All I can come up with is that it was a cry for help. That ultimately he does want out but he can't articulate that because of our kids, and the guilt associated with it. A retarded excuse, I know, but that is where I am at.

If you go by the premise that there is no excuse for an affair, then no amount of "why" will ever satisfy. There is no "why".

There are only rationalizations to justify immoral behavior.

I don't believe any BS will ever get a satisfactory answer to that question.

My WH says he can't explain why it happened. Is there some tool/questionaire that is available that can help get to the bottom of why he would cheat on me?

An analysis of the betrayed spouse's childhood or emotional state of mind in an effort to discover why he or she would have an affair is distracting and unnecessary. It takes precious time away from finding the real solutions. I know why people have affairs: We are all wired for it. Given certain conditions, we would all do it. Given other conditions, however, none of us would do it. So the goal of the first step is to discover the conditions that made the affair possible and eliminate them.

I just have a problem with the question itself.

If you go by the premise that there is no excuse for an affair, then no amount of "why" will ever satisfy. There is no "why".

There are only rationalizations to justify immoral behavior.

I don't believe any BS will ever get a satisfactory answer to that question.

Frank Grunzburg points out that there can be many reasons that can point to why an affair happened. THIS FROM Grunzburg:

• Some people cheat because they aren’t getting their needs met within the marriage and are under the deluded notion that going outside the marriage to get them met is a legitimate answer. It isn’t.
• In some cases people cheat because they have never learned to honor boundaries. They know the boundaries are there, but do not hesitate to step over them.
• Some, usually men, think that they are not real men if they turn down an invitation from someone attractive.
• Some people are thrill seekers who just can’t pass up the opportunity to get a thrill. The very fact that they are doing something that is considered taboo compels them to engage in an affair.
• Some may cheat because they have low self esteem. They get a sense of self worth from finding someone who is attracted to them and cares about them.
• In some cases, a person may have a sexual fetish that their partner is not willing to meet, so they go outside of their marriage in order to have these selfish desires fulfilled.
• A very common theme is that people cheat because their spouse no longer makes them feel special. These people go outside the marriage thinking that someone else might fill this gap.

Whatever the reasons, cheaters cheat because they have the mistaken notion that going outside their marriage will solve their problems or fulfill some unmet need or complete some aspect of their character.

Grunzburg suggests that some people have a defective sense of commitment. He says this usually applies to men. They expect themselves to be totally honest in all aspects of their lives in every situation, but feel they don’t have to be when it comes to dealing with women. Though they vehemently deny it, these men have a denigrating view of women in general, placing them into a second class status

Grunzburg goes on to say that you can ask the question “Why” until you are blue in the face and each time get a different answer. You will never get an acceptable answer because there really is not an answer that will make infidelity acceptable to the betrayed spouse.

The reason a betrayed spouse seeks this answer of course is that they feel that they need to find out why an affair happened in order to prevent it from happening again in the future. This is really based on the mistaken notion that in order to change a behavior you must know why it is happening. This is a relatively common idea in modern psychology that seeks to explain why a person acts in a certain way based on some experience or lack of experience of the past.

But you don’t have to understand family dynamics and chemical reactions in the brain in order to stop smoking. The action can be avoided without understanding the addictive properties of nicotine or the emotional component that compelled a person to begin smoking to begin with.

In some cases exploring what went into the cheater’s choice to cheat can help protect them against doing it again, but that isn’t universally true and it isn’t understanding why it happened that will keep your partner from cheating again. It will instead take hard work, by both the betrayed and the betrayer to avoid future affairs by changing the relationship at its foundational level. Much of this work will be in regard to communication which must be completely honest, not about the affair and why it happened, but about unmet needs, wants, desires and resolution to conflicts that can cause a rift within the marriage.

Neither of you need investigate why it happened in order to recommit to changing things going forward, and remain faithful to each other in the future. It does require a sincere commitment to doing things right from now on and a willingness to work together to rebuild the foundations of the marriage.

What is most important is that both of you want to do what it takes in order to heal and restore the relationship.

Asking “why” will most likely result in answers that are nothing more than justifications from the wayward spouse. It will be a list of things that were “wrong” with the betrayed spouse and the relationship, most of which can be dismissed as simply unacceptable in answer to the question. There is no justifiable reason to cheat and break your vows. Selfish desires, past wrongs either real or perceived and a lack of something in the marriage cannot make cheating acceptable since if a marriage is not worth keeping, then it should be dissolved before an affair takes place. Most often the list of “whys” is composed primarily of things that the wayward spouse used in order to justify the affair to him/herself at each step along the way. They were created in response to the affair rather than being the cause.

Grunzburg suggests that it might be time to let go of this question. While there might be reasons why it happened, figuring out doesn’t take you much closer to rebuilding your trust and reconciling your relationship. What he says will move you in that direction is figuring out what each of you needs from the relationship, communicating how these needs have been neglected and working out how your needs can be interfaced with your spouse’s needs so that both of you can get what you need and want.