NC,

I am searching for words to help you face what is before you.

You are questioning your decision to tell you husband the truth, and wondering if it was the best thing to do. I know that you think that your marriage would have endured and things would have been fine, at least someday, if you had never told him.

Is this true, though? I don't think so. This sin would have haunted you, and changed who you were - each day it would have eroded a piece of your soul, isn't that more truthful? And with each day, your understanding of the "real" closeness and love you had with your husband would have this darkness about it, because you would know that on the surface you were showing him love, but underneath the foundation of that love was not love at all, but lies and betrayal.

You cannot build love, a marriage, a relationship, a life, on lies and betrayal. Your desire to tell your husband the truth was proof of this. You knew that your affair had undermined your marriage, and the only way to make foundation repairs was to dig up the problem, expose it, and either rebuild the marriage or face the possible truth that your husband would not be able to rebuild.


You have faced this with grace and dignity. You have owned the truth, and have not decided for your husband. You could have decided for him, you know. You could have continued to lie, to betray him every day in that way, and decided for him that he would remain in this marriage and not know that the foundation was gravely damaged. You could have continued to conceal the truth of his life from him, chosen his path for him, and made the very selfish choice to have what YOU wanted instead.


You did the most honorable thing you could do, after you did something very dishonorable. What you have done, confess your affair, now sets you on the path to redeem yourself. Your sense of guilt and remorse, and your desire to allow your husband to freely choose, shows you to be headed in the direction of honor.


The rest of your future might hold reconciliation. It might hold divorce. Either way, you are a woman who is working to make amends for her wrongdoing, and to make changes in herself.


There is no more praiseworthy action than that.


Schoolbus