Here is a question for our post-privacy era: If you’ve been unfaithful to your partner or spouse, do you confess?
Ever
since Ashley Madison, an online dating site for married people, was
hacked in July and personal information about more than 30 million
registered users was leaked to the public, I’ve been hearing from many
marriage therapists who say they have clients who worry their spouse may
find out they used the site to cheat and wonder what to do.
The answer: Confess before you get caught.
We’ve
always risked being exposed if we have an extramarital affair. A nosy
neighbor or friend might tell our spouse that she saw something
suspicious. Our partner might walk in on us in flagrante delicto. A
spurned lover might out us due to spite.
In our current world, where the most-private information—from home
addresses and credit card numbers to secret emails and sexual
fantasies—are just one hack away from becoming public, the chance of
being found out has escalated. As the Ashley Madison hack has shown, the
Internet is the modern version of the proverbial lipstick on the
collar. You never know when a trace of your misdeed might appear and
give you away.
Even before Internet hacks became a concern,
affairs were likely to be uncovered. In the Lust, Love & Loyalty
survey, conducted in 2007 by MSNBC.com and iVillage, more than 30,000
people who said they had cheated on their partner were asked if that
partner had ever found out. Just 32% of men and 39% of women said
“definitely not.” Another 23% of both men and women said “not that I
know of.” The rest said their spouse either suspected or found out about
their affair.
Some therapists I spoke with were torn on whether or not to tell a
spouse about an infidelity. If you have put an affair behind you, your
marriage is strong, and you have reason to believe your past
transgression won’t be discovered, they recommend keeping your secret
and not hurting your spouse needlessly with a confession.
A
study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships in
April, 2001, showed that there are four ways that affairs typically come
to light. There is unsolicited partner discovery (the partner who had
the affair admits to it without prior interrogation from his or her
spouse) and solicited partner discovery (the partner who had the affair
admits to it only after being suspected and questioned by the spouse).
Then there is “red-handed” discovery (a spouse catches his or her
partner in the act of infidelity) and unsolicited third-party discovery
(a spouse is told about a partner’s affair by another person).
The study found that some modes of discovery are better for you than
others. The least damaging to a relationship is when the person who had
the affair admits to it on his or her own; 43.5% of the 115
participants in the study said their marriage dissolved afterward. That
compares with the 68% who said it dissolved after a third party told
them about their partner’s infidelity. Of those caught in the act, 83%
said the relationship dissolved and 86% said it dissolved after their
partner confronted them.
“Victims may view the act of honesty as an attempt to save the relationship,” says Whitney Petit,
a teaching fellow at the University of Houston, who has written on the
topic. When the injured spouse has to confront his or her partner about
an affair, it compounds the pain, therapists say.
According to
published reports, about 1 in 6 married men in the U.S. were on Ashley
Madison. This seems shocking, and we don’t know the percentage of
profiles that were fake. We also don’t know how many of these men had
sex with someone they met on the site—but the figure is actually a
little lower than general measures of infidelity.
Reliable
statistics on infidelity are scarce. Most people don’t want to admit to
having an affair and everyone, even the experts, has a different
definition of infidelity. Some people define it narrowly, as sexual
intercourse with someone who isn’t your partner. Others define it more
broadly and include emotional infidelity.
Caveats and all, how often do married people have sex with someone
other than their spouse? About 20% of men and 14% of women who have ever
been married have had extramarital sex, according to federally
sponsored research conducted since 1972 by the social-science research
organization NORC at the University of Chicago.
The
MSNBC.com/iVillage survey found that 15% of men and 11% of women who
said they’d had an extramarital affair confessed to their spouse about
it on their own, according to David Frederick, a professor of
psychology at Chapman University, in Orange, Calif., who analyzed the
results of the survey. This was the most common way a partner discovered
infidelity.
Experts said that disclosing an affair in a sincere,
respectful and contrite manner may actually help improve a marriage.
“Problematic relationships are less likely to heal without open and
honest communication,” says Gurit E. Birnbaum, a psychologist, sex
researcher and associate professor at the School of Psychology at the
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
So how, and when, do you tell your spouse you’ve been unfaithful?
First,
experts agree that you need to end the affair—with integrity. This
means that you are respectful to the person you had the affair with and
you are clear with yourself that it is over.
Tell your spouse
you’d like to talk and find a time that is convenient and a place that
is private. “Acknowledge that there have been difficulties in the
marriage and that one or both of you has not been happy,” says Tammy Nelson, a marriage therapist with offices in New Haven and Fairfield, Conn.
Dr.
Nelson suggests addressing three key areas of the affair: What kind of
relationship you had. (Was it sexual or emotional?). What kind of sex
you had. (Was it in-person, online, paid?). And what secrets you kept.
(Did you spend a lot of money?)
Therapists agree that you should
stay away from sharing too many gory details, even if your spouse asks
to hear them. “Your partner is not your therapist or your priest,” Dr.
Nelson says. Overly confessing might temporarily alleviate your guilt,
but it will only further traumatize your spouse.
The goal of the conversation is “try to make meaning of the affair so that you and your partner share a narrative,” says Barry McCarthy,
a professor of psychology at American University in Washington, D.C.,
and author of “Rekindling Desire.” “You want to look at what you learned
about your marriage from the affair and what you learned about
yourself,” he says.
Wait to apologize until you’ve heard your
partner out. “ ‘I am sorry’ can sound like an excuse,” says Dr. Nelson.
“It means nothing until you actually have some empathy for what you have
done to your partner.”
Finally, you should outline what you are
willing to do in the immediate future—can you commit to the marriage? Go
to therapy?—and be sure you can keep these promises.
“Focus on the present and the future,” says American University’s Dr. McCarthy. “You can’t change the past.”