Most of the time, when I listen to people on the subject of the details of an affair, I hear faithful husbands looking for a way to force their spouse to tell them everything. However, I heard from the cheating spouse who wants to know how much they have to disclose. There is usually a concern that the information will harm your spouse or make things worse.
It is relatively rare for me to hear cheating spouses who have absolutely no problem being completely clean and willingly giving up all the hurtful details. But it happens from time to time. And it usually comes from people who don’t have a good understanding of their own motivations.
Someone might say, “I cheated on my husband with a man who doesn’t really interest me in any way other than sex. He didn’t really have redemptive qualities. I realize that. And I didn’t tell my husband about the matter because I knew it would come to a natural end. However, my husband caught me. And unbelievably for me, he didn’t immediately kick me out or remove me from his life. He says he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet. But he says to make up his mind , he needs information. He wants all the details on the matter. At first I was very uncomfortable with this. I didn’t want to hurt my husband about all the details. But he kept pushing me on them. And once it all started to spill out, almost I couldn’t stop him. I mean, I dropped everything. I told him how I got a second phone he wouldn’t suspect a thing. I told him I had gone to a hotel with the other man when he was supposed to be at my sister’s house. The other man did things to me that I never had done with my husband. I have no idea why I gave all this information. My husband acted like he wanted it, but now I can say it hurt him a lot. The weird thing is, if you asked me for more details, I suspect I’d let even more out. Why? Why don’t I have a problem giving you the details that are going to hurt you? “
Well this is just my opinion, but it seems like there are two potential possibilities here. You, perhaps somewhere deep down, want to hurt, shock, or scare him enough to make him pay attention. Perhaps you had the affair out of pent-up resentment or your perception that your marriage was missing something. Perhaps you are hoping that by sharing the details, it will wake up your husband and inspire him to take some action. Or maybe you want to hurt him in some way because you were harboring hard feelings.
If this is true, you should know that betraying someone and causing more trouble in your marriage is not the way to handle this. Sure, your spouse deserves the information you are asking for. But there is a big difference between giving him the details that will let you know what he’s dealing with and then saying things that are meant to hurt or surprise him.
The other possibility here is that you suspect that in order for your spouse to be willing to move on and perhaps try to save the marriage in the future, you will have to be honest with him. I understand this. As a spouse who was on the other side of this and was cheated on, I can tell you that the details can be very important to the faithful spouse. It can be very important for you to get all the pieces of the puzzle.
But again, there is a difference between wanting to be honest and wanting to be hurtful. People often ask me how much to tell their spouse. I think your spouse needs to know who he is dealing with, what he is dealing with, and how and why this happened. They need to be able to get a clear picture of reality.
But you can do this without telling them specific details in terms of sex and little details that don’t matter and will only cause pain. Sexual details with the other man are an example. Of course people who have affairs have sex. This is a fact. And your husband already knows it, but it is not necessary to add salt to the wound by being explicit and hurtful.
If you’re not sure why you might be freely sharing hurtful information, it’s important to dig a little deeper. Understanding your motivations is part of healing. And it’s part of making sure this doesn’t happen again. It is not always easy to understand what drives us at times like this. If you have considered all of the above and are still unsure, I strongly suggest that a counselor listen to you. In fact, that’s good advice regardless of the fact that we’re often too close to the situation to be able to see our motivations clearly. But understanding our motivations is vital to healing ourselves and making sure we don’t repeat the same disastrous behaviors.