Dealing with a Cheating Spouse

Are you starting to suspect that you have a cheating spouse?

I’ve written this page to help you get some idea of the things you must need to know about:

• How to find out if your spouse really is cheating
• Why seeking revenge on your cheating spouse is the worst move you can make
• How to rebuild the relationship, if you want to and regain trust.

How to catch a cheating spouse

Before you invest too much energy in what may be simple paranoia, let me take you through a quick checklist to work out if your spouse has any real reason to stray. This is not an exhaustive list but serves as a good starting point.

Indications that your partner could be tempted:

• Your time together feels driven by routine with little spark or spontaneity.
• You both appear to be disinterested in sex with each other.
• The sex you are having feels perfunctory with no real excitement or intimacy.
• You feel like you’ve turned into housemates rather than lovers.

Clearly a great relationship isn’t just about sex but if you get into the kind of relationship I outlined above then it’s not going to take much for someone else to make them feel special and swoop in. At this point you are way too open to, what in business terms we’d refer to as, a ‘hostile takeover bid’.

So here are a list of symptoms that regularly turn up on my couch when a partner has strayed and the couple comes to me for help. Spot any of these and you’d do well to ask some very direct questions.

• They stop sharing the more intimate details of their life and you’re clearly no longer best friends.
• They suddenly stop caring about you and the marriage in a way that feels strange.
• They are spending a lot of time with a member of the opposite sex and you’re not introduced.
• They start taking calls on their mobile at strange times and never tell you who it is.
• They start taking their mobile into the bathroom with them when they shower.
• They may set up a new email account and refuse to tell you the password.
• They start asking you weird questions like ‘Do you think monogamy is realistic?’
• Suddenly they’re getting weird scratches or bruises.
• Work starts to take up a lot more time, lots of working late.
• They’ve developed a new interest in their clothing or weight or their taste in music changes.
• They’re suddenly suggesting new sexual positions or techniques.
• Your partner suddenly stops wanting to have sex with you.
• They want sex more often and seem re-invigorated.
• They’ve taken on a new glow that you don’t recognise.
• They are spending more nights away from home and you can’t contact them on a landline.
• Their voice changes on the phone.
• You’re locked out of things you used to have the passwords for.

Is it worth seeking out revenge on a cheating spouse?

Revenge is never sweet, it’s pretty bitter and it hurts you.

Your desire for revenge is propelled by resentment which is made up of things like anger and fear. All these feelings are totally normal so it would be cause for concern not to be feeling them. The thing is that they have consequences. It’s said that being resentful is like setting fire to ourselves and hoping they choke on the smoke.

This is going to be a little simplistic given the length of this article but at some point you’re going to need to move to a position of understanding and then eventually forgiveness. It can be a lengthy process but it’s totally possible, people rarely talk about recovering from infidelity but it is possible. This doesn’t mean you’ll be condoning their behaviour or making excuses for them but it does allow you to let go of some of your own suffering. All that pain and resentment is poisoning you and you deserve better.

Rebuilding your ability to trust your spouse

If your partner has been able to be totally open about their infidelity it’s possible that the two of you would want to reconnect, to begin to re-establish the trust that you once had.

Re-establishing the faith you once had in your partner is a real challenge but it is possible, take a look at this video if you want to know why more people don’t understand you can overcome infidelity. In the majority of cases, and I’m not talking about serial cheaters here, your partner strayed because they thought something was lacking in their relationship with you. This can sometimes be just about the sex but in my experience there’s generally a lot more going on. This might include feeling underappreciated, undesired or they might just have got depressed about their own life and gone looking for answers in all the wrong places.

If you find yourself in a position where both of you are able to begin the sometimes long, and painful, process of healing the damage of an extramarital affair you’re going to need to be totally honest about what you both need. Hopefully this will include some fairly radical changes in the way you relate to each other on pretty much every level.

The most important point about your recovery is this; Forgiveness and healing from this kind of betrayal takes as long as it takes. It’s not uncommon for the cheating spouse to begin to complain that 3 months after you discovered the betrayal you should be over it. That’s a total nonsense and you don’t need to take it seriously. I will however say that most of the couple’s that do make it past an affair have engaged the help of a really good marriage counsellor. I say really good as just dragging you both through guilt and shame isn’t going to fix it. Be careful about the help you get, when it comes to relationships everyone thinks they’re an expert.

Related Help

Extramarital Affairs