Should I tell

[handmedownqueen]

My lovely DH that I went to bed with an old friend. I love DH and have no excuses for it except a mini midlife crisis and feeling a lot of stress at present with work kids etc. Drank far too much and succumbed. It wasn't even much good and certainly made me feel I was missing nothing. I'm not going to benefit anyone by telling am I?

"Oh and I understand completely the fallability of humans. My dad cheated on my mum after nearly forty years of marriage and yes, she did forgive him and stayed with him. I couldn't understand why she chose the path she did but I respected her for it. I think living through that enables me to know my own mind and how I would react faced with the same situation. Don't you?"

No Hels, I really don't. All I can see is that you were an observer in your parents' marriage. You think you know how you would react but no one really does,as emotions are not logical. That's the one bit that is missing from yours anad Mal's arguments- you are not allowing for emotions to be stronger than reason. How you would react yourself is an unknown. And yes, I am married. 25 years. But I won't judge anyone who has done anything "wrong" as I know humans are fallible.

I'd suggest you try educating yourself about the human condition- Try reading some of the world's great literature and poetry- Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Chekov- whatever- if humans behaved unemotionally and always did what was "right" there would be nothing to write about to read- except Enid Blyton!

No. The secret is your burden to bear. You could find that being honest destroys him and his confidence more than you realise, and you can't undo it.

?Does it mean that you intend to stay faithful but hey, you might change,or life might change but for now I agree to be faithful to you etc etc??

If you don't believe that you can stay faithful no matter what then imo, I don't think you should get married in the first place. You must know your own mind when you're on the verge of marrying, surely?"

Do you believe then that people should stay married no matter what? Because surely getting divorced is the ultimate betrayal of your marriage vows? In which case changing Hels wording slightly

?Does it mean that you intend to stay married but hey, you might change,or life might change but for now I agree to be married to you etc etc??

If you don't believe that you can stay married no matter what then imo, I don't think you should get married in the first place. You must know your own mind when you're on the verge of marrying, surely?

No-one gets married contemplating or expecting to be unfaithful or get divorced surely. The point is not how you feel on your wedding day but what happens afterwards. I bet you would not judge everyone who gets divorced so harshly, so why is unfaithfulness reserved for such a particular level of judment and condemnation?

i find myself agreeing with everything pp says

Because adultery is a deed done by one partner who betrays another behind their back, while there's a level of warning, notification, communication and even collaboration in the divorce process?

me too

Oh thanks lou- that's a new one for me!

that was me agreeing with Lou33

helsbels-there are enough threads on here from posters who are devastated that their partners have opted out of the sexual side of their relationship-if your husband all of a sudden became a morbidly obese chain smoking alcoholic/a heroin addict would you accept this as a fait accompli and that would be that?
i think the difference is that those of us with a wider experience of men/relationships might have a broader view of things like this. If you meet someone (as an adult) as i did (my dp and i met when i was 32 and had a few thousand miles on the clock)then there is no doubt that sex is different-my outlook and his.
Our relationship is the only sexual relationship that i am interested in being in right now but if you delivered Jason Orange from take that and i was drunk/at a shit bit in our relationship (and obviously he'd have to work on me a bit) i might succumb.
I would not love my family any less-i would be gutted that in one random act i could have destroyed what i truly do hold dear but i would not tell-i love him too much to hurt him and know that the knowledge of something like that would destroy him,if i didn't do it again then i wouldn't think it fair on our lives to be destroyed by one sex act,that i've done thousands of times and not always with people who i have been in love with.
do you even half understand that?or could you try?
and i used slags and slappers as we clearly seem to be split into the 'marry for life to one person who's the only person we've ever slept with' or 'i've had more than 5 partners and it's not that big of a deal' camps

This: "The heart has its reasons, of which the mind knows nothing" is not a reason or excuse for adultery, but Pascal's quotation says it better than I can.
Worth thinking on.

The myth that lifelong heteromonogamy is better than anything else is what causes all the damage in the first place. Because it doesn't suit most people. Unless you actually have the monogamist fetish, it's boring and hard work (particularly given how long people live nowadays). Yet because the propaganda in favour of it is so intense, many people get married without really thinking it through in terms of what they want and who they are, and then find that they do still fancy other people, or they get bored with their partner, or both partners change (particularly true of those who marry young and inexperienced) and they are no longer happy with the deal they made - yet trying to renegotiate often ends up being met with hysteria and violence.
Oh, and don;t bother citing all those dozens of people you know who have been married for a long time - they may well have had affairs or be dedicated swingers and not have told you, because it's none of your business (and in some cases, they wouldn't tell you because you would flip out and rant at them forever more).

Aussieng, you are one of the few posters on here that has actually made me stop and think about my opinion.

I put my hands up and say that I'm sure I'll get flamed as a hypocrite but I don't see divorce as quite so unacceptable as being unfaithful. That doesn't sit particularly well with my head either, for what it's worth. Having said that, my marriage has been far from easy in the last few years and I know that if dh and I weren't married, then I might have thought a while ago that the easier option would have been to walk away and start again. But I haven't.

I am getting ever so slightly bored with the assumption that because I have only had one sexual partner then that is the reason I have the opinions that I do - well my dh has only slept with me but he has said that he wouldn't want to know and is firmly in peony and co's camp - so how does your theory stand up there?

Once again peony, I am sitting giggling at your wild, unfounded suggestions! So I should maybe try reading some classic literature to teach myself the workings of the world?! Do you know me? No, I didn't think so!

i think the FACT that you have stated you've only ever had sex with your husband might mean the ACT of sex is imbued with more reverence than those of us who have had more than one partner.
If dp fucked someone i'd be furious but probably wouldn't leave him,if he decided to not have sex with me ever again for whatever reason then i guess i would consider leaving him as i think sexual closeness between us is very important and i am not prepared to not have a sex life (unless he became medically unable to of course.)
do you understand that?

I'm rather hoping you're not meaning to be patronising when you keep asking, "Do you/can you understand that?" Of course I can understand what you are saying!

I can also understand your previous reference to Jason Orange - although he wouldn't be my personal preference. Gary maybe

tsc, you do know Jason O is gay don't you ?

i do know Jason has an identical twin brother called Justin who is-although i don't believe they've ever been photographed together...

now Howard is the one you need

he is hot

except he is mine

If you don't tell him I think this lie will eat away at you and destroy you both anyway.
I think you will cheat again, having 'got away with it' once when the initial guilt has eased off the same feelings will come back and another man will come along to break the routine.
If I were your DH I'd rather know so I could decide the next step, as others have said its the dishonesty that hurts more than the act itself.

Howard??? Nah, you can have him! I'll stick with Gary. Or Mark at a push.........

I'd love to have him

He could be the one I could tell DH about

my DH's "allowed" is Kylie

My dh's would be Emma Bunton. Or maybe Cheryl Cole. If he were allowed of course

i love that this thread was about one womans struggle with her inner secrets-and is now (after bickering and semi flounces!) about which member of take that we'd have a go on!

I know tsc, I love it when that happens

I like to think I have a skill in taking people's mind off their little spats

I do it a lot