Q: I’ve had an affair. It’s over, but I don’t know what to do to make things right with the man I live with and love. I want to hurl myself at him and tell him everything: that I never intended to do it, that I believe utterly in fidelity. But I feel like that sounds so much like b.s. that I can’t begin to figure out how to apologize. Should I tell or not tell? Is there a “right” way to deal with the aftermath of an affair? –Feeling Like a Hypocrite
A: Dear FLAH,
Your question–to tell or not to tell– is one of the most hotly debated issues among the most knowledgeable, even celestial minds. So I will go into it at some length.
Some marital therapists and psychologists say you must confess; that it’s the secret, not the extramarital sex itself, that corrodes a relationship; that only through coming clean and investigating together the reasons for the affair can understanding and intimacy be renewed. Others insist you investigate your act solo, or perhaps with a therapist or clergyman; that relaying news of your affair to a partner will only provoke responses that will sabotage both the understanding you seek and the intimacy you want to restore. The question of whether to tell is like the question of the tree falling in the forest: If no one is there to hear it, did the tree make a sound when it fell? If no one knows about your affair, will it still do terrible harm to your relationship?
Women’s adultery has long obsessed us, as evidenced by western literature: Othello; Anna Karenina; Madame Bovary; Tess of the D’Urbervilles; The Scarlet Letter–all those passionate women and their miserable fates! Need I remind you of Anna’s death under a train? Emma’s, by poison? And poor, innocent Desdemona’s, by the hand of her wrongheaded husband, Othello? I’m bringing them up because their message is relevant to you.
A case in point: A young friend of mine, Kristin, confessed her affair to her husband Glenn when, having heard from a friend about it, he asked Kristin outright. Rattled by his unexpected confrontation, she spilled everything: She ‘d slept with a co-worker; the affair lasted for three months; she’d been meaning to discuss it with Glenn but he’d seemed so preoccupied. She was glad now, finally, she told him, be able to talk about it.
Glenn, however, was hardly glad. He said he didn’t care what her reasons were; he didn’t want to hear them. She had better get a lawyer, he told her, because their marriage was over. And that was that. I mean it. He hasn’t spoken directly to her to this day: all discussion took place through lawyers, and their marriage ended two years ago.
Of course, Kristin was effectively caught having an affair, so she had no time to decide what would be best, to think about how Glenn would react, to prepare her words. Like other women whose husbands find out from a neighbor or from a letter or from e-mails, her confession was delivered in a climate hostile to healing conversation. Her only other choice was to lie outright, but Kristin says “I was too startled to even think, let alone lie.”
Another friend, Janet, on the other hand, had a choice–and says she has come to prefer the idea of discretion even at the cost of deception. She decided to tell her live-in lover Paul of her brief affair–a one-night stand on a business trip–and assured him that it meant very little to her. “I told him because he had told me about his affair a few years before, and I forgave him. And because we both live very out-of-town lives. And because we’re both aware of the world today.” But Paul read her act as vengeful, as pay-back, designed specifically, if unconsciously, to hurt him. He began obsessing: Where did it take place? In what hotel? How big was the bed? How many times did they do it? What perfume was she wearing?
Paul’s obsessiveness lasted well over a year, and by the time his torment subsided, Janet wasn’t sure they’d ever heal completely. “We may make it,” she says shakily, “but I’m not sure. He’ll never see this the way I do, ever; he sees it as punishment of him. He says he cannot trust me again.”
Friends and advisers who urge you to come clean in the name of honesty and healing may forget that while infidelity may be an equal opportunity crime, the punishment differs according to gender. Most cultures forgive, even overlook, men’s infidelity–but focus obsessively and unforgivingly on women’s. (There are still many cultures that allow men to kill an unfaithful wife.) We still like to see men’s affairs as arising somehow from their biology, some intrinsic “need,” and something a wife should not take personally; while we view women’s affairs as somehow abnormal, arising not from need or biology or evolution but from a moral disturbance–and an act, moreover, that dishonors–“cuckolds”– a man. This breech of honor suggests that a man experiences unendurable humiliation when faced with his lover’s infidelity–but that a woman does not when she faces her lover’s faithlessness.
This is what the double standard is–not only permission given to one gender and denied the other for an act that is engaged in together, but wildly different meanings granted that act. Please, remember this disgrace-revenge connection, even though we may all agree that it’s unfair–because it is real. And it even informs the way we think about men’s and women’s reasons for having an affair: Men, we have long assumed, have sex for its own sake–for variety, for fun–with no emotional involvement. What’s love got to do with it? Nothing. Whereas women, the thinking goes, have sex for emotional reasons; lust is always thought to be entwined with love. Her affair, then, since it’s a love affair, threatens the existing relationship (whereas you’ve heard unfaithful men say to their wives, “But it had nothing to do with you!”) So watch how this plays out: If a woman takes a man’s affair personally, or gets angry or hurt, everyone says “Forget it; he’s a man; he can’t help it; he’s just following his penis, that’s what men do.” Yet, a woman’s affair still makes us think 1. she’s lost control when she could have and should have kept it; 2. she’s in love with the affair partner; and 3. her behavior had everything to do with her mate.
I’ve always wondered, when I’ve seen one after another political wife stand up publicly beside her philandering husband, not why she defends him but whether her husband would do the same for her. Can you imagine it? No, a woman’s affair still hits a deep primitive cultural nerve that men’s affairs do not. Even the mere discussion of adultery–like this one, which is both sympathetic and serious–leads some people to think I am condoning it. In their hearts, many people don’t believe that a woman who has an affair should be forgiven under any circumstances–and I’m telling you right now, you’d better know if your partner is one of them.
Because you may have to take on your sorrow and your guilt and simply handle it. “I had an affair five years ago, ” admits Carrie, 35, “and I never told my boyfriend. I have had moments of deep regret–strangely, not about the affair as much as my withholding information–like I could make up for the Big Lie by being honest about it! I keep thinking if I don’t tell him, Bob will never know me fully. But then I think, well, that’s a crock, and just something I have to live with. I broke the faith, and I’m not going to now put it on him to figure out why. It’s asking too much.”
Jen, another woman who decided not to tell, says that not only does she not want to dump her guilt on her husband in hopes of forgiveness, but she doesn’t think her motives really matter. “Was I playing out my freedom fantasy–the one where I have this great relationship with one man, but a little fun on the side? Or was I angry at Raymond for all the reasons one gets angry at a husband? Whatever it was, who cares? I’m not dragging my husband into it. If it’s self-indulgent to have an affair, and I think it is even though for many reasons I can’t go into right now I don’t regret mine, then asking your husband to ruminate about your unfulfilled needs and fantasies seems self-deluded.”
Jen also questions the extent of “proper” truth-telling. “If I were to be truly honest with Raymond, I’d have to go way beyond the rage, fear, lust, or whatever, that drove me. I’d have to tell him that sex was better with this stranger than it is with him. And that would be not just the truth–that word we all worship so– but disgusting cruelty.”
One woman who says she did the right thing for her marriage by telling, said her affair wasn’t about sex at all. “My situation was unusual, I think. We had three small children, and I was in a terrible depression. I had become something of martyr and a saint, with all that neediness I faced and, as bizarre as it sounds, my smashing that role was good. Not good for the marriage, but for me Now of course, some would say, `Who cares what’s good for you?’ But my husband got it. He understood what happened. Thank God we’re okay now.”
I urge you to take into account every possible aspect of your affair, your husband’s character, your present feelings about him and your relationship, everything you can, before you make your decision about a confession. First, be practical. Do you know whether your partner is potentially violent? (Many violent crimes against women are committed by men they know–and by men in a jealous rage.) Can you deal with a decision to end the relationship? For years of pain and distrust on both your parts? Do you have an agenda that might be highly romanticized–like, say, that the truth will set you free, or that forgiveness is part of love, or that your partner will be grateful you’re telling? Are you looking for absolution, a condition better offered by a priest or pastor than your partner?
Look: Despite your fine character, you have broken the biggest rule in the culture. You’ve done what men kill women for doing. You are not a “good” woman in society’s terms any longer. All this can be frightening, and may make you want to return to safety; to be, in effect, reinstated. Everyone will want to tell you precisely how to get back to “goodness” again: beware their “good” intentions. Remember the literature. Remember what the world’s morality, it’s judgments, have done to unfaithful women. Remember the double standard. And remember that no one else in the world can know as much about you– your life, your psyche, your reasons, and your man–as you do. To tell or not to tell: You be the judge.