In yesterday’s Dear Prudence column, the first letter writer asks for advice on how to fess up to her new husband about a one night stand, and Prudie responds with what I consider to be terrible advice: to keep the affair to herself, and “recommit” to her husband.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around both Prudie’s advice, and the number of posters in the comments section who are agreeing with her. There’s currently maybe a 70/30 split in favor of clamming up about it, with most of those in favor of keeping quiet citing the possibility that revealing the affair would either destroy the marriage or destroy the husband. Some of them add that bearing the long term burden of guilt is the wife’s “punishment” for cheating, and to try and relieve herself of some of that guilt by confessing is “selfish.”
I don’t get this attitude at all. I realize that expectations of monogamy in marriage run along a continuum, but still, the modal attitude is absolute monogamy, with an concurrent expectation of honesty.
In other words, the wife fucked up by having the affair, but continuing to lie about it only compounds the violation. Better a cheater than a cheater and a liar.
If my SO fessed up to a one-night stand, or an affair, or told me he wanted permission to roam, I wouldn’t go crazy and rip his head off. I’d want to figure out what had led to that situation and solve it like reasonable grown-ups. And yes, I’d be willing to consider granting the permission to roam, if I reckoned circumstances warranted it (doesn’t mean I think it’s ok in any relationship, or that anybody should be willing to put up with it).
If, on the other hand, I got a VD from him when we’d both previously received clean bills of health… well, I wouldn’t rip his head off either, but mostly because I’m not the head-ripping type. Instead, I’d help him pack up his things and he’d either never hear from me again or hear from my lawyer re. divorce/custody, whichever one was applicable.
Roaming dicks I can tolerate, lying no. And as the Spanish saying goes, “it’s easier to catch a liar than a one-legged man.”
If I found out that my wife had a one night stand it would destroy me and seriously harm our marriage. It would be better if she kept quiet about it so long as it never happened again.
No argument with the serious harm to the marriage part, but why would it “destroy” you? For me, the notion that my partner could be a party to an ongoing lie told to my face would be far more destructive than the actual act of cheating.
As someone who used to be a reckless cheater, I can say that it’s better to be upfront and honest about infidelity. I was in a 12-year relationship with someone and, thinking stupidly that I could do better (when in fact I had a near perfect companion), I was always out there banging any woman I could get my hands on. We tried to work through it, but my stupidity cost me the relationship, and that’s something that haunts me to this day.
I think Prudie is taking the attitude of the husband in this joke–in the grand scheme of things, two slips in 25 years isn’t that big a deal, and Prudie has heard enough “confession of a ‘nothing’ one-hitter tore my marriage apart” stories to realize that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. If it really was an isolated incident and the other person really is out of her life and there really is no VD or pregnancy, then it really would do more harm than good to tell the spouse. My gut says one should always be truthful; my head says to keep this in perspective.
I think you need to talk about it. There must have been some reason for the cheating otherwise why would they have done it. The lying to me is the worst part, and I’ve been through it a couple of times now and that makes me trust them a lot less then the cheating itself. If you’re going to cheat and lie to me there’s probably a lot of problems going on that I’d want to know about.
You should do what your partner would want you to do. For me, infidelity may or may not end the relationship depending on the circumstances but finding out that I’ve been lied to or misled would be unforgivable. If you’re with somebody who would rather not know about it I suppose you should respect their wishes and keep your mouth shut.
There’s a difference between a serial cheater and someone that had a single one-night stand. If the person that committed the single one-night stand was resolved to never cheat again and was able to do so, there is no benefit of coming clean. It would only do greater harm.
On the other hand if you are a serial cheater, then yes, you need to come clean with your SO about your behavior.
I voted yes. This sums up my reasoning quite accurately.
IMHO, there are certain things you just don’t lie about – one of those things is infidelity.
A follow-up question for **ColdPhoenix **(if you’re up to it) or anyone who chose ‘No’:
If you found out about the infidelity by another means other than your spouse confessing, could you accept the claim that have she kept it under wraps to spare your feelings? If she said that by not telling you she was accepting the burden of the secret as punishment for her infidelity, would you consider that honest, even honorable?
Would your trust in her suffer more or less if you found out she cheated on you from a friend as opposed to a confession? Or about the same?
As a disclaimer: I recognize that it’s easy to predict what one would do when not faced with the situation and predictions are not concrete.
Bullshit. If you purposely withhold information that you think the other person would want to know, you’re lying. There’s no reason to try to convince yourself that you’re not lying if they don’t ask, as if they find out that you “omitted” information they will see it as a lie and be all the angrier for it, not to mention that you have now done two horrible things.
As for the actual post: I can tell you first hand that being cheated on hurts a lot less than being “protected” from that information. Not that I think cheating is kosher in any situation at any point, I’d much rather know about it first hand than find out later that I’ve been lied to repeatedly. If the relationship survives the cheating and lying it will take many years, perhaps decades, to regain the lost trust.
As a follow-up, I’m relatively sure that I could forgive an isolated incident, given my spouse was forthright and remorseful, but it would be much more difficult if I knew he actively deceived me after the fact. Of course, I never ask, nor do I keep strict tabs on my spouse, so I guess it would be possible to passively deceive me. Still, I feel that lying by omission is a choice I’m not sure I could live with.
IMHO, people make mistakes; often very serious ones. But the important thing is that they learn from poor choices and the consequences mistakes like that can have. Your actions can hurt people, whether you mean them to or not. I believe my marriage would be stronger by overcoming a serious mistake like that as a couple. I think I would respect my spouse more for a) choosing honesty and openness over self-flagellation with guilt and b) having the respect for me that I’d handle it with maturity, whatever the outcome.
This is interesting to me because my ex-husband cheated on me (with someone I thought was a friend!). He didn’t hide the affair very well, and eventually I confronted him about it and he admitted it. I told him he had to choose between her or me, and he chose me. We then went to counseling, although probably not as long as we should have. We stayed married for several years and as far as I know he never cheated again. As far as I know. While I tried, I could never trust him the same way I did before the affair. We ended up getting divorced five years later, and while that was not directly related to his cheating, it didn’t help, because I could never see him as the same person again.
But that wasn’t exactly like the Prudence situation, which looks like it happened just once. My ex’s affair lasted about six weeks, I think. If it had happened just once, it could be chalked up to an error in judgment, a drunken indiscretion, something like that. It would be something I think I could have gotten over. My ex continued seeing this woman for a while, and their affair became increasingly obvious.
So as I read these comments I keep asking myself, would it have been better if I’d never known? What would the trajectory of my life have been if he’d kept it a secret? I can see the benefit in both hiding it and making it known. The repercussions of either are unpredictable, but there’s always a price to pay.
Don’t tell. I don’t want to know, and it’s better for everyone if you don’t tell, IMO. I don’t really believe relationships can patch up well after that; it always stays there. But this only pertains to that one-night stand. It’s a mistake, and you should make amends for it. Making amends doesn’t mean hurting your partner by absolving your own guilt. It means working more on your own relationship and patching it up and fixing it.