Although a man can fall in love with anyone, unless the other woman wants commitment, your husband is not likely to leave you for her.
You are likely to cycle through periods of anger and sadness. It will be hard to stop thinking of how you were betrayed.
If you don’t let your emotions get the best of you, you have a good chance of getting your husband back. Before you throw in the towel on your marriage, let’s take a closer look at whether your marriage can still be saved.
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If you are like many of the women, you have either just discovered your husband’s affair or have been told by him that he is leaving you for someone else. Although he is the one having the affair, he is likely to blame you.
Be careful not to buy into his blaming. Even if he can point to specific damage you have done, it doesn’t justify his affair. He’s not having an affair because of what you’ve done. He is having it because of what he gets from the other woman so you don’t stay in defensive mode.
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Because you are not the real cause of his affair, your apologies or attempts to make things up to him won’t work. He will not be interested. The blame is only so he doesn’t have to feel bad about what he is doing. It also helps him to appear like the victim, when in fact, you are.
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Some men say they need time to think. They want you to give them time and space supposedly to figure out what they want. This is never the case. He already knows what he wants. He will not be spending time wrestling with his decision. It is a delay tactic.
Men and women handle their thinking and their emotions in different ways. In general, men are much better at separating their work life from their family life, their sex from their romance, and their lover from their wife.
Men can have all these mental “boxes” and mentally jump from one to another throughout the day. Out of sight is out of mind. He will simply enjoy his other boxes when he is not with you.
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As long as he can keep all of his boxes separate, there is no problem as far as he’s concerned. That is why he can make you feel as though he still loves you while an hour later he can be enjoying himself with his girlfriend. A woman can do this by pretending, but a man can actually have two relationships going on (with his wife; with his lover), sincerely connecting with both.
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Some men can have a mistress and a married life for years because of their ability to mentally separate parts of their life. That’s especially true if the other woman will play along with secrecy. The other woman, though, is usually not the money-grubbing, unkind, so and so that you would like to think she is.
The other woman is often under the assumption that your husband is suffering in his marriage. He has probably told her that he has been planning on leaving you all along. A man who lies to one woman has little problem lying to two. Men use words as tools rather than as ways to honestly get their feelings off their chest.
“Fun girls” are not looking for a relationship with a married man, though they may be happy with his attention or money on a regular basis. This applies to prostitutes as well. Men who can’t keep away from them have a kind of addiction.
These women have no desire to take your husband away from you, although they don’t care what happens to your relationship.
Other women, however, want what you want–an ongoing, loving, committed relationship. Eventually, this places men in the position of having to make a choice between one woman or the other. The biggest deciding factor in choosing is not how good their relationship is with the other woman.
The biggest deciding factor is how good their relationship is with their wife. Men hate to lose what they value and what they have put a lot of work into. Given an equal emotional connection, his investment of time, energy, money, children, etc., is far greater than his investment in the other woman.
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How much he loves her now has little to do with his future with her. People’s feelings of love can come and go very quickly in a new relationship. Perhaps you remember those days when you were dating other men when you were single. How many times did you fall in love?
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Leaving a lousy marriage to be with another woman is not a big sacrifice, and so does not count as a measure of love for her. Just because he is leaving you doesn’t mean his love for her is so strong. It is more likely that his love for you is not so strong. And, if he loves the other woman, but won’t leave you, he may enjoy her more, but actually love you more.
Mistakes women make trying to get their husbands back
1. Dealing with a man who wants to leave is different from dealing with a man who has been caught and doesn’t want to leave. Whatever anger you dump on him is only going to push him further out the door.
2. Pleading with him for another chance also is not going to get him to stay. The choice he is making is not about the other woman, and it is not about you (although you will both think it is). The choice is about him and what he wants for his future.
3. Anything you do that creates resistance or shows disapproval will push him away. Although his behavior is very wrong, you can’t get him to stay by trying to make him wrong. Your blaming, attacking, or pleading with him will do nothing to build your relationship with him.
4. Critical behaviors make you less attractive and her, more attractive. They all display a lack of concern for your husband. Sincere empathy will help you to connect instead of pushing him away. And having good boundaries will prevent him from having things both ways.
The other woman is not the problem. If it wasn’t her, then it would be someone else. There’s nothing magical about her. She is just an opportunity that he grabbed onto, so don’t get hung up on thinking about her.
The real problem is your loss of connection with your husband. He doesn’t care enough about your marriage to remain faithful to you. He is willing to risk losing it. Although you may only recently have found that out, you may still be able to get him back