There is nothing more traumatic in a relationship than discovering that your wife is cheating on you. Interestingly enough, New York Magazine reported that women are just as likely to cheat as men.
Another study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior found that 19% of women in heterosexual relationships report having cheated on their partners. 35% of women also reported having an emotional (non-physical affair) with someone else during marriage.
In other words, you’re not alone. Cheating is a big problem in relationships.
If you suspect your wife is cheating on you, or you’ve found out that your wife is cheating on you––this article will show you what to do in this situation.
This article goes in-depth and covers all aspects of cheating. You could call this the ultimate guide to cheating. Below is an index to help you navigate this long-form article:
- 11 Signs Your Wife Is Cheating
- Case Study: Cheating Wife
- You Suspect Your Wife Is Cheating
- Why Is She Cheating?
- The Unattractive Husband
- The Distant Husband
- Your Wife Is Cheating, Now What?
- How to Confront Your Wife
- You Want to Leave Your Wife
- Case Study: Repressed Anger
- How to Get Your Wife Back
- Re-Attract Your Wife
- Your Wife Wants to Leave
- Your Wife Wants To Stay
Before we look at this horrible situation in-depth, let’s take a moment to examine the signs that your wife is cheating on you so you can make an informed decision moving forward.
11 Signs Your Wife Is Cheating
- She’s lost interest in you
- She’s easily irritated by you
- She is protective of her phone
- She doesn’t want to be intimate with you
- She’s not affectionate around you
- She ignores you and never messages you
- Nothing you say or do is funny or interesting
- She’s distant and wants space away from you
- She’s become more focused on her appearance
- She is emotionally distant to the point of disrespect
- She often disappears and has unexplained absences
If your wife starts to display more than a couple of these signs at once, there’s a good chance she could be cheating on you.
However, before you jump to conclusions and assume the worst, remember your wife is innocent until proven guilty. Just because you think she’s cheating on you doesn’t mean she is cheating on you.
I’ve seen a lot of guys suffer from extreme paranoia and jealousy regarding their wife. These men are often quick to assume the worst.
If your wife displays one or two of the above signs, this in itself does not mean she is guilty of cheating.
If your wife displays more than a couple of signs of infidelity (and your instincts tell you she’s cheating), then you need to investigate further.
Case Study: Cheating Wife
(Note: the case studies in this article are based on true events. All names and personal information have been changed for privacy reasons.)
Pete suspected his wife was cheating on him the moment he came home from a two week business trip. Pete had sensed the change in her behavior months ago and he knew something was wrong.
The lack of intimacy, the cold, distant behavior, her lack of interest in anything he had to say, her disrespectful behavior and her long unexplained absences.
This wasn’t the woman Pete had married. His once sweet, loving wife had transformed into a moody, disrespectful woman.
Pete knew something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He sensed his wife was moving away from him, but only when he came home from the business trip did he suspect she was actually cheating on him.
First, there were the unexplained payments on a discarded bank statement he found in the trash. There was a payment for a room in a hotel, which she hadn’t told him about, and a suspicious payment to Victoria’s Secret.
Was she buying underwear? If she was, she wasn’t buying lacie panties to impress him, that’s for sure.
One night, Pete tried confronting his wife only to have her shut down then explode in anger, “You’re the one who destroyed our relationship. It’s YOUR FAULT, not mine!”
The next morning, when his wife went to work, Pete ransacked the house looking for more incriminating evidence… He found what he was looking for in the kitchen—a pair of red panties stuffed inside a kitchen drawer, hidden among the dish towels.
Pete’s body flushed with sweat and his heart began to pound. There was no denying it now, his wife was cheating on him.
When his wife came home he confronted her with the evidence. “I know you’re cheating on me,” he said. “I found your panties hidden in the kitchen drawer. You don’t wear them for me, so who are you wearing them for?”
Pete’s wife gave him a cold, withering look. “I can’t believe you went through my stuff. That’s an invasion of privacy.”
Pete began to stammer, “What’s going on?”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” She said. “I put them in the drawer because it’s private. It’s for me. I don’t want anyone to see them.”
“I don’t believe you,” Pete said. “You’re seeing someone.”
“I don’t care what you believe,” Pete’s wife muttered. “I’m done with you…”
“What are you talking about?” Pete replied.
“I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you going through my STUFF! Just GET OUT! Leave me alone!”
“Please,” Pete said. “Whatever’s going on, we can work through this. Just tell me what’s going on. We can talk about this and fix it.”
“It’s too late for that,” his wife responded. “I should have left you a long time ago.”
“Just because you’re mad at me,” Pete said. “I’m sorry I went through your stuff. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Pete’s wife replied as she snatched the panties out of his hand and stormed off.
After repeatedly apologizing to his wife for several weeks and trying to fix the relationship, Pete’s wife had had enough. She left the house and moved in with her sister.
It didn’t matter what Pete said, the more he talked the more he pushed his wife away. Even when she finally admitted that, yes, she had in fact been cheating on him, somehow she had managed to turn it all around and put the blame on him.
Pete was never there for her, she said. He wasn’t supportive. He was too focused on his work. He was too boring. He was stupid. He was a disappointment. She should never have married him.
All Pete could do was hang his head in sorrow and tear at the memory of their love… a love that had once blossomed but was now dead. His wife was gone, never to return again.
You Suspect Your Wife Is Cheating
If you suspect your wife is cheating on you, the first thing you need to do is collect hard evidence. You need proof that she is actually cheating on you.
Now, some men have gone to extreme lengths to catch their wives in the arms of another man.
One man sent a drone up into the sky to spy on his wife; another man put a GPS tracking device on his wife’s car; another tapped his wife’s phone and recorded her calls.
Whatever you do, stay legal and don’t break the law. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a difficult situation, especially if divorce proceedings are initiated.
If you suspect your wife is cheating on you, you can hire a reputable private investigator to follow your wife and collect photographic/video evidence that your wife is indeed guilty of infidelity.
It’s important to collect evidence. In many states and jurisdictions, adultery is a factor in determining if a spouse is entitled to alimony.
Evidence can also help to speed up divorce proceedings if you need to go down that road.
Keep in mind that cheating, as defined by the law, means you have to prove that sexual acts occurred outside of marriage. Hand-holding and kissing, followed by time spent alone in private is usually enough to convict a spouse of cheating.
At this stage, if you know your wife is cheating on you, I strongly suggest you get legal advice before you confront your wife.
Why Is She Cheating?
There are usually two reasons why your wife wil cheat on you:
1) You turned her off and she lost attraction for you.
2) You were emotionally and physically absent as a husband.
As you read this, you will know which of these two categories you fall into.
The Unattractive Husband
If you turned your wife off with your behavior, then you’re most likely the kind of husband who is too nice and predictable. No harm in that, except nice guy behavior traits are a turn-off to women.
The unattractive husband is usually emotionally needy, weak, and relationship focused. You are no longer a mystery, a challenge, or interesting to your wife. It is for this reason that your wife starts to look outside the marriage for excitement with another man.
Your behavior has turned your wife off. Yes, you were sweet, loving and loyal in the relationship and its not fair that you should be punished for your “nice guy” behavior. But attraction stems from nature; and just like nature, attraction is unforgiving and indifferent.
Attraction doesn’t care about right or wrong, it cares that you behave in a way that meets a woman’s desires for reproduction (more on that later as we discuss the best way to re-attract your wife).
The Distant Husband
The second reason why women cheat on their husbands comes down to the husband being emotionally and physically distant in the relationship. Sometimes the husband is also abusive and controlling and this is also a huge turn-off to women.
There’s a wonderful line in the Eagles song, “Lying Eyes” which sums up a woman’s state of mind right before she cheats on her husband…
“And it breaks her heart to think her love is only… given to a man with hands as cold as ice.”
There are many reasons why a husband might be distant and unavailable in the relationship. The husband might be working a lot and feel too tired to engage 100% with his wife’s emotional needs. As men, we all know how tiring and emotionally demanding women can be.
At other times, the husband simply loses attraction for his wife and no longer feels the need or desire to spend time with her. In all of these situations, the result is the same: the wife ends up feeling abandoned and neglected.
A woman’s emotions are like a black hole that needs constant filling, or to put it more elegantly: her emotions are like a garden that must be tended to and maintained.
Whichever way you slice it, if you don’t provide your wife with the most basic amount of love and affection, she will go looking for intimacy outside the marriage.
Your Wife Is Cheating, Now What?
So now you know: your wife is cheating on you. Once this discovery becomes clear, the emotional hit is savage and brutal.
You will feel rage, anger, hurt and betrayal. You will constantly think about your wife in the arms of another man. You might even feel the urge to get revenge on your wife and her lover.
It is crucial that you do your best to remain calm in this situation, as hard as it might be. There are countless stories of men getting revenge on their wives and lovers, however, all these stories have the same miserable ending for the jilted husband—he gets revenge then goes to jail.
No woman (not even your wife) is worth going to jail for. Should you feel a desire to destroy your wife and her lover, you must get revenge through the legal system as opposed to getting revenge in person.
Now, even though you’re angry and feel bitter resentment towards your wife, you might also feel a desperate desire to save your marriage and win your wife back.
This can be a confusing time for you, as anger is often accompanied by a spike in attraction, which is often as confusing as it is disturbing.
This happens due to the simple reason that men are wired to mate guard their partners. If another man is pursuing your wife, it’s normal to feel a spike in desire for your wife.
Despite the roller-coaster of emotions and feelings you’re going through right now, when you discover your wife is cheating on you the best thing you can do is introduce space into the relationship.
Get away from your wife if possible (at least for a couple of days).
Go stay with a trusted friend or family member; someone who can be discreet and can listen to you talk with empathy and understanding.
If you can’t get away from your wife because you live together, try to minimize the amount of time you spend together. During this time, you need to think about one important question: What do I want?
What do you want? Do you want to leave your wife because a cheating wife is a breach of trust you can never forgive. Or do you want to save the marriage?
Think about this long and hard because this decision will ultimately have a lasting impact on your future relationship with your wife.
Do you want to stay with your wife or do you want to leave her? Once you know where you stand, it’s time to confront your wife.
How To Confront Your Wife
What do you say to a wife who is cheating on you? How do you call her out on her behavior? No matter what you plan to say, this talk is never going to be easy. Once you accuse your wife of cheating, the cat is out the bag and there’s no going back.
This is why it’s important to make sure that your wife really is cheating on you and you have evidence to support your claim. If you don’t have evidence and just a sneaking suspicion that your wife is cheating, stop and collect more evidence.
If your wife is cheating it won’t be difficult to get proof. If you accuse your wife of cheating (and she isn’t), it will affect your relationship and make you look weak and insecure.
Now, if you know for sure that your wife is cheating on you, take a deep breath and find a moment to sit down together. Ask your wife if there’s something wrong in the relationship? You don’t need to come out, guns blazing, and accuse her of being a cheat and a liar.
At this point, your wife might tell you what’s going on and confess that she’s been cheating on you. If your wife denies cheating on you, then you need to provide evidence of her infidelity.
When confronted with the facts, your wife will either:
- Continue to deny she did anything wrong.
- Break down, cry, and tell you what happened.
- Get angry and blame you for invading her privacy and for being a useless husband.
No matter how your wife responds, you’re going to have one thought running through your head during this time. That thought is why?
Why did she cheat on you? Why did she do it? Why weren’t you good enough? Why did she want to be with someone else? Why, why, why?
Strangely enough, if you’re having a calm, rational conversation with your wife you’re unlikely to get the answers you’re looking for.
You will get half-truths mixed with white lies, but you won’t get the whole truth. You won’t find out why she cheated on you. This is why it’s important not to shy away from anger. If your wife gets angry and you get into a heated argument with her, good.
Your wife is much more likely to tell you the truth about why she cheated if she is angry with you as opposed to having a nice, rational conversation with you.
If you want to know why your wife cheated on you, make her angry and she’ll tell you everything. Just be aware that the truth can cut to the bone and hurt like hell. If you want to know why your wife cheated be prepared to hear some hard, uncomfortable truths.
Having said that, knowing why your wife cheated is an important step in moving forward and processing your thoughts and feelings.
Often, understanding why your wife cheated can help you move on emotionally from a relationship that was full of problems and going nowhere.
Note: if you want to forgive your wife and repair the relationship it is often better not to ask for too many intimate details about the affair. Ignorance, in this case, is bliss.
You Want to Leave Your Wife
This is a completely valid decision, and, for many men, it’s the right decision. For a lot of men, the thought of their wife in the arms of another man is too much to bear.
Her cheating is not just an emotional and physical betrayal, it’s an attack on your pride, dignity and ego. If your wife cheats on you, you might not be able to forgive her.
Having said that, one of the most important traits you can have as a man is to know yourself. If you know yourself and you know what your boundaries are, it becomes a lot easier to make difficult life decisions.
If cheating is unacceptable to you and you know this is something you can never forgive, you are justified in leaving your wife. I often speak to men who are so disgusted at the thought of their wife being intimate with another man they have to leave the marriage.
Cheating is the ultimate deal-breaker in this situation. Yet, for other men, a wife’s betrayal can be forgiven, and on some level understood.
You must know where you stand on this issue, then you can make an informed decision about whether to leave your wife or stay with her.
If you decide to stay with your wife after she cheated on you, but you still harbor deep resentment towards her, you will be wasting your life spending more time with her; and if you have children you will not be doing them any favors either.
It is always better to leave your wife instead of sticking around for the sake of children and family. A toxic environment does nothing for a child’s development.
If your children find themselves stuck in the middle of a feud between you and your wife, it will only cause more trauma for the child and stir up future resentment.
In short, get out while you can. You will be doing yourself and your children a huge service in the long-run.
If you find yourself stuck on the fence, not sure if you want to leave your wife or try to find a way to save the relationship, I would advocate taking a break.
There is no need to pull the trigger just yet and initiate divorce proceedings, especially if you are in two minds about leaving and your wife wants to work things out.
In this case, taking time apart is the best thing you can do. A temporary break can be a wonderful reprieve for the two of you.
Space allows tempers to cool and gives you and your wife time to calm down, so you can speak to each other with greater patience and understanding. Taking time away from each other also allows you to sort through your emotions and make an informed decision.
You will know pretty soon whether or not you want to try and work things out or if your wife’s cheating is something you cannot forgive.
A temporary break is a great way to get some perspective before you make any hard decisions during this traumatic time. If, in the end, you do decide to leave make sure you get good legal counsel and hire a competent divorce lawyer who can advise you on the best course of action.
A good divorce lawyer will have your best interests at heart. As such, they will not be trying to profit from your misery. Instead, they will encourage you to work things out with your wife in such a way that you avoid nasty custody/alimony disputes in court.
Case Study: Repressed Anger
When Todd found out that Katy (his wife of seven years) had been cheating on him, he was furious. How could she do this to him? He loved her, took care of her, and paid for everything.
She didn’t have to work. She didn’t have to do anything except take care of their five year old son. The details of the affair come out after Todd saw a message on his wife’s phone—a message from her lover.
At that moment, Todd had burst into the bathroom while Katy was in the shower and held her phone in front of her face, demanding to know what the hell was going on.
After bursting into tears, Katy toweled herself dry and came out of the shower to explain the situation. She said she felt “lonely” and “abandoned” by Todd because he was always at work.
Todd couldn’t believe he was hearing this. The absolute disrespect from this woman was almost too much to comprehend.
He was always at work? He abandoned her? Of course he worked long hours, he was paying for EVERYTHING to support her and their child.
Todd spent the evening downing shots of whiskey and yelling at Katy for being unfaithful, disrespectful, and selfish.
For her part, Katy was apologetic. She knew what she did was wrong. She knew she had been selfish. She had even wanted to call off the affair, but she was just so lonely and miserable staying at home all day she didn’t have anyone else to turn to—Todd was never home.
Todd was still furious when he woke up in the morning. He couldn’t even look at Katy without feeling a palpable sense of disgust. He’d done everything for her and their son and this was how she repaid him? Then there was that stupid accusation: “You’re never home, I’m so lonely.”
What did she expect? Not only did he have to work, but she wasn’t exactly great company. All she did was lie around the house, complaining and crying all the time. No wonder he didn’t want to spend any time with her.
The more Todd thought about the situation, the more he felt as though he’d been duped into marrying her. She had changed, she wasn’t the sweet, fun, loving girl he’d married. What about his own happiness?
Did she really think he didn’t have a chance to cheat too? He’d had a hundred opportunities at work to cheat on her, but he never cheated out of respect for their marriage.
How stupid he’d been to think she was special, that she was somehow different. Now, as Todd got ready to go to work, he looked at Katy lying in bed fast asleep…
He felt nothing. No love. No affection. Nothing… He would stay with her only because he loved their son and wanted to keep the family together. If it wasn’t for his son, he would have packed his bags and left that very morning.
Six months later, Todd was having dinner at home, another microwave meal served up by his miserable wife.
As Todd ate dinner, Katy complained that he never listened to her and she was unhappy in their marriage. Todd didn’t say anything, he just ate his food and seethed in anger. Why, when he was trying to relax after a hard days work, did Katy always try her best to ruin things?
“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Katy said as tears of indignation streamed down her face. “That’s it. I want a divorce. I want out of this marriage.”
“What?” Todd said, dropping his fork. “You don’t get to choose when to leave. The only reason I stayed with you was because of our son. We do this for him. We stay together for him, that’s it.”
“You’re no father and you’re no husband,” Katy said. “Are you even surprised I cheated on you? I’m taking our son and I’m going to divorce you. I’ll get a divorce.”
It was at that moment that Todd exploded with anger. Not only did he have to work like crazy to put food on the table. He had to come home to this? An unsupportive, rude, disrespectful wife who served him cheap microwave dinners.
What about all the sacrifices he’d made? Staying with a woman who cheated on him. Now she was threatening to leave, to divorce him, and take their son away from him?
Todd snapped. He grabbed the back of Katy’s head and slammed her forehead against the table into her plate of food. BANG!
The moment he did it, Todd knew he had crossed a line from which he could never return.
Katy screamed and covered her face with her hands. Whatever happened now, whether he went to jail or not, Todd knew this was it: they were getting divorced and their relationship was over.
Todd knew he should have walked away six months ago after he discovered his wife was cheating on him. Instead, he had stuck around. Why? To punish her? To keep the family together? Maybe a mixture of both.
No matter what happened, Todd’s hatred towards Katy and what she had done to him would never go away. His anger was always there, lingering like a monster beneath the surface of their relationship. It was time to walk away now or risk losing custody to his son forever.
How to Get Your Wife Back
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you don’t want to lose your wife. You remember the love she once felt for you, all the affection, and all the sweet memories.
You might be seething with anger, emotionally devastated and depressed right now because she cheated on you, but a part of you wants to fix the situation and save the relationship.
This is especially true in situations where you both have children together. You don’t want to get divorced. You don’t want to split the family up, not if you can help it. So what do you do?
First, you have to understand why women cheat in the first place. Women cheat when they become emotionally distant from their partner. In all relationships, attraction is the first element to enter a relationship followed by love.
Attraction is also the first element to leave a relationship when things start to turn sour. Therefore, it is my experience that the spark of attraction must be reignited to recapture your wife’s attention and bring her focus back onto you.
Re-attracting your wife takes self-reflection and a willingness to change your behavior. Remember, women are emotional creatures who respond to a man’s behavior.
Your behavior so far has lead you to this point. In other words, if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. Your wife will continue to cheat on you. This is why it’s so important to change your behavior to re-attract your wife.
Re-Attract Your Wife
If you want to save your marriage and recapture your wife’s interest, this section will show you how to do this in detail. It goes without saying, if your wife is cheating on you, she has lost attraction for you.
Some men are masters at killing attraction. The moment they get married they turn into lovestruck fools who can’t help but act in a way that turns a woman off.
Still, other men do little wrong besides losing the all important elements of mystery and challenge once they tie the knot.
Unless you know what you’re doing, it can be especially hard to keep the fire of attraction alive when you start living together with your wife under the same roof.
Re-attracting your wife is the same as re-attracting a girlfriend or a lover. Remember, women respond to your behavior as a man. They are purely emotional and responsive creatures.
A huge part of attraction is not only behaving in a way that is attractive, it’s behaving in a way that eliminates unattractive behaviors from your repertoire.
8 Unattractive Behaviors
- Being needy and clingy
- Being relationship focused
- Not giving your wife space
- You’re easily jealous and upset
- You’re emotionally unstable
- You display weak, beta behavior
- You are no longer a challenge or a mystery
- You are suffocating and boring to be around
If you look at this list and find yourself guilty of any of these attraction sins, you need to do your best to cut these behaviors out of your relationship.
Your lover is not your mother. This applies to your wife too. Your mother will forgive you for acting weak and needy, your wife won’t. If you think you can unload all your problems onto your wife without turning her off, you’re dead wrong.
Again, mentioned in my book Atomic Attraction: attraction (unlike love) doesn’t grow in comfort and safety, attraction grows in tension, space, uncertainty, and mystery—all those uncomfortable emotions we like to avoid.
Your goal, at this point, isn’t to bring the love back into the relationship, your goal is to bring the attraction back into the relationship.
5 Steps to Re-Attract Your Wife
- Mirror her emotions
- Be a mystery and a challenge
- Bring space into the relationship
- Stop talking about the relationship
- Keep the relationship light and fun
If you’re living with your wife, you must start by introducing space into the relationship. Attraction grows in space, it doesn’t grow in close proximity.
Mirror Her Emotions
The second step is to mirror your wife’s emotions. If you sense your wife losing interest in you, ignoring you, and you catch yourself constantly trying to close the distance between the two of you—stop!
Instead of trying to close the distance between you and your wife, which is natural, you must pull away from her to spark attraction.
If you imagine that there is a piece of string connected to you and your wife. If she pulls away from you, and you chase her, the string goes slack and there is no sexual tension in the relationship.
On the other hand, if your wife pulls away from you and you pull away from her, the string goes tight bringing that much needed spark and sexual energy back into your relationship.
Mystery and Challenge
Third, you must bring the elements of mystery and challenge back into play. This can be hard to do if you’re both living together, but it is possible.
How do you become a challenge and a mystery if you’re both living under the same roof? This all comes back to first giving your wife space. On top of space, you must become more unpredictable in your behavior.
Where once you put all your focus onto your wife, you must now bring the focus back onto yourself.
Focus on your hobbies, business, career, education, fitness—anything that helps you develop as a person, takes your mind off the affair, and makes you more attractive is a good thing.
Ambition is a hugely attractive quality to woman. Just because you put a ring on your wife’s finger doesn’t mean she’ll stay attracted to you forever. You need to stay focused on your mission to maintain attraction.
If you start a new hobby, hang out with friends, and get out of the house you will automatically bring the elements of space, mystery and challenge back into the relationship.
Don’t Talk About the Relationship
The fourth and final issue you must focus on is not talking about the relationship. If you spend a great deal of time rehashing the relationship, going over your problems together, and talking about the affair all you do is appear relationship focused as you dredge up bad memories.
Women are relationship focused, men are mission focused. If you subvert this natural dynamic (as assigned by nature), you will turn your wife off and she will continue to pull away from you.
Instead, let your wife talk about the relationship and bring up any issues that arise. Your job, as a man, is to push for intimacy and keep the relationship light, fun and playful.
Just because you’re married to your wife and she’s the mother of your children doesn’t mean you should stop treating her like your lover.
One of the best ways to keep your relationship exciting and fun is to treat your wife like your girlfriend, your babe, your lover, your girl.
Try to bring a sense of fun back into the relationship and never take yourself too seriously. Playful behavior is enormously attractive to women and it helps take the stress and pressure out the relationship too.
Attractive Communication
When it comes to messaging and calling your wife, don’t feel the need to check-in with her on a frequent basis. In my experience, 80% of relationship problems occur over the phone, not face-to-face.
To make communication simple, if your wife is the one who has lost interest in you and is pulling away from you, stop reaching out to her over the phone.
This isn’t about being passive aggressive. It’s about letting your wife know that if she wants to ignore you, you’re not going to chase her.
You have the strength and confidence to walk away from her (again, this is about pride, dignity and confidence). Allow your wife to call you and message you at her own pace. This ensures that she only reaches out to you when she misses you and craves your presence.
Instead of trying to force the interaction, allow your wife to miss you, let her think about you, let her crave you. By all means respond if she reaches out to you, but you want her to be doing the reaching out and initiating contact.
It can take a couple of weeks for this dynamic to shift: where your wife goes from being chased by you to chasing you, so be patient. Keep in mind, studies in the US, Canada, UK and Isreal all show that responsive men are less attractive to women.
Women are attracted to men who are ambitious and focused on their purpose in life, your wife is no exception to this rule.
Let mystery, space, challenge, distance, tension and uncertainty work to your advantage here as you begin eliminating unattractive behaviors from your relationship.
Your Wife Wants to Leave
If your wife cheated because she wants out of the relationship, don’t try to stop her from leaving, even if you want to save the relationship.
It sounds counter-intuitive, the natural inclination is to try and stop your wife from walking out the door. It’s easy to let her go if you don’t want her to stay, but if you want to rescue the relationship and save your marriage this section is for you.
Most men tend to panic when their wife says she’s had enough and she wants out. This sudden fear of loss can hit like a freight train.
The worst thing you can do is try to stop her. If you beg, plead, apologize, and promise to change you’ll often be met with the angry response, “It’s too late for that.”
If you try to pressure your wife into staying with you and she’s already emotionally checked out of the relationship, you will be pouring fuel onto an already stressful situation.
Instead, you must encourage your wife to leave and support her in her decision. This feels unnatural and uncomfortable, but it’s important that you take this stance.
You must turn the tables on your wife. She isn’t expecting you to let her go and encourage her to leave and pursue her own happiness.
Your wife is expecting a fight. She is expecting you to push for counseling and therapy—don’t go down this road just yet.
If you encourage your wife to leave, you take the stress out of the situation. You also sub communicate to your wife that you have the confidence and ability to live your life without her.
This will not only make you appear more attractive, it will confuse your wife and put her into a state of doubt and uncertainty.
This state of uncertainty has been proven, through scientific research, to increase a woman’s attraction for a man.
It’s a sad truth that “nice guy behaviors” do little to re-spark attraction. Why did your wife cheat on you in the first place?
Were you too nice? Too available? Too sweet? Too attentive? If you were, it’s likely that you killed attraction because you acted too feminine in the relationship.
At this point, you don’t want to make the mistake of trying to fix nice guy behavior by being more nice, especially after your wife has already cheated on you with another man.
Don’t be afraid to pull away from your wife and mirror her emotions. Just as she emotionally and physically pulled away from you, so, too, must you pull away from her to re-ignite the spark of attraction.
If this fails to capture your wife’s attention, you might need to bring some dread into the relationship to spike attraction.
I have written an article titled: Use Dread to Restore Dying Attraction which describes how to implement dread in great detail. Implementing dread essentially means flooding a woman with anxiety to re-spark attraction.
This is done by raising a woman’s jealousy, uncertainty, confusion and tension in the relationship.
Examples of Dread include:
— Tell your wife you miss your freedom and you miss being single. This sudden need for freedom will fire up your wife’s fear of loss receptors and get her focused back on you.
— Start exercising and focusing on your fitness. Get new clothes and wear fragrances. Your wife will notice the change in your behavior and new appearance and she’ll worry that you might have found another woman.
— Go on dates with other women. If your wife finds out, tell her you don’t see what the problem is, it’s not like she actually cares about you or the relationship.
— Tell her that you’re going to go away on holiday for a while. You’re not sure if you can speak to her when you’re away too. Your wife will wonder if you’re going alone and she’ll wonder if you’re going to meet someone else. Keep your answers vague and let anxiety and space work to your advantage here.
*You must implement all of these strategies without apology and without guilt so your actions appear genuine and authentic.
If your wife has emotionally checked-out of the relationship and no longer respects you, dread is one of the best ways to recapture her interest and get her to give the marriage one last shot.
The introduction of dread into the relationship is incredibly effective and powerful when it comes to rebuilding attraction, though some rightfully question its moral and ethical use.
You must use your own judgement to decide how much dread is appropriate in this situation to recapture your wife’s interest.
It’s a sad truth that women often only appreciate a relationship when it’s over. This is why there is no harm giving her a taste of finality if it can save your marriage and make her appreciate you again.
All too often, a man must use the elements of scarcity and unavailability to induce a sense of loss to wake his wife up and recapture her attention.
This is especially true if your wife is focused on someone else, or you’re dealing with a situation like walkaway wife syndrome.
In short, walkaway wife syndrome is when a woman emotionally checked out of the relationship years ago. These “walkaway wives” are simply waiting for the perfect time to leave the relationship, either when the children are old enough or she meets another man.
If you’re dealing with a walkaway wife, the worst thing you can do is try to beg her to come back. Doing so will only make you look more pathetic in her eyes.
Before you implement any of the above strategies, you must understand why your wife cheated on you in the first place? Were you too nice or were you too distant?
If you were too distant, unavailable and cold, you must try to close the distance between you and your wife by opening up to her again, bringing love and tenderness back into the relationship.
Note: a lot of men, especially nice guys, think they were too cold and distant in the relationship. Often, this is not true. Don’t assume that just because your wife said you were distant and unloving that her words are gospel truth. If you genuinely care for your wife and love her, your behavior in the relationship will reflect this.
If, after all this, your wife still wants to leave, you must seek legal advice from a good divorce lawyer. Separation usually means divorce, and divorce means the division of assets and custody arrangements.
In order to get the best deal for you (and your children), you need to have evidence that your wife was the one who cheated in the relationship and she betrayed your trust.
Seek legal counsel and get sound legal advice before you proceed any further.
Your Wife Wants To Stay
If your wife wants to work things out, you must make a hard decision. Can you forgive her for cheating on you and move forward in the relationship?
Or will your anger and frustration at the thought of her betrayal stop you from moving on? If your wife wants to work things out, you need to make sure she won’t cheat on you again.
She must cut all contact with her lover and stop cheating on you immediately. Your wife must realize that if she cheats on you again, this is a deal breaker and you will walk away from the relationship for good.
At this point you might be tempted to get counseling to try and “fix” the relationship. There are some dangers to this approach. Don’t assume that marriage counseling will fix the problems between you.
A study published in the journal American Psychologist found that marriage therapy is one the least effective forms of therapy when compared to other forms of therapy.
Often, you will deal with a therapist who is biased (this is particularly true if the therapist is a woman and she relates better to your wife’s emotional troubles than she does to you).
At other times, you will spend a lot of time talking about the relationship and digging up old problems from the past. Most of these discussion and conversations about the relationship will deteriorate into pointless, trivial arguments that go nowhere.
Remember, you can’t argue with a women through logic and reason. If your wife is unhappy, you can’t talk her into happiness again. Men argue with logic and reason, women argue with emotion. You cannot argue with emotion and expect to have a reasonable discussion.
Furthermore, talking endlessly about the relationship, revealing your feelings and emotions does little to rebuild attraction. In fact, it does the opposite: it kills attraction.
I see a lot of couples go to marriage counseling and come away worse off than they were before. If you’re going to go down the marriage counseling road, you both need to be on the same page.
And you both need to find a good quality therapist who can help you. A therapist who can remain unbiased throughout the counseling process.
Final Thoughts…
A cheating wife is often a devastating life event. If you’re not careful, this is an event that can tarnish all your future relationships.
As hard as it is, try not to let one nasty event ruin your life and ruin how you see relationships and other people. Everyone is different, and everyone handles situations in different ways.
In this situation, give yourself some time to work through your feelings. If you can’t let go of your anger and pain, I strongly suggest you leave your wife and start fresh. This is often the best solution.
If you can find forgiveness in your heart and genuinely want to save the relationship (not just keep your wife around to punish her), look within…
See where you went wrong in the past. Did you kill attraction? Were you acting in a way that was unattractive? Were you distant? Were you abusive?
Going forward, you should take immediate steps to correct your behavior so you can build a solid, loving relationship with your wife. Like all difficult situations, if you remain positive, this event offers a tremendous growth opportunity, whichever direction you choose to take.