The other day, I got an email from a wife whose husband had participated in a relatively short term affair. She was now the recipient of the affair excuses that men tend to give. He told her that he can't believe he made such a huge mistake, that it meant nothing to him, and that he could walk away without giving it another thought. He kept repearing he had "no idea what he was doing."

Of course, this did not ring true for the wife. She wanted to know how, if he knew this was so wrong, could he go through with it? How could he quiet those little voices in his head or the images of their children and their family and still go through with cheating? And what was the husband's response to this question? He said it was like he was "in the fog" when he was unfaithful. It's as if he were sleepwalking or living in a dream. He told her he "didn't know what he was doing." The wife wanted to know how she should respond to this "in a fog" nonsense. Believe it or not, I've heard this phrase a lot from men who write wanting to know how to save their marriage. I'll explain this more in the following article.

A Lot Of Men Say That They "Weren't Themselves" Or "Didn't Know What I Was Doing" When They Were Cheating: I know that when they give you the "outside of myself" excuse, it seems like a lot of silly talk. You feel that they're just making excuses because they've been caught. And if they say that in someway they were outside of themselves, then you will be less mad at them.

But, I know from interacting with countless men that there is some truth in this. What they are generally experiencing is a sense of disconnect. This disconnect is necessary for them to be able to proceed and it is also a means of self preservation, as crazy as that seems, which leads me to the following point.

An Affair / Cheating And "Being In The Fog" is Often A Means Of Escapism: It may surprise you to learn that an affair is less about sex and attraction than you may think. Cheating is often a man's way of boosting his self esteem and self worth, as unbelievable as this may sound. For whatever reason, they are experiencing stress or are feeling vulnerable in some way. When someone is there who will make him feel better about himself and who doesn't know of his flaws or failings, this can be very alluring to someone who is, at their core, vulnerable right now.

By no means am I making excuses for them. I've been on the wrong side of an affair and in my mind, there is no real excuse. But, they often don't want for anyone (especially you) to know of these vulnerabilities. So, it's so much easier to interact with someone who doesn't really know of these things. In a sense, they are trying desperately to distance themselves from their own person. What I mean by this is that they don't want to be the guy who is unsure of himself or who feels weak anymore.

For whatever reason, this other person creates the allusion that they are someone else, someone with more confidence, more competencies, and more attractiveness. Not only is this not true, it is not fair, but this is how they perceptive it at the time. In this way, they do disconnect themselves from the person that they are in reality. And, in this way, reality becomes quite diminished and blurred which is where this "being in a fog" talk comes from.

How To Handle Your Husband's Assertions That He "Wasn't Himself" When He Cheated: In truth, no matter what the reasoning is behind his cheating, picking up the pieces is going to require a lot of rebuilding and hard work. There are some causes of cheating that are easier to understand than others, I suppose. But, I consider any cheating to be deplorable – as do most of the wives who have dealt with it.

Still, you will need to evaluate whether you want to work things out or if it is better for you emotional health to walk away. No matter what you decide, it may make you feel better to tell him that the "being in fog" business certainly does not excuse the behavior or affect how you are going to deal with it. It may help you emotionally to know that he was struggling emotionally – so long is this is the first time that he has been unfaithful, but that does not dismiss the fact that restoring the trust and regaining your footing is going to take both considerable time and effort.

And the first step toward this is often the husband taking full responsibility for his actions and committing himself to doing whatever he has to do to help you through this. There is no way around this and there is no excuse that should change this. He can make all of the excuses that he wants, but the fall out is still there. You will still need to heal and deal with this, despite the excuses.

The first step for you to take is to make it clear that the underlying factors aren't as important to you as how you rebuild this in the future. This can't be done until he's going to take full responsibility and abandons the excuses. You should make it clear that this is what you need and expect. Otherwise, he's likely to keep right on offering up the excuses that really don't make much difference in the end.

It took me way too long to put an end to all of my husband's excuses. This completely delayed our recovery, but this is when I turned the corner and things got a whole lot better. Although I never would've believed this two years ago, my marriage is stronger than ever after my husband's affair. It took a lot of work, and I had to play the game to win, but it was worth it. Because of all the work I did on myself, my self esteem is at an all time high. I no longer worry my husband will cheat again. You can read a very personal story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com/.