Divorce Or Save The Marriage? My Husband Is Having An Affair!
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The Problem
It's tough to decide whether you should believe your husband’s apologies about having an affair and try to save your marriage or to just go ahead and get a divorce. It's especially hard when you've been married for 12 years, your children are five and nine years old and the affair has been going on for a full year. He promises it's over and won't happen again but how can you trust his promise when he's already cheated on you? You can start by thinking about answers to questions in these three areas.
The Questions
- What did you think the state of your marriage was before you learned that your husband was having an affair?
- How did he treat you? Were you satisfied? Has he been involved with the children or have you had to push him to pay attention to them? Did he keep his every day agreements with you and with them or did he blow them off and make excuses? Was the marriage generally in good shape with only a few problems that you knew about, or were there many problems?
- How were you doing personally before you learned about his affair?
- Were you growing or stagnating? Have you been staying in this marriage because you think you're supposed to or because it provides a life you really want? If you could do whatever you wanted to do with your life, would this be it? If not, what would your ideal life be like? Could you create your ideal life by staying married to your husband?
- Would your life and your children's lives be better or worse if you divorced your husband?
- Would it be a relief to not have to interact with him every day or would you miss him terribly? Do you have the skills and resources necessary to be a single parent? What kind of impact do you think the divorce would have on your children? Are you prepared to allow your children to spend extended periods of time with their dad without you being present?
Answering these questions should give you an idea of whether your marriage is worth saving in the first place. If you think it's worth saving then you need to be prepared to examine what went wrong a year ago, either with your marriage or with your husband, in order to correct those problems.
You and your husband must do that together in order to put your marriage back on the right track.The Being Happy Together Program can help you have these conversations together. So can a marriage counselor. You definitely need to do something different to protect yourself from accepting possibly empty promises.
If you want more detailed info about how to save your marriage, check out this meaty free report entitled "How To Save Your Marriage: Insider Secrets For Anxious Wives and Frustrated Husbands" - Claim Your Copy Here - Free!
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Read another one of these today. Good things to share. Relationships are very complicated at times. Will be interested to read your views. Welcome to hubpages.
Trust is the backbone of a relationship. Trust is given but only once in all situations. So your trust is now broken and you are confused as to what you should do next. So many things are going through your mind with decisions needing to be made, but all you want is for this to go away. Do not make a quick decision, because you need to determine first how you feel.
How do you feel? Are you hurt, angry, frustrated, scared, lost, searching and/or wondering who this person is that you once trusted? How could you possibly want to put yourself through all of this again? WAIT . . . there is a way through this maze of deception. First sort through your feelings and take all the time that you need. Not only do you first need to love and respect yourself, but you need to be clear about the messages you will be sending based on how you are feeling.
Be very clear and calm when you speak about what YOU need. Yes, this is now all about you! Once trust is broken it cannot be given a second time so easily. Your partner will need to earn your love, respect and trust to continue the relationship. The question is, "What is the value that you have placed on your love, respect and trust?" - Sabrina Tells All -
Sabrina Tells All,
Thank you for your thoughtful addition to this conversation. I too believe that trust and respect must be earned now. I disagree that trust should ever be just given between adults. I think it must always be earned -- even the first time.
On the other hand, I don't believe love can ever be earned. It is possible to be extremely angry at someone you love because of their behavior and to not trust their promises and still continue to love them. The choice is still whether or not to continue the relationship.—Laurie
welcome to HubPages. Good article, just be mindful of postings links to personal sites
Why do people resort to affairs when they can end their marriage before hand? A whole year is a year of lies and not one lie. I do not believe in second chances when it comes adultery. There is no up side to such an event. Most people who do this have been dishonest for much longer then you know. Divorce sucks and everything that comes after but he has already made you second to his selfishness in your life. Afterwards the relationship becomes so one sided in your favour that the relationship never finds balance again. Any person with a moral obligation to do the right thing would truly feel that it was wrong. If he blames you for the affair understand that he has no intentions of fixing himself. No matter what you have done in this relationship it does not excuse him from breaking your vows, because anything else could have been done prior to that.
Good luck and I know your pain more then you can imagine. I have endured the cheater who takes revenge on my life as If I deserved it. Years later that person found more victims but regrets throwing away what they had but can never have again.
Marcy Goodfleisch Level 7 Commenter 3 months ago
Welcome to the site! It sounds like you have a lot of expertise to share. I look forward to reading your hubs!