Do Husbands Come Back after Leaving for Another Woman?

By

Laura Doyle

By Laura Doyle

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Laura Doyle is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Relationship Expert, Host of The Empowered Wife Podcast at Laura Doyle Connect.

| Updated: 12/20/2023

Medically reviewed by Dr. Liz Hale

Medically reviewed by Dr. Liz Hale

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Dr. Liz Hale is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist specializing in Marriage Therapy and Discernment Counseling.

If your husband cheated and left you, it’s one of the most heart-wrenching things anyone can go through. When the man who vowed to love you for better or worse betrays you, it affects your self-esteem, your health, your family, every aspect of your life.

No one deserves to be treated like that.

If you’ve been through the most devastating kind of betrayal, what now? A lot of people will tell you it’s time to give up on your marriage.

But if you’re reading this, there must be some part of you that still wants to make it work.

The question is: How are you supposed to do that, especially if your husband is living with another woman?

You’d like to know if your husband will regret leaving for another woman. And, if so, when will he realize that?

Maybe he’s saying he is done, he’s not in love with you anymore and there’s no changing his mind. Ouch! You shouldn’t have to hear things like that from your man. It’s enough to make anyone feel hopeless and ready to give up.

Kudos to you for not giving up. Because as the wife, the keeper of your relationship, you have enormous power to turn things around, in my experience.

Here’s what to do when your husband abandons you, how to get him back after he leaves you.

And it’s not what you think.

1) Find and Keep Your Dignity

When the pain is fresh, every fiber of your being probably wants to cry out, “How could you do this to me?”

He deserves a guilt trip, big time.

You would be well within your rights to send him on that trip. I wouldn’t blame you a bit.

There’s one question that’s worth asking first: How would it serve you?

Chances are, even if it doesn’t look like it, he’s in pain himself. It’s not very dignified to hurt the woman you vowed to love.

What if you were to remain dignified yourself?

That’s what Misha did when she caught her husband in the act. In that moment of unspeakable pain and shock, Misha did the unthinkable.

She pulled her husband aside in the bathroom. With the other woman still lying in bed in the next room, Misha asked, not “How could you,” but “Do you not love me anymore?”

That wasn’t the problem.

“Okay,” she said, “Come home.”

Misha says that things couldn’t be more different now. Gone are the days of disconnect and disinterest, when they were like passing ships in the night. Now they actively spend time together, and she feels so supported. He even got a job at her same company so they could move overseas where she wanted to be.

Letting him deal with the shame himself grants him life lessons, not wife lessons. You not acting like his teacher or his mother, not criticizing or correcting or trying to control, is probably the most surprising thing you could do.

And the most respectful. Which is super attractive because respect is like oxygen for men.

2) Starve Her of Oxygen

Speaking of oxygen, if you’re like most of us mere mortal women, you’re probably giving oxygen to the last thing you want to think about: the other woman.

Who is she? Where did they do it and when and how many times? What does she look like? What does she have that you don’t?

Again, it’s worth considering how it would serve you to get such answers.

Especially since what you focus on increases.

Increasing this woman’s presence in your lives is surely the last thing you want.

What if you were to take an entirely unexpected approach and ignore her completely?

That’s what Misha did, starting the moment she found out about this woman and ignored her presence just next door. The other woman (or “OW,” as we call it around here) disappeared. For good.

3) Find Your Power and Use It

Just as with the questions “How could you do this to me” and “Who is she,” it’s natural to want to turn to him for answers about where the relationship went wrong.

Especially if you’re blindsided by this whole thing. Many wives think that things are going okay until something like this happens.

It’s a wakeup call no one wants. Maybe you’re so desperate to save your marriage that you are willing to make it right, if only you knew what “it” was.

The problem with turning to him for this information on what needs fixing is that it’s over on his side of the street. In my experience, empowerment resides on my side of the street, and it starts with me knowing and admitting what I wish I’d done differently

The times I’ve said “sorry” because I didn’t like my husband’s reaction and wanted to make nice, not because I was actually remorseful, only made the tension worse.

But wait a minute. He’s the one who got caught, not you. He’s the one who owes an apology.

That’s true.

But if you’ve ever tried making him show accountability, you already know it’s pretty unproductive. Maybe he obliged, but his apology wasn’t very satisfying because you had to ask for it. Or maybe, like Kendra’s husband, he just got annoyed with you, making matters even worse.

As frustrating as that was, Kendra saw how undignified her own response had been, which is only human when she found a video of her man having sex with another woman. While she obviously couldn’t make him take accountability, she could be the bigger person and show such accountability herself.

She cleaned up her side of the street, using the anatomy of an apology I share in “How to Bring Back that Lovin’ Feeling.”

Her unexpected response led to unexpected results.

Her husband did show that accountability she had longed for. He broke it off with the other woman, blocked her on social media, and never spoke to her again. He quit going out until 5:00 in the morning.

Almost a year later, he again expressed remorse for how he had cost them in their marriage, along with his appreciation for Kendra being so strong when he was at his worst.

4) First, Fall Completely Apart

If you’ve just had a bombshell dropped on you, it’s pretty impossible to feel strong right now.

You don’t have to be strong. I bet you’ve been strong enough, carrying things for a long time.

You don’t have to suck it up. As Jung wisely said, “What you resist persists,” so I invite you to give your feelings their day in the sun. You probably don’t need any help getting the tears flowing, but listening to sad songs and even angry songs can be cathartic.

Venting to well-meaning friends and family, who will naturally want to protect you and may have a hard time ever forgiving him, can be dangerous when you want to save your marriage, or at least keep that option open for now. So is being alone at a time when you most need support. There’s nothing like having a community of like-minded women who will support your desire for your marriage.

That kind of social self-care goes a long way when you don’t know if you can ever forgive him yourself.

That’s what Becca wondered after her husband cheated. How could she ever trust him again?

Becca didn’t know whether she was capable of all that, but she found a simple practice she was capable of doing.

She scheduled three self-care activities every single day. Things that filled her up, made her feel better, and allowed her to feel happy even at her saddest time. She listened to music she hadn’t heard in a long time, took long bubble baths, and did basic things like making sure she got enough sleep every night. (Being her best self without feeling like the walking dead was hard enough.)

If she wasn’t working or sleeping, she was doing self-care. She filled the freezer with meals for her teenagers and stopped cooking. Basically, she did what she wanted. She was gone all the time, shopping, seeing movies, taking craft classes, eating out, going to the park or the lake, and visiting friends.

One day, Becca suddenly felt a release of the hurt and resentment she’d been carrying.

Taking care of herself in these simple ways turned out to be a way of taking care of herself emotionally too.

Becoming responsible for her own happiness also allowed her to receive all the ways her husband started piling on to her happiness, as if it were contagious.

He started crashing her self-care, trying to find her, like the time he found her sitting at a bar having a drink. Then he started asking her to do things with him, like going out in his boat with him. Then he invited her on trips, lots of trips.

5) Prepare for a Breakthrough You May Not Have Imagined

If you’re like most women, you may be afraid that, even if you decide to move forward, you’ll always be looking over your shoulder, wondering what he’s up to, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

In other words, you worry that your marriage will be forever sullied. After such heartbreak and pain, that’s a common concern. And it can hold you back from wanting to save your relationship, thinking it will always be third-rate.

Your marriage will be different, yes, but in my experience, again it’s not how you might think.

Misha’s, Kendra’s, and Becca’s unexpected responses to infidelity brought about unexpected results. In fact, their dark time was the breakdown before the breakthrough.

What lay on the other side of that breakdown was more connection than before. Even your sex life changes, often for the better.

Another student, Mindy, is yet another example of the breakdown before the breakthrough. Shortly after the arrival of their newborn baby, her husband confessed to an affair. She felt dumb, naive, and heartbroken.

Yet she didn’t berate him or even talk to him much about it, not feeling the need to remind him of it. She starved it of oxygen and focused on the evidence that he is a good husband who loves her.

What she focused on increased too.

Today, she says that the new normal is feeling like they’re in love, like when they were dating. Shortly after she started this approach, her husband told her that he felt butterflies when he kissed her.

She was about to attend one of her coaching calls, getting the kind of support that empowered her to become her best self, watching a show on the couch with him when he said, “Why don’t you just cancel your meeting and hug me forever?”

Some students on our campus have even expressed gratitude for their husband’s affair because it’s what brought them here, where they got to become their best selves and learn the secrets of loving and being loved in return.

Now that’s unexpected.

What unconventional steps will you take to have your breakthrough?

By Laura Doyle

Hi! I'm Laura.

New York Times Bestselling Author

I was the perfect wife--until I actually got married. When I tried to tell my husband how to be more romantic, more ambitious, and tidier, he avoided me. I dragged him to marriage counseling and nearly divorced him. I then started talking to women who had what I wanted in their marriages and that’s when I got my miracle. The man who wooed me returned.

I wrote a few books about what I learned and accidentally started a worldwide movement of women who practice The Six Intimacy Skills™ that lead to having amazing, vibrant relationships. The thing I’m most proud of is my playful, passionate relationship with my hilarious husband John–who has been dressing himself since before I was born.

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