My Wife Cheated on Me. What Do I Do Now?

When you’re in a committed relationship with someone, it cuts deeply to find out that they were unfaithful to you. Infidelity, whether the physical or the emotional variety, is a deep betrayal of trust and the boundaries of your relationship.

While it doesn’t necessarily have to mean the end of the relationship, infidelity shakes the foundations of any relationship and brings up crucial questions about the relationship’s dynamics. Infidelity doesn’t just happen in unhappy marriages – unfaithfulness can occur even in the happiest of marriages.

No one group of people has a corner on the market when it comes to infidelity. Contrary to the popular idea that men are the only ones who cheat, the gender gap in terms of infidelity has been closing steadily over the last few years. Many women in committed relationships, as many as 1 in 5 according to some studies, report having been unfaithful to their partners.

My Wife Cheated on Me. Why?

People cheat for many reasons. The reasons why women cheat are different than they are for men, though these reasons are also becoming identical as time goes on. Each relationship is unique, and your situation may be different. Regardless of why a person decides to cheat, they are fully responsible for their actions – accountable for the choices they made.

What follows may be hard to hear, but it is important to ask these important questions, if only for the sake of closure. Finding out why someone cheated can help a couple to begin addressing problems in the relationship, or simply to address the needs each of the spouses may have.

Reasons Women Cheat

Some of the common reasons why women cheat on their husbands include:

Revenge: Sometimes resentment creeps into a relationship for whatever reason. This may include unmet expectations or the fact that her husband had an affair. The frustration and resentment that can develop from these realities can lead a wife to retaliate by having an affair of her own.

Mid-life crisis: As we get older, we view ourselves and our lives through a different lens. We may begin reassessing our lives, wondering about the things that may have been, the paths not followed, and the things left undone.

All of this may bring up the feeling of coming up short, or the fear of unrealized potential. For some women, they may deal with these feelings by wanting to make up for lost time or seeking fulfillment elsewhere. This may lead them outside the primary relationship.

Taking advantage of an opportunity: Affairs aren’t always premeditated. They are often spontaneous and happen without much planning. Sometimes something begun innocently can turn into an affair.

Women who have reported having affairs have spoken about an opportunity simply arising to have an affair with a work colleague, or an affair that began as a harmless interaction with a friend or an old flame on social media. As women are more often on social media than men, many opportunities for such interactions are available.

Lacking a secure attachment style: Depending on the care and nurturing that a person gets when they are a child, as adults they’ll develop one of three attachment styles: avoidant, where they prefer to retain independence from other people; anxious, where they may exhibit fears such as a fear of abandonment and neglect; or secure, where they have a healthy approach to relationships and a well-adjusted set of expectations toward their romantic relationships.

The first two types of attachment are termed “insecure,” and women who identify with an insecure attachment style are more likely to exhibit qualities such as clinginess or flippancy that can interfere with a healthy romantic relationship.

There is a greater likelihood that such individuals will cheat on their significant other because they may look for intimacy and reassurance outside their committed relationship because they aren’t receiving that in the marriage, or they may be attempting to avoid intimacy with their spouse.

Past trauma: When someone experiences trauma, the effects of that trauma do not simply go away or manifest in straightforward ways. Sometimes, women who have experienced significant trauma whether as an adult or in their formative childhood years, especially sexual trauma, will re-enact that trauma as a way of trying to master or control it. They might pursue sexual intercourse with someone other than their spouse for that purpose.

Boredom: Sometimes people seek out thrills. The clandestine nature of affairs – the secrecy, the duplicity, the fear of being discovered, the uncertainty of whether and when the people in the affair will see one another again – all of that provides something of a thrill.

Many of the women who have affairs don’t want to leave their husbands, but they crave excitement, variety, and passion; they desire the thrill that existed at the beginning of their marriage but that is now lost, and so they seek out an affair to satisfy that need.

Lacking emotional and physical intimacy at home: A woman may cheat because she is trying to fill a gap. She may be craving the emotional connections that are forged through conversation, devotion, empathy, support, respect, and adoration. Or, she may miss feeling desired, being touched, held, made love to – things that may be lacking in their committed relationship.

To feel validated and accepted: We all want to be valued for who we are, and for someone to love us for that, warts and all. Sometimes, a wife may have fantasies that they don’t feel comfortable sharing with their husbands, perhaps because they have been shamed for them before.

Imagine if a wife shared with her husband that she wanted to experiment sexually with him, and he rebuffs her repeatedly. She may feel rejected. If she then meets someone who welcomes and is appreciative of her imagination and sexual fantasies, that may create an opening for an affair.

If a woman has low self-worth and doesn’t feel validated by her spouse, she may turn elsewhere to feel desirable and validated. In other situations, a wife may feel ignored, unacknowledged, or neglected because she is treated more like a housekeeper or childminder than a wife and lover. In such situations, she might seek someone who validates who she is, rather than the services she provides.

Loneliness: If her partner is away from home a lot or works long hours, she can experience feelings of isolation. In desperation, she might look for companionship outside the marriage

To end the relationship: Sometimes a woman may feel trapped in a relationship. She may have tried to get things to change, but that work hasn’t yielded any fruit. Sometimes, cheating is the last resort to end the relationship and give their spouse a cause for leaving them.

Each woman will have her own set of reasons why she decided to have an affair. Whatever the reason, infidelity violates trust and damages a relationship. In short, it is sin. It is helpful for the partner who was cheated on to understand what happened, and you may also want to confront certain realities about what happened and why.

Confronting certain questions such as “why did she cheat?”, “how did she justify it to herself?”, “was this the first time she cheated?”, “did she pursue the opportunity for an affair or was it happenstance?”, “is the affair over?”, and “why is she telling you now?” may be important for accountability as well as getting a clearer understanding of what happened. This will inform you so that you can decide on your next steps for the relationship.

Christian Counseling for Infidelity

When infidelity happens, it creates a crisis in the relationship – a crisis of trust, among other things. In this crisis, several possibilities exist. One possibility is the end of the relationship. Around 40% of marriages end in divorce because of infidelity. However, other possibilities exist, and these include taking the path toward rebuilding the relationship, forgiveness, accountability, and counseling for you both.

Infidelity doesn’t necessarily mean the end of a relationship. It is possible to regain what was lost through infidelity. If a couple chooses to address the infidelity together, going for couples counseling can turn a relationship crisis into an opportunity for growth and the strengthening of their marriage.

Browse our counselor directory to find a couples counselor to meet your needs.