I am married to the nicest guy in the world. The guy who helps everyone, goes that extra mile for complete strangers and is always caring and compassionate. He was an Eagle Scout and learned CPR just in case someone around him needed it one day. He brings the neighbors trash cans in after the trash has been picked up and pulls over to help complete strangers change a flat tire. He helps the kids in the neighborhood build go-carts and tree forts. Everyone who knows him likes him. At work he is everyone's go to guy and everyone's friend. The all around, quintessential good guy...... who just happened to have another woman on the side for five years.
It was his good guy nature that got him into it in the first place as is often the case. While having breakfast one day in a local diner before work he noticed a woman weeping at a table near him. He went over and asked her if there was anything he could do to help. She told him she had just come back from putting her dog to sleep and her heart was breaking. A dog lover himself, my husband quickly sat down to console her and with complete understanding he just sat with her. We had put our fifteen year old dog to sleep a couple of months prior and he connected to her pain immediately. As most women who have what it takes to cheat with another woman's husband do, she mistook his kindness for interest and the game was on.
Soon they were running into one another frequently at the breakfast diner and with her insidiously laying the groundwork and driving a wedge between us to quell her own lonely life, a sexual affair soon began. My husband was no innocent in this either. He was a willing passenger into the secret and deceitful world of infidelity. There are many factors to this on both ends but with my husband just turning forty, in the prime of his career with lots of stress, family demands, our marriage of fifteen years not so hot, aging parent issues and all the rest of it that comes at this age, we had the perfect storm in that breakfast diner with two people who had low self esteem at critical life junctures. Both saw an opportunity to feed the ego beast. Their affair consisted of sex and ego strokes, as so many of them do, and went on for years. He was very clear with her that he loved his wife and family and was never leaving and in her desperation for any crumb of affection and caring, she was alright with that. Over time the affair took on the same dynamics as an addiction and it turned into something my husband didn't know how and had no tools to end.
Discovering my husband's affair was like a baseball bat to the knees. For years we had been distant but I thought it was because of where we were in our lives. Both of us had demanding careers and there were so many other things going on that I felt were normal and would pass once life calmed down a little. I looked around at friends and saw them in the same place and assumed we were normal. I never doubted that we loved one another. Not for a minute. And that's why this hit me like a Mack truck. Like many woman who have been betrayed do, I decided to stay in my marriage to try and work it out. Many would ask why I stayed with such a long term betrayal and the reasons would fill an entire article in itself. But let me just give you the two obvious reasons I was capable of coming up with as my soul went numb in the early days after discovering his affair. On Wednesday I loved my husband with all my heart and never doubted for a minute that we would grow old together. On Thursday I discovered he had betrayed me for a long time. I was livid, I was hurt beyond reason, I was bewildered and a million other things, but I was still in love with him. Love doesn't die in an instant. It's WAY too powerful and I will never doubt the power of love again as long as I live. Aside from this, I also knew I could never get answers if I threw him out. I refused to become an angry, bitter woman who never understood why she wasn't worthy of devoted love and faithfulness. I needed answers! And he, as so many cheating husbands are, was deeply remorseful, told me he never loved her, begged for a chance and promised to do whatever it took to hold us together. He has made good on this and we have healed our near mortally wounded marriage now with countless hours of marriage counseling and individual therapy.
What I went through in the first year was sheer hell. My world had completely imploded and I had absolutely no terra firma under me. I was lost and adrift in my own dark night of the soul. And yet I carried on with my life as if nothing had happen. The days and nights of anguish were almost too much to take. The countless hours hashing it out between us was agonizing beyond description. One day I was a strong, independent, self empowered woman at the top of my game and a few months later I was sitting in my bathroom with a straight razor contemplating cutting myself as the pain had reached epic proportions within me. We were in counseling but the progress was slow and didn't touch the broiling sea of emotion inside of me for quite some time. As time went on we began to drill down into our family of origin dynamics and began to clearly see our own marital dynamics. The dance of hurt that only we knew the steps to. We had both come from dysfunctional families. I had done a lot of emotional healing work and psychotherapy, my husband very little. Until this happen we couldn't have possibly seen it as clearly as we did. We were making some good progress at the one year point and I was able to finally see I might just stay glued together and then WHAM! I had an abnormal PAP and it was discovered I had HPV and it had invaded my cervix. I was in the preliminary stages of cervical cancer called cervical dysplasia. This strain of virus is only transmitted through sexual contact and since I had not had sex with anyone but my husband in 25 years it was pretty conclusive where it came from. This sent me spiraling once again and caused a whole new chasm between us. It was at this point that I could no longer remain silent and self contained with all of this with only my husband and our marriage counselor to process this with. I needed to connect with other women who knew my pain.
I had surfed all the infidelity websites when I first found out. Our marriage counselor had advised against participating in them as there were many different circumstances in those virtual communities and she felt the general rhetoric on these sites could be damaging to our progress. After the HPV diagnosis I ignored her advice and joined one of the sites and found a sub-forum with betrayed spouses of those who had had a long term affair. It was there that I found my tribe. People came and went in there but we had our core group. Each and every one of them not only understood my pain and anguish but had lived it themselves. Finally I could process until I had no words left and it would be broadcasted to an audience that nodded at each word in painful recognition! Tight bonds were made in our little group and some of us began talking on the phone. I could feel my soul coming to life again. I was no longer in my isolated cell of pain. Months went by and tighter bonds were formed. As new people came in with fresh wounds the veteran members performed triage. Getting to know all of the stories and comparing notes for months on end brought forth a pattern of similarities in all of our husbands. We all began to jokingly ask, "Are we married to the same guy?". We compared family of origin dynamics as well as communication dynamics, intimacy and trust dynamics and many other things. A profile was beginning to emerge in story after story of the type of guy who has it in him to cheat.
A core group of us left the public board when we started Infidelity Mavens. We had to leave the public message board so many of us had found refuge in because many in our group were being stalked by the woman their husbands had had an affair with. Posing as a betrayed wife they would try to learn if the marriage was gaining stability or not. It was with this ultimate insult that we decided to form Infidelity Mavens which is a members only support community for women who have been betrayed and it's created and run by women who have walked in those shoes. As one of the founders of this organization I've seen the typical profile and those patterns of behavior and character traits emerge into even greater clarity.
Before I lay out these five characteristics of men who cheat I must first state that I'm not a psychologist or psychotherapist. This is not data compiled in a scientific way. I am however an unofficial expert or a maven, having lived this myself and hearing countless vivid details into the inner workings of people's marriages and eventually their pathway to infidelity. This profile was compiled with the help of five of the Mavens in our community. Each one of them in marriages that have survived a long term affair. These five common characteristics are not a sure fire indication that your spouse is having or will have an affair. But they do indicate that there is a potential risk to your marriage and that he may have more susceptibility to the advances of a needy woman desperately seeking attention and affection. There are plenty of women out there who predatorily will seduce these "nice guys" with much needed and wanted ego strokes. They see their kindness as interest and they capitalize on it. Men with these characteristics often fall into a co-created web of deceit with them.
The Five Common Characteristics of Men Who Cheat
Knight In Shining Armor (KISA): This is where most men get hooked in the dynamic that sets up the affair. It's one of the most common traits in a man who has what it takes to have an affair. You will see this pattern play out in many areas of their work and personal life. They are the guys who will always help everyone out of their troubles. They are caring and responsive to people's needs when they are in distress or challenged in even the smallest ways. Often the KISA behavior will be a bit overboard where it becomes obvious that this is how they get their ego stroked. They save the day constantly to pull in the external validation of being the hero in order to salve their wounded ego and damaged self esteem.
Conflict Avoidant: Will avoid conflicts at just about all costs. Won't risk his good guy image, even to complete strangers. Does not set boundaries with others or has poorly constructed boundaries and allows others to take advantage. Flares up and talks a good game but seldom follows through with setting others straight or downplays the severity and actually defends the poor behavior of others in order to avoid conflict.
Passive / Aggressive Behavior: Because he is conflict avoidant passive aggressive behavior is the way he deals with his anger. Seldom verbalizes, or even recognizes himself, that he is angry or put out. Will go along with just about any situation as the flexible, patient good guy but then will act out in inappropriate ways by doing something he knows will upset or disrupt the other person. Often does not recognize he is doing this and will find ways to justify his inappropriate behavior because the ways he acts out are almost never associated with the thing that made him angry in the first place. Example: You unknowingly embarrassed him at a social function on Saturday. On Thursday the following week he "forgets" to water your favorite flower bed while you are out of town which kills all of the flowers.
Risk Takers: This shows up in a lot of different ways. It can be physical risk, financial or even in their communication. Never takes risks with their emotions though. Even a mild mannered guy will find ways to take risks in subtle ways. Their attitude in general is that worst case scenario won't happen.
Constricted emotions: Most often these men are emotionally unavailable or emotionally inept. They have no gauge to recognize their own emotions and don't really connect to the emotions of others in an authentic or genuine way. They often respond in appropriate or clumsy ways to emotional situations from ignoring the emotion to getting angry or annoyed about the display of emotions. Most of these men were brought up in households where the message was loud and clear that having or displaying emotions was wrong. This can be a family that appears to be perfect that just never connected on an emotional level to an abusive environment where it was downright dangerous to display emotions. This is where they learn to compartmentalize their emotions which means they form the ability to put extreme emotions in a compartment in their mind that they can control completely by accessing them in only "safe" environments. This is what allows many men to continue to love their wife while they are carrying on an affair. They have the ability to compartmentalize the affair emotions in their own container that is only accessed when with the affair person. Once they walk out that door (or turn off the computer or cell phone) they put any associated feelings back in their compartment and walk through the door of the house and kiss their wife and children.
When you are outside of this world you shake your head in disbelief that anyone would ever stay in a marriage after these sorts of things. You may say to yourself you'd have left the marriage right away, without a second thought, if these were the circumstances you were handed. Each and every one of us felt the same when we were outsiders too. Once you enter into the world of infidelity and begin to hear these stories you realize they are common and there are extenuating circumstances that makes staying in the marriage the most logical and emotionally healthy thing to do for all concerned. The conservative estimate is 60% of marriages will/have experienced infidelity. There is a high likelihood someone close to you is an "insider" and you haven't a clue.
We hope in sharing our experiences and this information that those who see these characteristics in their husband or men who see them in themselves will proactively seek counseling to understand themselves and their susceptibilities better. In hindsight we all feel we should have been more aggressive in addressing these characteristics. Unfortunately we did after much pain and near devastation of our marriages and the lives of our families. So much pain can be avoided with a little attention to these characteristics and taking the action to see a marriage counselor to explore them further.
by Vivian Byrne
