly the number and type of tools they would need to handle whatever life throws their way. Some of us can develop our own healthy tools, but far more of us either rely on crappy rusty tools to cope – we drink, we shop, we ignore, we rage, we cheat – or we fall apart completely.
Somewhere in there, the smart ones among us say one thing: Help.
We realize that if we were so awesome at solving our own problems, we wouldn't be in this mess. We acknowledge that our way of coping has created some highly unpleasant side-effects, like a wife whose eyes hold a world of pain that we caused.
And then, the smart and courageous ones allow themselves to consider that maybe, just maybe, this therapy thing is worth a try.
It might not work with the first therapist. It might require a few tries. But my guess is that these same guys would continue to find a good mechanic for their car if the first one didn't seem to great rather than decide that they don't "believe" in mechanics.
It will undoubtedly require a lot of ego-checking and patience as everyone finds their footing and begins to establish an atmosphere of trust. After all, you should all be there for the same reason. To create a healthy relationship based on honesty and respect and compassion. 
Because that, whether or not these guys will admit it, is what everyone is after. And, too bad for them, part of that process is going to require that this guy who doesn't "believe" in therapists, has to dig deep into his psyche and figure out why he risked everything that mattered for something that didn't. Or at least didn't matter as much.
He should want this. He should be willing to do whatever it takes to begin to heal this damage he created. He should be willing to make himself uncomfortable in order to help you feel safe again.
If he won't? If he continues to hide behind this fiction that therapy requires "belief" rather than hard work, then he's telling you that this marriage isn't worth the effort required of him.
This is painful but crucial information for you to have. Because it makes your choice – whether to stay in the marriage with full awareness of how much effort he's willing to put into rebuilding it, or whether to leave with that same awareness – a lot more clear.
I'm not insisting that no marriage can be saved without therapy. I am saying that I don't know of any. Sure, I know of marriages that survived infidelity without therapy. But I don't know of solid happy marriages that have. The solid happy marriages I know of that have survived infidelity have done so with a team of support, from friends to, yes, therapists. Personal therapists, marriage therapists, family therapists. Cognitive behavioural therapy, EMDR, couples counselling.
So while it's possible that a marriage can be rebuilt without the help of counsellors to guide couples toward healing, I don't "believe" it's helpful to anyone to ignore the valuable assistance of an objective, experienced therapist.

Healing from Betrayal: How to Counter Counter-Moves

My daughter is frustrated. She has a friend who routinely suggests grabbing something to eat after school but who inevitably turns out to be broke and unable to pay for her part of the snack. 
A third friend, whose parents keep her well supplied with money, will usually step in and pay for friend #2. This drives my daughter, who works hard for her money, crazy. 
"She taking advantage of [Friend #3]," my daughter wails. "And it makes me look cheap when I won't also chip in to cover [Friend #2's] meal."
I try to remind my daughter that she can only control her own actions, not those of her friends. And to pay for a friend and then resent having to pay isn't respecting her own boundaries now is it really respecting the friendship. 
Thing is, my daughter has choices in this situation. She just doesn't like them. 
And who can blame her? Drawing that clear line around our boundaries is really uncomfortable. We want people to like us. We want people to think good things about us. 
Besides, counter-moves are almost inevitable whenever we make our boundaries clear.
Counter-moves are the responses we get from people who far prefer our boundaries to be fuzzy and easily manipulated.
We see them most transparently with kids. Think of the last time you told a child he/she couldn't do something – watch TV, have a cookie before dinner, stay up late. Did the child respond with, "I understand. And I appreciate you even considering my request."
Uh...don't think so.
More likely you heard something like "You're the meanest person in the world. Jeremy's mother lets him [fill-in-the-blank-here] any time he wants. I hate you." Or maybe you heard: "You're not the boss of me. I can do whatever I want." Or perhaps it was something like: "Fine. I don't care. I didn't want that anyway." There's usually some eye-rolling, or arm crossing, or stomping involved.
Depending on our own personalities and understanding of boundaries and counter-moves, we're likely to get hooked into one type of counter-move more than others. For me, it's anger. The minute someone in my family gets angry at me, I'm hooked and I'll match them holler for holler. 
With my kids, it became easier to see when they were delivering counter-moves. Sometimes they were quite hilarious, like the time my then-five-year-old daughter packed her bags to leave home because we had said "no" to something and she had no choice but to leave a home in which she wasn't treated well (ie. given whatever she wanted). We said we would miss her very much and that if she ever changed her mind and felt that she could live with our rules, then she was always welcome back. After testing our resolve, she harrumphed and went upstairs to unpack. 
The adults in our lives aren't always so transparent. 
Do any of these sound familiar?
"You're just like your mother."
"You only think of yourself."
"You're so controlling."
"You're acting crazy."
"Stop being jealous."
"Nothing makes you happy." 
Every single one of those statements is about getting you to back down. And they often work. The last thing we want is to sound like our mother. Or feel selfish. Or controlling. Or crazy. And so we insist that we're not doing that at all...are we? And in that instant, our boundaries get fuzzy. We soften things a bit. "It's just that, I can't sleep until I know you're home..." or "I just need to know that you're not in touch with her...." Those "just"s or "I only..."s weaken your boundaries. 
Barbara Coloroso, who's a parenting expert but whose advice works with anyone in our lives, calls these typical counter-moves "cons": 
Con 1 is weeping, wailing, begging, bribing, gnashing of teeth ("Please don't check my texts. I promise there's nothing there. You have to trust me. I would never ever hurt you again...") 
Con 2 is anger and aggression. ("How dare you check my phone! You violated my privacy. If you won't trust me then there's no point in staying married.")
Con 3 is sulking/pouting. ("Fine. Do whatever you want. I don't care....")
Cons are powerful. They hook us and, if we're not good boundary-enforcers, next thing we know, we've backed down. 
But when we back down, we poison the relationship with our own negative feelings. Resentment. Frustration. Anger. Hurt. Fear. 
We might have kept the peace for the moment but we've paid for it by contributing to the dysfunction.

What does this look like after betrayal? Well, let's continue with the example above – to have total transparency around your partner's phone or computer. We want passwords and access to all records and accounts. 

It would be lovely if our partner responds that he understands that this is part of rebuilding trust. Many, however, give us countermoves. You're never going to trust me again, are you? No matter what I do, you find fault with it. I can't win with you. 

Or: I refuse to live like a prisoner in my own home. I told you I wouldn't cheat again. I've learned my lesson. If you can't believe me, that's your problem.

Or: You need to just trust me. Let's put this in the past and move forward. It's unhealthy to keep hashing it out.

What's more, some of it is probably true. You likely are hard to please right now (uh, duh. Wonder why?). You are also doubting you'll ever trust him again. But that doesn't make the counter-moves less toxic. And it doesn't change the fact that you are making a reasonable request under the circumstances. You're making clear boundaries in order to respect yourself within the relationship. 

You can commiserate if you'd like ("I'm sure it does seem humiliating to have to show me your phone messages but I need to see them in order to silence my fears that you're still cheating on me."). You can murmur sympathetically that, "yes, it does seem as though I'm hard to please right now." But that doesn't change the fact that you're respecting yourself and what you need within the relationship.
Recognizing and responding to counter-moves gets easier with practice. 

I asked my daughter what might happen if she began to ask her always-broke friend if she had any money before agreeing with her to go out for food. My daughter admitted she'd feel really uncomfortable asking and that her friend might only hang out with the other friend who paid. Or she might tell people my daughter was a cheapskate. And then, before I could even respond, my daughter said, "I know, I know. Counter-moves."
Exactly. 
At a certain point, when we consistently refuse to back down, the people in our lives realize that the counter-moves aren't going to work.
And they either stop...or find others with whom the unhealthy dance can continue.
Either way, we win. 

Come Out From the Shadows: Putting Down Your Story

"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it."~Brené Brown

Melissa, who frequently comments on this site and who inspires us all with her resilience, her clear-eyed optimism, and her steely determination to heal from betrayal, noted in response to yesterday's post that she's found this community so valuable in helping her through this.
And though I've written often about the value of sharing our stories, I thought I'd, once again, encourage anyone who finds herself on this site to write down her pain. 
If all you hear from us is "me too", then you will have had your pain held by us, which just may reduce its weight on your heart.
And just to show that I walk the talk, here's where I recently shared my story.