You Cheated. Should You Confess?
Should you? Will telling the truth bode well for your marriage, or buy you a ticket straight to divorce court? I asked a few experts, and here’s what they said:
Yes
“Yes,” says life coach Paul Coughlin, author of Married…but Not Engaged: Why Men Check Out and What You Can Do to Recapture Intimacy. “[Unfaithful folks] should confess,” Coughlin warns, “but be very wise regarding how and when they do it. Emotional and physical infidelity needs to be admitted because it’s the elephant in the room. It’s always there in the background influencing couples in hard-to-perceive ways.”
Stay-at-home mom Lydia Paul*, 37, felt raw honesty was her best choice. “I fell in love with a guy I used to work with,” she says. “I never had any physical contact with him, but we shared such a strong emotional connection, I decided to tell my husband.”
Infuriated, Lydia’s husband packed a bag to leave her, but changed his mind. “I’m still glad we got it out in the open. At least it forced us to talk about problems in our marriage,” she says.
While conscience-clearing may work wonders for some, an opposite camp posits that it’s not smart to dump your guilty actions onto an unsuspecting partner to bear.
No
“No,” says Sherry Argov, author of Why Men Marry Bitches, “absolutely not. This is one area where telling your [partner] something to get a reaction will backfire. It comes across as ‘Do what I want or I’ll retaliate by sleeping with someone else.'”
Usually, flat-out fear stops a philandering female or male from exposing their liaisons, especially if there are custody concerns regarding children involved. “My husband would leave me,” says Lisa, a 33-year-old married mother who’s been canoodling with a male coworker for years.
Maybe, so…
…what’s a modern-day Marquis de Sade or Hester Prynne to do? Put down the whip and pull out the sewing kit – or bury the crimson-colored A as deep as his or her scandalous secrets? Considering the possible health implications involved with unprotected sexual contact – diseases, unplanned pregnancies – anyone sleeping with more than one person should at minimum protect the physical health of everyone involved.
“At least use a latex condom,” says Joseph F. Zebari, M.D., FACOG, an ob/gyn at Gynecology & Obstetrics of Northeast Ohio. And if you’re hell-bent on winging it? “Get tested,” says Zebari.
Whether or not a person ever confesses infidelity to their partner, there’s at least one person they should get real with – themself. Figuring out how and why they ended up in the predicament – or predicaments, if adultery is a recurrent theme – would serve well towards creating a life with more integrity.
Paula Mooney is editor-in-chief of Real Moms magazine.
* Some names have been changed to protect the guilty.
