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iQuestions Faculty, Dr. Gary Smalley 
 
 
Question: 
 
I cheated on my wife. What do I do? 
 
Answer:  
 
You’re hurting big time, I can only imagine, because you’ve admitted 
that you’ve had an affair, your wife has asked you to leave the house, 
she’s got kids, you’re staying in an apartment with a friend or your 
folks, and it’s humiliating. And you are just now so aware of what 
you’ve done, the cost of this behavior. Obviously, it was pleasurable 
for a few seconds, and you now realize what you gave up for that, and 
you’re going, “Uh! How am I ever going to win her back?” 
 
Well, you’re going to go through grief for a while. You’re going to feel 
sick. You’re going to wake up feeling like “I’m such a bum. I’m such a 
failure and a loser in so many different ways.” And it’s going to affect 
everything about you, your work, your relationships, everything. 
You’re going to go through a period of maybe weeks or months feeling 
this way, but when you can, there are some very specific things you 
can do. 
 
Number one, as soon as you can, find out—and I know this is going to 
sound silly—all the feelings that your wife has over this experience. 
How cruddy does she feel? How rejected does she feel? How inferior? 
How exploited does she feel? Does she feel like a bomb hit the home, 
and she’s just been scattered and her body’s lying over there? What 
size tornado hit her home? What size hurricane? You know, was it a 
category 5?  
 
 
 
You need to ask her these questions when you can. What you’re doing 
is you want to fish for as much understanding you can get of her 
feelings. You’ve got to load up on feelings. 
 
This is the way you win her back. She’s got to know you feel the pain 
she’s experiencing. Here’s the other thing you’ve got to let her do: if 
she wants to explode all over you for a year or two, if she wants to 
say, “You were with her last night!” when, let’s say, you’ve been 
invited back. When she accuses you at times, just remember to take a 
deep breath, pause and relax. Don’t react to her words. She’s letting 
all the venomous, painful emotions out of her heart. Let her vent. 
 
Because, you want a woman—a wife, eventually—who has gotten this 
junk out. It’s like puss coming out. And you put it there. She put it 
there to some degree by her beliefs, but it was your actions that put it 
there. So, you’ve got to feel the pain and understand the pain. And 
you’ve got to say to her from time to time, “Honey, I don’t know if I’ll 
ever understand everything that you’ve gone through. But I want you 
to know that I want to. So, anything you can think of that you want to 
ask me. . . .” 
 
Sometimes, they want to ask you, “Well, was she better than me? 
What did she do in bed?” And you’re going to gasp! You don’t want to 
answer that question. You’re going to not want to answer that 
question! And I would say as few words as possible, actually, but you 
don’t want to reject her and say, “Well, I’m not going to answer that 
question, because the counselor says it’s not good.” 
 
Actually, unfortunately it’s all part of the process. In fact, one answer 
could lead to five other questions. But this is all the process, I’m telling 
you, of winning her back. 
 
Precious couple right here in my town, Mitch and Susie. He had an 
affair. Felt horrible about it. They had children. He hated the whole 
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idea. She kicked him out. He immediately got this small group, and 
she actually was willing to join the small group. So, he wasn’t living in 
the house, but they went to this small group together—just for her to 
be able to vent in the presence of four or five other couples that really 
loved them. 
 
That’s a great thing to do, incidentally, because it gives you the 
support you need. 
 
But he listened to her, he’d come home at times, and she’d accuse him 
of things. She went through his telephone numbers on his cell phone 
and their home phone, and she would accuse him. And here’s one of 
the best things he would say: “Honey, I can’t believe you’ve even 
allowed me to talk to you, let alone live in the basement like you are 
right now. I just think it’s so courageous of you, and so caring and 
loving for the kids’ sake, to just let me around.  
 
“If you want to ask these kinds of questions, you can ask them, honey. 
In fact, I want you feel free to ask them. Don’t hesitate. Because if 
you don’t trust me, that makes so much sense to me. I understand 
that you don’t trust me, and that it’s going to take me years to win 
your trust. But I want you to know something. I love you so much. I’m 
committed to you, and I’m committed to our children. I realize that 
what I did was stupid, and I see now even why I did it. But I did it, 
and I’m so sorry. I’m so wrong. 
 
“So, you feel what you need to feel, because our family being together 
is important for the kids and for you and for us, and I want to do 
whatever it takes to take you back. So, you’re free to do whatever you 
want, because I want to go with you at your pace, at your level. 
Whatever it takes, I’m willing to do.”  
 
That’s just one example of one of lots of couples that I know, and I 
have experienced that they get back together. And I want you to 
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know, also, that during this process, the golden questions, the three 
golden questions, are appropriate any time she’ll answer them. 
 
Number one, “Zero to ten, where are we in our relationship today?” 
Zero, rotten. Ten, the best. 
 
Second question: “Zero to ten, where would you like to be?” She’s 
probably a zero on question number one, and she’d like to be maybe a 
six this year or a seven. You know, it’s wonderful if she says a ten. 
And then you go, “Yes! A ten.” Because, she’s participating now in 
your survival with her. 
 
Third question of the golden questions, the golden of golden questions 
is, “What would it take this year from me to move our relationship 
from where it is up to where you would like it? Just start listing 
anything and everything you could think of, because I’ve got my pad 
and paper right here, and my pen, and I’m going to write. In fact, I 
think it would be great to record it, because then I can listen to it from 
time to time, your sweet voice, maybe tears.” 
 
When you hear an answer to question number three—what would it 
take for you to get closer to ten?—that’s your job for the next several 
weeks, months, maybe years. 
 
One more thing that’s very important: it is worth it. Don’t think for a 
minute that, because it’s hard, “Maybe I shouldn’t try this. Is she 
really going to give in to this?” Trust me. I’ve seen woman after 
woman, sometimes as soon as week, begin to soften when they see 
you becoming the gentle, tender person you should have been before.  
 
Secondly, when she sees you touching her affectionately—you’re 
probably not going to be involved sexually for months, so don’t try 
that. Some do, but that’s rare, because they’re nauseated by this 
whole experience. But that’s OK. Let me tell you what’s happening: 
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you are actually becoming a better person right now. You’re learning 
some great stuff that’s making you a better husband, father. And if 
you hang in there, the research shows that five years from now, you’re 
not going to be any happier. You’re going to be in some other 
relationship.  
 
I mean, the pain—according to Dr. Wallerstein—goes for 35 years. The 
level of income goes down for both of you. Your chances of dying, for a 
man, increases. You’re going to die sooner than what you would have 
expected if you had stayed together. And same for her.  
 
But here’s the thing. You’re going to have two, three, four kids at 
Christmastime—kids that have a loving mom and dad. That’s what’s 
worth this whole thing. 
 
And so, whatever effort you have to put into this, it’s going to be 
worth it for everybody. You know what you’re doing? If you have four 
kids, it’s four generations of other kids, and within a hundred years, 
it’s like dozens and dozens and dozens of people that you’re affecting 
by hanging in there and paying the price of becoming the husband you 
should have been, the father you should have been.  
 
And then learning, because you can click on this very webpage 
(www.iquestions.com), and find, “How do I get over my temptation for 
sex with another woman?” You can find those answers, so you can get 
healing and stay together as a couple. 
 
And what you have when you go through this, you’re going to see the 
testimony of Mitch and Susie, and get healing. You can click and hear 
it for yourself what the benefits are because they stayed together. You 
can do this. Take the courage and the enthusiasm and bite this goal, 
and say you’re with this thing until the end, because those kids and 
she and you are worth it. 
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