Today's topic is "I Cheated on My Husband. How Do I Fix It?" My name is Paul Friedman
I founded The Marriage Foundation and I also began a new way of healing
marriages that has been incredibly effective. And so, with The Marriage
Foundation, we have people writing in to our free service of asking the counselor
question and this is a question that comes up from time to time and with
different elements and the elements do matter. One of the big elements is I
have to ask you this question. Does your husband know? Did you tell him that you
cheated on him? And some people are of the school of total honesty, you
got to be clean. You got to come out of and lay all your cards on the table and
and it's not true. Those kind of confessions you save for church
or you talk to God which is even better but if you cheated on your husband and
you tell your husband and he knows almost doesn't matter what will happen
next. The chances of him coming back to you
and staying with you are not great and there's a couple of reasons why so
I'm just going to be very candid with you. If you cheated on your husband and I'm
not talking about you got drunk at a party and you didn't know what you were
doing -- cheated. I'm not talking about you bumped into an old flame who you were
really close to and you just wanted to see what was going on. I'm not talking
about those. Those are still not good obviously, but they're not as super
destructive as intentionally cheating on your husband and having basically an
affair. The reason why is because there's a big difference in genders and how we
as souls are impacted by these gender differences and please don't be of
the school that, "Oh, it doesn't matter. We're the same." Well, you are the same
when you go to the level of a soul but when you come into a body, things really
change. So a male body has you doing things because the bodies contain this
innate drive to survive and they're very different based on gender so a male
drive to survive because men have strong physical bodies
there's a lot of protection. There's a lot of stupidity too that men
don't really know what's going on around them. Oftentimes, they're reactive to
stimulation that is either going to enhance their situation or hurt their
situation and men are on the front line because of their gender and they
become angry, faster and things like loyalty are more important to them
because a man who is in defensive posture wants to be sure that someone's
with them who has his back. I'm talking about things that are sort
of innate to the gender. These are clever ideas that I've come up with -- they're
observable where a woman the drive to survive takes on a different context.
It rolls out in a very different way so a woman in a tough situation, let's
pretend that a woman is in a situation where she's going to be harmed.
She's not going to pick up a stick to fight unless she's well-trained which is rare.
She's going to try and manipulate her way out of the situation. It's just how
we are based on our physiology. So, what happens with a man and I just alluded to
this because of his biology, his need for a loyal wife is very strong and if he's
okay with a wife who is not so loyal you got to ask why and so will the wife even
if she wins him back there's going to be a part of her deep in her subconscious
that sees him as a lesser man and later on she won't want to be with him anyway.
And so, these are the conditions you have to take a look at. So, if you had
an affair the relationship is pretty much going to end with your husband just
will that's our experience and from a practical point of view based on genders
that's typically what's going to happen based on our experience at The Marriage
Foundation and you could talk to any therapist. Pretty much, it's over. It's
only a matter of time. Now we come to a more important question.
Why did you cheat on him? Now if there's drugs or alcohol involved that
mess with your mind more explainable but if not, the truth of
the matter is because of your gender you have to do some deep work on yourself.
I'm just being candid and you should find a really good therapist to help you.
Now we've had some women use our course for women to help themselves because
it's very difficult to find a really good therapist and some have been helped
with that because the first part of our course for women is learning how to
control your mind and when I say that I don't mean just like controlling what
comes out of your mouth but learning how to change your very character is innate
to the course because it's necessary for saving any marriage. So, we have had women
who have taken this course, but has it saved their marriage? No, I'm just being
honest. Are there other places you can go where
they can help you save your marriage? I'm not aware of any. Have I look? No, but
people come to us all the time so it's very difficult this situation
that you put yourself into and my advice to you is work on changing yourself
whether it's through our course or some other methodology to where the person
that you are could never even imagine yourself cheating on your husband. It's a
tough one. It's a tough place where you're starting from but I want to
encourage you. You have free will. You're a human being. God's given you free will.
You can do whatever you choose to do. This one is tough. It's not so easy to
change yourself in this regard but at some point you have to whether it's in --
and I'm going to say this. Whether it's in this life or the next or ten later this
thing has to change because if you think about it what allowed you to cheat on
your husband is that within you there is an element that accepts treacherous
behavior as being okay to some degree being excusable and there is no room for
that kind of thinking if you want to have a quality deep soulful relationship.
Now I know this was harsh but you probably won't find a more honest
evaluation anywhere else or a more truthful one. I do hope you take it
the right way. Don't take it as being against you but
merely as giving you information that will help you. I do love you. There's no
reason not to. I don't condemn you but you have a lot of work to do on yourself.
And so, you have my prayers and my blessings to you and your husband
and your family and if you do have a family you have small children do
your best. In those situations, the husband is more likely to put aside his
feelings of being offended and try. Alright. God bless and thank you!