I often hear from wives who are seeing things because they are trying to reconnect with their husband and save their marriage after their affair, but their husband is defending the other woman. The wife often does not understand how her husband can be so stupid as to look at her wife and defend the woman who is the source of all her problems.

I heard of a wife who said, “To be honest, I hate the other woman. I mean, I hate her. I think she’s a low-quality bum who set out to take what was mine. I think she’s a liar and a cheat. She knows my family. I wouldn’t call us friends anymore. But I know her kids and her husband. I know how she went behind everyone’s back and went after my husband. I know how she lied directly to me. I know how she took advantage of the fact that I was going through for medical issues that were stressing my marriage while she was going on the rampage like the predator that she is but when I say this to my husband he will say that I am making assumptions and that I don’t really know much about her he will assure me that she is not a bad person and that he has some redeeming qualities. This infuriates me! Why is he defending his behavior? I have a few theories about this which I will discuss below.

Some reasons why husbands defend the other woman: I absolutely understand why this makes you so mad. It’s easy to hate the other woman. It’s normal to make her the villain. And I don’t think anyone can deny that a woman who takes advantage of another woman’s husband (when she knows he is married and she herself is married) lacks integrity and moral character. But you know what? When you give your husband a complete list of things that are deplorable about her, he often knows that these attributes apply to him as well.

If you say that the other woman was a cunning and evil person who slipped away and took advantage of the wife’s illness, well, all of these attributes apply to the husband as well. He also sneaked in and used the wife’s medical treatments to meet with the other woman. So it can be painful for him to hear you tear her apart, when she knows he’s equally guilty.

Also, it’s very common for men to feel a bit defensive about anything to do with the affair (including the other woman). This is because he feels the need to justify his actions. If we define the other woman as a loathsome, scheming, hideous creature who doesn’t deserve the time of day, what does this say about her husband and her judgment? What does this say about her decision-making and impulse control? She doesn’t want to admit these negative things about herself. And admitting the negative things about him means that she has no choice but to admit the negative things about himself.

Many wives worry that the other woman’s husband’s defense may mean that he is still involved and still has feelings for her. Sometimes this is possible and you have to be careful. Many husbands tell me that they find it hard to turn off their feelings for the other woman once they find out about the affair. It’s like they suddenly have to hate this person they’ve spent a lot of time with and taken quite a risk for. If they recognize how foolish they were to take these risks for someone who had absolutely no redeeming qualities, then they really do look foolish. And even people with a guilty conscience who are fully aware that they are wrong don’t want to look foolish.

So understand that sometimes your defense of the other woman is a means of self-preservation and your effort to maintain at least some of your self-esteem. It doesn’t always mean that they still have feelings for her and don’t want to save her marriage. It may mean that they hear your criticism of her as criticism of them and the affair, and this can be painful. So they want to avoid it. And part of that is trying to shut you up when you talk about her.

How to handle it when your husband keeps defending the other woman: I hope now you can understand why he is on the defensive. Now, let’s talk about how to handle it. The next time these kinds of conversations come up, you could say something like, “We’re going to have to agree to disagree when it comes to her. I’ll never look favorably on her, but that doesn’t matter as much.” Because in the future, it’s about you and me. It’s not about her. In fact, I would like to stop focusing on her and us.”

This is the best way to go because, frankly, it doesn’t matter what kind of person she is in terms of her marriage. What matters is that you heal, move on and one day be happy and whole again.