Cheating and staying

 

So i was talking to a friend yesterday and we were talking about cheating husbands.  And she told me her husband told her that if a man is going to cheat there are only 2 reasons

1) he’s just a man who cheats

2)  He’s not getting what he needs at home.

So while talking to her i owned up to the fact that i neglected my husband.  I started an emotional affair and just wanted nothing to do with him.  Though it didn’t give him the right to go cheat on me, the reality is, i neglected my `marriage as so he did,   My affair started before his and lasted longer than his. The only difference is there was no sex in my affair.  However, no affair is better and an affair is an affair.  God doesn’t sit back and say well, my daughter you didn’t have sex with him, so his affair is a greater sin.  Both have an equal amount of sin and require equal amount of repentance to it.  I don’t really get how my husband has forgiven me right after i told him, if he hasn’t he is hiding it very well.  He told me we made mistakes, let’s get past them and move on, but i am not able to do so.  I have read several articles on why men cheat and most of them do say that it’s because “their wives won’t put out” or “there are things they want to try sexually” and the wife just is not into it or won’t try it so the mistress will and so they do it.  However most men say “we know its wrong”  but they do it anyways.

So i read this:  Common perceptions about wives who stay is that they have low self-esteem, that  they know that they couldn’t support themselves or afford to live on their own,  that they have an “open marriage” or are participating in their own affair, or  that they have chosen to put their family’s or children’s needs above their  own.  From experience, I’ve learned that many of these perceptions just  aren’t true.  I can say that some this is not why i stayed and some of it is why.  We do NOT have an “open marriage”  but at some point of my decision to stay was because of my children.  Not that is the only reason, but that is some of the reasons why i stayed.   I did however sit here and think and i still think about leaving my husband and moving on, and seeing what else is there for me.  It’s a fight i have with myself everyday.    Also just because i stayed doesn’t make me weak nor strong, i’m not ignoring what he did and i’m not excepting it as ok either.

I have stepped back and i understand why the affair happened on both sides.  I saw this saying on FB, i get quotes from Marriage Works and this is so true “We all see through filters that maximize our spouse’s faults while minimizing our own. Continually ask God for perspective to see things through His eyes.”  I act as though my affair was nothing because there was no sex and his was massive because their was.  When he cheated, he didn’t put his heart in it, it was just sex, for me it was my heart i was falling in love with this guy, and so was my daughters.  But i didn’t care, he was there for them, he played with them, he did the things my husband their father at this point was not.

Some or my anger wasn’t that he cheated and she became pregnant, it was also because he didn’t use a condom and the thought of him giving me an STD or HIV or AIDS scares the crap out of me.  The embarrassment of going to the family doctor and telling him i need an STD and AIDS test was embarrassing and him knowing my husband since he was a child and me for the last 8 years and having to explain to him why just crushed me to pieces.

“An affair begins at the place where you slowly drop your guard,

and leave your heart exposed for someone else to romance.

Guard your heart!”