Long...I'm sorry...
The last six months of my life has been an emotional roller coaster. My husband told me for months that he didn't love me anymore and wanted a divorve. I blindsided me, and I can't describe the pain. For a long time I felt broken. Our marriage has had a lot of up and downs, but during this time, I was smacked right upside the head with how much I loved him. After months of hell, I found out the reason he had been pushing me away was because he had a four month affair with a filipino woman when he was overseas. Our life has been a mess, but we are finally getting it back on track. We have worked so hard at being happy again, and we are more in love now than ever. In a weird way, what he did showed us both how much we DO love each other, and we are more in love, and closer now than we have been in 10 years....
Now comes the hard part...four years ago, I had a meaningless sexual affair with a man...it happened three times...and I regret it. It was the biggest mistake of my life. I learned my lesson and I have asked god for forgivness ever since. I do not want to tell my husband, period. I do not want to hurt him. I love him so much, and we have finally found each other again, and I am so scared of not only ruining things, but I really do not want to hurt him...
I know I can put it behind me because I know in my heart that I have learned my lesson, and would NEVER even consider such a thing again...but I just don't know what to do. I mean if we KNOW how we feel, and we KNOW how much we love our spouse and how much we regret it...do we really have to confess things that happened long ago???

i would say yes ...how can you have an honest relationship if you are not honest with everything....
i confessed and it cost me my marriage...was it worth it...F--- no...
but i had to come clean....
good luck to you....

Hi Lucky22,

My W kept several A's hidden from me for 10 years... I didn't have a clue. I did know about one A, and I suspected one more, but when she confessed the others 10 years later, it was just as if they happened that day.

My W thought that she could live with her guilt. She did a pretty good job of hiding it... but the guilt finally got to her. She had a nervous breakdown and then confessed the remaining A's.

I don't know what your H will or will not do if you don't confess... but I do suspect that if you think that you can just keep your A a secret and that it won't affect your M... then you are just kidding yourself.

Your H may divorce you, but then again, he may not... but if you ever want to have a true intimate relationship with him, then you need to confess.

Just my $0.02...

Semper Fi,
RIF

Lucky 22,

Virtually everyone here is going to tell you that you need to tell your H.

Complete honesty is probably the most important thing there is to building a strong M. I'll bet if you pay attention to yourself, there will be areas that you will not want to go into with your H because they will hit too close to your own secret. That will keep you from the kind of closeness needed in a M to make it strong.

Think about it. You said that your H was distant from you until he confessed the A. Now you two are closer. Can you honestly say that your own A has done NOTHING over the last four years to keep you from being as close to your H as you could be?

I am not an expert by any means, but it seems that if you and your H continue to work on things and get closer and more intimate with each other, that this secret you are carrying will get BIGGER and even more burdensome to you than it already is.

I will tell you that I have heard the opposite opinion on your particular situation. The idea is that anyone can lose their way for a short period of time, much as it seems you did. If they make a mistake, pull themselves out of it, and learn from it so that there is no chance of it happening again, why tell your S? It is just a way of trying to ease your own guilt and will needlessly hurt your S. If you are truly repentant than you should keep the burden to yourself and not give it to others.

I can see a certain logic in that way of thinking. But again, it doesn't address the vital issue of radical honesty and its importance in a M. Do you want your M to be ALL that it could be, or are you willing to settle for something less because of the one mistake you made?

There's my two cents. You are obviously a caring person who takes her M seriously, or you wouldn't be here asking this question. Keep posting, there are a lot of people here who REALLY know what they're talking about (unlike me,LOL), that will be able to help. God Bless You.

starman