01 Feb How to Stop Your Husband from Cheating
Today, I want to talk to you about a rather uncomfortable idea that can cause married women who have experienced infidelity to quickly lose their minds. Somehow, the claim is, you can stop your husband from being unfaithful.
We are continually given direction and even orders about how to act and who to be for the sake of others. I believe this can create in us a false sense of power. We assume that if we’ll just conform to what we’re supposed to do and be, we’ll achieve a specific outcome. This leads to frequent disappointment.
You may have heard ideas such as, in order to keep your husband faithful, you need to be sure to initiate sex and be experimental. Play the perfect wife, not too needy, not too distant. Watch yourself and ensure that you are in no way controlling. And as always, be sure to tell him how much you love and appreciate him. You may have done all this and more and he was still unfaithful, or that’s what I’m assuming since you’re here reading this. I’m sorry. I’ve known that pain.
What Would Freud Say?
There’s a phrase I’m sure that you have heard inside this community. It’s called Betrayal Trauma. Sigmund Freud defined Betrayal Trauma as occurring when the people or institutions on which a person depends for survival significantly violate that person’s trust or harm their well-being.
This is what boggles my mind: when did you start to depend on another human being for survival? It makes sense to do so as a child, but why would you as a grown woman who is capable of providing for herself and surviving on her own? Let’s break down this definition of Betrayal Trauma a little more and then get into what this has to do with stopping your husband from cheating.
When Freud refers to a person on which you depend for survival, could that mean you? At the end of the day, is anybody responsible for you other than yourself? The rest of the definition says that the person must have significantly violated someone’s trust or well-being…could that be you too? Could you have violated your trust in yourself and your marriage’s well-being by trusting somebody over yourself? Were you trusting yourself while conforming to the rules that you thought you had to follow in order to somehow manipulate and control another human being in the hope that he would stay faithful?
The Enemy in the Mirror
Perhaps the ultimate betrayal is the way that we betray ourselves. You now deem yourself not good enough because of his actions. You question your own actions because of his. You conclude that, because of his actions, you must have done something to lead him in that direction.
This is all FALSE. I say BOO to all of this. Do you want to know the truth?
You can’t keep your husband from being unfaithful. Nothing you do or don’t do is going to convince him one way or another. There is no guarantee that he will make the efforts that you want. The hope is that he wants to do those things himself because that is what is going to keep him from being unfaithful. Not you.
Consider too that if you want your husband to be faithful to you, you need to be faithful to yourself. I have a phrase ‘recovery is discovery’. The word ‘recovery’ is defined as a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength, or the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost. This recovery is the recovery of you. It is you reclaiming ownership of the person that you want to be in this life and in your marriage. To be honest, so many of us have no idea who that person is because we have lived our lives simply conforming to how others think we should think and act.
The Mind of Abraham Hicks
There’s a video clip of Abraham Hicks, the author of Ask and It is Given, in which they talk about being uncheatable-upon-able. In the clip, a woman confesses that her relationship had felt off for nine months and that she had recently found out that she had been cheated on for a very long time. Abraham responds by saying that we all have different levels of how much we’re willing to put up with. They go on to say that whoever you are interacting with is going to violate the commitment that almost all of us want them to keep. For those we are up close and personal with, we want a commitment that they will put us first, no matter what.
That is a promise that no one can keep.
Abraham says that they would like our marriage vows to go something like this.
Dear one, I want you to know that as much as I love you, there is something that comes first before you, and that is my alignment with the source within me. That is my inner being. That is who I am devoted to, that is who I am aligned to, and that is for who I am feeling.
That is to who I am committed to, and my promise to you is that I will give you as much as I can of the fullness of me, not a separated me. I am going to do my best to satisfy my alignment and therefore give you the gift of living with someone who is aligned. That will mean that I won’t be behaving in needy or demanding ways. My happiness will depend upon my focus.
Abraham explains that there are people who feel betrayed if their partners think about other people. There are people who feel betrayed if their partner doesn’t give their undivided attention to them. There are people who feel jealous if anyone feels happy in a conversation with somebody else. There are many kinds of cheating but for the most part, cheating means that your partner has taken attention away from you, and you were dependent upon his attention so that you could feel good. Abraham closes by saying that we really want all of you to not be dependent upon anyone for your own alignment. That is the epitome of looking for love in all the wrong places. Abraham would like you to be uncheatable-uponable, where you can say, I am stable and full of self-respect. My sense of well-being is not dependent upon your behavior.
It’s a powerful talk. Check it out here.
How is Your Relationship with YOU?
If you want your husband to stop cheating, you have to stop cheating on yourself.
Can you feel the power in this statement? How wonderful would it feel to genuinely regain ownership of yourself? I would be so honored to be able to show you the way back to yourself. The fastest and most efficient way to get there is to heal your emotional trauma. By clearing your emotional trauma, you regain possession of your thoughts and actions. You are available and willing to learn from your mistakes, own your growth and failures, and stop blaming others for your circumstances. You build character and integrity. In a marriage that I want to be part of, I want to be that kind of part. I don’t want to take responsibility for his actions, however, and I’m pretty sure you are ready to stop owning those as well. It’s time. It’s time to do this healing work.
So I’d love to hear from you now. Tell me in the comments below: how has the weight of the idea that you are responsible for your husband’s fidelity affected your physical, emotional, and mental body? Then tell me in the comments what it would feel like to lift this weight off of your shoulders.
You are not responsible for your husband’s infidelity and there is nothing that you will be able to do going forward that will guarantee that he will not cheat. However, there is plenty that you can do when it comes to not cheating yourself out of self-trust, self-love, and your ability to flourish as a human being. Let me help you along the way. I’ve already walked the path. Watch my free masterclass here. You cannot control your husband, but you can control whether you treat yourself with love today. Let us treat you with the love you deserve too.
