Most of the time, when I hear people on the subject of the details of an affair, I hear faithful spouses looking for a way to force their spouse to tell them everything. Or I hear from the cheating spouse who wants to know how much they have to disclose. There is usually a concern that the information will hurt your spouse or make things worse.
It’s relatively rare for me to hear from cheating spouses who have absolutely no problem coming clean and willingly giving up all the hurtful details. But it happens from time to time. And it usually comes from people who don’t quite understand their own motivations.
Someone might say, “I cheated on my husband with a man who really doesn’t interest me in any way other than sex. He really didn’t have any redeeming qualities. I realize that. And I didn’t tell my husband about the affair.” because I knew it would come to a natural end. However, my husband caught me. And unbelievably to me, he didn’t kick me out or cut me out of his life right away. He says he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet. But he says to take a decision, you need some information. You want all the details on the matter. At first I felt very uncomfortable with this. I didn’t want to hurt my husband about all the details. But he continued to press me on them. And once it all started spilling out I almost couldn’t stop him. I mean, I let it all go. I told him how I got a second phone so he wouldn’t suspect a thing. I told him about going to a hotel with the other man when he was supposed to be at my sister. I told him how I left him. The other man does things to me that he has never done to my husband. I have no idea why I gave away all this information. My husband acted as if he wanted to, but now I can say that he hurt him a lot. The weird thing is that if he asked me for more details, I suspect he’d blurt out even more. Why? Why don’t I have a problem giving him the details that are going to hurt him?”
Well, this is just my opinion, but there seem to be two potential possibilities here. One, maybe somewhere in the background, you want to hurt him, shock him, or scare him enough to make him pay attention. Perhaps you had the affair because of pent-up resentment, or your perception that something was missing from your marriage. Perhaps she hopes that by sharing the details, it will wake her husband up and inspire him to take some action. Or maybe you want to hurt him in some way because you were harboring some grudges.
If this is true, you should know that betraying someone and causing more problems in your marriage is not the way to handle this. Sure, your spouse deserves the information he’s asking for. But there’s a big difference between giving him the details that will let him know what he’s up against and then saying things that are meant to hurt or shock him.
The other possibility here is that you suspect that in order for your spouse to be willing to move on and perhaps try to save the marriage in the future, you will have to come clean with them. I understand this. As a spouse who was on the other side of this and was cheated on, I can tell you that the details can be very important to the faithful spouse. It can become very important for you to get all the pieces of the puzzle.
But then again, there is a difference between wanting to be honest and wanting to hurt. People often ask me how much to tell your spouse. I think your spouse needs to know who he’s dealing with, what he’s dealing with, and how and why this happened. They need to be able to get a clear picture of reality.
But you can do this without telling them specific details in terms of sex and little details that don’t matter and will only cause pain. Sexual details with the other man is an example. Of course people who have affairs have sex. This is a fact. And your husband already knows this, but rubbing salt in the wound by being explicit and hurtful isn’t necessary.
If you’re not sure why you might be freely sharing hurtful information, it’s important to dig a little deeper. Understanding your motivations is part of healing. And it’s part of making sure this doesn’t happen again. It’s not always easy to understand what drives us at times like this. If you have considered all of the above and are still unsure, I strongly suggest you have a counselor listen to you. In fact, that’s good advice even though we’re often too close to the situation to clearly see our motivations. But understanding our motivations is vital to healing and making sure we don’t repeat the same disastrous behaviors.
