Jana Kramer: I stayed with Mike Caussin after cheating for my daughter
In it for the long haul. Jana Kramer has faced many trials and tribulations in her marriage to Mike Caussin. But at the end of the day, she stayed in the relationship for the sake of her daughter, Jolie.
“I stayed in the beginning for Jolie so that I could say to my daughter, ‘I tried everything to keep this family together.’ Now, I’m not sacrificing my happiness. If I was still miserable, I would not still be in a relationship with my husband. But we’ve continued to grow,” Kramer, 34, said on the Monday, June 4, episode of her podcast, Whine Down. “But if it was just for my daughter… If I didn’t do that then we would have been divorced and I never wouldn’t have tried and I wouldn’t have been able to see the silver lining.”
Us Weekly exclusively revealed in 2016 that Caussin, 31, cheated on the One Tree Hill alum with multiple women when their daughter, Jolie, was just 7 months old. Since the scandal broke, they have gone to therapy and remain committed to working through their issues.
Despite her initial remarks, Kramer slightly backtracked and emphasized that a couple ultimately can’t force a tumultuous relationship to work out for a child’s benefit.
“I don’t think you should stay in a relationship for the kids. For the long haul, I don’t think that’s a good thing. Like, again, if we were still bad… But if they can work on it for the kids, for themselves, to try to keep the family together, I think that would be what worked for me,” she explained. “But if it doesn’t work out and you’re still not happy… At the end of the day, you want a happy household for your child and it’s OK if it’s two happy households. You don’t want one unhappy household.”
She added: “But I think you at least should give it a shot for the child, because for me, that was the biggest thing. If I didn’t try to try to keep my family together, I would feel like I let down Jolie and I let down our family. [Mike] let down our family first and foremost, but then I could have been the one to bury it.”
Although Kramer and Caussin seem to be in a good place now, they still experience intimacy issues following the former athlete’s infidelity. During the May 27 episode of Whine Down, the “I Got the Boy” crooner revealed that she often feels “insecure” and “rejected” by Caussin when he doesn’t want to have sex.
“It’s not saying you don’t think I’m pretty or you don’t want to have sex with me,” she told him at the time. “But you know, when infidelity does play a part, that’s what affects our sex life and I get upset, you get upset.”
Caussin, who underwent treatment in 2016 for sex addiction, then emphasized the importance of the couple openly communicating about their feelings.
“I think in general, especially when there is infidelity involved, communication is key,” he stressed. “I think you and I have slowly gotten better at communicating … I feel passive-aggressiveness in the sense that you’re waiting for me [to come to you for sex] but there hasn’t been any talk about it and then I get in my head.”
Kramer quipped back: “Because I want to feel chosen. Part of me is like, ‘You left me, so choose me. Jump on me.’”
