What I didn't know didn't hurt me????

[Zenstudent]

I think fellini's point is that OP is asking BS' s if they would have preferred not to know about their WS cheating. She's not asking whether its right or wrong nor is she asking people to respond based on philosophy. Unless you are a BS you have no idea how you would respond if you found your SO was cheating. To those posters the question is academic and their response is pure speculation. So - let's stay on topic.

I'm confused. Who are you adressing, drifter? And who do you think fellini is adressing - he may very well answer that for himself, I thought it was Alwaysgrowing and me?

 

On my end, I'm answering the OP - and I have plenty of experience in experiencing infidelity and knows exactly how it feels to be kept out of the loop when decisions are being made. No speculations at all.

[Southern Sun]

I am going to try to think through this and answer this honestly, as a former WW myself, and also consider it if I was in the position of a BS.

 

Would I want to know if my husband cheated?

 

Generally, I have always thought I would like to know the truth about my life. But having lived through the devastation my own cheating has created in my marriage, and seen the pain my H has gone through, I am beginning to think that, if given the ability to have no clue, I think I would choose the latter.

 

However, that assumes several things:

 

1) I have NO suspicions anything is off. If we have been going through difficult times, fighting, struggling, he's pulling away, etc., then I would want to know why. If I suspected cheating, especially if I specifically asked him, or if I had reason to believe that might be happening, then I think I would already be beyond the point of blissful ignorance. It's too late. There comes a point of no return. If a spouse truly believes down deep in their gut that their spouse might be cheating, yet never gets to the root of the issue, then I think that knowing the truth will eventually have to happen. It's crazy-making otherwise. So best to avoid getting to the point of no return, if you want to stay in blissful ignorance.

 

2) My health and life are not at risk. Self explanatory.

 

3) It's one and done. Spouse has realized the error of their ways, ended it, and is making the marriage right again. I'm not assuming this is a ONS, but if after having an affair, they realize this is not how they want to live and recommit to the marriage, AND the other two above conditions are met, again, I think I would prefer to just never know.

 

Looking at this from the WS perspective...from my own perspective, I didn't want to tell my BH for a variety of reasons. Yes, one of them was because I didn't want him to hurt. I get laughed at and scolded on this board for saying that, but it's true. The other was self-protection. I didn't want to get divorced, lose my family. I was scared. I also didn't think I wanted xMM in the long-term anyway, so I thought it made the most sense to try to end it with him and recommit to my marriage. If I could keep it to myself, wouldn't that just wall off the pain to less people? That was my thought process. Because believe me, I was in a lot of pain.

 

And that in itself ultimately became the reason I couldn't be the WS able to do any of those things required to keep my BS in blissful ignorance. I was too guilty, too obvious, too miserable. I wore it all on my sleeve. So the minute I stepped foot in an affair, I was already past the point of no return.

[Mr. Lucky]

Any spouse can, at any time and in any place and set of circumstances, meet someone and start falling in love.

 

This statement simply isn't true. Infidelity isn't a viral infection, we're not all equally prone to participation. As a married man, I can't "meet someone and start falling in love" unless I allow myself to indulge in certain behaviors - flirtation, intimate conversation, personal space, etc. Love requires interaction, I can simply opt out.

 

All would seem normal, if it's not one of those affairs that creates distance and tension in the relationship (but the BS doesn't know why).

 

Unless the WS is prescient, how do they know how the affair will affect their future behavior regarding "distance and tension" in the relationship? The "truth" doesn't level the playing field in present time, it allows future decisions to be made equally informed. A WS doesn't disclose to fix their marriage today, if smart they do so to have a chance at marital survival a year, two years, three years from now. It's a process...

 

Mr. Lucky

[fellini]

This statement simply isn't true. Infidelity isn't a viral infection, we're not all equally prone to participation. As a married man, I can't "meet someone and start falling in love" unless I allow myself to indulge in certain behaviors - flirtation, intimate conversation, personal space, etc. Love requires interaction, I can simply opt out.

 

I think it's only fair that you read the entire paragraph I wrote. You have isolated one phrase and lost completely the sense of my point.

 

That said, I disagree with what you say anyhow. Perhaps it's possible you personally would never fall in love with someone else while married, but the fact is there are 1000s of stories in LS alone in which W start with your assertion. Until one day...

[Furious]

I think those that don't want to know, who wished to have remained blissfully ignorant, have their reasons, which they are entitled to.

 

The paradox is that these folks found out anyway, and wishing or wrapping up a scenario in which their WS ended the affair after experiencing an epiphany of regret and without the transparency of their error invested themselves, love and all to their betrayed spouse. It's a fantastical wish, but is it possible, maybe, but I doubt it's a common occurrence.

 

All it takes is reading the many threads of WS's, that even after being discovered, they pine and grieve over the loss of their OM/OW, and the struggle of not having the double life they had become immersed in. With that said, it appears that it's rare indeed for cheaters to quit their cheating ways without a D-day and often times even with a d-day it's hard to quit it.

 

Not wanting to know because it would hurt is only postponing more hurt in the future.

[autumnnight]

I think Furious makes a good point. The people who say they wish they had never known DO know. So I can understand, given the horrible pain and the way it changed their lies, that they wish at times that they had never started down that road. Of course the ultimate wish would be that the WS never cheated to begin with. Beyond that, I can understand that some spouses just wish they hadn't been thrust into the nightmare.

 

In my case, I was not married, so it wasn't even comparable, but I needed to know that he was cheating because it answered my questions and helped me move him out of my life and heart.

 

If I was in a long term marriage and my spouse cheated on me with an actual person....I don't know. I think I would want to know, because even though my ex did not have an actual affair, not knowing all the thing I found out he did/was would have kept me in a miserable marriage never really understanding why it was so bad. Maybe if my marriage was blissfully happy and fulfilling then not knowing might be okay? I really have no idea.

[Mr. Lucky]

I think it's only fair that you read the entire paragraph I wrote. You have isolated one phrase and lost completely the sense of my point.

 

That said, I disagree with what you say anyhow. Perhaps it's possible you personally would never fall in love with someone else while married, but the fact is there are 1000s of stories in LS alone in which W start with your assertion. Until one day...

 

Of the 1000s of stories, a large percentage engage in revisionist history. What they should have done (and often claim they did) and what they actually did, two different things.

 

Your basic assertion that infidelity is like lightning and can strike anyone is nonsensical...

 

Mr. Lucky

[fellini]

And so we are back to the same discourse. The previous three players all saying that we BS are misinformed, delusional, nonsensical - although to get to that conclusion they have to continue to interpret our beliefs through an elaborate lens of hyperbole and speculation about what WE WHO DO NOT SHARE THEIR PERSPECTIVE REALLY FEEL.

 

So no Mr. Lucky, infidelity is not like lightning. Lightning doesn't strike so often, and certainly not so many times in the same place. I trust more what every single book on infidelity tells us, every single story in LS in which a WS begins with "I never considered possible I would cheat on my S", than I trust your analogy about lightning.

 

I dont need to resort to analogies to talk about infidelity and to dismiss it when the analogy doesn't hold water. There is sufficient detail and truth in infidelity to talk about it head on without interpretation, conjecture or divination.

 

OP asked a hypothetical question, and some of our answers have been challenged because they are "hypothetical" - which strikes me as a little inconsiderate. We understood the question, and we have answered it. To be told that our answer is not really valid because the fact is "we do know" is to me, frankly, arrogant.

 

Not all infidelity is met with a DDAY. Some people claim (and I presume believe) that all infidelity needs a dday, remorse, fixing, sharing all the details, a consequence - and not just any consequence, but one dealt by the BS. We know that some BS's do not share the belief that a WS suffers adequately or sufficient pain through self reflection and insist the BS must know. Some of us BS's actually do not share this belief. Some of us ACTUALLY believe the WS is the broken in the marriage and needs to address their own personal issues in order to function in the marriage again. Some of us believe this might best be a personal private journey. And we do not believe that this REQUIRES us to stand over them like a child monitoring their progress all the while we have to work on surviving our own trauma.

 

Some of us do not see how thrusting us into trauma, transferring the fixing from the WS onto the BS first, to be the best solution. Some of us believe that there is much less work in repairing oneself from an infidelity than there is to repairing the BS.

 

And while I can respect those who say to me, "I cannot believe that this can happen" it's not the same thing to tell me, "you are delusional in thinking it is possible". And this exactly what goes on here when a BS is telling another BS that they have no idea what they are talking about, or worse, that they have FALSELY INTERPRETED THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE.

 

It is possible for a WS to enter into an A, leave it (I don't care why) and return to the marriage the wiser or the more committed, or merely back to the "way it was". They can choose to stay silent or they can confess or they can wait and confess, or they can wait until something happens and the BS finds out weeks, months, years later.

 

If a WS has kept his/her infidelity to him/herself, is never discovered, and then confesses say, 10 years on, is it not reasonable to understand that it is possible for the BS to say: "I wish I had not been told"? Hypothetically speaking, of course.

 

I say yes. Others say no.

Edited June 22, 2015 by fellini

[katielee]

In recovery, I asked for a commitment to honesty. I'm am adult. There is no way I want my spouse to be making decisions for me, one of them being "what she doesn't know won't hurt her." It did. my gut was screaming. Our intimacy was a lie and you don't think I couldn't feel that? And then I found out myself. this doesn't bode well for reconciliation.

[Sub]

They know the truth that if they keep it to themselves, and learn from what they have done, they can be become better partners, having experienced a near death, that they can improve.

 

That's a very optimistic way of looking at it. Unless this is strictly a rationalization from the perspective of the one who knows.

[I4givehim]

In recovery, I asked for a commitment to honesty. I'm am adult. There is no way I want my spouse to be making decisions for me, one of them being "what she doesn't know won't hurt her." It did. my gut was screaming. Our intimacy was a lie and you don't think I couldn't feel that? And then I found out myself. this doesn't bode well for reconciliation.

I agree. I think I would have had more respect for my H if he was the one who told me about the A. Instead I had to get a letter in the mail anonymously (from the OW) informing me of his deceitful, lying a**..... When its all said and done I can't believe my H is such a coward. He is NOT a man in any form. Having an A, not telling me about it ect.... It has opened my eyes to what a POS he really is. He believes we can reconcile. I tell him "I DON'T SEE YOU AS A MAN ANYMORE." If he had man up from the beginning maybe just maybe I would have thought about reconciliation. To much hurt has been done to me. Time to move on. I want to make a better life for myself and most important for my children. I want my daughters to know you never except behavior like this from anybody. I deserve better.

[autumnnight]

I agree. I think I would have had more respect for my H if he was the one who told me about the A. Instead I had to get a letter in the mail anonymously (from the OW) informing me of his deceitful, lying a**..... When its all said and done I can't believe my H is such a coward. He is NOT a man in any form. Having an A, not telling me about it ect.... It has opened my eyes to what a POS he really is. He believes we can reconcile. I tell him "I DON'T SEE YOU AS A MAN ANYMORE." If he had man up from the beginning maybe just maybe I would have thought about reconciliation. To much hurt has been done to me. Time to move on. I want to make a better life for myself and most important for my children. I want my daughters to know you never except behavior like this from anybody. I deserve better.

 

This is why I really do believe divorce is the best option, even if one day down the road you might consider reconciling. It seems that for many many people, all staying married does is keep both people held hostage. It takes a very unique WS and BS to be able to stay married and actually have a marriage.

[fellini]

It seems to me that neither marriage nor divorce are the solution.

 

There is surely a cultural aspect to all of this that is not part of the conversation. It's as though you one day discovered an A and your spouse is a monster. How is divorce a solution if the real issue is you no longer see your spouse as human let alone an equal? I can understand why some people find out their fiancee or their newlywed partner has been cheating on them and they walk away before there is any real history.

 

But doesn't anyone else have the experience that after 15 years of marriage, (excluding stories like lifedestroyed) when one discovers that a spouse has embarked upon an affair, ends it, asks to be let back in, that maybe the spouse is not a monster but a human being who has done what 10s of 10000s have done before?

 

Obviously there is a lot of pain in this. I have been there. I know the pain. But to say that divorcing my WW after 15 years of so much other stuff, of having raised a wonderful child for 11 years, of having so much good to weigh... I don't know. To toss all that, to begin again, when an A can be "bracketed" within the context in which it really happened rather than throw me into an emotional "it was all a lie" (All of it? really? a lie?, it rolls off the tongue so easily, but believing your entire life together was a lie is much more to swallow than that.)

 

I know when my now WW married me it was not a lie, there was nothing but truth in her desire to be with me. With me. (Unless I stumbled into a masochist who was willing to wait 15 years before she decided to turn away from us and seek out her revenge. Im going to believe my WW married me, waited 15 years, bore my child, loved and nurtured her JUST so she could do what? Have an affair?)

 

Obviously if she was capable of 15 years of wanting to be my wife, she still has what it takes to be my wife for another 15 years. The affair does not negate that. In fact now, 2 years post dday, the affair only highlights and reinforces that her first choice, me, was what she wanted. Her AP was a successful single, available, wanting man. He so desperately wanted her to leave me for him. And she had him. But then things changed. Really I cannot imagine how my reaction to what she has done, even telling me about it, can be I should divorce her. She is irrevocably in my life. Divorce is just yet another piece of paper. What happens between two human beings who have a history is far more important than the signature on the dotted line. IMHO.

 

No, if I am to walk away from my WW it will not be because of an affair. It will be because it is what I must do.

[TrustedthenBusted]

I have a question. Do you think you are better off knowing about the A or what you didn't know didn't hurt you. I wonder if my husband just slithered out of the A, like the snake he is, what would life be like now. I wouldn't have known all the deceitful things he did to me. I wouldn't have all this pain ect... Life would be normal.

 

I wonder if you are struggling with KNOWING what you now know, or if you are actually struggling with the choices you've made since finding out.

 

I've certainly been there, and at times am still there. I never wish I didn't know though. Ignorance is never bliss...it's just ignorance.

[Mr. Lucky]

If a WS has kept his/her infidelity to him/herself, is never discovered, and then confesses say, 10 years on, is it not reasonable to understand that it is possible for the BS to say: "I wish I had not been told"? Hypothetically speaking, of course.

 

I say yes. Others say no.

 

I think the more common reaction would be "I wish I had been told earlier".

 

Fellini, I respect the authenticity of your position and the hard work involved to get there. Hopefully no one, me included, comes across any differently.

 

But even you must note the irony in the disclosed position from which you discuss non-disclosure. The value of your input is, having experienced the process, you've decided that (given the choice) you wouldn't want to (under certain circumstances) go through it again. That's a lot of qualifiers for something to be generally applicable.

 

One contradiction of life is that intangible feelings - love, faith, commitment, loyalty, respect - are supported and defined by tangible acts. I don't see anyway around that in this or any other discussion...

 

Mr. Lucky

[autumnnight]

I remember reading about a man who was married for something like...50 years? And he was very happy, loved his wife, believed she loved him, they raised children. By all accounts his life was happy and fulfilled. Then he discovered some old letters of something that made him realize that at some point in their marriage she had had an affair.

 

I remember reading the comments posted under the article. It was interesting to see who thought it was sad but that he should hold onto the good memories of his life, and who actually thought this man in his 709's should disavow basically his entire marriage and stop grieving his dead wife now that she was a "slut." In that case, it probably would have been better to never have known.

[TrustedthenBusted]

I remember reading about a man who was married for something like...50 years? And he was very happy, loved his wife, believed she loved him, they raised children. By all accounts his life was happy and fulfilled. Then he discovered some old letters of something that made him realize that at some point in their marriage she had had an affair.

 

I remember reading the comments posted under the article. It was interesting to see who thought it was sad but that he should hold onto the good memories of his life, and who actually thought this man in his 709's should disavow basically his entire marriage and stop grieving his dead wife now that she was a "slut." In that case, it probably would have been better to never have known.

 

I think I read that same article, only I thought the guy who was like 95 years old actually divorced his wife over it, even though the affair was like 50 years earlier.

 

Lies don't age like wine. They age like bananas.

[autumnnight]

I think I read that same article, only I thought the guy who was like 95 years old actually divorced his wife over it, even though the affair was like 50 years earlier.

 

Lies don't age like wine. They age like bananas.

 

I couldn't remember the particulars, and affairs are always, ALWAYS, wrong.

 

I guess there are 2 schools of thought - a short lived affair is wrong, but it doesn't cancel out 50 years. Or, no matter how good 50 years are, a short lived affair makes it all a lie.

[jen1447]

It's not the affair that makes it a lie, it's the lie behind the affair that makes it a lie.

[autumnnight]

It's not the affair that makes it a lie, it's the lie behind the affair that makes it a lie.

 

Definitely. I guess it would just depend on the person as to whether they could deal with it in light of the 50 years or if it would make all the 50 years null and void. I can see both sides.

 

I can respect the person who decides it is not worth chucking 50 years.

 

I can respect the person who leaves and decides that that long term lie just cannot be washed away no matter how good some years seemed.

 

It is the person who feels the latter but stays around that I have trouble with. But that is because of the way my brain works.

[jen1447]

I don't presume to decide for anyone what they should think either, but imo what exacerbates the injury from an affair (however brief) that was never brought to light is that it's not just a single lie, it's essentially a lie every day out of every year from that point forward until you're dead. That kinda changes what might seem contextually minor into something enormous.

 

In that sense, you could really say that the victim was objectively living a lie, as all that time, he/she never had the facts about the very heart of their life. It'd be like discovering your spouse was a secret assassin leading a double life all that time. Pretty hard imo to shrug that off and say "no biggie," and likewise pretty incredible to think that anyone would want to be oblivious and carry on with the lie.

[Southern Sun]

I don't presume to decide for anyone what they should think either, but imo what exacerbates the injury from an affair (however brief) that was never brought to light is that it's not just a single lie, it's essentially a lie every day out of every year from that point forward until you're dead. That kinda changes what might seem contextually minor into something enormous.

 

In that sense, you could really say that the victim was objectively living a lie, as all that time, he/she never had the facts about the very heart of their life. It'd be like discovering your spouse was a secret assassin leading a double life all that time. Pretty hard imo to shrug that off and say "no biggie," and likewise pretty incredible to think that anyone would want to be oblivious and carry on with the lie.

 

That's the thing - this whole debate assumes we know the ending. I mean, the very, very end. For example, if my husband cheated and I could see the future and I knew that, by the time I died, I could never possibly know, and he had seen the error of his ways and corrected his behavior and restored our marriage, then I would be better off not knowing...never knowing. But if something was going to occur that would tip me off before my last breath - then freaking tell me ASAP. At that point, I would have rather known back when it happened, so I could have made decisions about my life and, if I chose, worked together with my spouse.

 

So that's the problem with all of this. We can't know the ending. We can say, "I would rather not know." But what if we move forward thinking that's what our spouse would want, and then something crazy happens in 20 years and it's revealed? It would potentially be more devastating than if we had just confessed up front.

 

Jeez. How bout this. Don't cheat.

[autumnnight]

Jeez. How bout this. Don't cheat.

 

This. This really IS the bottom line. If you don't want to be in a wad about whether or not to confess....don't do anything you need to confess TO.

[HtotheN]

I have a question. Do you think you are better off knowing about the A or what you didn't know didn't hurt you. I wonder if my husband just slithered out of the A, like the snake he is, what would life be like now. I wouldn't have known all the deceitful things he did to me. I wouldn't have all this pain ect... Life would be normal.

 

While cheating on me, my (now ex) husband had that "what she doesn't know, won't hurt her" philosophy but I think that's complete BS.

 

I compare cheating on a spouse (and family as a whole) to black mold in a house. You might not be aware of the black mold because it's hidden behinds the walls but every day, it is effecting everyone who lives in the house. It is toxic to all involved and colors all interactions.

[Sub]

But if something was going to occur that would tip me off before my last breath - then freaking tell me ASAP.

 

True. But the decision to not disclose is rooted in the assumption - or the hope - that nothing will tip you off. It's risk assessment, under the guise of a rather disingenuous desire to not "hurt" someone.

 

To jen1447's point about it being a continuous lie for however long it's kept under wraps: it's not just the not telling and letting it be. It's the strong possibility that the unknowing BS verbalizes how much they trust their SO, or how faithful they've been for all these years, how they've stuck it out through thick and thin, etc. I'm sure there has to be a greater conflict at those moments within a WS.