I often get emails from women who are struggling to understand their husband's affair.  I'll often get comments like: "why and how do affairs happen? Because I just can't understand it.  Maybe if I understood the reason why this happened, it would help me to move forward, but it just doesn't make sense to me right now." 

I also have many men who find me on my blog and who write to me asking for advice on reconnecting with their wives or saving the marriage after the affair.  They often share with me the details of the affair and why it happened.  So, I do feel that I have some insight that I can offer you from a husband's point of view.  I'll share this information with you in the following article.  But, please keep in mind that by no means am I defending husbands who cheat.  I was in this situation myself and I know the devastation that it causes.  I would never try to excuse it.  But, I can share with you the information that I have, which I'll do below.

Believe It Or Not, Most Men Don't Intend To Cheat:  From my experience, very few men enter into the situation intending to cheat.  Often, the affair takes them by surprise.  What typically happens is that initially, there is innocent behavior and communications.  This evolves into friendship and shared experiences.  Men often tell me that the other woman listened to them, cared about their feelings, and seemed to just "get" and understand them.  One common comment is: "she was so easy to talk to." 

This then becomes flirting and the husband (whether he can admit this to himself of not) begins to look forward to the interactions with the other woman and begins to look to her for emotional give and take, validation, and fulfillment.  Here is where the line is crossed, although no physical contact has taken place yet.  Eventually, this evolves into a physical relationship, but often, it happens quite gradually and starts quite innocently.

This is why the majority of affairs happen at work or in innocent close quarters. They also are more likely to happen during times of stress. People are required to work closely and spend a lot of time together.  Typically, no alarm bells go off at first. The husband thinks that he's just doing what is required of him for his job.  The shift is often quite gradual so that he is able to justify it to himself quite easily.  Lunches together seem so innocent at first.  The ready smile that she has for him and the intent ear that she gives him is so refreshing and gives him something to look forward to at work. And, I must stress that the vast majority of affairs happen for emotional reasons – not for sex.

Now, I can hear what you are thinking because I have the same thoughts.  You may be thinking: "well there was a smile and an ear for him at home, but he wasn't focused on that."  You're absolutely, positively right.  His grave mistake was in allowing this process to spiral forward. Instead of pulling back and recognizing that he was meeting his needs elsewhere, he allowed this to move forward.

Why Men Allow The Affair To Continue Rather Than Stopping It Immediately: Often, when I tell women what I've explained above, I'll get comments like: "well, even if I could understand what you just said, I still can not get over the fact that he didn't quit the first time it happened.  He had to have known that he crossed a line and he should have stopped immediately.  But, he didn't. Why?"

Only your husband can definitely answer this question.  However, I can tell you what husbands tell me.  Often, the pay off to continue and the initial excitment overrides any guilt or shame that they feel.  Once the line has been crossed, there's no turning back anyway, at least in their mind.  They've already over stepped, so they are going to see it through.  And, the affair makes them feel valued, alive, understood, and attractive.  Suddenly, they feel like someone finds them important and exciting again. They tell me that they feel like "winners." 

And as twisted as it is, they often count on the fact that you won't find out. They are able to separate their marriage and what is happening right now.  They tell themselves that this won't go on forever, that they will get this out of their system and work it out for good, and that eventually things will pick right up at home, so that no one is getting hurt.

It's typically only when they get caught and they see how devastated you are and are faced with the fact that they might just have ruined their marriage does the seriousness of this truly hit them right in the face. Of course, by then, it's too late to take any of this back.

What To Take From This: Many women focus so much on the "why" of the affair and this is certainly important. In order to save and heal your marriage, you will need to understand exactly why this happened so that you can fix what needs to be fixed and put safeguards in place to ensure that you're never in this place again.

But, there's another word that's every bit as important – how.  It's important that you ask yourself how you're going to get what you need to fully heal, and how you are going to turn this negative into a positive – whether you ultimately chose to save your marriage or not.

Although it may not feel like it right now, often an affair is a wake up call that forces you to take the action that you desperately needed all along.  You can use this as spring board to strengthen yourself and your marriage. In addition to all of the work that I did on the marriage, I also completed a lot of work on myself and my own self esteem.  The affair brought forth a lot of issues that I was really always dealing with, but didn't want to face.  I went back to school, improved my appearance, and focused on loving myself.  This wasn't always easy, of course, and certainly I'm not glad that the affair happened.  But, I'd be lying if I said that there wasn't some good that came out of.  There were unexpected improvements that would never have happened if I didn't use this as a wake up call.

I know that understanding and working through the aftermath of an affair is difficult, but it can truly be worth it. It took a lot of work, but today my marriage is actually stronger than it ever was before. I also did a lot of work on myself and am happier as the result. Our bond and intimacy is much stronger and my self esteem is at an all time high. I know longer worry my husband will cheat again. You can read a very personal story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com/