I hear this question so often.
I hear it from wives and I hear it from mistresses.
Many wives can not understand how their husbands could look them in the eye and claim to still love them when they have betrayed their marriage vows and cheated with someone else.
And, mistresses almost always tend to believe husbands when they claim not to love their wives "in the way that a husband should.
" The mistresses believe these claims because they want to, while the wives tend not to believe this, even if it really is true.
What neither the wife or the mistress realize is that the husband often doesn't know exactly what he's feeling.
If he were completely clear on what he felt and what he stood for, then no one would be in this mess.
No, he's often having sort of a personal crisis.
And one thing that is often true and relevant for both women is that he doesn't exactly love himself or his lot in life at one point in time.
He may be looking back and understanding things more clearly right now, but, at this time, the mistake is already made.
Things are often so much more clear when you are looking back on them instead of experiencing them in the present.
But knowing these things don't really answer your questions.
Hopefully, what I have to tell you may shed some light on all of this.
I hear from so many men who ask for my advice on making their wives believe that they are truly sorry and that they want their old lives back.
They pour out their hearts in emails and comments.
So, I can share with you the insights that their words often convey, whether they realize it or not.
I'll do this in the following article.
How Men Are Able To Compartmentalize And Have An Affair In The Way That Many Women Never Could: One large reason that wives can not understand a husband's thinking when he cheated is that we do not even come close to thinking in the same way.
Very few of us can possibly understand physical transgressions that have very little to do with emotion because to most of us, the emotion has to be present for the physical to come forth.
This is not always the case with men.
They are very often able to separate the two.
And, as weird as it sounds, it's often their emotional ties to you that keeps them from sharing the doubts and insecurities that lead up to the affair anyway.
Often when he's struggling, he's reluctant to share his self doubt and lagging self esteem with us because he does not want to feel vulnerable or to appear weak.
So instead, he will act on things that he hopes will make him feel better about himself.
Often at that time, he doesn't realize that this is only a quick fix that is only going to makes things devastatingly worse.
He's not thinking about this in the way that we would.
And, it's often when he realizes just how huge a mistake he's made that it suddenly hits him that he may well have shattered what he holds most dear.
So many men tell me that not only do they "not know what they were thinking" when they cheated, they often have to admit that they weren't thinking at all.
And often now, they are trying to over think things.
They want their lives back and they want everything fixed quickly.
While they do understand that you're hurt and struggling, they are frustrated that you don't understand that their feelings for you never changed.
And, I can not stress enough that many men insist to me that they never stopped loving their wife.
They seem to be completely sincere in this and they completely believe what they are saying.
While they sometimes understand why you have a hard time believing their claims, this doesn't make them believe the validity of their feelings any less.
Deciding Whether Or Not To Allow Your Husband To Prove That He Still Loves You After The Affair: Often when wives tell me that they aren't sure if their husbands still really love them, I tell them that they really do have three choices.
You can either reject this altogether, you take this onto faith (which is often impossible as he's already lied to and betrayed you,) or you can decide if you want to give him the chance to prove it to you or not.
I understand being reluctant to do this.
You're afraid that he's going to cheat on or hurt you again.
So, if you have to be hurt, you want to make sure that this only happens once.
And you don't want to waste a lot of time and emotional energy if this is the end anyway.
I don't know your situation.
But, I have been in a similar situation and I've seen countless others go through it.
You often have to take his past behavior and performance as a husband into account and then ask yourself if, considering this, you are better off taking a chance with him rather than closing the door without him.
Only you can decide this.
But, if you do decide that you don't want to close the door, nothing says that you have to believe his assertions just because he says them.
You can make it very clear that while you're willing to listen to what he has to say and wait and see how this all turns out, you're going to be basing your belief system on his actions and behaviors from here on out.
If he really does still love you, his wife, then this will become obvious over time.
He will hang in there, and will offer you reassurance, understanding, and patience.
He will find out what you need and he will provide it.
And, he will work with you to strengthen your relationship and to create a new one in which you're both secure and happy.
If you present this to him and he's still on board, nothing says that you can't watch and wait and allow for him to prove this to you.