I’ve done a terrible thing

[Miserablemondsy]

Hi,

i’m 42, married to a great guy with 2 dc’s aged 9 and 13

for the last couple of years I’ve been doing a part time uni course funded and supported by my employer. This has involved several overnight residential sessions. The group of other students are great and we quickly got into the habit of going for drinks etc when we were all staying in the hotel.

on our last residential in June a few of the younger ones decided to go into town. Me, another woman and a guy weren’t up for it so we went back to the hotel and had a couple of drinks in my room.

the woman left after half hour leaving me With the guy. He’s 32 and has become a good friend over the course of our studies. I admit that I found him attractive and I got the impression that he liked me.

We sat in my room watching TV and shared a bottle of wine. We were both tipsy and he was being flirty. I can’t believe this happened but I ended up giving him a BJ and shagging him. (Safe sex)

the next morning we both agreed that ut had been a huge mistake and something that we won’t discuss again, our course had ended now so there’s mo need for any further contact. He’s getting married next year 🤦‍♂️

i’m devastated at what I’ve done. Until that night I had been 100% faithful. I just don’t know what to do

my heart tells me I must confess but my head tells me that it will destroy my family. My older sister is like a second mum ( 12 years older) and I have confided in her. She thinks that I need to move on and hero my mouth shut

I feel absolutely disgusted with myself, WWYD?

@blossomtoes How many times must I say that sex is never "safe"? There is only "safer". Condoms can break. HPV and herpes are not stopped by condoms. The OP has put her H at risk. It's a smaller risk than from unprotected sex, but still a risk.

If her partner hasn't asked her if she has been faithful or if she has cheated then she isn't lying to him.

I mean its all morally terrible dont get me wrong, i think cheating is vile, but if she hasn't said she hasn't cheated then I dont think she's lying by not freely disclosing.

Im flattered but i think you over estimate my sphere of influence a little.
I'm not the person who holds the reins on cheating, and my advice on this thread is not going to cause the OP to cheat again.
Women who have been cheated on have every right to complain. The views on this thread are entirely irrelevant to their dituations. How dare YOU use this thread to try to silence them?
As for your last paragraph, im fairly sure your views on women are already fixed. This thread will not have changed them.

You make some valid points.
The risk of it coming out and the ability of the OP to continue normally while holding the secret are definitely factors to consider. I agree both are unknown in this scenario.

A lie by omission is still a lie, so I respectfully completely disagree with your view.

Keep. Your. Mouth. Shut.

Any advice to the contrary should be ignored.

It's not god she's married to, it's her husband. It's not forgiveness that this is about, but honestly and fidelity within marriage. It's not about god deciding to forgive her, it's about her husband having a right to know that she put him at risk of STIs that condoms do not protect against.

As for catholicism teaching forgiveness: a religion that covered up paedophiles within its own priesthood, harming countless innocent children in the process, has no fucking business teaching anyone anything.

You're the one who said to keep cheating secret, not me. And your advice might be giving permission to OP... after all, no consequences!

I'm actually encouraging people to speak up about cheating, you're saying for them to keep quiet, don't turn this around. You're a disgrace for downplaying infidelity. Cheating is wrong and should be punished by more than just 'forgive yourself, don't upset the family unit' as you've said. I bet you're the first with your pitchfork when a man cheats.

Nice try turning this around. OP cheated, atop advising her to keep it quiet and move on! Are you HONESTLY telling me that if a man cheated on an established family, you'd be telling him to stay quiet because otherwise it would break up the family???

To be fair JohnofOxford has given a very RC approach to this problem.

Lie your head off to everyone and anyone. Call them pompous and sanctimonious. As long as you ask for forgiveness at confession then God will forgive you and that is all that matters, right? Who cares about the lives you ruin and the hurt you cause here on Earth.

The bloke has a fiancée - highly likely that he had condoms on him and doesn’t mean they were brought specifically for this occasion. This has been pointed out several times.

Why would you expect your partner to respect you enough to confess when they didn’t respect you enough not to cheat in the first place ?

I’m so sorry you’re going through this, but do you not think that the real hypocrisy is expecting the OP - or anyone else for that matter - to confess to a ONS out of respect or loyalty to their spouse, when in fact if there was any loyalty or respect there, the infidelity wouldn’t have happened in the first place. In the real world people confess because they can’t live with the guilt. I suspect confession out of respect or loyalty is very rare.

Or maybe, as has been pointed out several times, he had them on him because he has a fiancée and not everyone keeps them in the bedside table because not everyone confines sex to the bedroom.

So given that she had so little respect for her husband that she cheated in this way, why would you think she’d confess out of respect for the fact that he has a right to know ? The only reason she would confess is to ease her conscience, and in the process she’d destroy the family unit.
Surely that’s just as selfish.

She is being selfish in all ways, that is the nature of infidelity. She is no less selfish in hiding it from him so that is not a justification for further lying.

By confessing she hands her husband the agency over his own life that he should have and gives him the opportunity to make a decision about their relationship rather than having that decision made for him without his knowledge or consent.

Why ?

Sounds like an excuse to me. Many people in long-term relationships don't use condoms and rely on other contraceptive methods.

If the OP was a man (as well they might be given the recent trend of men starting threads pretending to be a woman who's done something wrong. But that's by the by) my advice would be the same.
I have at no point said 'forgive yourself' and my advice (whether you agree with it or not) was about the impact of the confession on the spouse.
As for 'cheating is wrong and should be punished...' you actually sound rather sinister. Fortunately the days of men like yourself dreaming up suitable punishments for cheating women are thankfully in the past.

And given that the OP has said she feels horribly guilty, you really think that the uppermost thought in her mind when she confesses is her husbands’ agency over his own life ? You can dress it up as altruistically as you want, but in the real world people confess to infidelity because they can’t bear the guilt they carry alone, not because they want to give their partner the opportunity to end things if they can’t live with what’s happened.

And many don’t.

@5128gap

You're arguing semantics. Infidelity is wrong and there should be repercussions. Your answer is simply lie, move on, and pretend like it never happened.

If this is real, Op wanted this to happen. She made a series of choices which took her from having drinks with 2 other people, to being alone in her hotel room with a man she found attractive and a bottle of wine. It wasn’t a mistake, it was a choice. Saying “I will never do it again” really doesn’t work until you work out WHY you made those shit choices (ego boost, validation, selfishness?) and address those issues. Unless and until op does that work, she is, despite what she says, at risk of doing it again. I can see both sides of telling him and not telling him but I think morally, you’ve shit all over your husbands chips, there IS a risk he will find out (this shit is almost impossible to keep secret) and finding out from someone else would be the worst possible outcome. Don’t tell him because you feel guilty, tell him because he deserves agency in his life, you are ashamed and want to give him the choice now. You made a choice on his behalf (you didn’t drop him a message asking if he’d be ok with you shagging someone else) and it wasn’t in his best interests, he needs and deserves to be allowed to choose how to move forward from that.

Exactly this.

Out of the blue confessing will turn her children's world upside down (parental divorce is an adverse childhood experience) all so you relieve herself some of the guilt.

Some of these responses do not even stand up to any level of scrutiny at all.

Under what circumstances, then, should someone confess to cheating? By your own questionable standards, confessing to cheating is "selfish" and likely to result in breaking apart a family-so is there any circumstances any of you pro-keep quiet folks would be happy for a person to admit to cheating?

Another breakdown because why the fuck not:

1. As this post is about-a ONS-don't tell as not going to be repeated you feel shit so why tell and destroy a family?

2. An affair-is this the point where they should tell? Why? If the whole purpose is to "protect the family" and to tell is to assuage guilt and risks destroying a family and is "selfish," why should they tell in this circumstance but not the other?

How would you justify the different treatment of these two things? By your own admissions (speaking directly to all people in the keep quiet brigade) it's selfish to risk destroying a family with honesty-so telling in both circumstances should be selfish and wrong, surely?

Also, just because the OP has shown an incredible amount of selfishness and dishonesty and disrespect for her husband, her marriage and her children with her actions, doesn't mean that she can't be honest and respectful now by telling him the truth. You don't have to continue down a deceptive path just because you started on it.

Just please-make it make sense. Is there any situation where a woman has cheated where you'd all change your minds and decide that she should actually be honest and decent?

@C1N1C

You are right. Infidelity is wrong and there should be repercussions..... ..........
In this case the OP will feel guilty probably for the rest of her life.

I still don't think she should tell her DH if:
it truly was a 1 night stand never ever to be repeated
There is little to no chance of him finding out

The collateral damage to the family could last the rest of their lives.