Sometimes you think you really know someone. You meet and fall in love with the man of your dreams. You enjoy months of wonderful experiences, bonding together in ways that you could only imagine in your wildest of aspirations.
In time, the man of your dreams becomes your husband. Then later, you shockingly discover that your husband may have a secret girlfriend on the side.
Maybe it is a woman he met before your romance. Perhaps this secret girlfriend is somebody he has known for a long time. Your speculation about who your husband could possibly be seeing starts to run rampant.
But to make matters worse, you are not even sure if your husband is truly hanging out with this other woman. One minute you are certain there he has met someone else and fallen in love. Then in the next moment, you try to laugh it off as just your over active imagination.
Try as you might to get answers without directly confronting him, you fall short. You are not even sure how to approach it.
What do you do if your husband is acting different around. What might it mean? I explore this question in the post below….
https://marriagerecovery.com/why-is-my-husband-acting-different-and-strange-around-me/
You are hesitant to just bring it up because the mere mention of it might cause your husband to think you have lost it. You certainly don’t want your man thinking of you in this way.
So you do nothing, yet the thoughts of your husband possibly having a secret love nest creep back in at the slightest stirring of a suspicious word, glance, or some other flimsy evidence.
If this represents your mindset as you struggle to understand what may be going on with your husband, welcome to the wild and unpredictable world of trying to figure out what signs might reliably point to a definite case of infidelity.
Is Your Husband Really Hanging Out With Some Other Woman?
I understand well the agonizing feeling of uncertainty when it involves matters of whether your husband is hooking up with another woman.
Your mind will invariably race into all different directions when matters of unfaithfulness is on the line.
Such is the vagaries of our imaginations.
For some women, if they notice certain things that seem out of character, it can cause them to dwell on whether their husband has found a girlfriend.
Or if you stumble across some piece of evidence, even remotely pointing to a the possibility that your husband has a secret life with a secret wife, it can turn all rationale thoughts, inside out. And before you know, you are feeling a little crazy and obsessed with getting to the bottom of things.
After all, if your are happily married and are fully invested into the relationship, the very thought of your man being unfaithful can be too much to bear.
On one end of the spectrum, this can lead to certain denial about what might actually be going on.
It is not that unusual for women to look past some of the telltale signs of whatever hanky panky their husbands may be up to. It is just not something you would expect, so you don’t look for it.
And arguably, if you spend all of your time looking for signs of your hubby sneaking around, it would suggest you are over thinking or are far too obsessed about such a thing.
Now don’t get me wrong about this sensitive topic. I am not suggesting that husbands are untrustworthy rascals that leave a trail of evidence pointing to their unfaithful, lying, and cheating ways!
By and far, most men and women, who are presumably happily married, don’t harbor deep and dark secrets about having other lovers.
Can You Really Trust Your Husband With Another Woman?
I have seen both sides of the loving and cheating equation.
It boils down to whether you can really trust your man being around another attractive woman.
https://marriagerecovery.com/i-cant-believe-my-husband-cheated-and-left-me/
In most cases, the answer is a resounding Yes. Letting your mind run away with wild thoughts of your man being unfaithful is often self-destructive. Until you have some indisputable evidence of your husband and another woman, it is not productive to dwell on the topic.
But I would be lying if I told you that every husband out there was not tempted to explore what having an affair is all about.
Now temptation is all together a different thing than making an actual decision to cheat.
But sometimes there is another woman involved.
Sometimes a guy wants to have his cake and eat it too. He hopes he is not found out. The girl on the side, in most cases, is fulfilling a sexual desire.
Some men do not exhibit a great deal of self-control when it comes to complying with their marital vows. The woman with whom they may have a physical or emotional affair in many cases is not an individual they want to spend the rest of their lives with. In these situations, the husband is allowing his hormones to rule his mind.
With these kind of guys, there are usually warning signs you can pick up on that will clue you in that your man is with another woman. I have written about this topic before. Check out the post below.
https://marriagerecovery.com/i-think-my-husband-is-having-an-emotional-affair/
Now the other side of the equation is that your imagination about your husband being with some other girl could be leading you down the wrong path.
Listen to what Olivia told me:
I was so convinced that he was sneaking around with this other woman at work that I would drive to his building’s parking lot and watch. I did this for two weeks. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind. This other girl was pretty and he had mentioned her a few times, talking about how the other guys in the office were often hitting on her. When I told him not to get any ideas and he had “better be a good boy” he started squirming around and getting defensive. Maybe I read too much into how he was acting but I couldn’t get this image of him in bed with this pretty blond out of my head. I was just obsessed about it. I would have these elaborate fantasies about what he was doing with her. I know it was not healthy for me to think this way and I really didn’t have any clear evidence against my husband. I even colored my hair blond thinking that if he was attracted to that look, then I was going to draw his attention back to me. I initiated sex more and did everything I could think of to keep him happy. And he seemed really happy, but then I started thinking maybe it was this other girl at the office that made him happy. One of the days I was spying on him I saw him take her to lunch. Granted there was another couple that went along but I just go so jealous that I barged into the restaurant pretending that I just happened to be in the area. I know I embarrassed my husband as he could see through my antics and we ended up fighting over it later that night. What can you do when everything in you thinks your husband is maybe with this other woman, but you have nothing to back it up?
Olivia was very upset about the prospect of her husband not being faithful.
She had invested so much of herself into the marriage that the very thought of her husband being attracted to some blond at the office and it growing into a real affair was terrifying for her.
How Can You Know For Sure You Husband Has Not Fallen In Love With Somebody Else?
I told her that, while she may not see it right now, that her actions were more likely to push her husband into an affair.
Now, I probably should have picked my words of advice more carefully because she became very angry and upset that anything she was doing would contribute to the problem.
After I calmed her down, I explained to her that there were two issues she should address. One dealt with getting a definitive answer, for her own sanity as to whether her husband was secretly having a love affair with the blond woman.
I told her I had some thoughts on how she can get a greater certainty as to whether her spouse was cheating on her.
That was issue one I wanted to help her with. Then I told her issue two was her inability to manage her emotions and speculative thoughts around this issue. I explained we needed to delve into why she was allowing herself, without reasonable cause, to become so obsessed about her husband’s lack of faithfulness.
So it was with those two things in mind we set off on a path to try to bring some closure to the matter.
I asked her if she had ever simply revealed all of her fears to her husband. I explained that her mind had opened the door to fear and allowed it to rule her nature. The best way to close that door is to confront your fear.
Meet your fear up close and personal, I explained to her. She had avoided really discussing her fears about the existence of this “other woman” with her husband because she didn’t want him to think she was a “little crazy” (using her words).
On the rationale side of her mind, she knew that she did not have a single piece of evidence that suggested her husband was shacking up with another woman.
I explained that the “fear” in her had grown to such gigantic proportions it would take an intervention of some kind to put this excessive fear back in its cage.
Are You Imagining That Your Man is With Another Girl?
We all deal with fear and anxiety.
It is natural to have these feelings. But there is a point where these emotion can get out of hand and begin to rule our thoughts, feelings, moods, and behavior.
This is what was happening to my client. By openly talking to her husband about her unnatural fears on this topic, she was giving herself (and her husband) a chance to loosen the grip these thoughts had on her.
So I told her to simply open up and tell her husband her worst fears about what she thinks is going on. I told her to tell him that you realize that the thoughts of his infidelity sounded irrational. But I encouraged her to go on to explain to her spouse that she believed that by opening up and confronting the fears, it can help erase them or at least control them. Then I advised her to ask her husband to help her.
It told her to ask her husband what he might be able to do to alleviate her concern. I suggested she should tell him that once that fear is wiped clean from her mind, she would be confident that it would not interfere with her thinking again.
In this situation, once the husband realized his wife was suffering from heightened anxiety about this topic, he would be more amenable to opening up every aspect of his life for her scrutiny.
With a little prepping, that is exactly what happened in this case.
He whipped out his cell phone and together they went through the history of phone messages. They also went online to check his account so she could see he only had one cell phone. One of her fantasies was her husband had multiple phones and was carrying on his secret love affair in this manner. I turned out that none of their records showed this.
Her husband then signed on to his email and gave her full access to show her that he was not communicating with a secret lover. For a few more minutes, they brainstormed some other things they could look into that would help arrest her fears. They went through his clothing. He gave her his wallet for her to look through. They also went online to check on his credit card and debit card account history so she could see there was not any unusual charges.
All of her fantasy thoughts of him having secret dinners, buying gifts, and staying at hotels was squashed after they went through the information.
At the end of this process, not only were her fears of losing her husband to another lover alleviated, but she felt a little sad and guilty that she allowed her mind to run away to such an extent that she had lost trust for her spouse.
I told her that she now needed to work on not allowing uncontrolled thoughts about her husband’s trustworthiness to flood her mind.
It is no fun when obsessive emotions decides to hijack our thoughts. I encouraged her to consider activities such a meditation, yoga, and/or physical exercise as a way to find better balance and peace of mind.
