Surely a wife would know [that her husband is unfaithful]?

[waterwoman]

Hi folks, haven't started a thread for a long time but something occurred to me recently. I have seen so many times on here, and elsewhere, that a wife HAS TO KNOW that her husband is cheating because he must be acting differently, why doesn't she notice, why doesn't she care? At the time I did notice, but he assured me he was OK, it was just work worry. And I believed him, not because I didn't care, but because of trust and because I had never experienced infidelity before so had no idea what to look for.

 

My husband is suffering from depression at the moment and his behaviour is almost exactly the same as during the affair. We are very straight forward with each other these days, the main positive outcome of his affair, and I know he isn't doing it again and know what is causing it. But it strikes me how very cruel it would be, when he is suffering already, to turn and accuse him of cheating. In fact it saddens me that it even occurred to me that he might be.

 

I HATE that this vile thing invaded our lives and I have to consider it and it makes me angry that betrayed spouses are seen as stupid or self-centred not to assume that is the reason for a partners change in behaviour.

[road]

Not saying he is but because of past behavior you need to

always check to verify that he does not slip back to his old ways.

 

Has your WH always been transparent after his affair?

If not the blame is on you.

 

Access to all means of him communicating and passwords

are always to be given up by the WS after D day.

[dichotomy]

After being cheated on, lied to in each marriage - its easy to look back and see signs - behavior, gut feelings, what ever that i missed. Yet I also dont love easily - when I do I tended (in past) to throw myself into complete trust.

 

I dont have that anymore and never will.

 

Trust but verify.

[carhill]

Some people are more sensitive and/or intuitive than others. Some are more crafty and/or gifted with deception. All sorts of people, personality-wise, get married. Also, each marriage is unique in its parameters, scope and intimacy.

 

Believing, knowing and responding are discrete states. Observers can draw some conclusions from response but that is dependent upon perception since we can't read minds. Our own experience colors our perceptions with bias.

 

I recall, decades ago, one MW recounting some work she was doing in IC and her counselor discussing marriages and how when one has experienced one marriage, that's one and no one other than the spouses really knows what goes on behind closed doors. Yup. That was also the time I learned about the difference between IC and MC, as I disagreed with the counselor that she should encourage MW to contact me because that's what she wanted, of course presuming that was authentic. The lesson was that IC works to benefit the person, regardless of effect on the marriage. I've seen many similar examples of that philosophy over the decades.

[sandylee1]

When your spouse sets out to deceive you and you have no reason not to trust you wouldn't know.

 

Not all cheaters give off signs of cheating. They take the time to put lots of measures in place to ensure they aren't caught.

 

I often find it's OWs who say the wife must know. It makes them feel better.

[Popsicle]

Esther Perel says that it is foolish to have blind trust and believe that your spouse would never cheat. You should treat your relationship as if your spouse could cheat on you at any moment. Because it's true. This keeps you from taking your spouse for granted and makes you take care of each other like two people who just met each other. Yes, you have competition. Is your husband/wife worth it?

Edited March 11, 2018 by Popsicle

[Popsicle]

[wmacbride]

In my experience, the people who say that are usually just trying to salve their own guilt and minimize their actions and those of the cheating spouse.. They think that the wife/husband must know, and if she/he doesn't, it means she/he really doesn't care and or she does know and since she doesn't say anything, he/she's actually okay with him cheating.

 

The reality is usually far different. It's usually a combination of the be loving and trusting their spouse, and the ws being sneaky and deceptive.

[seren]

I certainly had no idea, I knew H was acting as though he had been taken over by aliens, but he explained it away as work stress, being tired etc, always apologising for acting like a dickhead and when he wasn't being a dickhead he was being the same lovely man I had known for over 22 years.

 

The A totally blindsided me, it hurt like nothing else had because I trusted so much. That is why we don't suspect, we love and we trust and because they have previously shown they can be trusted we don't look for an A as the reason for their odd behaviour and they have reasons for it. Many of us who have been married for a long time are nearly always shocked. We were making plans for our future, we were talking about our retirement plans and a million and one future plans. Often the A's are snatched moments and so far from how I imagined an A, I always imagined being swept away to a nice hotel for the weekend, dinners in romantic places and all that, which is how I was woo'ed. I couldn't imagine meeting someone for snatched moments or a tawdry text while H went to the bathroom.

I know not all are like that, but many are and because they don't disrupt the family time, don't imagine any time left over for anyone else.

 

I had no idea and I agree, those who imagine the BS knows and says nothing or doesn't care are usually fooling themselves, the WS does all they can to prevent the BS finding out. That in itself says something.

[OpenBook]

I have seen so many times on here, and elsewhere, that a wife HAS TO KNOW that her husband is cheating because he must be acting differently, why doesn't she notice, why doesn't she care?

 

I think I was one of those people. I was apparently wrong. My apologies if I offended you, waterwoman. When I started observing (in general) how one spouse could have a totally different view of (and level of happiness with) the marriage than their other half, and neither side has any clue as to each other's real view of it - THE SAME MARRIAGE - that's when I began to see that no, it's really not the two becoming one, that spouses really can (and do) hide a lot from each other.

 

I will never understand how this is possible, living with a person day in and day out for years and decades. But I know (now) that it is a pretty common state of being.

 

I don't know how you married people do it.

[waterwoman]

I think I was one of those people. I was apparently wrong. My apologies if I offended you, waterwoman. When I started observing (in general) how one spouse could have a totally different view of (and level of happiness with) the marriage than their other half, and neither side has any clue as to each other's real view of it - THE SAME MARRIAGE - that's when I began to see that no, it's really not the two becoming one, that spouses really can (and do) hide a lot from each other.

 

I will never understand how this is possible, living with a person day in and day out for years and decades. But I know (now) that it is a pretty common state of being.

 

I don't know how you married people do it.

 

Thanks Open Book. It's not so much offensive as infuriating to be told the same thing again and again no matter how many times you try to explain that is isn't the case !!

 

it certainly isn't that we have a different view of marriage or level of happiness - I was pretty miserable at the time too - I just never believed he would cheat, anything but that. We were going through a lot of stuff at the time and I was battling depression and I thought we were both treading water waiting for life to ease up so we could get heal as a couple. I was wrong it seems. The difference is that while we were both in a similar place, I had boundaries and he didn't.

 

We don't 'hide' anything from each other as much as naturally keep part of ourselves separate. We are a married couple not one indivisible being. That would be utterly stifling.

[Chilli]

l really dunno who would see them as stupid, people even wives and husbands we think we know so well , can easily and do pull the wool over our eyes , all the time.

 

Unless they're pretty silly and careless , he or she can easily hide an affair if they want to and the spouse is all lovey dovey non the wiser until someone slips up , which could take years.

Don't feel bad about yourself or take any blame for this , it's always a lot easier to say or see or for others to see after the fact , right. But during , nother story.

[Excedrin PM]

Hi,

It's awful to have the Spector of Infidelity in a marriage. I applaud you for your efforts. It's only human to compare and contrast behavior. Sometimes we misconstrue and become concerned that history is repeating itself. Yes, depression has a myriad of faces, that's why It's best left to a professional to diagnose and treat. Stay strong.

[SolG]

And I believed him, not because I didn't care, but because of trust and because I had never experienced infidelity before so had no idea what to look for.

 

waterwoman your post reminded me of a fraud and ethics seminar I recently attended.

 

I work for a large diverse multinat. We have governance and forensic monitoring up the wahzoo. And still we and most other corporations of our size still have employees that manage to perpetrate fraud. (Although they do generally eventually get caught.)

 

And consistently, the people that work closely with the perpetrators--and are therefore most likely to first detect/notice red flages--had no idea what they were up to. Like you, they would say things like sure I noticed some differences... but no way in the world did I suspect that Mary/Joe Bagodonuts--my trusted work bud--was actively defrauding the company. And yet Mary/Joe Bagodonuts actually was; sometimes flagrantly and for very large sums of money.

 

I think it's human nature to trust those that we build a (perhaps in some contexts only seemingly) solid relationship with. Most of us don't want to think badly of or mistrust those close to us. Indeed, we'll reconstruct our narrative to avoid that thinking. He/she is only insisting on solely managing that account without assistance or oversight because he/she is so committed to delivering outcomes for the company. Or an example in the infidelity context... He/she is only working late every night with that particular opposite gender colleague because he/she wants a bonus to provide for our family.

 

We want to trust, until we're burned and consequently become wiser.

 

I think that it is expecting too much of a BS to assume that they 'must know' when their WS is being wayward. There is too much evidence that suggests that this is generally not what people do.

[seren]

Many BS don't know simply because the WS works so damned hard to ensure they don't find out. In many situations the marriage and the relationship they share in that marriage is much the same, where the WS is acting out of character it is explained away as trouble at work, extra demands placed upon them, if asked, they usually have an excuse for their 'off' behaviour but back it up by saying that they love the BS, they are sorry etc etc. The BS, wanting to lessen the stress for their partner will, often, try to make life easier for the WS. This can often have the WS feel guilty and so they project their guilt onto the BS, this often can end up as picking fault for no reason, for inventing things the BS has done, or not, this is possibly the worse thing. The gas lighting can make a BS feel they have lost the plot, it also gives the WS a hypothetical 'reason' for having an affair, they almost believe it themselves.

 

If they were sleeping in the spare room, suddenly not having sex or sharing intimacy, many BS would suspect an affair before finding out, but, a lot of the time the marriage basics remain the same. Many times we read how the WS tells the AP that he sleeps in the spare room, there is no sex, they don't share intimacy when the opposite is the truth of it. Those that want to hide something usually behave the same fundamentally.

 

Once D Day has happened and with hindsight, the scenarios take on a different slant, many a BS says to themselves, so that's why the WS was behaving like this, that is why (insert event) they did this or said that. Easiest thing all around? if you are unhappy talk about it, if you want someone else, leave, if you want to fix a marriage, communicate, last thing to do is to lie, cheat and try to justify it by blaming someone else. Giving someone trust is the greatest gift of all, breaking that trust is heartbreaking. I know many WS, my own H included, who said, had he a crystal ball and could see how broken the A made me, he would rather die than do that, shame crystal balls haven't been invented.