Ask Miri: I Had An Affair and Now My Husband Wants to Meet the Man

Posted on June 27, 2012 by

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I had an affair

Dear Miri,
I got married few months ago. I told my husband about my past before we got engaged;  I was having affair which lasted 3yrs. I had gotten physical with that guy, and I told this truth to my husband, as I never wanted to cheat on my husband.  At the time I told him,  my husband did not have a problem with the affair. But after we got married he did. Now he wants to meet the guy. What should I do?

Thanks,
Honest
Dear Honest:

 

What should you do? If I knew the answer to that I’d be, well, you. But I’ll do my best. I’m so glad that  you and your husband have an honest and open relationship. We want to share everything, until we do. Does that ring a bell? In other words, you wanted to share and perhaps unburden yourself as well? But now he’s hurt. Sharing is important but unburdening ourselves is different. Nobody can offer you redemption. You grant that to yourself.

I know, he acted like he was fine with the whole thing until after you got married. The whole thing sunk in. Now he wants to see the man who you were willing to jeopardize your relationship for. That’s of course, not a good idea. And meeting the man solves nothing and is guaranteed to create more problems. Your husband will scrutinize the man for the traits you found so irresistible, hold a mirror to himself and come up short,  feeling even more shitty about himself.  Also, leaving affair-man alone is a good idea legally. Who knows, maybe he’d file a restraining order or freak out. Anyway, this is between you and your husband and the other man is really not the issue, to use a therapy cliche.

But what is a good idea, is spending some real honest time with yourself. Being honest about an action (the affair) is not all there is to being honest. You must also be honest with yourself and I dare say, that may be the harder task here. What were you thinking? That’s the question that you must answer if you indeed want to stay happily married. What was missing inside your relationship that made you stray? Are those missing pieces found? Are you content, is there enough between your husband and you to keep you so? There are consequences to our actions and before we go spilling our guts, it’s always important to imagine what they might be. Did you really expect the admission of an affair not to be a problem? Did you tell him to illicit his help in keeping you faithful? Because that’s not his job, that’s yours. These are important questions to ask yourself. When we take full responsibility, and that includes understanding our motivations, we are behaving with true respect toward others and ourselves.

Honest, your confession is going to require some healing time for your husband. You’ll need to give him that and accept that he is hurt. He will have to decide how he handles that hurt. It’s easy when our emotions are running high to forget that all feelings calm with time. That all hurts eventually become dull aches and dull aches, scars.  Right now this situation seems like it will never change, but it will. In fact, the situation, unwittingly, is offering you all another chance for even deeper intimacy. Ironically, learning how to heal from hurt inflicted by each other inside a relationship, is part of the deal. I know that wasn’t your intention, yet life has a way of offering up multiple lessons within each seemingly simple interaction. You and your husband will eventually come through the other side of this. When your husband feels jealous, you could point out that you chose him. As you go forward, if you’re not cherishing your relationship, talk about the problems with your husband before you take actions that hurt both of you. Take the high road, be mature and you will have less to forgive.  I know.

Be well and take good care. Your answers? They are right in front of you and sometimes they will hurt but those are growing pains, embrace them.

Best,

Miri
(Image: reegone/Flickr Creative Commons)
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Posted in: affairs, Ask Miri, guidance, Guilt, Marriage, regrets, Relationships, self-discovery, Women