Nikki, thanks you for sharing some of your thoughts. I too am sorry to hear of your situation. You related to me a lot of what my wife is feeling, and I think the more I hear it, it crystallizes more and more for me. Through the entire process I have not experienced nor expressed any anger or discontent toward her in any way. The only anger I’ve had is toward myself.
Your question is a good one. I cannot write on behalf of all men, nor your husband, but I think I’m normal enough and thus can represent the thinking of a good portion of my gender. I think the answer points up an essential difference between men and women. Men are largely greedy, selfish and unexpressive (that, my friend, is the recipe for making a garden variety male). It’s not our nature to unpack our heart for anyone and let them know how we feel. This only comes when the pot has simmered for some time and is ready to boil over. Moreover, we think that offering sensitive information may lead to a degree of conflict at worst, and more discussion at best, so let’s just keep quiet and deal with it ourselves. This is something we learned from our fathers, who in turn learned it from theirs. Add to this the prospect of maybe being able to get away with a brief adulterous encounter (let’s call it what it is), blaming the “need” for the encounter on the wife who is not “meeting my needs”, (thus justifying our actions in our own mind) and you have the makings for a broken marriage. I think too, in a situation where there was prior intimacy there exists a level of “comfort” that lends itself to further encounters with that person.
I’ve come to understand that seeking out another woman is not so much due to my discontentment with my wife as it is discontentment with myself. Now, in order to spare myself some guilt, I blame it upon my wife’s lack of attention. But guilt must fall at my own feet as the originator of the issue. I think a lot of men experience this same thing only they find different “outlets” for alleviating their discontentment with themselves…e.g. pour themselves into their jobs, alcohol, drugs, food, exercise, ad nausium. Anything taken to excess in an attempt to squelch the inner battle that rages on the personal front. It’s almost like a drug (though I’ve never done drugs), once the mind determines what it needs, that desire becomes all controlling…the point around which the rest of our world revolves. The greater the internal conflict and discontentment, the greater the pursuit of the object which we believe will make us “happy and content”.
All of this to say, it sounds like your husband had personal issues and set his mind on the false hope that another woman would alleviate those internal issues. You can be certain of this though, Nikki, he, of all people, is keenly aware that the satisfaction from his adultery was only fleeting and temporal and did NOT do anything to remedy his personal conflicts.
Don’t know if this made sense, but hopefully there was something that helps to better understand.
