On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.
On today's episode, Coach Jack teaches why having sex with your cheating husband will damage your chances for reconciling.
After listening to today's episode, you may want to:
On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.
On today's episode, Coach Jack teaches why having sex with your cheating husband will damage your chances for reconciling.
After listening to today's episode, you may want to:
Will Having Sex with Husband Make Him End Affair?
Podcast Transcript)
(0:00)
[Introduction to the podcast]
Announcer: On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.
(0:29)
Coach Jack: Many women believe that having sex with their separated husbands will keep them faithful or make them want to reconcile. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Men and women are not the same. If a man is having sex with his separated wife, that is an indicator that their relationship is doing pretty well. The same cannot be said for a woman who is having sex with her separated husband.
For men, sex is often an indicator of achievement rather than relationship. Biologically, they are driven to have sex with as many young attractive women as possible. They were created this way and believing differently is not going to change the facts.
(1:12)
Having sex with one woman does not remove the desire to have sex with another. Solomon with his 300 concubines is a prime example of that. Men do what they can to get what they can. Women do also of course, but the sex drive is different for women. This is why my book on preventing and ending men’s affairs does not apply to women’s affairs.
The repercussions of this biological drive are that men often:
(2:02)
Religion makes no difference when it comes to biological drives. If you read the Bible, that fact becomes very clear. The Christian’s only hope is to be saved by the blood of Christ because we are no better than anyone else and never will be. Christian men struggle with their sex drives just like all other men.
I have worked with many thousands of men over the past thirty years. One of the many things I have learned is that men generally consider their marriage to be pretty good as long as they are having sex with their wives–even if they are not spending any other time together. Often women have to stop having sex with their husbands to get their husbands to pay attention to their concerns.
If you are having sex with your separated husband,
(2:59)
By the way, even if you give him the best sex he ever had, that will not reduce his desire for the other woman or other women. You may have the best restaurant in town, but people are still going to go to other restaurants. No matter how much you improve the quality of the food or service, they will still go out for Mexican or Chinese or pizza. Probably all three.
Why men and women separate
Men and women separate for different reasons. Many women don’t know this. They believe that their husbands separated because their needs were not being met. This is one of the most common myths perpetuated by the counseling industry.
The fact is that even men whose needs are completely met by their wives have affairs. No matter how good your restaurant, they still enjoy the others. No matter how good you are or bad you are, your husband will still desire other women.
(3:59)
Whether men actually have affairs or not depends on their ability to attract other women and the costs to them if they cheat. It is not a factor of desire. Which restaurant people go to is going to depend on the availability of restaurants and what they can afford.
Some men have high costs if they cheat:
A pastor who is married to a wonderful and secure woman, and whose friends are all part of his conservative congregation is much less likely to cheat, no matter how much he is tempted to do so. This is because he would lose his wife, his job, his income, and his friends. He will only do so if he believes he will never be caught.
(4:54)
A man who has a secular job, friends who also cheat, a wife he doesn’t particularly enjoy and who would never leave him, is at high risk for having an affair. If you add to that a job where he travels overnight, an affair is highly likely. It would be a high reward, low risk proposition. If his wife discovered his cheating and became more sexual, do you think that would make him want to give up his affair? Not at all. It would just be icing on the cake.
What helps me not to cheat?
Although most people would like to be able to fly, only very stupid ones will jump off the roof to do it.
(6:03)
Desires give way to serious consequences. This is why we need laws, police, and prisons. This is also why you need to be desirable to your husband but not so committed that you would put up with anything he did, no matter how destructive it was.
One of the most loving things a woman can ever say to her husband is, if you ever cheat on me, I will divorce you. One of the worst things a woman can say is, even if you cheat on me I won’t leave you. Of course you do need to be a good enough partner that he would care if you did leave him.
When you are single, getting a man to commit to you is a matter of:
When you are married and want your husband to re-commit to you, it is a matter of:
(7:00)
Marriage doesn’t change the way relationships work. Marriage adds commitment and responsibility to a romantic relationship. If you remove the romantic part, all that is left is commitment and responsibility and the marriage will become unenjoyable.
Meeting his needs is not a solution
Because men don’t leave because of unfulfilled needs, attempting to fulfill his needs after he leaves will do nothing to motivate him to come back to you. He will of course enjoy anything you are doing for him while separated, but that won’t make him think, “Now my wife is really fulfilling my needs. I guess I will go back with her.” Instead, he will enjoy his relationship with you while also continuing to enjoy his single lifestyle–having his cake and eating it, too.
He must lose something from you if he is ever to miss you
(7:57)
Men leave in search of something better. The worse their home situation is, the less likely they are to come back–just like a runaway child. If they leave brown grass or dirt and find nice green grass, they are not likely to come back, no matter what you do. However, most of the time, the grass is not all that greener. Many other women who seem like beautiful green pastures turn out to be no more than AstroTurf. And, many men don’t have the ability to keep a sensational other woman if they find one. Being single is not the paradise many married men think it is.
There is a reason that married people want to be single and single people want to be married.
Your husband experiencing the bad aspects of being single will help to move him back toward your marriage. But, if you help him to have the best of both worlds while separated, then he won’t want to have either–he will want to have both. By having sex with him, you will endorse his lifestyle. The longer this goes on, the less inclined he will ever be to be monogamous again. Even if he lives with you again, he will continue to cheat on you in the future.
(9:13)
Dissatisfaction is the key to reconciling.
If you have done a good job of maintaining boundaries, while also keeping a good connection with your estranged husband, then he will be drawn back toward you. Those boundaries have prevented him from being able to have his cake and eat it, too.
He has missed out on:
Hopefully he has also had to care for your children half the time and pay you support payments. And, in addition to that you will be preparing to give all those things to your next husband–making your husband the grand loser.
(9:56)
There is a way to get a person to go to your restaurant only. That is to have the best restaurant in town and to make the person choose which one they go to. You don’t allow them to go to both.
When you do take him back, take him back slowly.
In his fear of losing you or dissatisfaction with his other relationship he will attempt to romantically reconnect with you while still being connected with the other woman. This you must not do or you will take away his motivation to connect more with you. He will only do enough to keep you on the hook. You will be confused by his push-pull behavior.
Just like when you are single, you keep walking away if your husband is not faithful. That means he gives up ALL contact with the other woman. Zero contact–even if he needs to quit his job. If you allow him to have continued contact with the other woman, the affair will never really stop, though it may take a break for a while.
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If he does that, then remain separated and go back to rebuilding your relationship as you first did when you first met. Start over. Don’t go to marriage counseling. You need to use all your good relationship skills just like you would as a single woman. But, you must not be quick to have sex with him and you DO NOT live with him again until the relationship is completely rebuilt.
Relationship building stops when people get married or live together after a separation. Do not fall for the myth that living together is conducive to building relationships–it is not. Separation provides more motivation for relationship building and creates better relationship building conditions.
The number one mistake separated women make is to take their husbands back before love, trust, and commitment have been restored. This results in stagnation, distancing, and repeat affairs.
(12:01)
Let him know your back-up plan.
Nothing helps a man to stay on the straight and narrow like knowing the consequences of what will happen if he doesn’t stay on it. This is what keeps faithful men faithful. In your process of rebuilding with your husband, it would be wise to let him know that if he cheats on you during this process of rebuilding, that it will end and you will file for divorce.
I don’t say this to encourage divorce, but rather to help you save your marriage. A woman who is not prepared to end her marriage to a cheating husband will have a husband who always cheats on her.
I may forgive a man who breaks into my house, but I won’t give him a key to it.
Professional help may be needed.
I have helped thousands of women reconcile with cheating husbands through this method of good boundaries and good connection. I haven’t seen any women fix their relationships by having poor boundaries or by punishing their husbands. If you want help with either having the correct boundaries or learning how to reconnect and re-attract your husband, then you may wish to get relationship coaching for ending an affair.
(13:08)
On the other hand, if you know you need to have good boundaries but find yourself unable to do it, you need to get into individual counseling. You have to get over the fears that prevent you from being strong enough to have good boundaries.
God will help you to do whatever you need to, but He won’t do it for you. Get whichever kind of help you need and stop waiting for your spouse to make your relationship good for you. You are the only one who can do that.
(13:39)
[Podcast wrap-up]
Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.