Thinking About Confessing

[NotADayGoesBy]

The overwhelming advice I have seen on this site is to always confess an affair. I was dead set against disclosing mine but after reading Naivewoman’s post, I am having second thoughts.

 

At this point I’m honestly not sure where my self interests end, and doing what’s best for my H and family begins. On one hand, I feel like I made the bad decision to have an A and should live with the consequences alone. On the other, I wonder if my marriage would be ultimately better for us both if I confessed.

 

Unlike many posters, my marriage is not unhappy. Obviously there are more issues than I realized, but most of them are from me. I’m in IC because I have to fix me to make the marriage better—I see this now. I wish it didn’t take an affair to know this.

 

As I look back on my past relationships where infidelity was involved and I was betrayed, there are some instances where I genuinely wish I had never found out. I’m trying to be honest with myself and ask: if the situation were reversed, would I want to know? In this situation I fel like the answer is no. I’m still struggling with being lovesick over the xAP, but I know it’s the affair addiction; not love. I never wanted to leave my husband. Divorce never entered my mind.

I would not be staying and faking it for the sake of my kids or lifestyle, therefore robbing him of a chance to find someone who loves him. If he were committed to doing the hard work to fix things and not let it happen again, I *think*i would rather not know. But how can you really know until you’re there?

 

We all work at the same place. Even though H rarely works with xMM, he knows him and they sometimes are in meetings together. If I tell I am dooming him to have to have this guy in his face because quitting is not an option. He’s trying to find another job but it may not happen.

 

Obviously I can give a million reasons not to tell, but we all know the benefits to coming clean. One last bit of information: I know there are no guarantees, but the threat of discovery is low.

 

Did you tell voluntarily? If you are at least a year + from the end of you A And didn’t tell, what are your thoughts? Do you regret not telling?

[Zona]

You do seem to be in a good place mentally for the most part and have a realistic view of things. There is one thing you didn't mention in your pros and cons of confessing. It is this: if you don't confess and your husband finds out on his own which, according to some sources (Dr. Shirley Glass for example) is quite likely, it will be INFINITELY WORSE. He will feel like his life has been completely fake, and he will likely never trust you again. He will think about all the times and ways you lied to him and deceived him while you were having sex with another man behind his back and he will be crushed. I didn't find out for over 7 years and it has tainted everything in our marriage since the affair. It's a total FindMuck. I suspected something was going on at the time but couldn't prove it, and I trusted my wife so gave her the benefit of the doubt.

 

A common way for affairs to get exposed is when the MM's wife finds out about his cheating and informs the other BS('s). This is something you can't control. Most BS's turn into Sherlock Holmes once cheating is discovered and will eventually get to all the truth.

 

You owe it to your husband to be honest with him. Don't let him discover it on his own some day. That is something you will regret for the rest of your life.

 

Edited to add: And BTW don't trickle truth as this will make the trust issue infinitely worse. Perhaps have two written time lines of the affair, ome with all the details and one without. He can decide what level of detail he wants.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Zona

[DKT3]

No such thing as low risk when it comes to affairs.

 

To share an experience of ours. After we divorced I had several people approach me saying that they knew of my wifes affair and really struggled with getting involved and telling me.

 

Unless you and your AP have the ability to teleport someone else knows, you not know who makes it high risk.

 

Also from my experience, her not confessing continued to drive a wedge between us even after she ended her affair. She feared fully engaging, she feared letting something slip (which she eventually did) she just plain lived in fear.

[oldtruck]

You need to not just tell your BH, you also have NC with the

OM. That means you or the OM will have to leave that job, ASAP.

[Simple Logic]

This is really a simple decision. If your wife/husband knows you had an affair would they divorce you? If the answer is yes, it is just the simple decision of do you want to get divorced now or see if they find out later.

[Naivewomen]

I would wait for your emotions to heal and suppress a bit before you tell your spouse. Your emotional stability is weak and unhealthy at the moment. Your husband cant fix this. Only we have the power to fix it. Continue with therapy, self help books whatever works. First and foremost fix YOU!! We cant have healthy anything while we feel like this. Hope it helps!! It helps me a bit to type this. I'm so sorry.

[pepperbird]

This decision isn't about what's best for you. It's about what's best for the two of you.

 

 

I would hazard a guess that if he finds out abut your actions from anyone else besides you, it will trump any love he has for you.

 

 

 

That's the thing a lot of ws don't understand. The cheating was bad enough, but it can be forgiven if both spouses want it and are willing to work at it.

Hiding an affair is another matter. Each lie obliterates trust, and really, that's easy to understand.

In your situation, it;s especially bad because your h and your om work together. If your H finds out from anyone else but you, it will humiliate him. Put yourself in his shoes..how would you feel? At least if he hears it from won;t have to live with the humiliation of knowing others knew about it ( if you think the om is going to keep his mouth zipped, you'd better hope he's not into bragging)

[DKT3]

This decision isn't about what's best for you. It's about what's best for the two of you.

 

This is a hard sell to people who mainly focus on their own happiness. Telling and allowing the betrayed spouse to decide for themselves what kind of relationship they want is secondary to what the wayward spouse wants.

 

I do agree that if the motivation to confess is to make herself feel better or get some relief it wont work for that.

Edited February 20, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
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[standtall]

I am of the opinion that it is not always best to confess an affair. If it was literally years ago and is over, over, then I would say no. On the other hand, it may be best to confess...for example, if you can't control you own feelings, or your AP is a wild card. There is no generic answer. I have been married for 22 yrs, and if my wife had a brief affair in say year 3, then it is best, for my piece of mind, not to know.

[LonelyITGuy]

What does your therapist think?

[vinnyfl]

There is no upside to confessing an affair. It is a selfish act to alleviate your guilt which in turn destroys your spouses life. You are in effect telling your spouse that you are a liar and cannot be trusted and then expecting to be forgiven, believed and trusted again. Your relationship may continue if forgiven but your betrayal will never be forgotten and will be brought up in many future arguments. Trust will never be the same. Your actions and activities will forever be watched carefully. Your spouse may even feel like cheating too to get even since there is not much you can say about it.

 

I know two friends who confessed. One got divorced right away. The other was forgiven but only lasted two more years before the accusations and mistrust of her got to be too much. Personal matters like this should not be decide by strangers, especially those who never cheated and confessed. Most will tell you what they feel is the way to proceed without thinking or knowing the consequences. I never ask strangers for advice on things even less personal and important than this.

 

If you think by confessing your spouse will think better of you, you are very wrong. It will change his view of you and your marriage. He will think less of you. You will be verifying that you cannot be believed or trusted and he will be asking your questions for years since believing an admitted liar is not going to happen so he will assume you are sugar coating the affair. His imagination will run wild. He will forever picture you giving yourself fully to another man.

 

If you do not believe what I say, do research from professional studies and papers, not strangers on the internet. They will tell you that you can expect years of questions as to why and what exactly you did. You will find out that all of your actions a little out of the ordinary will appear as cheating. You may get so tired of being accused of cheating that you will cheat again figuring if you are being assumed to be cheating you might as well do so.

 

Trust once broken will never be the same, never. To simplify this you how choices:

 

1. Tell your spouse and change your life and marriage for the worse forever.

2. Not tell him, don’t cheat again and your marriage will continue to be the same as it is now.

 

I chose not to tell my wife and we are happily married 46 years. I never cheated again and I just live with the guilt so my wife can be happy. Just knowing the guilt I feel was enough to stop me from cheating again. However be careful an research this yourself because sometimes when you confess and are forgiven, you will cheat again. The reason is now you know that your spouse is afraid to divorce you so the stakes are much lower than before. Yes, people who feel guilty do cheat again because what made them cheat in the first place still exists in the marriage and adults rarely change who they are. They may say they will do things differently but in the end they revert. That is why most who cheat become serial cheaters and I know a lot of guys and girls who are.

 

Do yourself a favor and just keep your mouth shut rather than destroy your spouse’s life.

[CantGetEnuff]

I co-sign @vinnyfl's comments in their entirety.

 

OP, I'd really really really suggest you just keep moving forward with your marriage. It IS possible to move on from affairs and have a solid relationship with your spouse. As Vinny says, blowing it up blows up EVERYTHING.

 

BOOM.

 

You seem to be in a good spot to move forward, and that's my motto. Keep doing that.

[BaileyB]

OP, I’m honestly not sure what I would do. Normally, I would say that the truth will set you free and your spouse has a right to know. I just don’t think it’s fair to ask your spouse to “save” the marriage when they don’t have all the information - this kind of secret causes division and disconnect.

 

My hesitation is obviously because you all work together. Oh, what a tangled web we weave... if only you could go back and make a different decision. But, obviously you can’t. You are left now trying to make the best of some really bad options...

 

The argument that you are somehow being selfish and saving your spouse pain by keeping the secret and not telling them about the affair is frankly, absolutely ridiculous. If someone wanted to save their spouse pain, they would not have selfishly had sex with someone who is not their spouse...

[Rockdad]

OP I will tell you my experience with confessing after I cheated in 1st marriage. Making no excuses as I knew before I did it was absolutely wrong even though it was a near sexless marriage to an abuser. We separated and she took my little boys off with her. I hurt her very badly. I did what I could for that 2nd chance which she granted me. The next 10 years of the marriage was hell on earth and the abuse level escalated and now sexless. (go figure?) No matter the continued counseling, walking a straight line and hard work was to no avail. She was understandably pissed and going to punish or get back at me and she did exactly that until I had a breakdown. She was absolutely shocked when I filed for divorce and now really pissed. Believe you me she punished me for years to come financially any inventive way she could.

 

 

 

How could I ever tell someone to confess??

[Zona]

I agree that it is ridiculous to claim that continuing to lie and cover up the affair is somehow the noble thing to do.

 

The thing is, living everyday with these lies and deceptions in your marriage is it's own punishment. Since most affairs are eventually found out, you will wonder every day if this will be the day it gets exposed. It's naïve to think that people at work didn't know what was going on, or that the AP will not continue to cheat until he gets caught. Your husband is likely one of the few people at work who doesn't know because he trusted you and it never crossed his mind that you were capable of cheating. That's how it was with me.

 

It's not the act of confessing that destroys your marriage, it was the act of betrayal that killed the marriage and set off a ticking time bomb. That's not to say the marriage can't be rebuilt on a foundation of honesty and redemption.

 

 

So there are three possibilities:

 

1) Don't tell and the affair never gets exposed. You will be susceptible to cheating again because you rug-swept the affair and never dealt with your "whys".

 

2) Confess and work through the fall-out, and most marriages recover. Through IC you can make yourself a safe partner.

 

3) Don't confess and have your spouse discover it themselves.

 

 

Number 3 is the worst case scenario, and by continuing to lie to and deceive your spouse, you are setting yourself up for it.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Zona

[NotADayGoesBy]

Thank you all for weighing in, I appreciate all perspectives. I’ve been very busy at work and not had much private time to get on here but I plan on reading the responses again carefully.

 

I absolutely do NOT want to confess only to assuage my guilt. I only want to if it’s what’s best in the long run. I will say in all honesty, I’m not sure I’m brave enough to do it, even if it’s best.

 

For those who don’t know my whole story, it’s unlikely xMM would blab. He was already having a full blown A with another colleague who is also a friend. He told his W about his A with her several months ago to try and save his marriage I guess, but not about me. I forget his wording, but he knows he stands to lose both women if they find out about me. I think he is keeping the OOW on a string (or maybe continuing the A) in case things don’t work out with W. At any rate, I think he has way more to worry about regarding what I could do to him.

[BaileyB]

That is however, all the more reason for he office rumor mill to swirl...

[Zona]

Did your affair ever go physical? I don't know the details, but it if was really honestly only an over-blown crush that never went anywhere physically, I would probably not confess to it.

 

I did read an old thread you posted about open relationships. I wish my wife had expressed a desire to be more adventuresome before she had her affair, because I would have been all in. However now it would never work because seeing her with someone else now would just be an ugly trigger-fest. Both my WW and I have way over the top libidos and could have had a lot of fun, but the affair burned that bridge.

[NotADayGoesBy]

Zona, unfortunately it did—once.

 

FYI my post on open relationships was not inspired by my own life or desire for one, but because of someone else’s post that made me curious to ask some questions about it. I read somewhere once it only works if you start off that way and that switching some time down the road from exclusive to open is a recipe for unhappiness for at least one of the partners, or both.

[Zona]

It is a rare couple that can make an open marriage work long term. As someone pointed out, women can find sex partners at the drop of a hat, while for men it is much harder. Not to mention the fact that we know from biology 101 that most women have a harder time separating love and sex. Also when (most) women have sex, their bodies produce a massive amount of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, which lead to powerful feelings of love, attachment and loyalty which can in turn create limerence.

There are other things short of an open marriage to spice things up, but you have to be very careful about it.

 

Anyways that's all OT for this thread.

 

You don't really have any good options now that it went physical. Sorry to say, only bad and worse.

[standtall]

<snip>So there are three possibilities:

 

1) Don't tell and the affair never gets exposed. You will be susceptible to cheating again because you rug-swept the affair and never dealt with your "whys".

 

2) Confess and work through the fall-out, and most marriages recover. Through IC you can make yourself a safe partner.

 

3) Don't confess and have your spouse discover it themselves.

 

Number 3 is the worst case scenario, and by continuing to lie to and deceive your spouse, you are setting yourself up for it.

 

1. Opinion....not fact.

2. Opinion...not fact.

3. Maybe

 

I couldn't disagree more with the rest of this post. I couldn't agree more with vinny...it is a selfish act where you trade your own piece of mind for that of the unsuspecting partner. For an example, as someone who has been what I think happily married for 23 yrs with no cheating, I would not want my wife to confess to something stupid she did for a weekend 20 yrs ago just so she feels better....that would serve no purpose in my opinion except destroy my piece of mind.

 

OP, there is no one size fits all answer.

Edited February 19, 2019 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
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[Zona]

@standtall

 

If you have not lived through infidelity as either the betrayed or wayward, I'm not sure how much weight your opinion carries. People who have lived it know that what I am saying is true, although the generalities aren't true for everyone. It's also the consensus from experts who have studied infidelity.

 

That being said, the OP gets to ultimately decide what she does in this situation, but can't control outside factors.

[bathtub-row]

I personally wouldn’t say anything about it. This is extremely hurtful information and it’ll take your husband years to get past it, if he ever does. It’ll completely change the dynamics of your marriage. I say move past it and don’t ever do anything like that again. If you’re the main cause of the problems in your marriage, you really need to get that straightened out, or leave the marriage and stop torturing your husband.

 

I know a lot of people say that you need to be honest but there is a such thing as too much honesty. If it were me, I wouldn’t want to know about it, but ONLY IF MY SPOUSE WAS SORRY ABOUT IT, STOPPED THE AFFAIR, AND VOWED TO NEVER DO IT AGAIN.

 

Just remember, once you pull the trigger on spilling that info, you can’t take it back.

[standtall]

@standtall

 

If you have not lived through infidelity as either the betrayed or wayward, I'm not sure how much weight your opinion carries. People who have lived it know that what I am saying is true, although the generalities aren't true for everyone. It's also the consensus from experts who have studied infidelity.

 

That being said, the OP gets to ultimately decide what she does in this situation, but can't control outside factors.

 

That's a first...my opinion is wrong. Well, since you haven't lived through a happy marriage, I question the validity of your opinion about remaining happy in a marriage. Do you see where this is going? Come on...respect 101, your opinion has as much weight as mine does.

 

"Consensus of experts"?? I hear another another opinion of yours. Where is this consensus? What is it's name? What exactly did they study and where did they get the data. I'm not trying to give you the burden of proof, but you....get this..."in my opinion"....are stating your feelings as facts.

 

OP....you got plenty of opinion here...they all have the same validity. I merely responded because you had posted...to paraphrase...that the overwhelming advice is to confess. I disagree. I would also assert that the overwhelming majority of people giving you that advice have been at the worse end of an affair and are pretty angry about it. They also may be projecting their anger onto you, and would like to see you suffer the worst possible consequences of your actions.....just my opinion.

Edited February 19, 2019 by standtall

[Zona]

As an example, because I have never experienced it myself, I would never say to a parent that lost a child that I know how they feel, and I would never give them advice on how to deal with it.

 

I can tell you from my experience, it would have been infinitely better for my wife to have come to me soon after the affair happened and told me about it instead of me finding out about it years later. If she confessed in a way that showed true remorse our marriage would be way further ahead.

Instead, because it had been rug-swept in her mind and she never suffered the real consequences from it, she stupidly reached out to her AP years later in the hope they could just be "friends". The affair could have easily restarted if I hadn't stumbled upon some of the messages by accident.