Unless you’re a Stepford Wife or a zombie, sooner or later something that could be described as a complaint about his infidelity will come out of your mouth. Right away he’ll typecast you—the adulterer’s wife—into the jealous bitch role.

That’s not to say that you won’t feel jealous emotions. You may never have felt the slightest bit of jealousy towards anyone ever before, but now it may arise in you unbidden whenever you think of the other woman. You may find yourself behaving in a way that you never in a million years thought possible. Negative emotions can eat you alive and drive you insane.

Perhaps the other woman is nothing but a gold-digger, doing her best to pry him away from you so that she can have him all to herself. Maybe she’s a really dumb blonde or a totally naïve young girl and you wonder what the hell she and your husband would have in common to be able to have a conversation together (of course most of what they’re doing with each other may not involve talking at all). However true to the floozy stereotype she is, this kind of analysis of her character is not going to be well received. Your infatuated husband will hear it as strident, complaining and the product of jealousy. You’ll make him rise to her defense, and drive him away from you right into her arms.

In the January 2014 issue of Vanity Fair, Benjamin Wallace wrote an in-depth exposé of Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Hot Yoga. At the time of writing this, Choudhury was facing several rape and sexual harassment lawsuits. According to the plaintiffs’ stories, his modus operandi would be to select a naïve young woman, tell her how talented and special she was and then come on more and more strongly to her. Those who rejected his sexual advances apparently faced threats and intimidation. Some of the litigation has named his wife Rajashree as a co-defendant because she was his business partner, however she may well have been a victim of his behavior too. He had married her in an arranged marriage in India when she was a teenage yoga champion. One of certified instructors suing him said that his wife had invited her to a Thanksgiving meal, but once Rajashree had gone to bed the instructor alleges that Choudhury made sexual advances to her while describing his wife as “mean” and “a bitch.” Not unsurprising behavior. When a spouse complains to her husband about his cheating in the cases where he won’t apologize or take responsibility for his actions, he’ll often try to deflect the criticism back to the wife by portraying her as jealous bitch. After all, that uppity woman shouldn’t be making a fuss; she should just grin and bear it.

Then there’s the old adage about female jealousy, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” What about male jealousy? Why isn’t it “Hell hath no fury like a man scorned?” History is littered with the corpses of women who have paid for adultery with their lives, yet in the majority of cases this has been seen as a totally acceptable way for a man to defend his honor.

Yes, I know that jealousy or envy is one of the seven deadly sins, but then so is lust, and that’s presumably what lead to his infidelity in the first place. Now I happen to believe that the sin responsible for more problems in the world than lust and jealousy put together is the one many people tend to forget: pride. It’s the cause of many destructive decisions and destroyed relationships, whether in terms of business, politics or family issues. Many people, because of pride, choose to hang on to being right rather than letting it go and being happy. That’s especially true if you happen to have a lying, two-timing weasel of a philandering husband. In many ways, he may be in the wrong and you may be in the right. But if reconciliation is what you want, or even an amicable parting of ways without involving the lawyers and accountants that can suck divorcing spouses dry, you’ll need to put self-righteousness aside. Your husband may well be too proud to admit he’s at fault, so he might spin some reason as to why that’s not the case. And don’t forget what they say: pride comes before a fall.

Please tell us how your adulterous husband tried to make you wrong when you first accused him of cheating.