Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack

Prevent Your Husband’s Affair by Re-scripting Your Marriage

• Jack Ito PhD, Psychologist, Author, and Relationship Coach • Season 4 • Episode 8

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 The 3 relationship scripts that make affairs likely—and how to shift them

Most people don’t get married expecting to have an affair. And yet, affairs happen all the time, even in marriages that seem stable. The truth is, most people who cheat aren’t looking for a new relationship—they’re searching for something they’ve lost in their marriage.

In this episode of Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack, we explore how subconscious relationship scripts shape a marriage—and how three specific scripts make affairs more likely. If you’ve ever felt like your marriage has lost its spark, understanding these patterns can help you take back control and rebuild a deeper connection.

What You’ll Learn:

  • The wife-as-caretaker script – Why treating your husband like a dependent, rather than a partner, weakens attraction.
  • The wife-as-roommate script – How extreme independence leads to emotional disconnection and infidelity.
  • The wife-as-business-partner script – Why running a household like a company often drains romance from the marriage.
  • How to shift to the boyfriend-girlfriend script – The key to keeping passion, connection, and commitment alive long-term.

Ready to reshape your marriage dynamics and restore attraction? Tune in, subscribe, and check the show notes for extra resources to help you make these changes step by step.

Some key takeaways from today’s podcast:

  • Your husband’s perception of you is shaped by how you behave with him.
  • Attraction fades when a marriage becomes too practical—romance requires intentional effort.
  • Small, gradual changes can shift your role in his life and reignite his interest in you.
  • The boyfriend-girlfriend dynamic keeps passion alive in long-term relationships.

More relationship help for you:


Prevent Your Husband’s Affair by Re-scripting Your Marriage

(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: Women never cause men’s affairs. However, the way you behave as a wife will influence how desirable an affair would be to your husband. –just as his behavior can affect how much you care about your marriage.

Your husband’s impression of you comes from you.

Do you realize that any changes in the way your husband perceives you since you became married is largely a result of how you behave when you are with him and not with him? If you behave like his mother, he will come to see you like a mother, with similar feelings. 

(1:02)

If you behave like a business partner or roommate, he will come to see you in these ways. 

These three ways of behaving can contribute to your husband eventually having an affair with a woman he views as a girlfriend. Let’s talk about these three scripts that contribute to men’s affairs and how you can make a shift to behaving more like a girlfriend. While it won’t prevent your husband from having an affair, it will take away some of his unconscious incentive to have an affair.

All humans have a need for human connection that goes beyond a working relationship. Although your husband may seem all business, sooner or later, he’s going to desire more of a relationship like you had before the two of you got married. There was a reason that he enjoyed your relationship at that time. 

And, while he may have turned his attentions elsewhere after getting married, sooner or later he will want to re-create that loving relationship of years ago. You will too, if you go long enough without that kind of connection with your husband.

(2:05)

What are scripts?

A script is an internal and largely subconscious narrative that tells us what to expect and how to behave in different situations. They make life easier because we don’t need to keep figuring things out. When we have good scripts, that is very useful. When we have bad scripts, we may keep using them although they are worse than others we could have.

Babies don’t have scripts. Everything they encounter is a new experience to either be approached with fear or excitement. But, as they grow, they learn more and more what things do and how things are supposed to be. They get used to their environment. What is happening is that scripts are being learned. Scripts are a set of expectations about what to do and what to expect.

You know something is scripted if you don’t need to think much about it. It becomes automatic. Driving isn’t a script when you are first learning, but it becomes one after you have more experience. 

(3:04)

If you’ve learned well, you are less likely to have accidents than someone who learned poorly. We learn scripts either by watching others or by having gone through the process before.

Partial success is enough to create a script about how to do things. Those scripts are resistant to change. A script may work well for beginning a marriage, but not work so well for maintaining a marriage. It takes effort to change such scripts, but it is important to do.

What are marriage scripts?

Our marriage scripts are learned while we are still preschool age, from our parents. We won’t use those scripts for many years to come, so they don’t get changed. We don’t even realize that we have them stored in our mind until we get married. Then, we get to see them for the first time after we get married and can be surprised by our own behavior.

Husbands and wives get along better when their scripts match. Otherwise, there is a lot of conflict at the beginning of marriage when scripts don’t match. 

(4:02)

One spouse having a script that says marriages should be loving and romantic would do well if the other person had the same script. 

But, if the other person believed that marriages are essentially business partnerships, then one of three things will happen: one person will very dissatisfied giving in to the script of the other, they will both compromise and meet in the middle, or one spouse will eventually play out their script with another person.

What does this mean for your marriage?

It’s important to be aware of your script and your spouse’s to help prevent affairs. If you have a matching script with your husband, the first part of your marriage will do well, regardless of your script. If your scripts mismatch, you will have problems from early in your marriage. 

The sooner someone has problems in their marriage, the more I suspect a difference in marriage scripts.

4:56

Let’s take a look at three scripts that contribute to affairs and then discover together how you can change your script if necessary, so that the only thing your husband would gain from an affair would be the newness of the other woman (that is one factor you don’t have control of and must be dealt with in other ways. See my book on preventing and ending men’s affairs to learn more about why men cheat and have affairs.)

Today, I’m breaking down the three most common relationship scripts that result in the loss of an intimate connection. The truth is, most people who cheat aren’t looking for a new relationship—they’re looking for something they’ve lost in their marriage.

Script #1: The Wife-as-Caretaker

This script is common in more traditional marriages, where a woman’s primary role is to take care of her husband. She makes sure the house is clean, the meals are cooked, and the kids are taken care of. Her husband, in return, provides financially, works long hours, and sees his role as being a responsible provider.

(5:58)

At first glance, this might seem fine. He works hard, she takes care of the home, and they build a stable life together. But here’s the problem: in this situation, the wife becomes more of a mother figure than a romantic partner.

A practical, not romantic, partnership

Over time, this turns the marriage into a practical partnership instead of an emotional or sexual one. Affection dwindles, intimacy feels like a chore, and eventually, the wife is appreciated most for her service to her husband and children. Her husband will have a hard time seeing her as a romantic figure as he did when they were first dating. 

That doesn’t mean he no longer enjoys such romantic relationships, but it’s just that he stops thinking about his wife in a romantic way. They will be more like old friends. He expresses appreciation and takes care of her. He feels responsible for her. Those are good things, but without the romantic interest he is going to be more easily enticed by women who make him feel like more than a friend.

(7:02)

What other women do for him

He will be attracted to women who make him feel successful, desirable, and masculine. Other women won’t fish for your husband by offering to wash the dishes or cook meals. They will seduce with their appearance, energy, youthfulness (even if they are not young), and their interest in his interests.

Women who have the wife as caretaker script often try to win back their husbands by cooking more, cleaning more, and other services. Their husbands doubtless will appreciate that, but more of the same is not what he is attracted to.

Script #2: The Wife-as-Roommate

The roommate script promotes a high level of independence for both husband and wife. She has her career, he has his. She has her money, he has his. She has her laundry, he has his. When they have children, she has her shift with the children, he has his. 

(7:59)

Unlike the wife as caregiver script, their relationship is not family centered.

With this relationship script, people coordinate with each other–they exchange information. They go to common activities, but stare at their cell phones. Husbands and wives have sex with each other, but it is more of a convenience for their own gratification than it is any form of closeness. Indeed, they both might be imagining someone else when they have sex.

Convenience, not connection

Such a high level of independence and low level of connection is breeding ground for open marriages and affairs–both of which destroy marriages. Often there is very little overlapping time that a couple could spend together. They spend more time with others than they do with each other. 

Even people with this script need emotional connection. It is part of our human nature. In this day and age, it is very unlikely that roommate scripted marriages will last a lifetime. At some point, roommates will need to be exchanged for romances. These romances are then likely to turn into new marriages in which the roommate script is played out again.

(9:08)

Too much independence is a bad thing

If the marriage is to survive and people are to remain monogamous, one of them is going to have to help the other one to learn how to be a married couple rather than married individuals. This requires significant training in connection skills for one of the roommates.

Without matching roommate scripts at the beginning of marriage, problems manifest within a few years. Often within the first year. Often there is conflict which further damages the marriage. 

We can’t improve relationships by making our spouse’s like us even less. And we can’t make things better simply by enduring them. There is hope for such mismatched couples. One of them must be strong enough to love and use good boundaries to help their spouse to change scripts.

(9:57)

One of them must re-create the conditions to work together, play together, and love together–bringing back elements of the pre-marital relationship under threat of ending the marriage if necessary. Which means the relationship needs to be strong before the boundaries are used. Otherwise there will simply be a mutual agreement to divorce and find new roommates.

If you would like to use boundaries, make sure you are loving your spouse first.

Script #3: The Wife-as-Business Partner

Some couples thrive on shared goals—raising kids, running a business, or building financial success. They talk strategy, make big decisions together, and respect each other’s work ethic. The problem? Everything revolves around projects, tasks, and responsibilities.

These couples may be highly interdependent, but they often lose romantic connection along the way. Conversations become business meetings. Quality time turns into work time. And after years of being business partners, one or both partners start to feel emotionally neglected.

(11:05)

Eventually, someone new enters the picture—someone who isn’t part of the business, someone who sees them as more than just a co-parent or co-worker. That new person brings excitement, admiration, and a sense of novelty that’s been missing at home.

And because the business-partner dynamic makes affairs easier to hide (since both spouses are so busy), these affairs often go on longer before they’re discovered.

The Script That Keeps Marriages Strong: The Boyfriend-Girlfriend Script

The common thread in all these unhealthy scripts? They shift the focus away from romance and into practicality. The best way to keep a marriage strong isn’t by being a perfect caretaker, an efficient roommate, or a great business partner. It’s by keeping the romantic dynamic alive.

That means you need to:

  • Make your relationship a priority. Not just the household, not just the kids, but the actual connection between the two of you.

(12:01)

  • Maintain emotional closeness. Talking for the sake of connection, not just to exchange information.
  • Keep attraction alive. Dressing up for him, flirting with him, and making him feel like the man you once couldn’t get enough of.
  • Set expectations early and reinforce them. If you let him treat you like a roommate, business partner or mother, he will. If you require that he prioritize your relationship, he will adjust accordingly.

While a high maintenance woman can be tiring, a low maintenance woman is unattractive. Men only value what they work for. Make him treat you like his girlfriend, but also make it a rewarding experience for him.

Men who have affairs aren’t looking for someone to cook and clean for them. They’re looking for someone who makes them feel excited, wanted, and important. 

(12:57)

That’s exactly what you gave him when you were dating. It’s what you can gradually help him have now. You will be slowly changing his perception of your role in his life. 

Some practical steps for changing to a boyfriend-girlfriend script

How to change your script to the girlfriend-boyfriend script:

  • Shift your focus from communicating information to validating what he says.
  • Move away from advice giving, even when he asks for it. 
  • Be less concerned about him doing everything right than you are about just having a good relationship with him.
  • Reintroduce fun things to do starting with things within his current interests.
  • Signal your feelings for him with nonverbal flirting (go slow).
  • Flirt with your husband verbally as he starts to respond to your nonverbal behavior.
  • Separate business from romance. 
  • Make him a priority over your cell phone.
  • Make space for regular time with him in your schedule. 
  • Develop more of a single woman mindset to activate your inner girlfriend script.

(14:01)

You will need to gradually decrease the role you are playing now at the same time you gradually increase the girlfriend role. You will also need to do this slowly enough that you don’t create resistance.

Success depends on doing the right steps, in the right order, at the right pace. 

If you run into difficulty, one of more of those three things is out of whack.

What does this look like in real life?

Let me tell you about Lisa…

Lisa had been married for 12 years when she realized she and her husband had become more like roommates than a couple. They talked mostly about work and the kids, date nights were routine and unexciting, and intimacy was more of a memory than a reality. 

Lisa woke up to her roommate realization about the same time she discovered her husband messaging with a female coworker and exchanging pictures.

Lisa and I did an assessment of her marriage. In retrospect, her husbands affair had been predictable. 

(15:01)

Their relationship had become more emotionally disconnected with each passing year. They slowly drifted more into a roommate role. An affair was almost inevitable at some point.

Lisa didn’t stand much of a chance confronting her husband unless she changed how her husband saw her first. As her coach, I helped Lisa to become more attractive in her appearance, behavior, and words. She also became more involved in activities that made her appear more youthful for her age. She gave up the book club for tennis lessons. 

Lisa walked a tricky line of making changes without creating resistance. Lisa couldn’t afford to let her husband’s affair grow too much, but she had to do some re-attracting first. Coaching helped Lisa to stay on track.

How do you want your husband to see you?

Of course in actuality, you are like a roommate, a caretaker, and a business partner at times, out of necessity. But, are you also behaving like a girlfriend? What do you do mostly? 

(16:02)

Doing some self-evaluation here may help you to understand better why your husband treats you the way he does. 

Your husband doesn’t need another woman. He needs the woman you used to be. Be that woman again, and watch how your marriage transforms.

Learn single women’s behavior to do better in your marriage

Some people will know from experience how to make the desired changes for a better relationship. Others have no idea how to transform their relationship to a more connected and romantic one. For such people a very good resource is to learn from material meant to guide single women in attracting and getting commitment from men. 

The very same skills, when used with a husband, can enhance your marriage in a way that nothing else could ever do. Just remember to gradually make the changes so that you don’t get a negative reaction from your husband. That would be discouraging and make you feel like giving up.

(16:58)

You also need to give up any neediness you have.

The women who work with me in these situations often focus on ending needy behaviors which are repelling their husbands. It won’t do much good to learn about girlfriend behaviors if you are treating your husband badly in any way, so those needy behaviors have to stop first. A good way to get started with that would be to get my book for overcoming neediness and getting the love you want.

Get as much help as you need to prevent affairs or to save your marriage

If your husband is already having an affair, my book on preventing and ending men’s affairs will help you navigate all of the areas for reconciling. For comprehensive help and especially if your spouse is already having an affair, I refer you to my coaching package for ending a spouse’s affair. If you would like to learn more about scripts and how they influence our behavior, Wikipedia has an article called Script Analysis that is eye opening.

(17:58)

[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.