Why Do Cheating Wives Stay Married?

Being an expert in relationships, I have always heard heartbreaking stories of wives caught cheating and one question that has continued to puzzle my mind is why cheating wives remain in marriage?

The concept of cheating may give rise to the images of betrayal, lies, and the destruction of a relationship. However, not all women that cheat can abandon their marriages.

Rather, they tend to resort to remaining married and this introduces a messy and emotional dilemma. In this post, I shall reveal why some cheating wives are sticking to their marriages despite the infidelity.

Why do cheating wives stay married?

1. Fear of Losing Stability

Panic of losing the stability that the marriage offers is one of the main reasons why cheating wives remain married.

Stability may comprise many aspects: financial, emotional, social, and family. The prospect of restarting in life is quite overwhelming to many women, particularly those who might rely financially on their husbands or have children together.

Divorce can jolt the very roots of life and, in many cases, remaining in the marriage despite the existence of the affair may appear safer to some in order to preserve their lifestyle, especially in cases where the affair is concealed or considered a temporary one.

I have observed several situations where women hesitate to divorce their husbands due to the unwillingness to disturb the family balance, especially not to disappoint their children. The need to uphold the flawless image of a family, even with lies, might be quite strong to overcome the need for individual happiness.

Related: Why Do People Cheat in Relationships?

2. Emotional Attachment to the Husband

The second reason why cheating wives find it difficult to leave their marriages is the emotional attachment to their husbands.

Most wives love their husbands or feel connected with their husbands in spite of infidelity. They might cheat not because they don’t care about their spouse, but because they feel mentally or emotionally deprived or unsatisfied.

I have met a number of women who, following an affair, report that they feel bad not over the affair itself but by the fact that they feel torn between two worlds—the love and memories they have shared with their husbands and the thrill or fulfillment they get as part of their extramarital affair.

The relationship in such instances may show less to do with physical attractiveness and instead evolve into an emotional affair. Although the wife might be in need of emotional closeness outside her marriage, she might appreciate the comfort, history, and friendship that her marriage can offer. It is not necessarily black and white, and things are much more gray behind the scenes than they seem to be on the surface.

3. Fear of Judgment and Social Stigma

The pressures of society and the fear of judgment can further be a big factor in keeping some cheating wives married.

The effect of this sort of societal attitude is that divorce is looked down upon, and in particular cases, used against women by labeling them as failures or incapable of keeping their homes together.

This stigma may make it extremely challenging for a woman to walk out of a marriage even when it makes her unhappy or she feels betrayed.

Clients have revealed to me that the look of judgment by their families, friends, and even religious groups poses a burden to consider divorcing their spouses.

Women are expected culturally to stay in their marriages at all costs. To some, staying in a marriage, no matter what it involves, may seem better than the alternative. They fear the impact that their children will have once they divorce or on the perception of their social circle.

Here is my previous post about signs your wife is unhappy.

4. Guilt and Internal Conflict

In most cases, infidelity may arouse a lot of guilt, shame, and personal conflict among women.

The after-effects of emotions are usually worse even though the act of cheating might appear like a way out or exciting on a temporary basis.

A cheating wife might love her husband, feel guilty that she is betraying him, and find herself stuck in the infidelity circle.

Such an internal conflict is especially complicated since the wife might consider the affair as an error or a cry for attention.

Self-blame for breaking the promise to their husband can cause self-guilt, making such an individual indecisive about whether to sever the marriage or remain and work to reconnect the trust.

Instead of bearing the full weight of their guilt, some women opt to remain married, allowing them to deal with their emotions without addressing the fear of the relationship being terminated.

5. Hope for Change

In other instances, the cheating wives do not leave their marriages as they keep the hope that they will fall back in love with their marriage.

They might have cheated due to feelings of neglect or dissatisfaction, but still, they think that their marriage can be salvaged should their husbands change or they can make a better decision in the future.

I have come across numerous women who, even after admitting they had an affair, still want to reconcile with their husbands.

They might have the opinion that the affair was a single mistake and it does not indicate the situation in the whole marriage.

In the case of these women, remaining in the relationship is an attempt to salvage the relationship with the view that by applying the appropriate effort and both persons adopting changes, the relationship is salvageable and they would emerge stronger than before.

6. No Better Alternatives

It is not always the emotional attachment to the spouse and societal pressures that make some women decide not to leave the marriage following an affair, but practicality.

They can even believe that they have no place and no one else to turn to. In case the affair was due to dissatisfaction in the emotional sense, they might feel that they cannot get the same support, intimacy, or economic security anywhere.

This may particularly be the case when the same woman is in a marriage where the husband has given a high degree of financial or emotional support.

In this case, separation from the marriage might not be an attractive option, particularly if the affair was the desire to have something that she is not capable of providing by herself.

7. Comfort with the Familiar

Lastly, it also has a strong psychological aspect of remaining in a marriage simply because it is familiar.

A wife might relax in the conveniences, rites, and routines of her life with the husband even though she has been unfaithful.

Comfort in the known could be so hard to escape even when there is an intuitive feeling that something is going wrong.

In such cases, the wife can explain to herself that although the marriage is not ideal, it is more acceptable than the confusion and obstacles of breaking up.

She might not be prepared to contend with the unease of a new start, particularly should the affair have plugged a short-term gap.

Conclusion

The reasons why cheating wives remain in their marriages are highly personal and, in some cases, complicated.

It is not just love or no love; it is fear, guilt, hope, attachment, and social pressures that combine to play a part in this choice.

The action of remaining in a marriage after the discovery of infidelity does not translate to the fact that the wife does not care about her partner or that she is not undergoing personal problems.

The intricacy of relationships also represents how emotions and personal situations usually tend to connect in a complicated way; it is not quite clear to other people.

Finally, remaining in a marriage after cheating might be a painful and hard decision made by many women because of the process of struggling with their love, their guilt, their stability, and the hope of a possible bright future.

In the event that you find yourself in this state, it is important to engage in open communication, consult a relationship expert, and follow all other measures that are necessary so that trust can be regained or the best course of action determined.