However, I am quite upset to learn of this behaviour and the dishonesty for all these years. Is it crazy to be upset even though it was so long ago? Is it crazy to feel a loss of respect for him?
Our marriage was finally almost as good as I ever dreamed of. Is that all a lie now? All the misery of the past with the drinking and the poor marital practices we had have come rushing back to mind with this revelation. Is it good somehow that he told me of this 35 year secret?
Hi Barigirl. I'm sorry that this has happened. I know how horrible you must be feeling.
I think you're asking two related questions here: whether it is "crazy" that you feel so upset about what you've been told, and whether "it's good somehow" that he told you of the 35-year secret.
On the first, I suggest that it doesn't matter whether it is crazy to feel as you do. As I understand it, Marriage Builders does not judge whether feelings are right or wrong. We will always have feelings and instinctive reactions to things, and in most cases, there isn't any outright standard against which to judge whether those feelings are right or wrong. I think that most readers here would feel as upset as you do, but even then, how we would feel isn't the issue. What matters is that, when your spouse does something or tells you something (whether to do with historical honesty or not) you do not react with demands, disrespect or anger.
But then there's the question of the rightness or wrongness of his having told you about the event.
We've had many discussions on this forum about historical and radical honesty, and Dr Harley's views on this are quite clear: he recommends radical honesty about the past and the present, regardless of how unpleasant information might be. He created the personal history questionnaire for those doing the MB course in order that spouses could learn as much as possible about each other, all the better to understand each other and create a marriage of extraordinary care.
However, he does have a restriction on this, and that is when mistakes of the past that are already known about are brought up again during the search for radical honesty. This is because dwelling on mistakes from the past is an enemy of marriage. This applies especially when the subject of the "mistake" is an affair. Dr Harley is adamant that, once the basic details of an affair are known about and the couple is in recovery, the affair must not be brought up ever again. When the affair is raised again, the hurtful and thoughtless actions that the unfaithful enacted are brought into the present, making the present-day relationship unhappy - as has happened to you.
This means that, for two reasons (the affair was a mistake of the past, and also, it was an affair), your husband should not talk about the affair again. (I know that you were reading Draw Close rather than completing a questionnaire, but it was essentially the same thing.)
I copied an answer that Dr Harley gave to a poster on the private forum, about a similar event:
"In general, I recommend that after questions have been answered about the details of an affair, the topic should be dropped for future discussion. Further questioning falls into the category of dwelling on mistakes of the past, which is one of the four enemies of intimate conversation.
The Personal History Questionnaire is written to help a couple learn about each other's past that they had not known. While it's tempting to use it to ask a few more questions about an affair that had already been revealed and discussed earlier, I don't recommend further questioning on that incident.
Dr. Harley"
