1. Honesty

The first extraordinary precaution to avoid your lover is to tell your husband all about your affair, and the decision you have made to restore your love for him. Then promise to keep telling him the truth about every aspect of your life, so you never again have a secret second life where you are tempted to hurt him behind his back.

Honesty and openness is one of the best ways to prevent yourself from being inconsiderate of your husband's feelings. It was your friend's threat to reveal all to your husband that motivated you to separate from your lover. Your friend wanted to shed to light of day on the things you were doing in secret to protect your husband. But you should do it yourself. Go right to your husband with the facts. If you had been honest about your budding relationship with your lover from the beginning, it would never have developed into an affair.

You may be afraid that once your husband knows the facts about your ongoing affair, he will leave you. Quite frankly, I think he has the right to make that decision. If, faced with the facts he decides to divorce you, you lose your option to restore your relationship with your him. But you simply cannot build a relationship on lies and deception. Dishonesty will never get you to your goal of loving your husband again. So it's better to get all of the cards out on the table now and build your marriage the right way, even if there is a chance that your husband will throw in the towel before you have a chance to reconcile.

Another reason you may be reluctant to tell your husband the truth is that he might have a violent reaction to what you have done. If you are afraid of his reaction, separate from him first, and then tell him the truth in a public place or with friends who can protect you. If your husband cannot control his temper once he knows the facts, then I see no hope of saving your marriage. Honesty is so important in marriage that if the threat of violence prevents honesty, I don't believe you will ever have a good marriage.

Besides, dishonesty does not prevent violence in marriage, it encourages it. If your honesty brings out violence in your husband, your dishonesty would enrage him even more, once he discovers that you've lied to him.

If you think your husband may divorce you or become violent when you are honest with him, I encourage you to be honest anyway, before you begin your plan for reconciliation. If he cannot accept the truth, no plan of reconciliation will work.

Honesty and openness helps build compatibility in marriage. When you and your spouse openly reveal the facts of your past, your present activities, and your plans for the future, you are able to make intelligent decisions that take each other's feelings into account. And that's how you create compatibility -- by making decisions that work well for both of you simultaneously.

Dishonesty

If your spouse had an affair ten years ago that was a brief indiscretion, would you want to know about it?

If you had an affair ten years ago that you ended because you knew it was wrong, should you tell your spouse about it?

These are tough questions that go to the heart of our fifth Love Buster -- dishonesty.

Dishonesty is the strangest of the five Love Busters. Obviously, no one likes dishonesty, but sometimes honesty seems even more damaging. What if the truth is more painful than a lie?

When a wife first learns that her husband has been unfaithful, the pain is often so great that she wishes she had been left ignorant. When a husband discovers his wife's affair, it's like a knife in his heart -- and he wonders if it would have been better not knowing. In fact, many marriage counselors advise clients to avoid telling spouses about past infidelity, saying that it's too painful for people to handle. Besides, if it's over and done with, why dredge up the sewage of the past?

It's this sort of confusion that leads some of the most well-intentioned husbands and wives to lie to each other, or at least give each other false impressions. They feel that dishonesty will help them protect each other's feelings.

But what kind of a relationship is that? The lie is a wall that comes between the two partners, something hidden, a secret that cannot be mentioned, yet is right under the surface of every conversation.

And dishonesty can be as addictive as a drug. One secret leads to another. If you start using dishonesty to protect each other's feelings, where will it end?

That's why dishonesty is a strange Love Buster. Lies clearly hurt a relationship over the long-term, but truth can also hurt, especially in the short-term. It's no wonder that many couples continue in dishonesty -- because they feel they can't take the shock of facing the truth, at least right now. As a result, the marriage dies a slow death.

Honesty is like a flu shot. It may give you a short, sharp pain, but it keeps you healthier over the following months.

In the case of infidelity, don't you think that your own affair would be one of the most important pieces of information about yourself? How could you ever expect to have an intimate relationship with someone to whom you cannot reveal your most inner feelings?

I'll admit that infidelity is an extreme example of something you would be tempted to lie about. But "little white lies" can be just as destructive when discovered, and there's even less justification for them. If it makes sense to be honest about something as hurtful as an affair, it makes even more sense to be honest about something more trivial, such as buying something you know your spouse would not have approved.

I wanted to use the extreme case of infidelity to underscore the curious nature of this Love Buster and how important honesty is, even in extreme cases. But whether the lie is about something as devastating as an affair, or something that would simply be disappointing to your spouse, it's dishonesty, not honesty, that makes matters worse. I draw a distinction between the pain of a thoughtless act and the pain of knowing about a thoughtless act. Honesty sometimes creates some pain, the pain of knowing that your spouse has been thoughtless. But it is really the thoughtless act itself that causes the pain. Dishonesty may defer some of that pain, but it compounds the pain later. The truth usually comes out eventually, and the months or years of hiding it not only creates an emotional barrier before it is revealed, but also destroys trust afterward.

Dishonesty strangles compatibility. To create and sustain compatibility, you must lay your cards on the table. You must be honest about your thoughts, feelings, habits, likes, dislikes, personal history, daily activities and plans for the future. When misinformation is part of the mix, you have little hope of making successful adjustments to each other. Dishonesty not only makes solutions hard to find, but it often leaves couples ignorant of the problems themselves.

There's another very important reason to be honest. Honesty tends to make our behavior more thoughtful. If we knew that everything we do and say would be televised and reviewed by all our friends, we would be far less likely to engage in thoughtless acts. Criminals would not steal and commit violent acts as much if they knew they would be caught each time they did. Honesty is the television camera in our lives. We know what we do, and if we are honest about what we do, we tend not to engage in thoughtless acts because we know those acts will be revealed-by ourselves.

In an honest relationship, thoughtless acts are usually corrected. Bad habits are nipped in the bud. Honesty keeps a couple from drifting into incompatibility-as incompatible attitudes and behavior are revealed, they can become targets for elimination. But if these attitudes and behavior remain hidden, they are left to grow out of control.

So many of the couples I've counseled have been confused as to what constitutes honesty in marriage, that I have created a policy to explain it. I call it the Policy of Radical Honesty, because so many think it's radical. But from my perspective either you are honest or you are dishonest. There is no middle ground.

My next Basic Concept will explain this policy to you, and try to justify something so radical that there are very few counselors who recommend it. And yet, without honesty -- radical honesty -- your marriage has little hope for success, and you and your spouse are very unlikely to be in love with each other.

The Policy of Radical Honesty

Reveal to your spouse as much
information about yourself as you know;
your thoughts, feelings, habits, likes,
dislikes, personal history, daily activities,
and plans for the future.