21st September, 2008
Question
I'm a 38 year old female. When I was 30 and in my first marriage, I had an affair. He was married too. Obviously, we were both in troubled marriages that were crumbling to pieces. Still, there is no excuse for what we did.
We both tried dating other people after our respective divorces and were told by friends that our relationship would never work. But we were constantly drawn to each other and finally moved in together and got married.
We are now married for five years and very happy. I am more in love with him than I ever thought possible. We are ashamed of the way we met, and wish we could go back and do it differently, and avoid the hurt and disruption we caused. Yet we both agree that we are so happy to have found one another. We would never change the fact that we are married today.
Are we just living in a dream-land? Can a marriage spawned from an affair really survive?
Answer
I don't wish you to be unhappy. Of course I don't. But I do have to admit that it's good to hear that guilt is alive and well. I was beginning to wonder.
When I started off as a psychologist, therapy was largely about softening impossible burdens of inappropriate guilt. These days it's more akin to a moral boot-camp, geared to create a functioning conscience, or awaken personal responsibility to use a less biblical turn of phrase. And before anyone thinks I've entirely lost it, let me hasten to add that therapy is about finding peace, if not actual happiness. Appropriate guilt is central to that process.
Few marriages end cleanly. It's not synchronised swimming. People don't fall out of love at the same time. They certainly don't arrive at the decision to ditch a marriage directly on cue. It's always painful and messy and filled with situations we could have handled differently, and better. Hurt is par for the course. And of course affairs are awful, involving as they do, so much deceit. No, it's not pretty. And yes, anyone with a heart has regrets. Who wants to sully their slate with underhand behaviour? Or treat someone they once loved badly?
Of course your marriage can succeed. You didn't do what you had to do lightly. And guilt used wisely, deepens our understanding of the human condition, and particularly of ourselves. You cherish what you have. Your loss of innocence, which is what marital breakdown entails, makes you more careful. You don't take anything for granted. You understand your capacity to get things wrong, which makes you willing to challenge yourself, and change what needs to be changed. Appropriate guilt makes us properly humble, and hence kinder, more gentle, and more loving. Which is how I think both you and your husband are.
