When we discovered our husband’s affair (or when it was disclosed willingly), the first set of questions we had were:
Who did you have the affair with?
When did all of this happen?
Where did you two go together?
What did you two do together? What did I do to lead you to an affair? What is it about me that makes you not love me? What gave you the right? What were you thinking?
These form the bulk of our questions in the first months following the discovery of an affair. We want the details. We want to make sense of what has happened to us. If you are like me, you want to put the missing pieces of your marriage’s puzzle together so that you can see the picture more clearly (I can’t make decisions without all of the information). We ask question after question, ad nauseum. We feel like a broken record, going over the details again and again, asking the same question five different ways. But, above all, the question that most plagues us, and the one that eludes us the most is the question of WHY.
Why would a man, who has made a commitment to love and cherish you, suddenly turn his sights on another woman? Why would he betray your trust so painfully? Why would he risk all that you have built for this seemingly meaningless encounter, or second-rate relationship? It is the foundation of what most bothers us, and the question that few ever get the honest answers to. As painful as it would sound to hear it, we almost prefer to hear “She was thinner than you”, to “I don’t know why I did it” After all, don’t we all have enough self awareness to know why we do the things that we do? Don’t we all have some measure of self control over our lives, our decisions, and our circumstances? The answer to that is “not always”, and most of us are less self aware than we think we are. I think it gives us a measure of safety to think that we are in control of ourselves, and that our decisions are all made consciously with good intentions after much research and contemplation, but the fact is, they are not. More on that later…back to the WHY question.
In the wake of my husband’s disclosure, I yearned for the why. I wanted to know why a man who I *thought* I knew so well could have gone behind my back, lied, created opportunities for himself to philander, and have gotten another woman pregnant? Why was I so unaware? Why was I so blind? Why didn’t I see the signs???? The biggest why of all, however, was “Why did you cheat on me????”. He didn’t have the answer, and that hurt almost as much as the news itself. It sounded like a cop-out. It sounded like yet another lie in the web he’d created, and saying “I don’t know”, sounded like a way to avert the truth, to avoid hurting me, to avoid looking like an idiot. It just sounded like a pathetic excuse.
Within an hour of ‘finding out’, I locked myself in my bedroom and pulled out a journal and began to furiously scribble my thoughts. My pen could not move as fast as my thoughts, and I was having a hard time keeping up. Here are some excerpts of what I wrote:
” …I am thinking that this is a nightmare, and I’ll wake up soon – I hope. I fear tomorrow I will open my eyes and realize that the day is just beginning and this is real, and not going away. I feel so stupid, so naive, so ridiculous. Deep down, I know that I am not the fool, you are. I’m just the one who opened herself up too much, trusted too much, and naively believed that I was the luckiest woman in the world…You and I used to talk about infidelity and how we felt lucky that we’d never find ourselves there, and yet here we are. You told me that you’d never have eyes for another woman, that I was beautiful, smart, and everything you’ve ever wanted. You gave me such a strong feeling of security and enclosure. I never dreamed of this…Why wasn’t I good enough for you? Why wasn’t I enough? Did I get too fat? Did I lose my youth? Do you workout for her? You started cheating around our anniversary and that kills me. You were intimate with another woman and that sickens me to the depths of my core. You’ve touched and been touched by someone else. What gives you the right to act so selfishly? To turn my life upside down? The kids lives? How could you turn to someone else. How could you turn to someone like HER? I am insulted that I was picked over in favour of someone as sorry and pathetic, as mean, as superficial, and disgusting as her. I am sick that my love for you has been made a mockery by you two…I find myself in a place I can’t describe. On the one hand, I see you suffering and I want to reach out to you and make it all better. I want to run to you and hold you and tell you that we’ll be ok, and have you wrap your arms around me. You’re the only one who comforts me, and the only one I can turn to, and now I feel all alone. On the other hand, I want you to feel hurt, pain, and worry about our future. I want you to be DESPERATE and WANT ME. Turning to you to comfort YOU makes me feel like the world’s biggest idiot after what I’ve just learned. She is carrying your baby – that is surreal. I am the ONLY one who should have that priviledge, and that has been taken from me. How could you be so stupid????”
Looking back over my words, expressed over two years ago, I can remember vividly where I was, and how I felt. My first entry was all questions, centred around my worth as a wife and partner. I wanted to know that I was loveable. I wanted to know why I wasn’t enough. I needed to be reassured that it wasn’t because of ME or because I’d fallen short in some way. My bruised ego simply couldn’t take that. I wanted to know what she had that I didn’t. I wanted to know why someone he had described as being so pathetic could ever have been considered as anything more?
Why became my biggest question over the coming months, and I was desperate to know how it came to be. I wanted to understand it, anatomically pick it apart. I needed to see the affair from the vantage point of my husband, with all of the details. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t asked for so many details so quickly, but I was just emotionally wrecked and didn’t think I could take another blow, so I wanted it all at once. Some of the information was tolerable, if I imagined it wasn’t really him, but a Hollywood actor, and he was telling me a story. When I would snap back to reality and realize that he was describing true events that involved HIM, I was sick. Some of the information was completely intolerable and left me with flashbacks for months. In May 2010, I asked him whether he had ever done anything with her sexually that he hadn’t done with me. His response was no. I asked if the sex was better. His response was no. But, then he decided to add a little detail, saying “well there was this thing she did with her hips once that was amazing”…and I was right back to square one. From that day on, I tried to imagine what it was she had done, and wondered why I couldn’t do it? Did I dare try? ”No”, I thought, “I don’t want to aspire to be someone like HER”. It grated in my memory for the longest time, and caused such flashbacks when we were intimate for the longest time.
We all want to know WHY, and yet it is the one thing they can’t answer much of the time. Much of that comes from a lack of awareness of why. After all I have learned, I think that many men really don’t realize WHY they did what they did, and it was that exact LACK of self awareness that put them there in the first place. A few weeks ago, I posted about vulnerabilities and what factors can pre-dispose people to affairs. Most of them shocked me. I wouldn’t have known they were flags, let alone red ones. I guarantee you men don’t know either. Most men don’t make a conscious plan to have an affair. It is a situation in which they suddenly find themselves after having slipped down a slippery slope, having allowed their moral compass to shift somewhat, allowing them to perceive previously actions previously described as irreprehensible as suddenly “tolerable”. Little by little they slip, rationalizing and justifying their actions to themselves along the way until there is NO DOUBT that they have crossed that line, and now it is a matter of damage control.
Finding the why is hard. It takes a man (or woman if you are a man and your wife cheated) who is willing to patiently answer all of your questions, who is willing to repeat as needed all of the details until you are satisfied, and then often repeat them some more. It takes a person who is willing to be introspective and to look inside themselves at what was going on for them at the time, what the affair was giving them that they felt they were lacking. It takes someone willing to do the work.
I can’t say enough good things about the “healing from affairs” weekend, offered by Anne and Brian Bercht. Seeing the affair of other men, and realizing that my husband was not unique in his situation was tremendously healing for me. Being able to see his lack of self awareness as just that, and not a bunch of lies aimed at avoiding the real reason for WHY. The Beyond Affairs website has a lot of great tools and resources including the tele seminars which are recorded, and which you can listen to at your desk, or on a tablet in the privacy of your room. The in-person seminars, are, however, the best option, if you can manage it. If you are both willing to do the work, this will get you there, and WAY FASTER than what we have endured. I recommend everyone to take a look at the site, and consider attending a weekend. You will be so glad you did. You’ll get your why.
**Edited to add as an afterthought***:
For those struggling with the why….it wasn’t about you. It wasn’t something you did, or didn’t do. It wasn’t because you aren’t pretty. Studies have shown that strangely enough, men often cheat with women inferior in looks to their spouse. It isn’t because you aren’t thin enough. It isn’t because you burn dinner, or forget to starch the ironed shirts. It isn’t ANYTHING you did or caused. In fact, if you were the epitome of perfect, he still would have cheated. I mean, take a look at hollywood and you will find a beautiful star who has it all: looks, fame, money, a body to die for, and a husband who cheated. It has everything to do with them. Sure, there are bad marriages, but a bad marriage doesn’t make an affair – it makes a bad marriage. You need to separate the two because they aren’t linked. Many men in bad marriages never cheat, and men in good marriages do. Marital issues are marital issues. They need to be worked on and settled. Affair issues are entirely to do with the vulnerabilities in the wayward partner, and the opportunities that presented themselves at the right time. Marital issues = both responsible. Affair issues = Wayward spouse’s issue. Please don’t mix the two and assume one has anything to do with the other, because they are separate, and need to be dealt with separately. You aren’t responsible for your spouse’s affair. The only thing we are guilty of is loving and trusting too much – and that isn’t a crime 
