Dear Christine,
MY HUSBAND AND I have been together for 22 years. He is my first love and sexual experience. I love him deeply, but a couple of weeks ago I had an affair. He found out, and I told him everything.
It started out as a text relationship with this guy, joking with him. Then it became more. And after we had sex my feelings were mixed up – I guess because he is the second man I’ve ever slept with.
But I had fantasised about having sex with another man for a while, even though I am very happy with my sex life with my husband.
I never in a million years thought I was capable of doing this to my husband or to me. How can I fix this and do you have any idea why after 22 years someone would do this to someone they love because I don’t know why I did it. Please help!
– CHEATER
Dear Cheater,
Everyone does something stupid on the spur of the moment once in a while. Most of the time there aren’t any consequences.
You can drive through traffic lights 20 times as they’re just turning red and not get stopped, and then there’s that one time when the next thing you hear is a police siren. And it’s to prevent that last occurrence that most people stop themselves from doing stupid things.
I can’t assign a percentage to how many married people would like to have the occasional fling, but certainly lots would, and some do. But many affairs, or flings, never happen because the people considerthe consequences and hold back.
Having the urge doesn’t mean that they don’t love their spouse. It just means that we inherently have this desire to have sex with other people and it doesn’t go away just because we got married. You’re just supposed to hold yourself in check. And that’s what you didn’t do.
How to fix it? Sadly it’s not entirely up to you. You can tell your husband how sorry you are, how you’ll never do it again and how much you love him, but he may not want to hear it. He may feel so hurt that he’ll demand a divorce. If I were you, I would seriously consider going to marital therapy together.
Whatever his expressed reaction, there may be more under the surface that needs to be explored. Go just a few times so that you can help clear the air.
And assuming you keep your husband, you have to promise yourself to keep yourself in check, to never take even one flirtatious step with another man, because you’ve shown to yourself that you have this weakness, and the best way to prevent a repeat is to avoid all temptation.
– CHRISTINE
