I had a drunken one-night stand. I feel so ashamed!

[MinimumAstronaut811]

Hello,

I know I will get judged and ridiculed for this, and rightfully so, but I want to share my story and see if anyone can help me figure out how I should tell my husband about what I did. About four months ago, I (F50) was on a trip to beach with my best friend (F50) where we stayed in a beach town for 4 nights. My husband (M48) and daughter (F12) were visiting his mother in a different town, so my girlfriend and I decided to hit the beach during this time. On day 3, we were out at a beachside restaurant with a bar, and we were drinking pretty much the entire day there. Eventually my best friend was extremely tired and returned to our hotel room, leaving me at the bar. This was around 9:00 PM. Soon a group of young guys arrived and one of them (M24) started hitting on me and was relentless. He was very handsome and Ken (like Barbie's Ken) type guy with blond/brown hair and blue eyes and was very fit. He started buying me shots, and I have a real problem with alcohol. At some point during this time, we started making out at the bar and I ended up with him in his room!! I don't remember the encounter, just flashes of it, as I was so drunk, but we had sex all night and I returned to my room (my girlfriend was sleeping) around 7 AM.

I was devasted and ashamed of myself the next morning and I told my girlfriend what had happened. She was very surprised as she knew that my marriage was in a pretty good place. I love my husband as he is the greatest man I have known, amazing dad and a good husband; however, he has let himself go lately and had gained a lot of weight as he is now classified as Obese (over 34% body fat). He was very fit when we met. I ask him to get in shape for his health's sake, as I am in medical industry and see how bad Obesity will destroy your body and I was really afraid he would end up in a wheelchair or worse dead very soon. I had a new boss, and my job was very stressful. I am not making excuses, but I think some of this may have played some role in my heavy drinking and sleeping someone other than my husband.

I don't really know why I slept with this guy. I did find him attractive, alcohol was involved, but getting hit by good looking guys is not a new thing for me. I always brush it off or play it off, but not this time. The guilt is eating me alive, and I know I am a piece of garbage for doing this to my loving husband. I really want to come clean, but I am so afraid that it will break up the family. I know I made a terrible mistake; I don't deserve another chance and probably will not get another chance.

Since I incident I have completely given up alcohol and have been sober since that day. My husband actually commented on this about a week later, as he knows I have struggled with alcohol since my teen age years. He is very supportive of me quitting alcohol and he himself has stopped drinking (he was never an alcoholic but did drink socially).

Can someone give me some guidance on how I should break this news to my husband. I know he will be devastated and will probably hate me, and I deserve it. I don't think I can bear to see the pain in his eyes when I do tell him, but I have to do this. My only hope is that he will see that I am truly sorry and believe that this will never happen. I will also hope he agrees to couples' marriage counseling and hopefully individual counseling for both of us. I don't know, I am so worried about this horrible choice that I made. Please tell me how I should approach this with my husband in breaking this news to him.

Please give me something more than I am a terrible person, a piece of shit, slut etc. etc. I already know this, and I am determined it will never happen again. I am hoping for some constructive feedback on how I can dampen the pain for my husband when I break the news to him. Thanks!

Whether or not this is real ultimately doesn’t matter. IF it is real, then this is a very serious situation, so I’m going to treat it as if it is real.

You are exactly right about posting here.

It's a hard choice - blow up your family or live a lie. I do think it's unfair and a massive lack of respect for someone to not allow them to have the full facts of the relationship so they can make their own decision whether to stay in it or not. But you do have a child, you are a family and I understand it will be excruciating for everyone if you to rock the foundations of it. It's really not for anyone else on here to tell you definitively what you should do.

it is a huge gaping hole in her story that generally, just doesn't ring true.

I thought this forum was big on informed consent?

Or is he meant to live the rest of his life in a marriage based on a lie " for his own good"?

These things have a way of coming out anyway.

Do you know anything about the term contradiction?

Not everyone experiences hangovers like that? I certainly don’t. Plus, hangovers can be largely mitigated by staying hydrated.

It really doesn’t matter if this is true or not. If it’s true, then it’s important to help out. If it’s not true, then oh well.

OP hiv takes 3 months before it's detected by traditional std screening. So are you abstaining with husband for 3 months or risking his health in the unlikely (but still possibl) scenario you could have caught something like this?

I'm shocked at PP encouraging her to stay silent. OP is not a good person and not a victim here, the husband is.

It is also very odd that you were drinking all day with your friend and then opt to stay in the bar alone rather than return to the hotel. If that was a guy guarantee the insinuation would be they were hoping to hook up with someone, which may have been the case here (quite likely considering what happened).

You go first.

I’m not sure what you’ll achieve by telling him apart from blowing up your lives.
just move on and don’t do it again. Quitting alcohol sounds like a really good move too.

Humans make mistakes- doesn’t mean they are bad people. Stop defining people as bad because they have made a mistake. Are you perfect???

Yikes I cannot believe people are suggesting that he shouldn’t be told, especially framing as OP was too drunk to consent. Her husband is now in an intimate relationship under false pretences, he also cannot give consent until he knows what has happened and every intimate moment now is a violation of this. OP rightly feels burdened and guilt, which shows she isn’t a sociopath and is a good thing.
OP your husband needs to know so he can make his own informed decision. You’ve had great advice on this thread of how to handle this. You are clearly in crisis with your drinking. I think as well it is a reckless abandonment of responsibility to our families to allow our health to deteriorate dangerously, so I understand your frustration with your husband not taking care of himself. That is an abandonment which is rarely acknowledged imo.
You guys have got work to do whether it is together or separately, but your husband has the right to know, and if you don’t tell him I think the likelihood is you and will end up more entrenched in your alcohol issues anyway, which would be catastrophic for you all.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5368840-cheated-husband-asking-for-your-perspective?page=1

Is this thread your husband? Although I know you say you haven't told him yet. Just a lot of the wording seems very similar. Even down to referring to the other man as a Ken lookalike and referring to alcohol as 'boos'.

Question OP, has your DH asked you about suddenly stopping drinking after the incident? Maybe I'm a suspicious person but I'd definitely be wondering why. Obviously, it's better for your health but it would give me pause.

Also I'm quite suprised how much sympathy you are getting on here when your OP comes across as though you're gloating. Multiple mentions of how fit and handsome the guy was, and mentioning you had sex all night.

If you were truly guilty those details would be downplayed to the bare minimum (e.g. he was good looking, we had sex).

You would have had multiple chances in your all night sex marathon to think of the harm you were causing to your family, but were too busy riding 'Ken' every which way to care.

Op I wonder if you really want to leave your marriage but can't admit it to yourself.

I would start by having therapy - and asking yourself if your husband left - would you be relieved?

As humans we often self sabotage rather than behave with honesty - you chose this path - you chose to drink too much, to flirt, to go too far etc - I have zero judgment, anyone on here who judges a stranger is an idiot.

I've made countless mistakes in my life - often hurting other people - now i look back and understand my own weak points better.

I really recommend finding a good therapist and talking about how unhappy you have been in life/ your marrriage/ why you have been hiding by drinking.

It may be you want out but feel it's 'wrong'

Have to agree about the double standards.

If this was the other way around, the DH would already have been hung drawn and quartered and posters would be happily arranging pile-on chardonnay, cake and bunting parties around his twitching corpse.

Ultimately I would probably not tell him and move along. The only caveat is can you trust your friend to not let the cat out of the bag. If you think she might then you need to talk to him first. I know it's wrong but the bigger picture needs to be thought about and not ruined by a massive mistake.

Do not tell him. Nothing to be gained and everything to lose.

@HectorPlasm why? the op hates herself and feels ashamed. If a man came on saying that how would it help judging them further?

Judgement of anyone is boring, unhelpful and doesn't resolve anything. As litearlly nobody here knows the OP what is the point judging her - she has come for advice not judgement.

No, I'm not perfect, nobody is perfect. But surely a good person would admit their mistakes and tries to do right by them, no?

The right thing here is to give her husband the full information and give him the choice how to proceed. Doing the right thing also means not putting your innocent husbands health at risk until you are 100% sure you have contracted no stds.

OP you had "sex all night until 7am" in your post with another man. This doesn't sound like a one time drunken mistake and that you can't remember it or that your inhibitions were loosened. Unless I'm misreading this, you had sex several times with this man over the course of that night?

I can see how you can end up kissing someone as a drunken mistake, maybe. But you stop at some point and wake up to what you're doing while you are in a relationship with someone else. You had sex with someone in a room several time all night long! That is unforgivable in my eyes.

Your DH deserves to know what you've done. He deserves to know so he can decide how he wants to proceed with the marriage.

Your DH doesn't deserve to be lied to and live through a marriage that is a lie.
Of course it will hurt him but he deserves to know. It's his future too.

Also why is OP being treated so differently in this post just because she's a woman! If the tables were turned the responses would be very different.

Maybe OP DH has gained weight due to stress and working long hours to support his family and SAHW who has plenty of time to exercise and keep herself looking good so she an go to bars and frequently get hit upon.

what a boring response

Hmmm 🤔 - anyone would think they were written by same fantasist person

Boos indeed