Lost My Husband Because I Cheated

If you lost your husband because you cheated, your husband decided he couldn’t trust you with his feelings anymore. He couldn’t forget the cheating and open up his heart to you the way he did before you cheated.

Maybe he got scared of another betrayal or maybe he just couldn’t forgive you for backstabbing him and crossing his boundaries.

No matter why he left, he made a rational decision to distance himself from you after his perception of you and the relationship had changed. The truth is your husband couldn’t restore the relationship to normal. He probably didn’t want to because he considered cheating disrespectful and unworthy of his time and forgiveness.

Even if you told him about cheating yourself and apologized (rather than him finding out on his own), you couldn’t undo the damage caused by betrayal. It was too late and too much for your husband to forgive and work on. He couldn’t just forget the cheating and act like nothing happened.

He loved himself too much to ignore feelings of betrayal and chase your validation and security.

Because you gave your body and mind to someone else, you showed him you prioritized your feelings over his loyalty and that you were willing to hurt him. Your actions proved you couldn’t or didn’t want to resist temptations to cheat and that the relationship with him wasn’t the most important thing to you.

You may have cheated only once, but one time was enough for him to stop loving you and create some space between the two of you. It was enough for your husband to break his commitment to you and defend his self-love, ego, and pride.

Not all cheatees forgive their partners for betraying them. Some cheatees put up their walls and keep their partner or ex-partner away from them. They don’t feel comfortable or safe continuing the relationship after their partner’s unfaithfulness. They’re angry and disappointed with their cheating spouse and think they deserve better and that they can be happier on their own.

Such cheatees tend not to forgive their spouse for adultery no matter how regretful the cheater is. In their mind, the relationship has ended and can’t be restored to its pristine condition. Once cheating happens, they believe the relationship will never be the same again because it will be stigmatized by the constant reminders that the person they loved and trusted acted on impulses and cheated.

Usually, only the most forgiving and low self-esteem people forgive and take back a cheating spouse. Such people are attached (often codependent) and need their spouse to feel loved and fulfilled. They don’t have the confidence and strength to end things with their cheating spouse, so they forgive the cheater (usually on the spot) and hope their partner doesn’t cheat again.

They don’t have any proof that cheating was a one-time thing. All they have is the cheatee’s reassurance and blind faith.

Unfortunately, cheating relationships often have underlying issues. Usually, cheaters are unhappy or have impulses, morals, and other things to work on. If they don’t work on them, they may take the cheatee for granted again and cheat, monkey-branch, or simply leave.

Unless their mentality and maturity improve, there’s a chance they’ll make the same mistakes when they feel accepted and forgiven and stop regretting their actions.

So if you lost your husband because you cheated, know that it may not be possible to save the relationship with willpower alone. You may be really sorry and willing to do anything to restore trust and love, but if your husband doesn’t trust you, like you, or care about the relationship, nothing you say or do will change his mind.

You’ve probably already tried to reason with your husband. You’ve told him how sorry you were for cheating and what you were willing to do to make things right. Despite that, your husband remained set on his decision and may even have blamed you for destroying the relationship.

I don’t know what he said or did when you expressed regret and shame, but I do know that he didn’t budge when you begged and pleaded and tried to show how important he and the relationship were to you. He didn’t change his mind because he lost the determination to stay committed and work on the relationship and wanted you to respect his decision and feelings.

Just like he had to accept your cheating, he expected you to accept his decision to leave.

Now that he’s left, you need to understand that he can’t be brought back with words and actions. Even if you say the nicest things and prove he’s the most important person in the world for you, he won’t care what you think and want. His opinion of you won’t change because he’ll continue to think negatively of you and feel betrayed.

He’ll do this for as long as he can.

So give up on trying to change your husband’s mind about the relationship. If he doesn’t want to be with you because you cheated or did something he can’t forgive and overcome, you shouldn’t keep convincing him to come back. All you should do is apologize sincerely once and give him the space he’s asked for.

Space will make him feel good whereas a lack of it will make him feel unheard, disrespected, smothered, and vexed.

Your husband is your ex and doesn’t want to be persuaded to forgive you and get back together with you. He wants to be left to his own devices and enjoy life on his terms. You may find it extremely difficult to let him go, but you don’t have a choice right now.

The time to fight for the relationship ended when he said or showed he lost the will to maintain the relationship. That was when you needed to start taking your focus off your husband and figure out how to recover from heartbreak.

In this post, we discuss what to do if you lost your husband because you cheated.

What do I do if I lost my husband because I cheated?

Instead of actively trying to get back with your husband, the first thing you should do is figure out why you cheated on him and what you can do to avoid cheating in the future. This should be your top priority. Discovering your reasons for cheating will help you improve yourself, forgive yourself, and allow you to dissociate yourself from your mistakes and the person you were in the past.

Once you’ve grown and let go of the past, you won’t need your ex-husband’s forgiveness and validation anymore. You’ll be okay without it because you’ll accept your past and move forward with your life.

Right now, your husband isn’t interested in being with you. He hasn’t dealt with the past and found a way to forgive and trust you yet. He still thinks he needed to break up with you and punish you for what you’ve done. Of course, he didn’t leave just to inflict pain and make you regret cheating.

He left mainly to protect himself from being forced to invest in you and plan things with you.

After cheating, your husband didn’t see a future with you anymore and determined life would be better (less painful) without you. He convinced himself cheating was unjustifiable and that he didn’t want to continue a relationship with someone who wasn’t 100% loyal to him.

Maybe you learned your lesson and improved after cheating and getting dumped, but he wasn’t willing to take that risk. Perhaps the expression “Once a cheater, always a cheater” echoed in his head and prevented him from recommitting to you and starting a new relationship.

Whatever the case may be, he hasn’t dealt with negative feelings and perceptions and therefore, doesn’t want to get back with you.

You shouldn’t push him to go to therapy with you and promise to help him trust you and love you. If he doesn’t love you or want to love you, your persistence will only make things worse. It will tell him you don’t care about his decisions and feelings and that you only want what you want.

Previously, you were selfish and acted on your sexual urges. This time, you want to be with him even though he doesn’t feel the same way about you. This makes him notice a pattern of opposing his feelings and refusing to let the relationship go.

So what should you do if your husband doesn’t want you back after cheating?

Don’t do anything he doesn’t want you to do. If he doesn’t want to get back together and talk to you, stop talking to him and asking him to reconcile. Let the guy enjoy his space and freedom while you work on self-growth and healing.

He won’t want you back now or in the future if you throw your dignity and self-respect out of the window. If you give him your remaining power, he could hog all of it and make you feel even worse about the cheating and the breakup. He could humiliate you, ignore you, or do something you’re not ready for.

The more you beg for time and affection, the less he’ll respect you and want to be with you when he processes the cheating.

You need to remember that your job as a dumpee isn’t to convince your husband to be with you. Your job is to leave him alone, focus on yourself, evolve, get busy, find your purpose, improve your self-esteem, and retain your value.

You need to wait for something to change on his end. Something that could potentially change his thinking and his mind about you. This could be anything (negative) that encourages reflection, growth, and forgiveness.

Your husband has to want you back on his own. If you keep crying and telling or showing him you need him in your life, he’ll believe you and think you started valuing him way too late. He’ll think you should have respected and cherished him before you betrayed him and made him dump you.

Now that he’s given up and slipped out of reach, he doesn’t want your tears and promises. He’s going through the dumper stages and wants you to respect his need for space and quiet. The only way he’ll respect you and not think worse of you is if you accept your errors and the breakup.

Accept that your ex gave up just like he accepted your betrayal.

You knew that cheating could cause mistrust, pain, and ultimately, a separation. But despite that, you betrayed your partner and hurt his feelings.

You shouldn’t convey the idea that life is unfair and that you’re the victim. You both hurt each other. You hurt your husband by cheating whereas your husband hurt you by leaving.

It doesn’t matter who caused more problems and pain. What matters is that trust was broken and that it needs two equally interested people to repair it. At the moment, you’re the only person willing to fix it. You’re the only one who feels hurt, sad, and depressed.

You want your ex back to heal your broken heart and feel accepted, needed, and loved. You don’t want to lose your husband because of cheating. Deep inside, you’re hoping for forgiveness and another chance.

Bear in mind that you’ll get another chance only if your ex wants to give the relationship another chance. You won’t get it just because you want it really badly and are prepared to win your ex’s trust and love back.

Reconciliations don’t work that way. They don’t depend on what the dumpee is willing to do to get back with the dumper but what the dumper thinks of the dumpee and how badly he or she needs the dumpee to be happy.

If the dumper has a hard time being happy, he could return when unhappiness forces the dumper to feel better. This tends to happen when the dumper explores other (romantic) options and fails. Mind you, something would need to go horribly wrong for your ex. Something or someone would need to hurt him more than your cheating and convince him he was happy or happier when he was with you.

Having said that, here’s what you should do if your ex-husband doesn’t want you back after you cheated on him.

What if my husband doesn’t come back?

You need to acknowledge that all relationships can’t be saved. When dumpers feel victimized, develop negative perceptions of the dumpee, and find better or different people and things to get occupied with, they don’t come back. It doesn’t matter if they’re married and have kids with their ex.

If they’re happier than they used to be, they stay away from their ex and continue to think they’ve made the right decision to leave.

Dumpers come back only if they aren’t happy with the decisions that led to their recent unhappiness. If they aren’t happy and can’t find a way to be happy, they consider getting back with an ex even if years have passed since the breakup.

If your husband doesn’t want you back, you obviously shouldn’t tell him to come back and wait for him to fall back in love with you. You could waste a lot of time waiting for an ex who may never come back. Hence, you should start letting go of your ex and accepting that he may never come back.

Coming to terms with the possibility that the relationship has ended forever will set you free and allow you to let new people into your life. People who don’t hold you responsible for cheating and other relationship mistakes.

Years from now, you won’t care about your ex anymore. You’ll have detached from your ex and be okay with your new life. You may even be with someone else and over your cheating.

Don’t beat yourself up over the lost relationship. You may have messed up badly, but blaming yourself won’t change the past, the present, or the future. It will just make you miserable and slow down your growth and detachment.

Instead, focus on learning and improving your mentality and relationship skills. If you do that long enough, you’ll be better prepared for your next relationship with your ex or someone else.

Did you lose your husband because you cheated? What did you try to get him to forgive you and take you back? Did you beg, guilt-trip, send gifts and letters, or make some other breakup mistake? Let us know in the comments section below.

And if you want to discuss different methods for getting your ex-husband back after you were unfaithful, check out our coaching options on this link.

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.