If you found out that your spouse cheated on you with a coworker years ago but never strayed from your marriage again, would you still want a divorce?
This 34-year-old woman has been married to her 36-year-old husband for eight years, and they have two kids, who are four and six.
They own their own home, and it’s not exactly luxurious, but she thought that was a big piece of their stable, boring, pretty great life.
One month ago, she was on the computer she shares with her husband, organizing some of their old photos, when she came across a backup folder from 2019.
“Most of it was receipts and work stuff, then I opened one file and saw a hotel booking confirmation. [The] same folder had a few blurry, very intimate selfies that were very clearly not of me, from the same day. My stomach just dropped,” she explained.
“I confronted him that night. He went pale and didn’t even try to lie. He admitted he’d had a 6-month affair with a coworker during a really rough time in our marriage, when our oldest was a newborn, we were exhausted, fighting all the time, barely holding it together.”
“He says it ended when she moved away, that he cut all contact, and he never told me because ‘it was over and wouldn’t happen again.’ And from what I can tell, it didn’t.”
Honestly, she says her husband has been an amazing partner to her over the years, which is why she was clueless about his affair.
He’s been extremely involved with their kids, affectionate towards her, and didn’t do anything to make her worry that he was interested in another woman.
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Since uncovering his infidelity, she feels as if her entire life is fake. She has so many happy memories with her husband, including a trip they went on for their anniversary, their baby’s first steps, and when they conceived their second.
But all of these memories happened when her husband was lying to her face, or directly following his affair, which makes them all contaminated to her now.
She did leave her house and is staying with her sister while she gathers her thoughts, but before she left, she did admit to her husband that she’s not sure how this will play out.
“I feel furious, shattered, [and] embarrassed. He’s begging me to forgive him, saying he was selfish and thought he was ‘protecting me from pain’ by keeping it secret,” she continued.
“His family knows, and they’re on me to ‘not throw away a good marriage over something that ended years ago.’ Even my mom said something like, if he’s been good since then, is it worth ‘breaking up your kids’ home over something in the past?”
“But it did happen. I just found out now. I didn’t get to go through the hurt back then, so I’m going through it now, and it feels brand new to me, not like some old thing that’s over.”
She’s left wondering if she would be wrong to end her marriage over an affair that was over and done with years ago.
What gets me is what if her husband’s affair partner didn’t move? Would he still be sleeping with her? Her husband was left with her after his affair partner relocated; it’s not like he ended it, and that’s something I couldn’t get over.
Also, I don’t think her husband ever would have told her, and it was entirely accidental that she came across the hotel receipts and the photos. And speaking of the photos, I want to know why her husband still has them after all this time.
Her husband made a series of selfish choices and then decided to keep up his lies, which is pretty unforgivable, but if she does want to reconcile, he’s going to have to show remorse and prove to her he’s worth sticking with (and she shouldn’t let anyone else influence her to stay or go).
For the moment, she should give herself as much time as possible to process what she wants here, and it’s not like she has to rush to make any decisions. She can take all the time in the world to determine what’s best for her.
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
