Much of the time, when I hear from folks on the topic of the details of an affair, I hear from faithful spouses looking for a way to force their spouse to tell them everything. Or, I hear from the cheating spouse who wants to know just how much they have to disclose. There is usually Eurodate.com Reviews a concern about the information hurting their spouse or actually making things worse.
It's relatively rare for me to hear
from cheating spouses who have absolutely no problems coming completely clean
and willingly giving up all of the hurtful details. But it does occasionally
happen. And it usually comes from people who don't quite understand their own
motivations.
Someone might say: "I cheated
on my husband with a man who really doesn't interest me in any way other than
the sex. He really didn't have any redeeming qualities. I realize that. And I
didn't tell my husband about the affair because I knew that it would come to a
natural end. My husband caught me though. And unbelievably to me, he didn't
immediately kick me out or cut me out of his life. He says that he doesn't know
what he wants Eurodate to do yet.
But he says that in order to make a decision, he needs some information. He
wants all of the details about the affair. At first I felt very uncomfortable
about this. I didn't want to hurt my husband about all of the details. But he
continued to press me on them. And once everything started spilling out, I
almost couldn't stop it. I mean, I let everything go. I told him about how I
got a second phone so he wouldn't suspect anything. I told him about going to a
hotel with the other man when I was supposed to be at my sister's. I told him
how I let the other man do things to me that I had never done with my husband.
I have no idea why I gave up all of this information. My husband acted like he
wanted it, but now I can tell it's hurt him very much. The weird thing is, if
he asked me for more details, I suspect that I'd let even more come out. Why?
Why do I have no problems giving him the details that are going to hurt
him?"
Well, this is only my opinion, but
it seems that there are two potential possibilities here. One, perhaps
somewhere deep down, you want to hurt, shock, or startle him enough so that he
pays attention. Perhaps you had the affair because of pent up resentment, or
your perception that your marriage was missing something. Maybe you are hoping Eurodate.com that by
sharing the details, this will wake you husband up and inspire him to take some
action. Or, perhaps you want to hurt him in some way because you were harboring
some resentments.
If this is true, you must know that
betraying someone and causing more problems in your marriage is not the way to
handle this. Sure, your spouse deserves the information that he is asking for.
But there is a big difference between giving him the details that are going to
allow him to know what he is dealing with and then saying things meant to hurt
or shock him.
The other possibility here is that
you suspect that in order for your spouse to be willing to move forward and
perhaps to try to save the marriage down the line, you're going to have to be
truthful with him. I get 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 become very important to you to get all of the
pieces of the puzzle.
But again, there's a difference
between wanting to be honest and wanting to be hurtful. People often ask me how
much to tell their spouse. I believe that your spouse needs to know who they
are dealing with, what they are 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 about specifics in terms of sex and small details that do not
matter - and will only cause pain. The sexual details with the other man is an
example. Of course people who have affairs have sex. This is a given. And your
husband already knows this, but pouring salt in the wound by being explicit and
hurtful just isn't necessary.
If you're unsure as to why you
might be freely sharing hurtful information, it's important that you dig a
little deeper. Understanding your motivations is part of healing. And it is
part of making sure that this doesn't happen again. It isn't always easy to
understand what drives us at times like this. If you've considered all of the
above and are still unsure, I'd strongly suggest having a counselor hear you
out. In fact, that's good advice regardless because often, we are too close to
the situation to be able to see our motivations clearly. But understanding our
motivations is vital to healing and to making sure that we don't repeat the
same disastrous behaviors.
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