if you never knew that your WS had an affair...if it was over and done with...no STD's, no OC, no residual feelings for the OP..would you still want to know about it?...

i mean, i may be biased as the FWS, but i think if it has ended, and there has been no residual 'stuff' left over..i'd really rather not know???...

i just can't see the point in telling my H of the A now..it's over and done with, and i've realized that he is the one i am meant to be with, he is the one who truly loves ME and not only the feelings i bring to him...

would you REALLY want to know if you didn't have to???

Hello:

You are still disrespecting and humiliating your husband by not being honest with him. If you have respect for him then he deserves the truth so he can make decisions on what he wishes to do. You are asking is it better to be honest with your spouse or continue through lies of omission to tell him the truth. You have cheated, betrayed your husband and marriage and put his health at risk and you want to know if is all right not to tell him the truth? If you truly love and respect you husband you will be honest and remorseful to him. Otherwise you are just being the typical selfish wayward spouse who does not wish to suffer any consequences to her actions. Your marriage is either based on a foundation of honesty or lies. At the very least you should tell your husband out of respect you still have for him. How sad that you even have to ask this question. I wish you luck because it seems your moral compass is still broken because you still seem incapbable of being honest with your husband.

Hi Dreamcatcher

To answer your question yes. How else is your H going to be able to address his part of creating the astmosphere for an A to develope. He is 50% responsible for the pre-A M problems. You are 100% responsible for the A.

He also needs to know because you are not the W he married. You say there is no residule stuff, but there is. You question is part of the stuff, so is your knoweldge of the A, it has effected you. And, it will continue to have an effect on you and on your M. Lies and deceit can and will eat at you. Also anger and resentment. Better to confess anyways, because you can never be sure that he won't find out on his own.

Also since you haven't told your H of the A, whats to stop another A from happening.
For your M to be redeemed you both must be working on it. You cannot do it alone.

Be open and honest with your H, he deserves it. Yes it will hurt him, but it will also tell him how much you want your M to work. That you choose him, and that you Love him.

My gut reaction is to say YES I would want to know... but in hindsight I would give anything if I hadn't ever found out and he had realized on his own that it was me he loved and wanted to spend the rest of his life with and that his affair was a mistake. If he had just come to me and told me he was unhappy... I would have done anything to save our marriage.

I wasn't given that chance... I was told out of the blue that he didn't love me anymore and wanted a divorce. It was after he moved out that I came across some love letters he had written to her and learned the real truth.

No he is not with her now... the best I can tell he is alone and miserable but still blaming me for everything, only what that everything is or was I was never told and never given the chance to correct.

So no I wouldn't want to know... not if he really regretted it and made a vow to himself to find a way to make our marriage what it used to be and could be again. I know that is going against popular opinion and MB principals... but gosh I would give anything not to have had to go through that awful pain.

Not knowing about the affair would forever put a wall of secrecy between my spouse and I that would make true intimacy (the sharing of our deepests thoughts and feelings) impossible to achieve.

Who knows, maybe he to had an affair(s) of his own, and would welcome an opportunity to finally come clean himself.

I think you are kidding yourself if you assume that your EA/PA has done no damage or caused no pain to your H even though you have ended it. Believe me I knew SOMETHING was WRONG in my marriage and tried desperately to figure out what it WAS. An affair sucks the lifeblood out of a marriage whether the BS knows the truth or not.By not leveling with your H you are dis-allowing him the opportunity to put the pieces of the confusing emotional puzzle in place. Without honesty there can be no healing and improvement in a marriage. Pain is terrible but I think dishonesty is even worse over the long run. Take care- lifeismessy

The question isn't if you should tell him, but how.

There is a questionaire you could print out and both fill out that would give you the opportunity to come clean in the spirit of improving the marriage.

thank you all for taking the time to reply...gave me lots to think about...
take care...

dreamcatcher

I can answer this because it was exactly my situation.

My H's affair was over long before I ever knew about it. There was no OC, no STD's, no residual feelings, no suspicion, nothing. I remember posting here that I could have lived the rest of my life not knowing, not finding out. But I did find out, quite accidentally, and that could happen to anyone.

To me it would have been much easier to handle if my H had told me rather than allowing me to find out by chance. I have never been able to completely rebuild trust in him and I'm always suspicious. I hate what it's done to our marriage and relationship.

My best advice is that it's always better to tell your spouse rather than leave it to chance that they may find out some other way. The wall built by lies doesn't fall so easily unless you're willing to take out the first brick with honesty.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by dreamcatcher:
<strong> if you never knew that your WS had an affair...if it was over and done with...no STD's, no OC, no residual feelings for the OP..would you still want to know about it?...

i mean, i may be biased as the FWS, but i think if it has ended, and there has been no residual 'stuff' left over..i'd really rather not know???...

i just can't see the point in telling my H of the A now..it's over and done with, and i've realized that he is the one i am meant to be with, he is the one who truly loves ME and not only the feelings i bring to him...

would you REALLY want to know if you didn't have to??? </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">OMG, of course I would want to know. It is MY LIFE and I have RIGHT TO KNOW. I have a right to know to whom I am married. I have a RIGHT to choose whether or not I would want to stay married to a liar and cheat.

You have NO RIGHT to withhold information about your spouse's life from them. How pernicious, manipulative and cruel.

What if your spouse would choose NOT to continue the marriage if he had all the facts? Who are you to deny him that right?

To withhold this information is to keep your spouse in bondage to you based on A LIE.

<small>[ December 14, 2003, 11:05 AM: Message edited by: MelodyLane ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by dreamcatcher:
<strong>

i just can't see the point in telling my H of the A now..it's over and done with, and i've realized that he is the one i am meant to be with, he is the one who truly loves ME and not only the feelings i bring to him...
</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">What about what is best for HIM? Are you the one he would choose to be with? Shouldn't he have a little say in this or do his feelings mean a damn thing to you? Will he truly love you if he knows WHO you are? You have hidden this from him. He is not aware of how very destructive you are and doesn't know that he needs to protect himself from you.

Would he truly want to be married to you if he knew who you really are? Shouldn't he have the right to make that choice? You are just keeping him on the hook with a LIE. Sort of like a pet you own that you keep around for your convenience.

Willard Harley on revealing an affair:

"From my perspective, honesty is part of the solution to infidelity, and so I'll take honesty for whatever reason, even if it's to relieve a feeling of guilt and depression. The revelation of an affair is very hard on an unsuspecting spouse, of course, but at the same time, it's the first step toward marital reconciliation.

Most unfaithful spouses know that their affair is one of the most heartless acts they could ever inflict on their spouse. So one of their reasons to be dishonest is to protect their spouse from emotional pain. "Why add insult to injury," they reason. "What I did was wrong, but why put my spouse through needless pain by revealing this thoughtless act?" As is the case with bank robbers and murderers, unfaithful spouses don't think they will ever be discovered, and so they don't expect their unfaithfulness to hurt their spouse.

But I am one of the very few that advocate the revelation of affairs at all costs, even when the wayward spouse has no feelings of guilt or depression to overcome. I believe that honesty is so essential to the success of marriage, that hiding past infidelity makes a marriage dishonest, preventing emotional closeness and intimacy.

It isn't honesty that causes the pain, it's the affair. Honesty is simply revealing truth to the victim. Those who advocate dishonesty regarding infidelity assume that the truth will cause such irreparable harm, that it's in the best interest of a victimized spouse to go through life with the illusion of fidelity.

It's patronizing to think that a spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Anyone who assumes that their spouse cannot handle truth is being incredibly disrespectful, manipulative and in the final analysis, dangerous. How little you must think of your spouse when you try to protect him or her from the truth.

It's not only patronizing, but it's also false to assume that your spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Illusions do not make us happy, they cause us to wander through life, bumping into barriers that are invisible to us because of the illusion that is created. Truth, on the other hand, reveals those barriers, and sheds light on them so that we can see well enough to overcome them. The unsuspecting spouse of an unfaithful husband or wife wonders why their marriage is not more fulfilling and more intimate. Knowledge of an affair would make it clear why all efforts have failed.

After revealing an affair, your spouse will no longer trust you. But lack of trust does not ruin a marriage, it's the lack of care and protection that ruins marriages. Your spouse should not trust you, and the sooner your spouse realizes it, the better.

The Policy of Radical Honesty is one of two rules you must follow to protect your spouse from your self-centered behavior, which includes affairs. The other rule is the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). If you were to be completely honest with you spouse, and you were to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement, an affair would be impossible, unless for some reason your spouse wanted you to have one.

If you knew that your affair would be discovered -- that right after having sex with your co-worker, your spouse were to find out about it -- you would probably not go through with it. And if you were honest enough with your spouse so that YOU would be the one to tell him or her what you did, your honesty would be a huge reason to avoid any affair.

How the victimized spouse should respond to the revelation of an affair is a subject of a later column. I do not have the space to treat it here. But a spouse is twice victimized when he or she is lied to about an affair. Truth is far easier to handle than lies."

These may seem extreme, but:

*would you want to know if your daughter got pregnant and had an abortion? After all there are no "residuals" left behind when all is said and done.

*Would you want to know if your son was strung out on drugs after he quit using? After all he did quit, right.

*Would you want to know about about an affair that your husband had in the past, even if there were no STD's or other "baggage" so to speak?

OF COURSE YOU WOULD!!!

Why choose to live with the guilt and dishonesty of hiding your affair. Treat him the same way that you would want to be treated!

My thoughts...

I'd love to avoid the pain and heartache that I've endured (and am still enduring). However, almost every BS will tell you that the most painful part of the A was the betrayal and lies, not any "act" of the A.

That said, I think you have a great opportunity. As mentioned above, if and when he does find out what happened, and you cannot guarantee that he will never find out, it will still be devastating.

However, if you come to him in the right situation, with the right frame of mind, and the complete truth, you may be surprised.

If you come to him prepared to tell him everything, and willing to answer any and all questions he might have with complete honesty, you might be surprised.

If everything you say about the A is true, and I've no reason to believe otherwise, then sharing this with him may have two results. Not only will it unburden you of some guilt you may be carrying, but it may actually build a greater trust between the two of you from that point forward. Knowing that you'd come to him and openly share such painful information...

If I could change one thing from the past about my marriage, I would wish that my WW would have come to me and confessed whatever concerns and feelings she had. If she would have come to me ahead of time and told me that she...

1) Felt like our marriage had become more like roommates sharing expenses, and...
2) Was developing strong feelings for someone else...

Then I'd have felt that I was being given a chance to participate in improving our relationship, and that she was so trustworthy and honest that she came to me to share information that could have a very negative impact on our marriage.

You might be surprised how much "total honesty" can make someone feel better about you, even if the truth is sometimes painful.

DC if you had been honest with your H and had expressed to him that you were being attracted to your OM because he was fulfilling your most EN's that he used to meet, do you honestly think that your affair would have ever had a chance to be?

The point I'm trying to make is that with the possible exception of a ONS, it is virtually impossible for an affair to happen if there is radical honesty present when spouses communicate their deepest thoughts and feelings towards each other(true intimacy). Expressing growing attraction towards an OP to a spouse lessens the possibility of acting on that attraction because both spouses are more likely to take preventive measures to safeguard their marriage from the danger of one or both spouses crossing marital boundaries. Are you at that point where you can honestly and clearly express attraction to other men to your H?