8th March, 2009
Question
Ten years ago my husband and I hurt each other very badly. In fact it was me who first inflicted hurt. But we agreed that we loved each other and wanted to make a fresh start. Since then we've had a great time together, spending all our free time enjoying each others' company. I was very happy, although our sex life had cooled off. To be honest, this suited me fine. I just put it down to years of marriage and getting older.
Ten months ago I discovered that he had never given up the woman with whom he'd had an affair ten years back. I was numb with grief but decided not to tell our adult children, families, or friends, until I had decided what to do. However, I just could not imagine a life without him.
My husband is my life, my everything. I love him and I actually do believe him when he says he loves me. He says he's always made it clear to the other woman that it would never be more than sex and friendship. He says he was only with her because she made herself so available, and he knows he's treated her badly. He is very popular with all my friends and family and I would have found it very difficult to move forward if they all disliked him.
I did move forward, and although still very wounded, and finding it very difficult to forgive and forget, my husband and I are starting to have fun again and making plans for the future. Neither of us wants to grow old with anyone else. Slowly I'm getting my life back. I'm wiser, and have grown up a lot as a result of this experience. There is a feeling of living a lie when people speak of my husband with fondness, or talk about my good life. Yet in many ways I can carry on as if it had never happened. It's just on days when I'm tired or low, it can overwhelm me. But mostly I'm doing fine and getting better. I've never had counselling. I just couldn't get my hands on someone good.
What I need to know Patricia is what this says about me as a person. Nobody I know would feel I should stay. Have I no respect for myself, no dignity? I'm not financially independent and haven't got any qualifications, so that doesn't help. One thing I know for sure. My life would be empty without him.
Answer
Three things stand out. You don't say whether this affaire is still going on or not. So I've no idea what you're actually dealing with. Are you trying to live with the history of ten years of deceit? Or are you accommodating a third person in your marriage?
Secondly, you make a point of telling me not only that you hurt your husband, but that you did so first. I know you're trying to paint a true picture. But you're also suggesting that your husband's involvement with another woman is at least in part your fault. In some way that's not clear - since you're not explicit about what you did to hurt him - his unfaithfulness is a follow-on from your bad behaviour. That's what you feel.
Such thinking is full of pitfalls. To begin with, you didn't cause your husband's behaviour. None of us cause someone else's behaviour. They choose their response. Sure, we can put it up to a husband, mother, friend, neighbour, work colleague. In the end, however, they decide how to deal with us, no matter how challenging our behaviour might be. Say, for example, you were unfaithful first. Or did your husband down as a man. Or withdrew from sex. Provocation perhaps, but not the cause of his unfaithfulness. He had other options, like hauling you off to a marriage counsellor, or whatever.
Nor did you in any way deserve your husband's deceit, in the sense of some kind of punishment. You didn't earn his unfaithfulness. Your hurtful behaviour, whatever it was, didn't give your husband permission to seek someone else out. To put it succinctly, you did not cause, by word deed or omission, your husband's behaviour. You are not in any way, shape or form, responsible for your husband's affaire. He is.
Thirdly, you are terribly isolated. The reason isn't a failure to find good counselling, although certainly it can be difficult to discover someone who is simpatico. You chose not to. My guess is that you didn't want any challenge to your inclination to stay in your marriage. But since it doesn't matter what any counsellor thinks, your real fear was about questioning yourself too closely. The question you're putting to me now about self-espect and dignity has undoubtedly been bugging you all along.
You know I can't answer it. People make all kinds of emotional arrangements, within and outside marriage. Dignity in such matters - in fact dignity in all matters - is not handed to us by the opinions of others. Dignity and self-espect come from looking, honestly, into our own souls. I do believe you've avoided doing that in the past. You're not avoiding it now.
I feel I have to give you just one nudge. I accept that your life would be empty without your husband. But it could be even emptier with him, if the price you are paying is too great. Nobody can know that price except you. Think carefully.
