Continuing my series on Confronting the Other Person:

Let’s make a couple distinctions about the types of affairs that might be helpful.

Low self esteem, ego and personal needs can be viewed differently.

Low self esteem as I use the phrase has more to do with affair #6: “I Need to Prove my Desirability.” The cheating spouse has an affair with the intention (usually unconscious) of building that self-esteem which has been lacking for as many years as s/he can remember.

Ego often refers to someone in the “I Don’t Want to Say No” affair who inflates his/her sense of self worth. This is the big “ego” that feels entitlement.

The person in the scenario below I would imagine is someone with powerful, but unrecognized, personal needs. The affair was an attempt to fill a void with those personal needs – most likely, an “I Fell out of Love…and just love being in love” type of affair.

The confrontation worked because it reigned in his personal needs, something he probably had a difficult time doing, but knew he must.

Another take away from this scenario. The confronting spouse felt badly after the confrontation because she was not whom she wanted to be. A good lesson – for any situation.

1. What was your purpose for confronting the OP and what did you say/do?

My husband was forced to take early retirement. His self esteem and ego must have been very low at the time, and he went into an affair which lasted for 7 months. Obviously he denied it, although his phone records proved that he was in contact with the OP at least 3 times a day whilst I was at work. He said that it was purely business. I decided not to contact the OP, but phoned her husband and told him of my suspicions.

2. What happened? What was the outcome?

After this, it was like a swarm of bees – with calls being made backwards and forwards with all parties concerned. My husband denied emphatically to the OP’s husband that nothing was going on, but they both got such a fright, that no further contact was made with each other, to my knowledge.

3. If you were to do it again, would you do it differently? What did you learn?

No, I wouldn’t do it differently. The only thing I regret,was that I lost my cool in the end. I just wished I had never blown my top and told the other woman what I thought of her when she started shouting at me on the phone. I was actually lowering myself to her level.

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This entry was posted by Dr. Bob Huizenga on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 10:03 am and is filed under Confronting the Other Person. You may follow any responses to this entry through the RSS/XML feed. You may leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This entry has been tagged with the following keywords: confronting the other person, infidelity and self esteem, infidelity and ego, coping with infidelity, marital infidelity, effects of infidelity, marriage infidelity, extramarital affairs, surviving infidelity, emotional infidelity, emotional affair.