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My husband had an affair. I chose to stay in our marriage and try to begin again and so did he. With his blessing, not that I felt I needed it, I wrote publicly about our experience. There was no hiding it in our community, so I didn’t feel silenced by the oppressive gag order that seems to accompany being cheated on.
I felt the opposite, like our whole story should be told — not just the salacious and half-true bits. We felt full disclosure would help us heal and help the people we care about understand us better, all at the same time.
One of the most common questions readers ask me is, “What do you do when your friends and family don’t support your choice to stay with a partner who was unfaithful?” This kind of response is salt in the wound. It stings like hell. Feeling like you’re risking disapproval or abandonment from the people whose support you need the most is nerve-wracking and scary, a boot on the chest when you already feel crushed by your partner’s betrayal.
There were a handful of close friends and family members who did not shy away from us during our darkest time, but, in fact, drew nearer and asked how they could best support me, specifically. I looked them dead in the eye and solemnly asked them to keep supporting us both, not just me.
I told our nearest and dearest that I needed them to keep loving my husband, too. I needed them to give him a chance to repair the damage he’d done to me. I asked them to treat him with kindness and honor my choice to stay and work on my most important relationship. I explained that this was all I needed from them while I tried to figure out what I needed from my husband. We needed our trusted community to rally around us both.
Some said, “OK, no problem!” Some said, “OK.” Some, with tears in their eyes from anguish over my pain, said, “OK, I don’t want to, and it will be hard, but I will.” And they did. All of them. Some even supported him more than me. But they all supported us best by not withdrawing their support based on judgments they were making over something that did not happen to them.
I’m confident staying in my marriage was the right choice for me. I never questioned my way forward, only whether the two of us would successfully create the kind of marriage I needed to be in. I just knew I wanted and needed to try.
We are not our mistakes; we are what we do after. Because of my husband’s full accountability and ownership of his affair and because of his sincere humility and willingness to march straight into couples therapy, we were able to do the years of hard work it takes to recover from the devastation of adultery.
If you’ve suffered a betrayal and you’re making an informed decision to stay with your partner, it does not matter what anyone else thinks of your choice. No one else is aware of the intricacies of your relationship or the nuanced thought process that led to your decision. Let that knowledge embolden you.
If you’re on the outside of a struggling relationship looking in, you don’t get a say in how the two people involved choose to move forward. Can you have an opinion? Of course, you’re human, and that’s how we roll. But should you express it to your friend, family member or co-worker in pain? Absolutely not.
If you’ve been cheated on, you’ll need a few trusted people to lean on while you heal. When you identify those people, it’s OK to tell them point blank how invaluable their love and support will be, but how unwelcome and unhelpful their negativity will be.
If you’re trying to support a loved one whose choice you don’t agree with, or whose actions wouldn’t mimic your own, you need to hear this next part. You have no idea what you would do in their situation. You think you do based on what you know. But you don’t know everything and you’re not looking at their experience of infidelity through the same set of lenses. You don’t need to agree with them to walk alongside them.
Remember the blue dress you’d swear was white? Who’s to say who saw it right?
If you choose to stay or choose to leave, and then change your mind or it doesn’t work out the way you’d hoped, you weren’t wrong. You made the best choice for you in the moment. You’re allowed to change your mind or make a new — better for you in this moment — choice. Life is trial and error, there is no other way. We don’t get any guarantees.
If you’re in the inner circle of someone who changes their mind in this regard, “told ya so” better never leave your lips. “Once a cheater always a cheater” is an ignorant slur. Would you want to hear that if the roles were reversed? Would it be helpful?
You can be irked by your loved one’s choice to stay with an unfaithful spouse and still support their right to make that choice. You can be angry at the one who cheated for hurting someone you care about. You can even express that anger in an appropriate manner —that’s called clearing the air and paving a way forward with someone you’re unhappy with. That's called repair and it’s what matters most when we let someone down.
We’ll all let someone down, but not all of us will circle back, own it and do the repair all relationships need at some point. Try to meet the mistake with the softened gaze of grace. Try to champion the repair, even if you hate the way they got there. And may the same be done for you.
Would you ever stay with a spouse who cheated on you? Let us know in the comments below.
Andrea D'Aquino
Follow Article Topics: Relationships
