Ended my 9-month affair 2 months ago. Wife is none the wiser. Taking it to the grave but I can’t stop thinking about it.

[PolarBearBear]

I am bracing myself for the comments here, but I need an honest outside perspective. I’ve behaved appallingly and I'm trying to figure out how to move forward.

I’ve been married for 12 years with young kids. We are in our late 30s.

For 9 months, I had an affair with a 24-year-old single woman. She knew I was married from the start. To be blunt, the ego stroke completely blinded me and I got caught up in a total bubble.

This August, the guilt finally got too much. I realized how much I love my wife and our life, so I ended it. She was a work colleague, but she has since got a different job elsewhere, so I never see her anymore. When we broke it off, she promised to never tell anyone ever and she is just moving on with her life.

My wife has absolutely no idea and is completely none the wiser about all of this. There is absolutely no way she could ever find out on her own, as nobody else knows it happened.

I am 100% committed to focusing on my marriage, being the best husband I can possibly be, and I will never, ever cheat again.

I genuinely believe it is better if I never tell my wife and take this secret to my grave. Confessing would only alleviate my own guilt, and what she doesn't know can't hurt her. I don't want to destroy her world.

The problem is, I can't stop thinking about the affair. It's constantly in my head. I'm trying to be this perfect, attentive husband, but mentally I'm completely consumed by what happened.

Am I completely delusional to think I can just bury this and move on? How do I stop the thoughts and actually fix my marriage without destroying it with the truth?

I've attached a poll because I am genuinely torn on the ethics here. Is honesty always the best policy, or is silence sometimes the kinder choice? Please vote and let me know your thoughts.

Where I’m from, we have a saying - ‘a lie has short legs’. It’s going to come back to bite you.

"Trend data going back to the 1990s suggests that men have always been more likely than women to cheat."
Besides this old article is based on self-confessed data. What makes you think a cheater would confess for the sake of a study 🙄

You say you love your wife but you don't love her enough to have avoided an affair. What's missing from your marriage to have led to the affair and how can you be sure it won't happen again. What's different in your marriage to prevent it in future.

The thing that was lacking in the marriage was within him - no boundaries, seeking validation, making a lot of decisions to cheat, and lie, time and time again.

Until he knows how and why this happened, it will happen again. The "affair" wasn't a real relationship. It was based in Fantasyland. No kids to look after, all the pressures of a real relationship non existent. A fantasy bubble land.
He is a classic cake eater - wants his lovely life, but fantasy land as well.
The question I would ask him is "if you found out your wife had fucked another man over a nine month period. It was a full blown relationship to the extent they pined for him afterwards, would you have wanted to know?" - maybe ten years, maybe 20 years later? Being a good husband in the proceeding years - I really don't think would make a difference to how she feels - because those years wouldn't count TO HER

If you love someone, then you don't lie to them. It's that simple.

You love yourself. You're the one with the truth, well you and your girlfriend. This means both of you get to control your wife's life. You literally have no idea when, if ever, your girlfriend might change her mind and dump all over your wife. Letting someone else have control over whether / when they'll pull the trigger isn't love.

You're a coward. A cheat and a coward. All because you couldn't keep it in your pants. But here's the rub. Your wife probably does know and despises you. She's just getting her ducks in a row.

You need to tell her what's happened. Its not up to you what happens next. Yes it will likely destroy her temporarily but you will either be able to prove to her your committment and love, and she will move on from it eventually. Or she will decide it is over between you and move on elsewhere. At this point it's not your choice, it's hers. And who's to say your 24 year old piece on the side who didn't give a sh**t about stealing a married man and hurting another woman, doesn't suddenly get a crisis of conscience when she she gets a bit older and decides to crawl out the woodwork and tell your wife? This will eat you up, just tell her. Tell you love her, you're sorry, she is your priority and you will spend the rest of your life proving that - the decision lies with her.

It just means more of the “don’t tell her” brigade don’t want to comment to back up and justify their opinion.

I posted about my experience. I back up my vote.

If you really loved your wife, you'd have never cheated on her.

Tell her and give her the opportunity to actually be with someone who gives a fuck about her.

Put twenty quid on this being completely made up.

If you have any consideration for her you have to tell her.

Otherwise if you have sex with her, she will be unable to give informed consent, there is a material reason she might not have sex with you if she knew it.

It astonishes me how many people say keep quiet.

The funniest part about this is that he is trusting a 24 year old woman to keep a secret like this LOL

I hope he makes an update thread when she finds out

Your delusional. Atleast her PH balance will
be back to normal now. How selfish of you. I hope it comes to her in her dreams what link you have missed. Good luck living with a lie

Yes. She WILL tell friends and any one of them could choose to fuck up OP’s life at any time. Also in about five years or so she will have a realisation that the relationship was wrong and there was a serious power imbalance due to age and workplace status. She will then start to get angry at how she was treated and may well let the OP’s wife know. He’s an idiot.

What OP's wife deserves is to live a life free from hurt. OP telling his wife about the affair would only hurt her. If he came on here saying 'Yeah, I had an affair and there's a high chance it would probably happen again', then I'd be saying yes the wife deserves to know. But OP made a mistake, regrets it, learned from it, and has no intention of doing it again. Why should he cause unnecessary pain to his wife over an indiscretion?

May sound blunt but let your wife go off and find a decent man, there must have been a reason you felt the need to go elsewhere which clearly means you had no respect for your wife in the first place! She deserves better.

He seriously is, so utterly childish the fact he's written "she's promised not to tell anyone and move on with her life". Idiotic for a.) Putting the status of his marriage in the hands of this """promise""", and b.) Doesn't realise that her moving on with life means her getting older, processing the affair and will want to relieve her guilt/get revenge for being taken advantage of/etc etc etc. As if a 24yo now is going to keep this secret by the time she's 40 hahahaha I can't wait for this to fall back on him loool

OP's wife deserves to live life of her own choosing based on facts. No one should be made to live a lie. To take the cheater husband around her family for Christmas, soeak good of him to others, posing in family pictures, standing by her husband during tough times.. whilst some people out there know she's living a lie.
THAT is cruel. Rather the hurt than decades of gaslighting.

If you told her what do you think she would do?

Accept that you are very sorry and move on with you or end it?

How can you be so certain you won't do it again?

This and the post it's replying to both reek of justice-based schadenfreude. I think the OP knows this woman better than any of us and if he's confident that she can keep a secret, there's no reason for us to think otherwise. To say "she WILL tell someone and WILL want revenge!" so confidently is just scare-mongering nonsense.

Yes, quite possibly.

God you're dim

Do we know if he lied to his wife?
Some people have affairs for years with work colleagues without telling lies, especially as AP knew and wasn't forcing a decision..it has ended now with an apparent commitment to not ever sling it again. I still say there's nothing to be gained by telling wife and forcing her hand.

It's all very well for either embittered or comfortably off wivea married to wealthy husbands to say ditch him, take him to the cleaners, etc but it can be devasting upheaval for the children or huge emotional tension if there's not enough finances to provide two homes and the couple have to live separately in the same house together while they wait years to go their own ways .

I'm dim because I disagree with a completely fabricated narrative? right...

In what world can you imagine him NOT lying over the course of 9 months? You are dancing on the head of a pin here. He lied, he omitted, he told her he loved her when quite obviously he couldn't if he was having s&x with a 24 year old colleague.