Many wives who are dealing with the aftermath of an affair will tell you that this process has affected their self-esteem or self-esteem. This may not make sense unless an infidelity has happened to you, but your spouse cheating on you can make you feel that you are less than others and that you were not very intelligent or observant because this happened to you. Therefore, you can get angry with yourself on many levels for allowing this to happen. I know this may sound crazy, but it’s true. Many wives share their frustrations about this with their husbands and are surprised when he claims that his self-esteem and self-respect have also suffered. This annoys many wives because they think that not only is he not validating his feelings, but now he is trying to play the victim to take the wind out of the sails.
She might say, “One of the biggest struggles I am having after my husband’s affair is my self-esteem. I have always considered myself a strong person. I don’t let people trample me and speak up When I feel like I don’t listen to or take advantage of me. I like to think of myself as a competent husband personally and professionally. However, now that I am considering trying to work on my marriage after I was cheated on, frankly, I think less of myself. I see myself as a docile housewife with no respect for myself. Of course, I could support myself and one of the main reasons I’m still here is because of my kids, but still. I shared this with my husband and I was hopeful that tell me this was silly because I was strong and I certainly wasn’t letting go easily. But do you know what his response was to me? Respect too. What? What’s the point of this? I’m the one who stays when I am the injured party. I was the one who was betrayed. So why do you suffer from low self-esteem? “
Why Cheating Men Can Have Self-Esteem Problems: I can transmit what many men have told me and what I have read. In no way am I defending your husband. But men can be affected by their self-esteem and self-respect because they feel ashamed and ashamed of their choices. They betrayed their family. They put at risk what they valued most. And they can feel very helpless when they go to fix it. They can’t take the pain away. They can’t make you believe they’re sorry and they won’t cheat again. They cannot retract this. They can only weakly try to improve a bad situation, knowing all the time that the people they love are suffering due to their own actions. You may wonder how they could have been so stupid.
So yes, what your husband says is not completely uncommon. But that doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t validate your concerns as well. You may not be consciously trying to draw attention to yourself or to distract yourself from your own concerns, but I can see why you think that and feel angry. Ironically, often the person who cheated and the person who was cheated on feel exactly the same way when faced with the aftermath: frustrated, angry, helpless, scared, and incompetent. Of course, they feel this way for different reasons. And the person who didn’t cheat doesn’t really deserve to feel that way because you really are the hurt (but innocent) party.
Ideas that can offer some relief: If it helps, I’ll tell you a few things that helped my self-esteem. I was angry with myself because I was not suspicious of the matter, but in truth, it was when my husband was in another area for work. So I consciously decided that unless it was just a paranoid wife who was overly suspicious of her husband, why would she have seen him coming? I gave my husband the benefit of the doubt, as unsuspecting spouses are supposed to do. It was unfair of me to blame myself for that. Another place where I punished myself was because I worried that I wouldn’t be more attractive. I was worried that I had lost my appearance and that my husband would never genuinely love or desire me. But then I realized that he looked the same as he did the week before the adventure. And at the time, she wasn’t exactly thrilled with my appearance, but she didn’t consider me horrible either. I addressed issues that were bothering me (like my teeth), but didn’t go crazy with unrealistic changes. I’m mom. I’m a certain age. I decided to take care of myself and be healthy, but beyond that, I am not going to pursue unrealistic ideals. As for deciding to stay, yes, my children did influence me. But I stayed because I love my husband, my marriage, and my family. This does not make me weak, uneducated or easy to convince. It means that I am someone who prioritized my family over staying angry. It means that I am a problem solver rather than someone on the run. My decisions weren’t right for everyone, but I made them and I wasn’t going to feel “less than” about them. I am still a strong and capable person and I am sure that you are too.
If you don’t like your husband deviating from his own self-esteem, you can try something like, “Well, I guess we can empathize with what the other person feels. For me, I’m going to do a lot of the work myself to regain respect. by myself and I hope they support me with that as they know how I feel. “