SIX

Seven Ways You Can Make a Bad Situation Worse

I’m not upset that you lied to me; I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Two months ago Edwin, a thirty-seven-year-old schoolteacher, was caught cheating. His wife, Elena, learned that he had been having an affair with the mother of a former student when the other woman called Elena to spill the beans, hoping to break up the marriage and have Edwin to herself. Edwin initially denied the affair, even though it had been going on for almost three years, and pretended that the other woman was simply disturbed. Later, after much questioning by his disbelieving wife, he finally admitted that he’d been sexual with the woman on one occasion. But he insisted that it was only one time and that he had ignored the woman ever since.

However, Edwin’s history of text messages, e-mails, and phone calls—uncovered during some typical fear-driven detective work by Elena—painted a very different picture. When she confronted him with this, he tried to calm her down by insisting that the other woman meant nothing to him. He also claimed that he had only ever cheated with this one woman. Yet just a few weeks later Elena uncovered a couple of hidden dating apps on his phone, which revealed that he had cheated with dozens of women and, even worse, had continued this behavior even after she discovered the first affair. Now Edwin’s wife won’t believe a thing he says about anything—work, finances, chores, even trips to the grocery store—and he’s getting frustrated with her lack of trust.

First, Do No Harm

Perhaps you are familiar with the Hippocratic Oath, originally an ancient Greek medical text requiring physicians to uphold specific ethical standards. The original version reads, in part, “With regard to healing the sick, I will . . . take care that they suffer no further hurt or damage.” The modern version, penned in 1964 by Louis Lasagna of Tufts Medical School, reads in part, “Most especially, I must tread with care.” Both forms of the oath can essentially be summed up as “First, do no harm,” which is commonly used as a guiding principle by modern physicians and caregivers.

I mention this here because healing from infidelity has a similar guiding tenet: at minimum, do no more harm. However, if you’re like most cheating men, the odds that you will fulfill that ideal are slim.

In fact, you are likely to make all sorts of mistakes as you try to heal your relationship, no matter how sincere you are. This chapter is written with the hope that you might develop an understanding of the most common mistakes that cheating men make after their infidelity is discovered, and that you will learn to recognize and avoid these pitfalls before they occur.

There are seven things you can do to make your current situation worse:

1. Continue to cheat

2. Continue to lie, tell partial truths, and keep secrets

3. Put the blame on someone or something other than yourself

4. Apologize and then expect or demand immediate forgiveness

5. Try to buy forgiveness

6. Use aggression and threats

7. Try to calm your spouse down

Continuing the Infidelity

That you must quit being unfaithful goes without saying, right? It’s like me telling you that four pitches out of the strike zone puts the batter on first base. It’s really basic information. However, I’m including this because a frighteningly large percentage of men (including Edwin, in the example that opens this chapter) just can’t seem to stop cheating, no matter what the consequences. In this way, some cheating men are like drug addicts: they lie, cheat, and keep huge secrets, all in an effort to continue their behavior. And they do this even after their infidelity (or part of it, anyway) has been uncovered and their world is crumbling around them.

It would not surprise me if you told me that you are feeling a strong urge to return to cheating right this moment, even if you’ve stopped and fully intend to stay stopped. And I get it. After all, the high of illicit sex is intoxicating and very hard to let go of. It’s possible you’re worried that your life will be mundane and boring without this thrill. Or maybe your mate is being particularly vengeful and unpleasant in response to your cheating, and you think that her nasty behavior might be a reasonable justification to go back to it at least one more time.

SEX ADDICTION

Some (but not most) men who cheat are sexually addicted. For them, cheating is part of a larger pattern of compulsive sexual behavior, engaged in regardless of consequences. In such cases, stopping the infidelity is not likely to occur without outside assistance of some sort. Just as alcoholics and drug addicts go to rehab centers, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Narcotics Anonymous for help, sex addicts seek treatment from certified sex addiction therapists and social support in twelve-step sexual recovery groups like Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and Sexaholics Anonymous. If you think you might be sexually addicted, I urge you to seek assistance, education, and support for this issue. You might start with my book, Sex Addiction 101, which explains the basics of that issue. Even more info can be viewed at www.robertweissmsw.com.

As we discussed earlier, if there has been an emotional component to your cheating, as with a long-term affair (or even regular booty calls), letting go can be difficult—primarily because you probably care about the other woman and don’t want to cause her pain. You might even decide that you can surreptitiously stay in contact, continuing the relationship but being a little more careful from now on. In other words, if you are emotionally attached to the other woman (or women), you may have a strong desire to continue lying and cheating, but to “do it better” this time around.

Of course, this solution will only make things much, much worse. Even if your significant other initially believes your lie (that the infidelity is over), she will inevitably find out the truth, and your continued breach of relationship trust will cause her incredible pain and anguish—much more than what she has experienced already. It might be enough to turn her away from you permanently. So before you continue cheating, I strongly advise you to think this idea through to its logical and extremely unpleasant outcome.

Continuing to Lie, Tell Partial Truths, and Keep Secrets

Continuing to be dishonest relates to the preceding pitfall, but it deals with much more than ongoing infidelity. It also involves a pattern of lies, cover-ups, partial admissions, and outright secrets about both past and current behavior of all types, including behavior not related to sex or romance. Aside from continuing the infidelity itself, ongoing lies, partial truths, and secrets are the easiest (and most potent) way to derail the process of saving your relationship.

A lot of the time, both outright lies and lies of omission occur because you don’t want to hurt your spouse anymore, and you think that what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her. So you tell her that your cheating occurred only once, or that you almost cheated but actually didn’t, or that it didn’t mean anything. Later, when caught red-handed in a particular deception, you admit to that specific incident and that one only. Regarding everything else, you continue to deny, deny, deny.

Essentially, you cling to the belief that you needn’t fully disclose your past behavior and you “deserve some privacy” in the present. The problem with this is that it fails to incorporate your spouse’s point of view: she may need to know the full truth about your past infidelity, and she may need full transparency about your actions in the current moment. Without these concessions, she may not be able to heal, and trust will not be restored. Of course, neither of you wants to experience the pain that comes with full disclosure and ongoing transparency, but your relationship is likely to be doomed without those things.

JUMPING THE GUN ON DISCLOSURE

Sometimes men make the mistake of fully disclosing everything they’ve done too soon. Occasionally this is because the man’s spouse has said she wants to know it all, and she wants to know it now. Other times, the man is thinking more about himself than his partner, wanting to get things off his chest and clear his conscience. Either way, making a full disclosure without the assistance of an experienced and knowledgeable therapist, preferably a couple’s therapist or a similarly trained member of the clergy, is not recommended. In fact, unsupervised disclosure could easily lead to the end of your relationship.

The basics of disclosure are discussed in the next chapter and in an addendum at the end of this book. For now, I will simply say that if your mate asks to know everything about your cheating, it is best to tell her that you are not ready to provide full disclosure—not because you are unwilling to tell her, but because you want to make sure that you both have proper support and direction before you do so. Then you should clearly state that you will tell her everything she wants to know, and sooner rather than later, but you want to do so with the assistance of a couple’s counselor. Usually, as long as your spouse knows that she will hear the truth at some point, preferably on a set date, she will be patient. But don’t ask her to wait more than a month because that would be torturous and unfair to her.

Putting the Blame on Someone or Something Other Than Yourself

Externalizing blame (making the problem someone else’s fault) is one of the most common tactics cheaters use to rationalize and justify their actions. While actively cheating, for example, you might have told yourself, “If my wife hadn’t gained twenty pounds after we had the kids, I’d still find her attractive and I wouldn’t be so interested in other women,” or, “If she wasn’t such a cold fish, I wouldn’t be searching for hot sex elsewhere.” Unfortunately, this tendency toward externalizing blame may continue even after your cheating is discovered, typically cropping up when your spouse seems exceedingly angry for no apparent reason. At such times you may find yourself thinking or even saying things like the following:

My response to these and similarly understandable attitudes is that tolerating your spouse’s anger and demands, while not blaming her for them, is what being in the doghouse is all about. It’s not fun, nor should it be, and if you want to get out of the doghouse and back into life with your significant other, you’re going to have to earn that right. And that means accepting responsibility for what you’ve done. You cheated, and now your spouse is in pain and behaving exactly the way a traumatized person typically behaves. So blaming her for your current predicament is ridiculous. No matter how much weight she gained, no matter how little sex she has had with you, no matter how moody or kid-focused she has been, she did not make you cheat. Cheating was your choice, not hers.

This means that when your spouse can’t let go of her anger, you can’t look at her and say, “If you would just forgive me, then everything would get better.” First, that’s not true. Second, a statement like that, in which you’re shifting blame onto her, will either make her more angry than she already is, or it will further traumatize and distance her. It’s like getting whistled for an obvious yellow card foul in soccer, screaming at the referee about it, and then getting another yellow card, which means you’ve now got an automatic ejection. You’ve gone from bad to worse, getting yourself tossed from the match because you blamed the wrong person, who rightfully took offense. In short, blaming your mate for your own decisions is extremely counterproductive if you want to heal your relationship and grow as a man.

Apologizing and Expecting or Demanding Immediate Forgiveness

Many men get upset about the fact that their wives aren’t acknowledging their efforts at restoring trust. They say things like, “Doesn’t she understand that I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing? I’ve stopped cheating and I’m taking responsibility for what I did. What more does she want?” However, as your spouse sees it, the fact that you are finally behaving the way you promised you would when you initially committed to monogamy is hardly cause for celebration. Nevertheless, in frustration you may find yourself demanding that she acknowledge your hard work and progress by being a bit softer and more loving (and maybe even initiating sex with you)—all the stuff that typically comes with a trusting relationship. But the simple truth is that you no longer have a trusting relationship because you cheated and lied and kept important secrets. So please hear me when I tell you this, because it’s very important: Expecting your significant other to be more loving just because you’ve stopped misbehaving for a few weeks is a bad idea. And if you try to see things from her perspective, you will understand why. To her, you finally becoming honest and faithful doesn’t exactly merit a pat on the back, because you were supposed to be honest and faithful all along.

If you still find that you need some positive reinforcement, con- sider it high praise that your partner is still willing to speak to you after everything you’ve done to hurt her. If you want something more tangible, it’s best to seek your “Attaboy!” elsewhere, perhaps from a friend, a family member, a support group member, a clergyperson, or your therapist.

If you’re expecting immediate forgiveness from a woman you profoundly betrayed only a few weeks or months ago, simply because you’ve told her that you’re sorry and it won’t happen again, then you need to think again. Expecting her to let you off the hook that easily is just not realistic. Yes, you do deserve acknowledgment for working hard towards change, but not from your spouse. At least not yet.

Trying to Buy Forgiveness

One of the most common mistakes cheating men make when trying to win back a betrayed spouse is attempting to buy their way out of the doghouse with flowers, dinners, trips, jewelry, and other gifts. This doesn’t work. Your spouse will probably accept the gift, and she might even say thank you, but she’s not going to forgive you just because you bought her something nice. And she might reject your gift altogether, throwing it back at you and walking away in tears.

Gifts, no matter how expensive, do not undo the trauma wrought by infidelity. They never have, and they never will. Still, lots of men try this tactic. (Recall, for instance, Kobe Bryant and the $4 million diamond he bought his wife, Vanessa, after she learned about his cheating.) However, this is not the route out of the doghouse. Saying you’re sorry and then giving your spouse a romantic gift will not restore relationship trust or earn forgiveness. Moreover, your gift will forever be tainted because your mate will always associate it with your betrayal.

Note: A variation on trying to buy forgiveness occurs when you use seduction, regret, lies, partial disclosure, good behavior, or any other form of manipulation to obtain forgiveness and keep your relationship. The simple truth is that your significant other does not want you to buy her off (unless she wants to clean out your bank account). Instead, she wants you to be a man who understands what she is feeling, cares about those feelings (even if those feelings are mostly anger directed at you), and behaves in ways that cause her to feel loved, valued, and adored instead of cheap, used, and abandoned.

Using Aggression and Threats

Sometimes cheating men get sick of their partner being so angry, and in response they get aggressive. The most common ways to do this involve emotional and/or financial threats, like the following:

Men who use aggression and threats in this way seem to think that the best defense is a good offense. It isn’t. If you try this approach it is possible that you will successfully bully your wife into submission—temporarily. More likely, however, you will drive her further away. And if she does give in to your bullying, is that really the kind of relationship you want? Wouldn’t you rather be with a woman that you respect and think of as a full partner?

Trying to Calm Her Down

If you want to watch your significant other really lose her temper, wait until she’s already upset and then try to calm her down. Say something like, “Honey, relax. This isn’t a big deal. You know I love you, and I always have. You’re overreacting.” Then you should probably duck and cover—because that’s what you do when a tornado is heading your way, right?

Please trust me when I tell you that your spouse will not like it if you try to diminish (i.e., invalidate) her emotions. Sure, if you work hard enough, you might be able to calm her down a little bit, but it won’t last, and it certainly won’t fix your underlying issues with relationship trust. Besides, you are rightfully in the doghouse. Your wife’s anger was caused by your actions. If you hadn’t cheated and lied, she wouldn’t be angry. So maybe you should just let her be angry and be glad that she still cares enough to have strong feelings about you. Know too that a big part of her healing process is being able to express how your actions have affected her, and you need to live with that, no matter how awful it feels.

Perhaps more important, accepting your significant other’s anger, sadness, disappointment, and hurt by letting her fully express it tells her that you care about her and your relationship enough to just sit there and take it. So in this case the best action you can take is no action at all, except perhaps to validate what she is feeling.

QUESTIONS FOR

Reflection