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.

They aren't being hurt by what they don't know.

Unless you are her husband you have no idea if it's in his best interests or not.

It depends on how comfortable you are with lying or concealing it. Is it worth telling him, if it would blow apart your marriage?

I love my husband too much to a. cheat on him, b. lie to him. You probably don’t think the same way, so live with your deceit and do better in your marriage.

It’s not about punishing the cheat. The lie protects nobody. And people absolutely have said the lie is some form of selfless act.

The lie means that the problem becomes un-fixable when it eventually comes out. Being honest creates the chance to fix forward. Lying to create a false sense of family security for the child will make it doubly painful when that unravels, and could irreparably damage your relationship with them and warp their concept of what a family and marriage is.

Gross. These are people you are meant to love. People don’t lie to people they love.

I agree with the first poster. You can't undo what you did but telling him with blow up all three of your lives. If you decide not to tell, you must never tell later down the line, never tell anyone else and feel absolutely sure there is no way he could find out.

If you can't be sure of all those things then perhaps you should tell. If he had had a short affair at the same dark time would you rather know or not?

This is a bit of a reach as an excuse for the OP not to tell her husband what he deserves to know.

She chose to fuck a man 3 times.

She knows her own husband and whether that's likely to result in her murder.

Well I expect so anyway.

Yes you should tell him. He can then decide if he wants to forgive you
The poor sod deserves to know what you have done, seriously ZERO excuse for cheating.

who ended the ‘fling’??

if anyone on here tries to justify what you have done are seriously wrong!

imagine if this was posted by a man…. What’s the common saying?? LTB….

If your DH cheated on you would you think you had the right to know? Of course he should be able to make informed consent about his relationship.

You telling your DH isn't going to blow up your child's life. You shagging another man is going to blow up your child's life - but you weren't worrying about it then, obviously.

Don't try to make out your are protecting your DH either by not telling him and blowing up his life. The only reason you don't want to tell him is for your own selfish reasons.

I'm afraid you're right, you are the lowest of the low - and you're still not taking accountability from what I can see.

Maybe the B needs to be changed to mean something else, as advice for the men who are with these women who have such a moral deficit that they can construe covering their ass as a great and selfless moral accomplishment

Yes, I understand that. People shouldn't cheat on those they love. But, why don't you have a look at some stories where being honest didn't work out so well. In some cases, it can have catastrophic consequences without me spelling it out, here.

Sometimes, lies that should have never been needed, save lives and protect people.

What the actual f00k?? How can you justify this?

That doesn’t create a one size fits all rationale for women that want to have affairs to lie. She could put safeguards in place to leave her husband safely, before telling him.

I haven't seen anyone call it "selfless" but if they have, well, I disagree. Talk to them about it. I don't think it's selfless and wonderful, I just think it's the path with the best possible outcome and no pain to anyone who doesn't deserve it.

And I'm afraid that, after seeing this discussion so many times on here, it does always seem to come down to punishing the cheat, no matter how people dress it up. I've said before that if it were me, I wouldn't want to be told, and let's just say people didn't like that, and were not motivated by my preferences and what I wanted for my wellbeing. To put it mildly.

If my husband has cheated, I don't know about it and it isn't hurting me. That's how I want to stay.

100%

It’s not shit advice. She didn’t accidentally do it once… multiple times, she knew what she was doing and couldn’t care less about her fella…

do you would be happy with your partner cheating on you so long as you didn’t know?

Misandry at its best. Standard Mumsnet.

I was in a similar position to your husband. He cheated on me during a bad patch. Texts, voice messages, naked photos, one kiss.

I found out, after the fact, piecemeal, and spent a long time trying to piece together what happened while he cried and lied and minimised and made me eke out the truth little by little.

I still don’t know the truth. And have to accept that I probably never will.

it’s nearly killed me.

Had it not been for one chance notification on his phone which led me down a rabbit hole, years after it had ended, I probably would have never found out.

Would I have preferred that? Yes, probably.

So I think you need to tell him, fully, with reasons why you did it and assurances that it won’t ever happen again. Or make damn sure he will never find out some other way. Because if he does, you’ve lost control and it’s doubtful that he will ever he able to believe what you tell him.

I believe my husband is deeply sorry. I 90% believe that he won’t do it again. But the damage has been done and I won’t ever be able to forget it.

I asked him recently (when we were yet again fighting about it), if he ever thinks about it, because I constantly do. He said yes. I asked if this was since I found out (about a year ago). He said no, he said he thought about it every day since it happened and wished it never had as he was consumed with guilt about how much it would hurt me.

Would you feel like that?

For what it’s worth, I’m not sure he was telling the truth about that. He was still in (at the very least) sporadic contact with her and I think he enjoyed the attention and felt that becuase it was all through screens it was ok.

So I don’t know.

im surprised at all the responses on here saying not to tell him, when people on here (and everywhere) always seem to say “I’d want to know”

Not sure she had the affair so she could lie - think she has to lie because she's had the affair. Anyway, I hope she sorts it out. It's a mess.

So, given the choice between having the opportunity to be with someone who loves, supports and respects you, and being with someone who lies to you every day, for the rest of your life, and fundamentally disrespects you and the only relationship you will ever have - you'd choose the latter.

I mean, it's certainly a choice.

It’s solely about imprisoning people you are supposed to love, in a lie, for the rest of that life. It’s not about punishment. People mess up. By depriving someone of a choice in this situation is utterly, wholly, immoral.

Confessing would make you feel better.
It would be earth shattering to your husband & child. Resolve to be a better person, & I hope all the posters here saying 'tell! tell!' have never done anything wrong in their lives.

Don’t tell him. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t ever confide in a friend or a sister. Block it out. Push it to the back of your mind.

You will be able to live with yourself. If your marriage is in a precarious state now, then in the future it’s likely you may split up. If you tell him about the affair the chances of a split increase massively. Just stay quiet.

I genuinely hate threads like this. It brings out the worst of Mumsnet and highlights the enormous double standards and underlying misandry.

Lie, don’t lie. Do whatever. I hope you never have a son or daughter that ends up with someone who has taken the kind of advice being dished out by deceitful women on here

After 10 years you had a bit of a rough patch so had an affair.
Ask anyone who has been married a while. You’ll have more rough patches. And when you’ve been unfaithful once it gets easier as the taboo has been broken. So you’re likely to have more affairs.
I’d tell him.