Dear Amy: I am a 53-year-old single man. I just had a four-month affair with a married lady.
We connected at our high school reunion. She has been married to the same man for 35 years and says I am the only man she ever had an affair with ... and I believe her. She told me that she and her husband had not been sexually intimate for three years.
As time went on, I started disliking her criticism and insensitivity toward me, and she has since ended our affair.
She and her husband are leaving the country in a few months for good. I am tempted to tell her husband (I have pictures, if he doesnβt believe me). I want to do this, partly because she hurt me and was very arrogant and insensitive, and partly because I would want to know if I was in his shoes.
Your thoughts?
β High School Crushed
Dear High School: First this: You canβt know what this husband would want, because unless you, too, have been married for 35 years, you cannot put yourself in his shoes.
Anger at your affair partner is the worst and most punitive reason to disclose your affair to her husband, because then you would only be transferring your own responsibility, guilt, confusion and anger onto him, the innocent party. I assure you, he would suffer more than the woman with whom you committed adultery.
Now is the perfect time for you to reflect on your own actions. You willingly and knowingly took up with someone who was married. You canβt change her choices. You also shouldnβt continue to interfere with her marriage by making this disclosure to her husband.
