Is Staying in a Marriage After an Affair a Sign of Weakness?
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The ability to forgive a spouse, heal a marriage and become a better stronger person through the pain is something one can tremendously respect themselves for.
One of the biggest rewards I earned for staying and working it out was the respect of our teenagers. All of them have come to us on separate occasions and in their own words said to my husband and myself, “You know what Mom and Dad, most of our friends parents are having the exact same problems as you and Dad have had, except they just give up, throw in the towel and quit. You and Dad worked out your problems. We really respect you for that!”
Imagine being told by your teenagers that they respect you!
I’ve come to see that my husband’s affair was not something he did to me. It was something which was a reflection of his weaknesses (not my failure as a wife) and what he didn’t understand about affairs before the subtle lure of friendship at work led him beyond the line. It was not an intentional act of disrespect towards me. He didn’t have an affair because he thought; “Now I’m going to disrespect my wife by having an affair.”
Of course if he was continuing to have affairs and I stayed in the marriage that would be different, but he has done everything any man could ever do not only to make it up to me, but to become a better, stronger man himself and to ensure it never happens again.
A vice president of a large corporation once made a huge mistake which literally cost the company millions of dollars. As a result he (and everyone else) assumed he would be fired. But the President said, no way, I’ve just spent millions of dollars training this man. He’ll be the smarter for his mistake. After spending all that money on his education, I’m not about to let some other company reap the benefits.
So also my husband has made the biggest relationship mistake possible for which he has paid a huge price and become a much better man as a result. Should I now just hand over the man I love to some other woman, now that I’ve paid the price in his learning experience? What am I suppose to do? Start over with some other loser who hasn’t learned this lesson yet and have my heart broken again? How could I respect myself for that?
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