I Cheated On My Husband And Now He Wants To Leave

If you cheated on your husband and made him want to leave, you need to know that you’ve hurt your husband badly and caused a lot of damage to the relationship. Not only did you destroy your husband’s trust in you, but you also showed him how little the relationship meant to you.

You may be sorry and willing to fix what you broke, but sorry doesn’t change what you did. Your actions still speak for themselves as they demonstrate that you prioritize your feelings over your partner’s and that you lack or lacked the ability to say no to people who showed romantic and/or sexual interest in you.

Instead of pulling away and investing more time and love in your relationship, you gave in to temptation and showed how easily replaceable your partner was to you. This explains why your partner took the cheating personally and found it difficult to forgive you and resume the relationship.

Keep in mind that cheating says a lot of bad things about a person and that it affects the cheatee badly. It scars both men and women severely as both genders feel betrayed and not good enough for their partners. Of course, everyone gets affected differently, but how badly people suffer depends on three major things.

Their self-esteem and the emotions and time they invested in the relationship.

If a cheatee’s self-esteem is bad and he or she overinvested in the relationship, chances are the cheatee has overvalued and overprioritized the cheater and is willing to instantly forgive the cheater. Breaking up would be a huge shock to the cheatee’s system as it would create unbearable separation anxiety and fear bigger than he or she is ready to face.

Don’t get me wrong. Even if a cheatee has good self-esteem, he or she will still get hurt and wonder why the cheating happened. A person who loves his or her partner and cares about the relationship gets hurt no matter how emotionally strong he or she is. That’s how it is and should be as people get attached and develop expectations.

The only people who don’t care and get hurt (much) are those who recently cheated and those who’d detached prior to their partner’s betrayal. Such people are okay with breaking up or having multiple sexual partners and should probably have gotten dumped a long time ago.

So if you cheated on your husband and he now wants to leave, bear in mind that you caused a lot of pain and suffering to your husband and that he doesn’t want to go through any more pain. He feels that he can’t trust you with his heart anymore and that you’re not worth his time, effort, and commitment.

Now that you cheated, you can’t fix the problem simply by apologizing and promising not to cheat again. This may work on someone who depends on your validation and doesn’t love himself but not on someone who knows his worth and possesses the determination to walk away from betrayal.

To a person who loves you, cheating isn’t just superficial sex. It’s also emotional betrayal and depiction of immorality. It’s a complete mismatch of relationship standards and core values.

Just as you wouldn’t date someone who thinks the opposite of you and believes in different things, your partner wouldn’t want to be with a person who lacks self-control and morals and has different life values. Your husband may have married you (committed to you for life), but in this world, there is no such thing as forever.

Every relationship has a tipping point—and we normally realize where that is when a person abuses his or her power and does hurtful things. It’d be naive to think that relationships can withstand anything. Such beliefs belong in fairy tales, not in real life.

Real life is much more unforgiving because a person with self-respect and decent self-esteem will usually make rational decisions and break up with a cheater to defend his or her core beliefs. Emotionally, it may be hard to do that, but his or her beliefs will overpower that which the heart desires.

You mustn’t think that a person who’s been with you for years will always be with you. If you treat him badly and show little respect to him, he’ll probably give up on you in a matter of weeks. However, if you do something really nasty and break his trust, then you can expect him to dump you the minute he finds out about it.

You can’t say you didn’t consider the possibility of the relationship ending. Deep inside, you knew exactly what you were doing. You knew that cheating entailed considerable risks and that you may not get another chance with your partner if you go through with it.

But despite that, you did go through with it. And when your partner learned what you did, he immediately knew that you weren’t invested in the relationship (at least not at the time of cheating) and that you were prepared to break up if he were to find out about it.

I’m not trying to make you feel worse than you already do as you probably blamed yourself enough for this already. But you do need to understand that if you valued your partner and wanted the best for you and him that you wouldn’t have cheated. You’d have found a hundred ways to keep your admirers away and your partner close to you.

Because you didn’t do that, your husband now has every right to believe you didn’t care about him (and still don’t). He can think you started caring about your actions only now that reality has caught up with you and made you feel guilty.

In this post, we talk about what to do if you cheated on your husband and made him want to leave you.

Why does he want to leave after I cheated on him?

Before we talk about viable solutions, it’s of utmost importance that you understand how your husband feels and why he feels that way. The easiest way for you to understand his feelings, decisions, and behaviors is to empathize and put yourself in his shoes.

Imagine you love this person with all your heart and that you can see yourself being with him for as long as you live. You feel comfortable and secure in a relationship with him and continuously pour your time and heart into him. You love him more than anyone you’ve ever met and want the best for him, so you stick with him through thick and thin.

You grow with him, confide in him, and tell him he’s the best boyfriend you could ever ask for. Because he feels your love and likes it, he tells you you’re the love of his life as well and that he could never be with anyone else.

But just when you trust him completely and lower your guard, he does something heartbreaking. He sleeps with someone he barely knows and makes you feel stupid for putting your trust in him and being vulnerable around him.

Because he messed up badly, the guy then tries to justify his behavior by saying he was stressed, confused, drunk, or stupid. He basically wants you to know he’s sorry for betraying you and that he’ll treat you better if you can find it in your heart to forgive him.

Sadly, he already had a chance to show who he was and how he dealt with temptations and problems. But he was okay with wasting that chance and didn’t mind facing the consequences of cheating.

His feelings came way before yours, so he made you feel the kind of pain you wouldn’t want your worst enemy to feel. His selfishness completely ruined your ability to trust him and other people. Thanks to him, your angelic belief in love is gone. All that’s left is the harsh reality of his betrayal and the emotional scars he gave you.

Technically, you could forgive him and jump right back where you left off, but doing that wouldn’t make much sense. It wouldn’t get you your dignity back and fix the trust that has been blown to pieces. You just wouldn’t know if someone who wounded you that badly has learned his lessons and vowed to himself (not to you) to live a righteous life.

Cheaters have a tendency to promise lots of things when their reputation, livelihood, or well-being is on the line. But that doesn’t mean that they take the time to reflect and evolve. Many times, they just tell people what they want to hear so they can stop hurting.

That’s the main point of asking for forgiveness. A person who has hurt someone wants that person to be okay so he can also be okay. Seldom do people apologize selflessly just to help others.

The problem is that even if people can see that their cheater is determined to grow, it’s not always enough for them to take the cheater back. Some cheatees feel humiliated and betrayed by their partner and don’t care whether their partner grows or not.

They’re done with their partner and don’t want to even think about being in a relationship anymore. They’d rather separate and start fresh with someone else.

Now that you’ve put yourself in your husband’s shoes, you probably understand that cheating is difficult to take lightly. Your husband likely feels hurt and angry at the same time and thinks he deserves more than you can offer. I’m not saying he wants to be in a relationship with someone else right now, but he does prefer the idea of being with a loyal partner in contrast to a disloyal one.

Loyalty and trust are the two most basic components of a romantic relationship. If you’re considered to be disloyal and untrustworthy, you don’t have much to offer to your partner. Your commitment without loyalty is like ice cream with nothing but ice.

It’s bland and not worth having.

People who want serious relationships want the highest level of devotion they can have. They want to know they can trust their partner fully and relax when their partner is not around. What they don’t want, though, is a relationship full of uncertainty.

This infographic below explains why your husband wants to leave after you cheated on him.

If you came clean about cheating, you showed respect and did the right thing. You did what many people don’t do as they don’t have a strong moral compass. Honesty might help your partner see that you regret cheating very much and that you confessed to cheating because you think he deserves to know.

On the other hand, if your partner singlehandedly or through someone else discovered you were unfaithful, then you’re probably not just an ordinary cheater in his eyes. You’re also someone who refused to take accountability and continued to act as if nothing happened.

This is especially true if you continued to sleep with your partner because in that case, you showed no concern for your partner’s emotional, physical, and sexual life. You slept with your partner after sleeping with someone else, which means you put his health in danger.

Your partner may consider this double treachery and find it impossible to forgive.

How can I stop him from leaving?

If a guy wants to leave because you cheated, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you can’t stop him from leaving. Since he’s set on leaving, all you can do is talk to him about your foolishness and impulsiveness, say how sorry you are for hurting him, and promise to work on yourself and do better.

Once you’ve expressed regret and shown the wish to put the work in, you must lay off the pressure and let your husband respond. You’re no longer in a position of power, so whatever your husband decides goes.

If he’s angry and says he can’t trust you anymore, you must respect his decision and let him do what he wants. He can decide what’s best for him on his own – without you.

You must understand that nothing you say and do will change the way he feels about you because he isn’t in a reasonable state of mind.

He’s in the kind of state where he needs to protect himself from wearing his heart on his sleeve again.

So instead of stopping your husband from leaving after you got cheated on, sympathize with him instead. Tell him you understand his reasons for leaving and that you’d probably do the same if you were him.

Always remember that the guy wants to be understood and respected and make his decisions freely without judgment and resistance.

Here’s my advice.

If he’s merely threatening to leave because he’s hurt but hasn’t left yet, listen to him and let him vent. He most likely wants you to show him you care about him, love him, and won’t ever betray him again.

But if he’s done speaking with you and/or looking for ways to avoid you, then all you can do is give him space and let him think, feel, and do what he wants.

Do I just wait and let him go?

If you lost your husband because you cheated, this isn’t the first time you lost him. You already lost him when you stopped caring about his feelings and investing in the relationship. You didn’t care about it back then because you had different priorities and feelings of attraction for someone else.

This time, though, you do care. But unfortunately, it’s your husband’s turn to decide whether you’re worth fighting for and being with.

I want you to know that guys who forgive their partners for cheating normally do so right away (within a couple of days). They don’t string their partners along for weeks and make things difficult for everyone. Yes, some people don’t express the relationship is over, but in all fairness, they don’t need to.

Their actions and inactions show they’re done being disrespected and that you need to pack your things and go.

Knowing this will make your life much easier as it will help you accept the breakup and understand that letting go is your only option. It may not be what you want to do, but it’s all you can do when your partner is determined to leave and stay away.

The guy could, of course, eventually change his mind and return, but no one knows when or if that will ever happen. Your ex has to first go through the breakup stages and realize you were the best option for him.

I have to be honest, though. The chances of your ex choosing a cheater over someone completely new aren’t very big. Something or someone would have to disappoint or hurt your ex much more than you. That’s probably the only way your ex will consider being with you.

So while you’re waiting, learn your lessons and keep moving on. You have to forgive yourself now and think about fixing the relationship with your husband later (when your husband becomes open to that idea).

And your husband will become open to it when he discerns you’re worth another shot.

Did you cheat on your husband and he now wants to leave? Did you find any of the tips in this article useful? Comment below and let us know.

And if you want to talk about your infidelity with us and let us help you devise a breakup plan, sign up for coaching with MOS here.

Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.