Should I tell my husband about an affair that ended last month?

[SeaWave21]

Hi everyone. I am using a name changer for obvious reasons. Please be gentle, I already know I am the lowest of the low right now and I feel sick writing this.

My DH (mid 30s) and I (mid 30s) have been together for a decade and have a beautiful daughter (6). Over the last year, our marriage hit a really dark, lonely place. We stopped connecting entirely.

During this low point, I did the unthinkable. I started flirting with another man, which escalated into a physical affair. I slept with him 3 times. It ended completely one month ago. It was a massive mistake, and it made me realize how much I actually want my marriage to work.

Since it ended, DH and I have been actively working through our issues. Things are genuinely improving, and we are finding our way back to each other. He has no idea about the affair.

I am torn apart by guilt. Part of me thinks he has a right to know the truth, but another part of me knows confessing will destroy him and blow up our daughter's stable life just to clear my own conscience. If I don't tell him, I don't know if I can live with the guilt, or if I should just leave him entirely because he deserves better.

I really need outside perspective. I'm adding a poll because I need to know what the consensus is.

Don't you know men are evil and these women can do no wrong. I find some of these threads mind blowing and something I have learned now as I get older is women seem to take no responsibility for their actions.

Why's that? Because you were held to account for your choices? Do you think it would have been better for you if you'd just kept lying and, instead, just treated your partner as someone who didn't deserve to be told the truth about who you'd slept with?

He did!! But I eventually married the man i had an affair with, and had children.
Wonderful.

I can’t quite get my head around how many people on this thread are advising her to keep quiet! What you are basically saying is that if your partner was to cheat on you, you would want them to lie and not tell you…i’m willing to bet double standards are at play here and you absolutely would want your partner to come clean. The replies would also be VERY different if this was a man doing the cheating you would be tearing him a new arsehole 😆

All very true.

However if things are going well, I would definitely not tell.

Why throw a bomb into the relationship for no reason?

"Why throw a bomb into the relationship for no reason?"

This was answered many times in this thread alone.
Because:

• It is the right/moral thing to do
• Your partner deserves to know who she is in a relationship with, and decide to stay or leave knowing the full picture
• You are not a lying child who can't take responsibility for his actions (unless you are)
• Making someone live in a lie potentially all her life is one of the lowest things you could do to them
• You already broke and betrayed a trust, the least you could do is show that you are not a sociopath, unable to consider the harm you caused, and make it a despicable, long-term deceipt.

People who ask this are genuinely so self-absorbed that they can't see beyond the surface of what benefits them. "Well this would make me look bad, and I don't like that feeling, better lie about this, yes, that's more convenient for me". To be fair that is what caused the mess in the first place - "it will make me feel nice in my groins if is sleep with other person who is not my spouse - who cares if it breaks the rules of my relationship I agreed to". Not coming clean to your significant other you cheated on only proves that you are a coward who will always prioritise your own comfort, and not deserving the partner you have.

There is nothing wrong with how your life turned out - I am glad you are happy. But it is also quite normal that your previous partner left after you cheated. It was the right thing that he got to learn and managed to make a decision.

It completely blows my mind the double standards by some on here.

So if you’re happy now, why do you wish you’d kept the secret to the grave?

You need to stop and look at how many assumptions you have made here:
No STDs that have passed on;
No chance the information doesn’t come out at a later date and blow up in an even worse way;
No change the gilt just festers and eventually turns to resentment leading to mistreatment of the innocent spouse;
No chance the fact the cheater “gets away with it” causes them to lower their opinion of their victim and lead to a deterioration in the marriage (“well they aren’t that great as they are so dumb they didn’t even notice …”);
No chance of addressing any issues that contributed to the cheating.

This is the rationalisation that a cheater will go through over and over, first time then when time has passed and they can excuse themselves doing it again, then again. It is different if someone told you explicitly they wouldn’t want to know, but for most people it is not the cheaters choice to make.

You know the bomb was the cheating, right?

The fact you now get to try and do the right thing by coming clean is the making amends part, the destruction was the original action.

Thats a fascinating question in theory. And if there were no practical consequences to cheating I guess it could even be consider a real question to mull over

Back in the real world though, cheating puts people at risk of STDs without their knowledge or consent. It removed from them the option to get tested or to refuse to have unprotected sex on the basis of the actual risk.

So for that reason alone people have a duty to disclose

I think you should tell but be prepared for your whole life to blow up.

mainly I’m saying tell because if you were a man then that would be the response on here that you should and the wife deserved to know and make her own choices etc and I don’t think it should just be double standards because your a woman. Your husband deserves the chance to decide if he wants to stay and sleep with you and also to get himself sti checked etc