Act like a lady, think like a man by Steve Harvey

and work on a way to move forward with him.
    Now sometimes, it takes a man to lose something or nearly lose something to really appreciate it. But isn’t that true of everybody? Some men cheat because there’s never been a penalty for it. But if a man who’s cheated on you sees you walking out the door and you matter to him, please know that at this point he’s very vulnerable and open to learning. Should he win you back, he’s going to straighten up and fly right because he’s almost lost his girl and his family, which means he’ll do most anything you tell him to get back into your good graces. He’s going to work to earn your trust back—follow your requirements to get back on the team. If that means he has to be home by a certain time, call when he’s going to be late, send flowers every week, find a sitter so you all can have a date night on Thursdays, go to church with you on Sundays, even sit on a psychologist’s couch and air out all of your dirty laundry until you’re satisfied he’s a changed man, then that’s what he’ll do.

    Once there’s a penalty and he’s forced to say to himself, “Wow, everything I’ve ever loved was about to be lost,” he may very well come through the fire a better man.
    Is that to say it’s going to be easy to forgive him and not be suspicious? No. But he may eventually earn your trust back and be willing to work through it with you. He’s not going to like being asked questions about where he’s been, he’s going to hate not being able to be intimate with you while you work through your anger, and he’s going to be really reluctant to carry his butt down to the psychologist’s office with you. But in his heart of hearts, he knows that’s a part of working his way back into your heart. He knows he created this—he knows what he did, and he understands the consequences, ramifications, and reper-cussions way better than you think he does. We understand penalties, and we know it’s going to be straight hell. Trust me, I know. Because it’s happened to me. It happens to a lot of men.
    You can’t be a man of power and not step outside your house. I don’t know one man of power who has not stepped outside his house. Such a man may exist but I have not met him. But I do know men of power who have learned to do right, go home, and take care of their families. Each one of them eventually gets to that. I certainly have; now, I carry my behind home. I had to come to this, though. And guess what? I know a lot of those same men—entertainers, ball players, executives, and so on—who have turned into some of the best husbands and fathers in the world, because they’ve lined up their life responsibilities in the right order: God, family, education, and then business. And their wives? They’ve become better wives in the process, too—by trying to create a little bit of that magic they had when their relationship was fresh and new. She might come home from work and instead of kicking off those heels, keep them on and whisper in his ear to meet her in the bedroom for a pre-dinner snack. Or she might smile a little more, act a little bit more happy, be a tad bit more spontaneous—appreciate her man more, and show it, too.
    This was certainly the story of one of my really good friends.
    His wife found out about his woman on the side, and she left him—went to her mother’s house for seven months and took his son with her. Dude was miserable. I mean, he was losing weight. We would go by to get him and say, “Let’s go out and have a good time,” and he would tell us, “Eh, I don’t feel like it.” We even offered to take him to see the woman he had on the side, in hopes that at least getting some from her would make him feel a little bit better, but he refused her, too. “I’m through with that,” he insisted. “I lost my marriage, my boy is gone—the people who mattered most to me are gone. And I want them back.”
    It took him a year and a half to get this