Is it Time to Pack Your Bags? Why Some Women Stay After Affairs

It's easy to say that a woman would leave their husband if she caught him or he confessed to an affair. It makes sense right? Once you hear the words, "I've messed up, please forgive me," escape from his lips, you are in the bedroom packing a suitcase and out the door to your mother's house. However, in reality this rarely happens and here is my list of reasons as to why it doesn't.

Feelings don't evaporate over night

If we could choose who to love or when to stop loving someone then we wouldn't have relationship problems. The fact that love doesn't just disappear when someone hurts us gives us a reason to stay. It gives us hope that things may end up alright.

We need confirmation

When we are betrayed we need reassurance that we were loved throughout the entire relationship. We need some sort of confirmation that the relationship was real.

We stay to make sense of it all

Questions such as, "Why?" and "How could you hurt me like this?" keep running through our heads. There is a war raging within ourselves that can only be calmed with answers to these questions.

We have nowhere else to go

Stay-at-home mothers may experience this dilemma; they don't have the money or resources to support themselves. Perhaps there is no family nearby and friends are limited and we feel the burden might be too much for them to bear.

Children

To suddenly root up your children and leave can disrupt their lives, leaving them confused and hurt. For a child to suddenly not have a father around can be devastating and hard on the mother as well when she tries to explain the situation.

Shock and denial

Some women may sink into a deep depression and go on pretending as if nothing ever happened.

Marriage vows

Some women are determined to make things work. They stand by their husband because they hold their marriage vows true and near to their heart. When they said, "For better or for worse," they meant it and will stick out the hard times in hope for a better future.

Women feel as if it was their fault

Some women may blame themselves. They feel as maybe they weren't caring enough or as attentive to their husband's needs as they should have been. Or perhaps she had committed a major wrong-doing in their marriage and she feels as if this is her karma.

I personally salute any woman who stays and tries to work on her marriage after such betrayal. It shows strength and integrity. There will be many trials to come while trying to get past such hurt, but I believe that it can only make the couple stronger in the end if they go about fixing it the right way.