Finding out that your husband has been cheating on you is quite painful. Many wives admit that they have a little more respect for their husband if he himself confesses to cheating on them. However, this is often not true if the husband is mean, cruel, or spiteful in making that confession.
A wife might say, “Last week my husband and I had a big fight. He was telling me how controlling and miserable I am. He kept saying that he feels suffocated by our marriage. her voice “your negativity is the reason I’m cheating on you. That’s why I have to turn to someone else to escape your evil.” And then, without skipping a beat, he wants to tell me how superior the other woman is to me. He told me that she was kind and supportive. He told me that she she didn’t scold or criticize him. And she told me that she was much prettier and younger than me and that she knew how to make a man feel good instead of miserable. Now, I’m doubly angry. It’s bad enough that I’m cheating. But why does he have to be? So spiteful? He acts like he deserves to be cheated on.”
This is not unusual, but it sure is frustrating. Below I will list a few reasons why he may be acting this way and how you might address it.
You may be feeling a lot of anger and not sure where to direct it: I write many articles indicating that people cheat at a time of personal crisis and vulnerability. I firmly believe in this almost without exception. Although it’s just my opinion. But, you often see people cheat when things are falling apart in their life or within their conscience. So it’s not unusual for someone who is cheating to be struggling with feelings of anger. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that anger may have contributed to the deception.
Yet often these people are angry with themselves and their lives. And they might project these angry feelings onto their spouse. After all, your spouse is an easy target and if you can direct your anger at your spouse, you may find some justification for your infidelity.
Please don’t think I’m defending them. I am not. I’m just trying to point out that anger is often a very common precursor to (and symptom of) an affair. And even though it’s directed at you, that doesn’t mean you’re the only place his anger is directed.
He may be trying to hurt you: As immature as this may sound, sometimes an affair is an attempt to “get back” at a spouse for some perceived wrongdoing. Maybe your husband really felt that you were acting negatively, but instead of reaching out to you and trying to resolve this like the adult that he is, he resorted to committing a selfish act that he knew would hurt you.
The words of spite were a way of making sure to add to the pain, and when they came out of his mouth, he couldn’t help it. Again, this is not an excuse, but it lets you know what you are up against.
Resentment management: How you handle this entirely depends on what you want to go forward with. If you think you might one day want to save your marriage OR you think it’s best not to get involved with him to make things worse (which, frankly, is almost always my preferred way of dealing with this), I suggest something like this. “That’s pretty hurtful, but I guess that was the point. I’m sorry you feel like I’m controlling you, but that’s never going to be a valid excuse for cheating. I’m not going to start a conversation where we talk to each other like this. It doesn’t solve nothing. And the core problem is the affair, which seems to be overshadowed by your words about my actions. And while my actions clearly concern you, they’re certainly not as malicious as cheating. Regardless, we’re clearly not going to be able to solve anything while we’re both So angry. I don’t accept that my actions justify your cheating, but we’ll have to talk about that another day. Things are too painful and volatile, right? Right now, and I don’t want to stand here and listen to you say these things to me. Once we both calm down. And if we commit to talking to each other in a more civil way, we can address this.”
I know I’m asking for a lot of restraint. I know it’s very tempting to stand up there and defend yourself and tell him what you think of him. But doing so will only make this worse and that’s bad enough. It’s almost never a bad idea to regroup, calm down, and tackle it later.
Frankly, if your husband can see that his anger and resentment are displaced and neglected, he is likely to back off. But he can’t figure that out if he’s displaying the negative behavior he now complains about. It’s better to show him who he doesn’t expect to see. Someone who is calm and anything but the bitter controlling person he has been describing.
