Want to win back a cheating husband? Then YOU must eat humble pie
From respected marital counsellor ANDREW G MARSHALL, the most unexpected relationship advice you’ll ever read
THEY’RE the words no woman ever wants to hear. In 30 years of relationship counselling I’ve worked with around 2,000 couples and I ’ ve l earned t he most common reason a husband tells his wife he doesn’t love her any more is because there’s ‘another woman’.
Discovering that your husband has fallen out of love with you or is ‘ i nvolved’ with someone else is simply horrible.
Your heart races, it feels like a bag of cement is lodged in your stomach and your mind starts working overtime.
Why is he doing this, you ask? You’ve been a loyal and supportive wife, after all. He’s got a lovely home and children who adore him. What more could he want?
Of course you’re not perfect — who is? But you’re not the one sending inappropriate texts to another woman. You’re just trying to hold the family together. If only he’d grow up and start acting his age.
Any woman who finds herself in this situation has my sympathy. Though there is always hope, the weeks and months ahead are going to be really tough. But while it might surprise you, the person whose behaviour needs to change first is . . . you.
If your husband’s been behaving badly, understandably it’s tempting to label him as the problem, but this sidesteps your part in the unravelling of your marriage and what made him unhappy enough to look elsewhere.
Ultimately, the only person we can change is ourselves and that should be the first step to rescuing any marriage in crisis. Here, I show how, with a bit of honesty and several servings of humble pie, women can begin the process of reviving the most unsalvageable marriage and win back the love of a cheating man.
He’s cheating, but YOU should apologise
THE first step towards recovery needs you to commit to change. And while you’ve probably said you are sorry a million times before to keep the peace, have you made a full apology? This is one that acknowledges your unhelpful behaviour (eg taking him for granted), accepts your responsibility (you’ve been so wrapped up in the children you’ve forgotten to be a wife as well as a mother), expresses sorrow and a determination to change, and is sincere.
In particular, do you need to apologise for nagging, a habit that could be destroying your relationship?
Acknowledge that it must make him feel
constantly criticised. Promise not to nag again and that he should say something if he catches you doing it. Though it is tempting to add an explanation for your nagging, it can sound as if you’re excusing yourself and therefore lessens the power of your apology.
Ultimately, if your husband thinks you spend the majority of your time complaining, nagging or getting angry, he will feel that all the joy has been sucked out of your relationship.
What you should do next DON’T BAN CONTACT WITH THE OTHER WOMAN
IF YOUR husband is still in touch with another woman, it’s tempting to lay down the law and say ‘ no contact’. Understandably, you want her out of your life, but over and over again I’ve seen this backfire.
First, he’s been self-medicating his own unhappiness with attention from another woman, so if you cut off his ‘supply’, of course he’ll crave another hit.
Worse still, it’ll mean you start checking on his actions so he feels distrusted — not a good environment for working on your relationship. Plus it’s controlling behaviour, and who wants to be with a controlling partner?
DON’T COMPLAIN IF HE MOVES IN WITH HER
WHILE I’m not a fan of temporary separations — it makes it harder for you to communicate and there are fewer opportunities to work on your relationship — there’s an upside to him moving in with the other woman.
His ‘true love’ will be tested for the first time. Slowly real life and day-today domesticity will intrude into their fantasy. He will have to deal with her surly teenage son. She will discover all his nasty habits. It is not exactly Romeo and Juliet.
As long as you don’t drive them together — by abusive phone calls, being unreasonable about access to the children and so on — it is highly likely that their relationship will implode.
MEET HER YOURSELF
A VERY personal decision that could make the situation worse, but can also leave you with a better sense of proportion about their relationship and provide her with a more balanced picture of yours.
So she might find out, for example, you’re still having sex or have been reading her texts to your husband.
As one client told me after she confronted the female colleague her husband had been having an affair with: ‘This woman was a demon-like f i gure i n my mind, making me question why I wasn’t good enough any more for my husband.
‘But she wasn’t any more attractive than me and, frankly, seemed very insecure and self-orientated.
‘I was reassured she had no deep feelings for my husband. The demons were exorcised the day I met her. I left feeling in control and relieved there was one l ess obstacle to rebuilding our marriage.’
A few words of warning. If you know where she lives, don’t go to her home on the spur of the moment — you will most likely be angry or frightened and this will not promote clear thinking. Also, if you arrange a meeting by text, remember you are not two friends getting together for coffee, so put a time limit on it.
Remember that everything you say and do will most likely be relayed back to your husband, and don’t do anything — such as becoming aggressive — that could invite retaliation.
Why he’s fallen out of love with you
YOU PUT YOUR CHILDREN FIRST
I KNOW this is controversial. Of course you put your children first! What’s the problem?
Well, the problem is that babies grow up, but some mothers still drop everything for their children.
One client set off on a three-hour round trip to her daughter’s college room to find her l ost passport (because her daughter was too busy to look); another had a copy of her daughter’s reading list so she could help with her coursework.
These are extraordinary examples, but I have many of them.
If your husband believes he is just the father of your children, he will not feel loved by you and will begin to detach in order to protect himself from this depressing scenario.
YOUR SEX LIFE HAS LOST ITS SPARK
THERE have been some massive strides since the sexual revolution of
The Sixties. Everyone is more relaxed about talking about sex and women have been given more permission to enjoy sex, rather than simply doing it for men. Though there is much to celebrate, relationship counsellors and society in general have been so busy stress-ing that no one should be forced have to sex they don’t want that we’ve forgotten the other half of the equation: no one should have to do without the sex they do want. Some couples I counsel are having sex as little as three or four times a year. Men have very black-and-white attitudes to sex. They think if you don’t want sex with them, you don’t love them (and discount other reasons — such as being tired, stressed or not feeling close enough).
If your husband feels that you don’t love him, he can start to feel entitled to look elsewhere.
POOR COMMUNICATION
ON THE surface, everything seems fine. Yes, there might be a few squabbles and sarcastic comments, but nothing to worry about.
And that’s the real danger. One partner — probably your husband — is feeling ignored, a second- class citizen in his own home.
Meanwhile, the other partner — probably you — remains in blissful i gnorance. Or i f you are aware of issues, you don’t think they are that serious.
With poor communication, what would have been a difficult but fixable problem becomes impossible to resolve.
Five tactics you think will work — but won’t
BEING ESPECIALLY NICE
YOU’VE cooked his favourite meals, kept the children off his back, told him how much you appreciate him and offered sex whenever he wants it. But he still doesn’t love you.
For some men, your gestures will be too little, too late.
In addition, your moods are probably all over the place: super-nice one minute, withdrawn the next, then biting his head off and quickly apologising.
He won’t know what to expect when he comes home, and who wants to live like that?
USING THE CHILDREN AS BLACKMAIL
HE’S going to hear your concern for the children as proof you’re interested in him only as a father. Let’s face it, if he suggested you act as a housekeeper and nursemaid and nothing else, would you jump at his offer?
You also risk becoming the wife of every man’s nightmares: ‘ She’s turning my children against me.’
Yes, he might stay because you’ve held a gun to his head or maybe he’ll just say, ‘What else have I got to lose?’ and leave, setting you up for a bitter and protracted divorce.
HAVING LONGER TALKS
GOOD communication is at the heart of a good marriage, but going round and round in circles isn’t good communication.
Constantly cross- examining him about his feelings is like digging up a seed to see if it has germinated.
Worse still, these long talks suck any remaining fun and spontaneity out of your marriage.
No wonder he wants to leave. Anything for a quiet life.
GUESSING WHAT HE’S REALLY FEELING
HOURS of over-thinking will just result in a range of assumptions, often cobbled together from all the different things he says and does throughout his day, which may well be unrelated.
Ultimately, it is better to ask, and take his answers at face value, than to over-analyse and then tell him what he’s feeling — that really puts men’s backs up.
SUPPRESSING YOUR OWN ISSUES
WALKING on eggshells just makes your husband irritated. When you back down, he loses all respect.
PS There’s always hope
IT IS possible to turn around your marriage, even if he’s telling you he’s met his soulmate.
I’ve l e arned t here’s al ways hope for the future if you meet at least two of the following criteria — you’ve been together three years or more, you have children together and you truly love him and want him back.
Finally, you mustn’t panic. This is the worst thing you can do. More marriages end because of a wife’s panic than a husband’s determination to leave.