Cheat or Change? Will My Spouse Cheat Again?

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Will he cheat again? 

You have scoured the internet looking for the answer to the two questions that drives almost all of us betrayed spouses to the brink of insanity, haven’t you?

And of course you know the questions are 1) Will my husband cheat again? (or wife), and 2) Is my marriage worth saving?

I will tackle these questions based on my experience and through the research I conducted to give you the best way I know to help you to find peace and decide what to do next.

I will even show you one of books I credit most for helping me decide.

Use the table of contents at the top of the post to jump to section you wish to read. This will help you as you return to visit this post. I also created a few documents for you to download to read from your laptop, phone or tablet later.

Suspect Your Partner is Cheating Again?

AND if you suspect they might be cheating discover who they’re calling and texting here (run a background check with the best in the industry Truthfinder.com).

Or you can decode some of your spouse’s recent strange behavior here.

Sections on this Post

==>DOWNLOAD your FREE copy of “Affair Stethoscope [Checklist]” Will your cheating spouse STOP the affair? Gauge the “pulse” of their affair.

Without This Your Marriage Has NO Chance After an Affair

Stop the presses! Stop the online YouTube marriage counselor videos! Stop reading all those books! And most of all stop talking to your nosy, unhelpful friends! In fact, you may not have to read this any further than this first section.

I have thought about this many times and finally I read this online recently to confirm what I was thinking. What must your relationship have in order to survive infidelity?

• Two people who truly want to stay together for the right reasons and work out their problems or miscommunication.
• The cheating spouse must feel and show sincere remorse and demonstrate a new proactive pattern of change

Yes, that’s how I see it. The most important element hands down to answer the questions, “Will my husband (wife) cheat again,” and “Is my marriage worth saving,” is do the two people in the relationship sincerely want to stay together and want to work together to discover what underlying emotional factors led to the affair? And they want to stay together because they care for each other.

Notice I did not say because of the kids or not because of a family business they own together or that they are co-dependent or afraid to be alone.

…the two people in the relationship sincerely want to stay together and want to work together to discover what underlying emotional factors led to the affair

Stats: Cheat Again or Change?

Will your wife or husband cheat again?

Here’s the thing about infidelity stats, specifically on serial cheaters, there are no reliable stats. The reason is most stats depend on people that volunteer to share the truth about their affair. Most cheaters will not crawl out of the woodwork to stick their neck out about such sensitive information.

I found conflicting stats. Some showed as high as 75-80% of cheaters show remorse, identify their internal emotional issues and work to restore their marriage and other stats that showed as much as 40% of cheaters who leave after their affair is discovered.

I don’t invest too much thought into infidelity stats.

Instead I would prefer to spend time to identify and understand the signs that a husband or wife is likely to cheat again.

How to Determine If Your Husband or Wife Will Cheat Again?

When you ask, “Will my husband cheat again?,” what you are really asking is, “Is he the type of person that is likely to cheat on me if I give him a second chance?”. When I wrote my most popular post about the 9 personality traits of a serial cheater I had this hunch that my wife cheated based on deep emotional issues she never resolved.

Due to these character flaws she probably was just going to cheat over and over looking to fill some need she didn’t even know she had. Giving her yet another chance was not an option. I didn’t want to get my hopes up things would work just to run into the same problem again. Why not just ask her to rip my heart out right then and step on it? Waste of time.

You want to know if it is worth it to give your husband a second chance? Look for the signs he is remorseful, values the relationship he has with you and fights to earn it back.

Why Do We Freak Out that Our Spouse Will Cheat Again?

Ever think about it? This Case Study Explains Why 

Read all the books, posts you want. Talk with a relationship therapist until your’re blue in the face. In the end none of that matters if you don’t understand why you feel what you feel.

Why is that important?

It helps you separate fact from fiction. It highlights unnecessary pressures you place on yourself or allow others to spew on you. No matter how much advice you take from a therapist or from my blog you are the only one who controls what you feel and the thoughts and beliefs that lead to those feelings.

That’s what makes the collaborative case study on how to emotionally recover from an affair conducted by Kristina Coop Gordon of the University of Tennessee, Donald Baucom of the University of North Carolina and Douglas Snyder of Texas A&M University so intriguing.

They claim infidelity is one of the most difficult problems to advise counseling on. The traumatic relationship of a affair changes how the people involved process information about each other and the what the roles and rules of a relationship were supposed to be.

In other words, do you remember how you viewed marriage before the affair? You believed assumptions how your spouse was supposed to behave, the roles you each played in the relationship and what the purpose of a marriage served. Your spouse’s affair attacked those assumptions and forced you to question every belief you ever had about marriage and relationships.

Your spouse’s affair attacked assumptions how your spouse was supposed to behave, the roles you each played in the relationship and what the purpose of a marriage served.

The introduction section to the study digs deeper to explain that immediately following the discovery of the affair the betrayed spouse frantically attempt to piece together why the affair happened, but your spiraling downward, out-of-control emotions sabotage your efforts to make sense of your spouse’s betrayal rendering you to feel helpless and depressed.

Let’s face it. It’s the truth. I felt this way, you felt this way. And it felt (and maybe still feels) like you will never trust another man or woman again, never experience the love and affection like you did at the beginning of the relationship or perhaps never feel love again.

And why? Because we no longer have a set of assumptions or behavioral patterns to trust which could help us predict how your current partner or potential future partner would act.

It’s scary, but I can tell you from my own experience it forced me to re-evaluate how I viewed relationships and to identify what false assumptions I created.

In the book I recommend further down on this post, the therapist that wrote it provides an explanation how the media (movies, shows, news, commercials) affect how we fantasize love and romance and expect to benefit from positive emotional rewards that are not realistic. It’s just Hollywood hoopla.

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15 Signs Your Cheating Husband (or Wife) Will Cheat Again (and one Bonus)

Sure there is no guaranteed way to predict if your husband or wife will cheat again. However, you can look for evidence that he or she does not feel remorse and does not proactively take action to earn your trust and work out the problems that led to their choice to betray you.

1. Anxious or Avoidant Attachment Style. How your husband or wife views the purpose of relationships can determine his or her probability to leave for greener pastures. Style Dr. Lisa Firestone explains that for those who are confident, can get along with others well, knows how to get their own needs met and how to help fulfill the needs of their partner can have fruitful, long-lasting relationships more easily. This kind of person has a secure attachment style.
2. On the other hand if your wife or husband displays an anxious or avoidant style they are selfish and focus on themselves. An anxious attachment style person becomes clingy and needy.  An avoidant attachment style person acts standoffish and desires an illusionary relationship with the freedom to come and go as they please.
3. Blames their choice to cheat on you. No responsibility here. Your husband or wife simply plops all the blame on you.
4. No Real Remorse. Your gut tells you they do not feel sincere, genuine remorse towards the emotional damage they caused you to the point they do not fear losing the relationship.
5. No action to change, just talk. Your cheating spouse does not proactively change factors that led to the affair. “Proactively” is the key word here.
6. Defensive towards transparency. After all the secrecy and living a double life they still do not wish to prove that they have nothing to hide. DO YOU STILL WANT TO PUT UP WITH THAT?
7. Past cheating history for various reasons. I do believe a cheater can change if they identify and fix their personality flaws or emotional voids. However, if you know that your spouse cheated multiple times in the past under many different circumstances and then they cheated with you. They have not identified their own sabotaging, messed up traits. If you don’t identify a problem you cannot solve it.
8. Shows or has shown multiple characteristics as a bad relationship partner. Sure they were fun in the beginning. Yes you loved spending time with him or her for a while. But ask yourself this, “WAS your husband or wife really LONG-TERM relationship material from the BEGINNING?”
9. ….

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How can you tell if your cheating husband (or wife) will change?

OK friends can we agree that the first step to answer the question, “Will your husband (or wife) cheat again?” is that they show remorse? It’s also the first step to instill the confidence in you that your husband or wife is on the path to change.

BUT WHAT ABOUT ACTUAL CHANGE?

This will only come from his or her actions. Expressing regret is not enough.

You ever run across a story about someone you knew who cheated, but they just don’t seem like the cheater type?

I don’t believe the old axiom, “once a cheater, always a cheater.” It’s too simple-minded. You know why? Some people act out of character when at the wrong place at the wrong time. I would refer to this as situational cheating. So I searched the internet for any articles that referenced cheaters who commit infidelity based on outside factors other than their cheater-prone-personality traits.

Dr Kelly Campbell wrote this interesting article where she references three main reasons people cheat.  One reason is for qualities related specifically to that person that indicate they display a tendency to cheat.

Another reason people cheat is for relationship reasons– their needs are never met mostly due to a mismatch with their partner.

And then the last reason is due to situations they find themselves in such as working a job where the sex ratio is out of balance- there are many more of one gender than the other or if the cheater works a job that requires a lot of alone time with people, involves personal conversations or touching others.

Even my serial cheater wife eventually displayed genuine remorse and said she was sorry, but still wanted to go back to her lover. This list of signs your dishonest husband or wife moves from regret to reform and may not cheat again.

15 Signs Your Cheating Husband (or Wife) Is Worth Giving a Second Chance (or perhaps yet another chance)

1. Your cheating husband or wife asks you to forgive them. He or she doesn’t just offers up a passive, “I’m sorry.” This shows they fear losing the relationship.
2. He or she is willing to provide full disclosure of the events. Of course only if you want to hear them. Counselors, therapists and betrayed spouses who experienced an affair dispute among themselves how effective listening to all the details can help you both as a couple heal and rebuild a healthy relationship. However, the fact that your unfaithful spouse would be willing to offer the details shows that keeping the relationship is more important than admitting shame and removes secrecy of hiding affair.  Imagine how embarrassed you would feel describing how a man or woman outside the relationship touched you in your naughty parts.
3. New pattern of changed behavior. No more questionable actions that broke the pre-affair behavioral patterns that served as believable excuses to help them cheat and meet up with their lover.
4. Takes responsibility for cheating. No more blaming you. No more blaming the Other Person. No more blaming being drunk or any other lame excuses. Your cheating husband or wife takes full responsibility for the choice to cheat without communicating whatever it was that was bothering them which helped lead to the affair.
5. *Proactive* to earn your trust. If you really felt shame. If you truly feared losing your husband or wife because of an action that you chose to do, you would do everything in your power to make sure they would stay. Makes sense, right?
6. Acts less secretive. Unfortunately you will feel edgy for a while. Perhaps like a whistle-blowing, happy referee with penalty flag in-hand ready to throw it. BUT overall your gut instinct should tell you they cease all secret-hiding actions.
7. Return of the love letters and texts. If you like someone, you make sure they know it. They flirt again. Or at least attempt to.
8. They apologize to your family. To me this is a sign they see a long-term future with you still. My cheating wife hid from my family and even un-friended anyone associated with me.
9. …

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Is your marriage worth saving?

Lots of pointless jabber surrounding affairs pollutes the internet from people who have not gone through the horrific experience of someone cheating on them (wow, you are so tough, we wish we had your strength *sarcasm*)  and mindless people love to smack their lips, don’t they?

Folks by the way, please don’t listen to fools’ advice like from the link above.

Mindless opinions about whether to stay or leave a relationship after an affair pollute the internet- ignore it!

Ok what was I saying? Oh yeah, I’m sure that if you have not already received an endless heaping pile of unwarranted advice about what to do now that infidelity has reared its ugly head in your relationship, just wait, you will soon. It’s easy for others to judge you. You will hear it all, “Just leave him”, “Once a cheater, always a cheater” or “After all you did for him and this is how he repays you.”

Then there’s the other side. The people that offer over optimistic advice like, “You just have to talk it out” or “He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So when you must decide if it is worth the risk of staying with your husband and take the chance that he will not cheat again do not commit the same flaw that all cheaters do. Do not justify your cheating husband’s or wife’s actions just in the hope that you will relive the glory days of the relationship.

Ladies if you want some healthy midlife divorce recovery advice from a fellow woman who lived the experience and is helping other women worldwide heal from the emotional trauma of experiencing an affair first hand check out Suzy Brown’s website www.MidlifeDivorceRecovery.com 

Further down here on this post I describe a book I read that helped me determine if my wife would cheat again and began the future planning of what I would do with or without her. You can also jump down to the affair survival ebook review.

My Infidelity Story as a Betrayed Spouse

I wanted to believe that my wife made a mistake. I led myself to believe that I just did not provide the right situation for her. I used the excuse that she was far from home and needed a more exciting place to live. Maybe you do not know my infidelity story. Please check out how I discovered my cheating wife not only committed infidelity, but abandoned me.

Respect the fact that cheaters act cunningly. They plan. They scheme. They plot. They invent code names and code words. Design excuses. Bottom line is cheaters know what they are doing. Don’t believe me? Read my post about how a cheating spouse hides their evidence.

It ‘s not easy to just pack it in and call it quits, no matter how disgusting the atrocity he or she committed. I was there. I refused to believe it was over, but my wife was broken. She had too many deep-seeded character flaws to remain my wife. As of today the divorce proceedings have almost ended. I did not want to waste anymore time, but your situation may be different.

14 Reasons Betrayed Spouses Stay in Relationships after Affairs

What possibly makes it worth saving a marriage after a husband or wife cheat on their loyal spouses? I mean, you are thinking about staying that’s how you landed on this post. And you don’t want to feel alone or ashamed for taking back that lying, cheating dog walking back into your life with his or her tail stuck between their legs.

So why do other men or women take back their cheating spouses. Here is a mix of reasons I have heard or researched other betrayed spouses said or my own reasons for taking back my cheating wife a second time.

1. To protect the children. You don’t want the traumatic to experience to scar them too.
2. Belief that they can still love you. They fell in love with you once, they can do it again. After my wife abandoned me and left for NYC without telling me she came back to visit a few months later. I felt alive again. She talked and smiled and laughed just like in the beginning.
3. Do not want to start over with someone else. You fell in love and why should you start over with someone new? We can fix this. All cars break at some point and no relationship is perfect.
4. Chance to uncover the underlying problems that plague the relationship. Hang around just long enough to hear the reason they chose to cheat and perhaps revive the love that once existed.
5. Can’t financially afford to leave. Maybe you depend on their income. Maybe they take care of you. You live a good lifestyle. It’s just this cheating thing. What? No more expensive bottles of wine or restaurants? Can it still work?
6. Believe he or she acted out of character. Maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
7. Believe he or she can change. You believe her apologies. You buy into the reform plan he’s selling you on. Just one more try, at least for a little longer. If you don’t see progress then he can go %$#@ himself.
8. …

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17 Nightmares to Expect After You Take Back Your Cheating Spouse

I believed it was worth saving my marriage. I gave my wife another chance after she chose to cheat on me. Let me pull out my crystal ball and read the future for you. Here is a list of what to expect based on my experience and others’.

1. Forever suspicious. Where the hell are they? He’s probably Facetiming his gf. (They’re taking a nap on the couch.) Earning trust back is a bitch.
2. There will never be enough evidence. Ok, what else do you got? She can toss up another piece of information proving her innocence on top of the heap of other evidence she’s brought for months. It won’t suffice. You’ll just ask for more (or think about asking for more).
3. Push or stranglehold too much and he’ll want to cut bait. You reeled him back in. You dropped him in a shot glass to swim around in. HE FEELS TRAPPED! Who wants that?
4. You’ll always think about the pain from finding out. Post traumatic stress disorder will eat at you EVERY day. Trust me.
5. You’ll doubt he (or she) still finds you attractive. He left me for another woman. The butterflies in his stomach must have flown away.
6. You’ll feel awkward when you both are around people that know about the cheating. Imagine those family get-togethers. Everyone thinks but doesn’t say anything. Why does my sister keep looking away?
7. Others may not respect you. Will they think I am weak? Will they gossip?
8. You’re afraid what your kids may think. OK so staying for the kids’ sake my not be the best idea after all. What lesson would that teach them about cheating? Or should we just keep the “daddy choice to cheat on mommy story” under wraps?
9. …

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What Type of Affair Did He (or She) Commit? What Are the Chances Your Marriage Survives After Your Spouse Chose to Cheat on You?

**Review of One of the Affair Survival Ebooks I Credit for Saving Me**

Looking for professional therapist advice? Or do you want first hand experience from a fellow betrayed spouse? Deciding whether the marriage is worth saving or not? Want a glimpse into the future of post-divorce after an affair gain a jump start into your midlife divorce recovery?

Here’s one helpful tip from a fellow betrayed spouse just like you. Both professional advice and insight from people who have gone through an affair and come out the other side will help you- whether you end up alone or stay together. It will take time to heal. Today starts that journey.

Both professional advice and insight from people who have gone through an affair and come out the other side will help you- whether you end up alone or stay together. It will take time to heal. Today starts that journey.

Navigating a Sinking Ship

The advice between the two is different though. Observation from an outsider who deals with couple’s or individual therapy tends to aid your logical, rational side. You need to know what steps to take and what hurdles to expect while calm. However, a therapist who has not lived the horrific, humbling experience of an affair has no idea what it feels like to navigate a sinking ship that just slammed into an iceberg. That’s where someone like me or Suzy Brown come in.

Within an hour of sifting through the phone records and spotting a peculiar NY phone number **WAM!!!** my ship (ok not a real ship, but my life) slammed into an iceberg. Water gushed in through the gaping gash on the side of the hull. My heart began to sink.

Images of those romantic trips to wine country, back home during my nieces birth and romantic dinners at expensive Disney restaurants zipped through my mind at supersonic speed. I knew she lied about cutting off all ties to the strange guy she chose to cheat with.

I slipped on my life jacket realizing time was of slipping away. I dove onto the keyboard of my new Asus laptop and searched the internet for answers. I needed help and yesterday.

Sound familiar?

I sought advice to help me answer  many questions. One of them being “will she cheat again”. I wanted professional recommendations to aid me in making the best informed decision whether to stay or leave.

That’s when I came across online marriage counselor Dr Huizenga’s ebook on how to survive an affair. I yanked out my wallet. Jabbed at the keyboard and inserted my credit card number.

Within seconds I downloaded the golden words that would save me. His ebook pulled me up onto a lifeboat. A few months later www.InfidelityFirstAidKit.com was born and my midlife divorce recovery inched closer to the present.

Now I like ebooks better than paperback. I can upload them to my phone and read them anywhere, usually they contain specialized answers to my questions, but more importantly I enjoy the writing style ebook authors tend to adopt. Yes, there are really good paperback affair recovery books, but many tend to read like an encyclopedia- they’re boring.

How this Affair Recovery Book Helped Me and Could Help You

In his book Dr Huizenga defines 7 different affair types through his own observations of decades of couples therapy and research of fellow therapists. The design of the list helps you determine if your relationship is worth saving or not.

I identified my wife’s affair was from his list of 7. It was fairly easy to distinguish based on personality characteristics and the list of words and actions to cross reference with what I experienced with her.

Next the guide described what type of behavior to expect from her and what she might do now that I discovered the affair. It also provided a long, detailed list of what not to do or say.

After that his book showed the prognosis of whether or not we could “live happily after” again. In my case the outlook looked bleak. Dr H shed light on the fact that perhaps my marriage showed unhealthy signs since the beginning and most likely was not meant to last forever. As you can imagine- not easy news to swallow.

After reading his ebook and doing much research for my site here I reflected on the affair quite a bit. As a result I don’t hurt as much realizing that the right elements between us did not exist.

The Very Unique, Never-Seen-Before Feature

Then Dr H implemented an insightful rating scale from 1-10 (1 meaning “sure”, 10 meaning “now way”) to help me decide if my marriage was worth saving.

After that he challenged me to ask myself why the relationship is worth saving.

And finally he advised what specifically I could do to increase the odds of saving the marriage related to the personality traits listed and the type of affair she committed. It took several months, but I knew in my heart the relationship was not salvageable- it simply was not worth saving.

What type of affair did your husband (or wife) commit? What are the chances you can save your marriage?

Check out the book review.

Alright everyone thank you for visiting my blog InfidelityFirstAidKit.com I round out today’s post with a few more helpful resources to guide you through this rocky journey.

If you haven’t already done so scroll back up and click on one of the links or buttons to download my free resources and receive updates via email whenever I post something new or to read or watch tips only designed only for the emails.

Other Helpful Resources to Help Answer the Question, “Will you husband or wife cheat again?”

• Free Extramarital Affair Downloads. One of the most thorough resources to heal from the pain after you spouse chose to cheat on you I have come across during my endless hours of internet research.
• Article. How to Rebuild Trust and Stay Married. A real-life example of what a couple did to fix their marriage after the affair.
• Article. What to Expect After an Affair. Insight from an renown divorce attorney and a well-known author of affair fictional books who lived through a few affairs of her own share their view why cheating spouses lose interest.
• Cheating Risk Assessment Quiz. Answer a thorough questionnaire to help determine if your husband or wife will cheat again.
  • Quiz for betrayed wives 
  • Quiz for betrayed husbands