Why Men Have Affairs: Most Common Excuses

Have you ever wondered why men have affairs? It has nothing to do with whether your husband is still in love with you or even whether you find your marriage satisfying or not. It has everything to do with personal integrity, or who you are on the inside.

Are you using your dissatisfaction with your marriage as a mask for your own sin, or are you the type of person that wants to honor God with your body by keeping the marriage covenant you made before Him?

Common Excuses for Why Men Have Affairs

1. She doesn’t look good to me.

Some husbands falsely argue that because their wives have “let their looks go” that makes them partly to blame for the husband’s adultery. These husbands should really be asking “why are they letting their looks go?”

What is happening in the marriage that encourages the wife not to make an effort to present a nice appearance anymore? Perhaps they just feel too worn out to try or maybe they feel as if it is just not appreciated when they do. Husband and wives have an obligation to the covenant they made before God to attempt to fix problems in their marriage.

Husbands should also ask themselves both what may be wrong with their own ideas of beauty, and what they are doing wrong in their marriage that makes their wives not want to try to look beautiful for them.

2. It has been years since I felt like this!

Husbands who offer this excuse need to grow up and face reality. The highly charged atmosphere of the honeymoon was never meant to cover the entire length of the marriage. This does not mean that affection and attraction for your spouse dies, but your heart won’t necessarily skip a beat every time you see them.

Basic human biology is responsible for you getting a charge out of seeing someone new. Studies have clearly demonstrated that this adrenaline-pumping thrill does will last two years at best. It might all feel very exciting and invigorating at the start, but those exhilarating feelings will fade away, just as it happened with your own marriage and with your own husband or wife.

“What you think of as being head over heels in love is in large part a gust of ego gratification, but it’s nothing like the profound satisfaction of being known and loved. When over the years someone has seen you at your worst, and knows you with all your strengths and flaws, yet commits him- or herself to you wholly, it is a consummate experience…

The kind of love life I am talking about is not devoid of passion, but it’s not the same kind of passion that is there during the days of naïveté. When Kathy first held my hand, it was an almost electrical thrill. Thirty-seven years later, you don’t get the same buzz out of holding your wife’s hand that you did the first time.

But as I look back on that initial sensation, I realize that it came not so much from the magnitude of my love for her but from the flattery of her choice of me. In the beginning, it goes to your head, and there is some love in that, but there are a lot of other things, too. There is no comparison between that and what it means to hold Kathy’s hand now, after all, we’ve been through.” (Keller 95)

3. I am no longer in love with them.

Any faithful Christian spouse who has been married for an extended period of time will likely tell you that they have experienced times of discontentment in their marriage.

However, if they are mature in the Lord, they will understand that you cannot just run out on your spouse – the covenant made before God is binding and must be upheld and respected. We are emotional beings and our feelings fluctuate over time. Simply put, sometimes you may not feel as if you like your wife the way you did before, and that is okay.

What to do about it: keep on loving them in spite of your feelings!

“You do the acts of love, despite your lack of feeling. You may not feel tender, sympathetic, and eager to please, but in your actions, you must be tender, understanding, forgiving, and helpful.

And, if you do that, as time goes on you will not only get through the dry spells, but they will become less frequent and deep, and you will become more constant in your feelings. This is what can happen if you decide to love.” (Keller 104)

When your marriage is thriving, and when you are having a great time with your spouse, it is easy to love them. The true test comes when they are driving you crazy. Will you seek after the Lord and ask Him for grace and strength to be faithful in your marriage?

Help Through Christian Counseling

“Adultery is like the worship of false gods. It allows for the passion that God intended without bowing the knee to the one whom we were called to love. Adultery is not merely sex with the wrong person; it is union with someone who will never require us to face our sinfulness or draw forth out glory so that we are more and more in awe of God. It is intimacy without commitment, flight from the struggle of intimacy without ever facing our part in the loss.” (Allender, Longman III 308-309)

Christian counseling for both of you can provide a safe and neutral environment for talking about your marriage problems. The counselor is there to help, not judge. Their mission is to come alongside and help you to identify issues in your marriage and to assist you in rebuilding your relationship into everything God intends for it to be.