Agony aunt Coleen Nolan has advice for a reader who’s just found out his wife has been seeing her ex-boyfriend for a year, and he doesn’t know how to move on from it
Dear Coleen
Recently I found out that my wife had an affair with an ex-boyfriend. I saw an email from him that she’d left open on her laptop, so she couldn’t deny it. Apparently it had been going on for about a year.
It’s over now and his wife and family don’t know, and I don’t feel it’s up to me to tell them.
I’ve known about this guy since my wife and I got together 12 years ago and he’s always been in her life as a friend, and I’ve met him on a few occasions at parties.
I never once suspected they still had feelings for each other. I’m obviously far too trusting or just stupid.
When it all came out, I told her I wanted a divorce, but since then we’ve talked a lot and we’ve seen a relationship therapist a couple of times. We have two young children, so it’s not so easy to just give up.
I want us to survive this, but my wife is still vague on her reasons for the affair and won’t open up about how she feels.
She says she finds counselling awkward and embarrassing, and that it feels unnatural to discuss such personal stuff with someone she doesn’t know.
The thing is, I need her to be honest and transparent. I’m racking my brains trying to come up with reasons and I’m blaming myself.
How can we make this work?
Coleen says
It’s actually pretty normal to look inwards and start looking for reasons to blame yourself in this situation, and I say this from experience.
But this is not your fault. It was your wife’s choice to have an affair rather than talk to you and face how she was feeling.
Counselling is not a quick fix and a couple of sessions is nowhere near enough to do the work required. It’s a process and it needs commitment.
But you’re holding some strong cards and if counselling is an important part of moving forward for you, she should show up. It’s uncomfortable for her because she has to face herself and her guilt, and lots of other difficult emotions.
Up until now, she’s been doing a good job of avoiding these emotions by having an affair, which is an escape route and a fantasy.
I think what you should try to get across to your wife is it’s difficult – impossible even – to move on unless she’s honest about her reasons. How can you try to repair something if you don’t identify the broken bits?
There must have been issues for her that made her willing to risk her marriage and while they’re hard to say and hard to hear, they have to be brought into the open. Good luck.