Infidelity: Betrayed Partners Suffer but Marriages Often Endure
” . . . And cleave only unto her, so long as you both shall live?”
“I will. . . . “
Marriages begin with that pledge, among others. But do they end if the promise is broken? Most likely not, say Family Life readers.
Surprised? We were. Over the past several weeks we’ve heard from all sides of the infidelity triangle: the unfaithful spouse, the betrayed partner, the other woman (or man). But in all the letters we received, one point of view has been conspicuously absent. Nobody wrote to tell us the classic infidelity story: “My partner cheated, I found out, and so I ended the relationship.”
Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Adultery, once the only legal reason for divorce in some states, isn’t even a relevant issue under today’s no-fault divorce laws, which California adopted in the 1970s.
Does that mean we have no-fault marriages, too? Not quite. But those who wrote offered some interesting thoughts on why their partners’ infidelity didn’t send them running to a divorce lawyer.
We don’t pretend that ours is a scientific sampling--for one thing, women who responded far outnumbered men. It may be that men aren’t as forgiving when it comes to infidelity. If that’s the case, guys, you’ll have to write and let us know.
Some of the betrayed women who wrote said they repaired their damaged relationships and went on. Others wanted to leave but felt they couldn’t afford it financially or emotionally. And in still other cases, the marriage ended anyway, but the break was initiated by the husband who wanted to make the other woman his new wife.
Kay, who lives in Irvine, says that after 20 years her marriage is the best it has ever been, thanks in part to her husband’s affair. “About a year and a half ago I learned he had been having an affair with a client on and off over a span of three years. That’s when my life changed and when our marriage began to take on a metamorphosis.
“I found out when he was away on business and was only able to confront him by phone,” Kay wrote. Her husband didn’t return home until five days after that confrontation, and Kay says that time--”probably the hardest five days I’ve spent”--gave her a chance to put the betrayal in perspective.
“When I look back on it, it was a valuable time,” she says. “I had time to go over the years we’d spent together, what this man meant to me, how such an unthinkable thing could have happened, a lot of reflecting without any input from him. I sat down and wrote him a five-page letter expressing my love for him and some requirements I felt were needed before our relationship could work.”
Kay’s husband ended his affair the day he got home. They went to counseling, read self-help books, learned to communicate better. They started spending more time together, without their children. “We now have the kind of marriage I fantasized as a child--but not because it comes naturally. We have to work on it daily. . . . Putting my relationship with my husband before any other human beings and letting him know how important he is to me has changed our lives,” she says.
“We had always been good friends. I would always come to him with my day-to-day problems and ask for advice. But I would bury my problems of intimacy and love within myself. . . .
“Did I suspect? I think all spouses suspect at times but I immediately put it out of my mind, because it was too threatening to confront. . . . I believe I found out only at a time when I was ready to make that change in my relationship.”
Kay says she believes the affair also helped keep things going for her and her husband before she was ready to change. “During . . . his affair he did not reject me or treat me any differently, and he did not put any pressure on me to work on our relationship, so his outside relationship kept a buffer on ours, I think. . . . “
Although Kay says she will never condone her husband’s behavior, “the memory of the pain I experienced over his betrayal becomes diminished as time goes on. But I never want to forget what price you have to pay when you give up putting your relationship with your spouse first.”
But sometimes that just isn’t enough, says Pat of Huntington Beach. She put her relationship first, the way she’d been brought up to do in a conservative, traditional family. She stayed home and took care of her children, and never considered it a problem that she was financially dependent on her husband.
Then six years ago, she found out with her own eyes that her husband was unfaithful. She walked onto the family boat, which was docked at a local harbor, and found him having sex with another woman. “That was on a Wednesday. By Friday, I was in a therapist’s office,” she says.
Her husband agreed to go with her for counseling. Nearly a year later, he confessed to a previous affair with another woman that had lasted seven years. Pat had suspected it and confronted him at the time, but he had insisted she was wrong.
They stopped counseling a year ago, and now Pat says they don’t talk about the infidelities anymore. Her husband may not realize it, but inside, she’s still seething.
“For the life of me, I don’t know why I’m here,” she says. “It’s really sad. I really think if I’d had any sense, I’d have gotten out of it when I first found out. But we had been married 28 years at the time. And I’m Catholic, so that will tell you something.
“Now I’m 60 years old. It would be too hard economically to leave now.
“We share the same house; to the outside world we seem to be the ideal couple. I’m sure nobody suspects that we don’t really have a relationship anymore. I try to keep busy with my hobbies and volunteer work; I don’t dwell on the things that happened. But still, there’s that longing for the lost feeling. I have lost my respect for him but also a lot of my own self-esteem. I have to admit I still love him. But I haven’t forgiven him. I guess I might, eventually.”
Rosemarie, who lives in Orange, was shocked when her husband told her eight years ago he’d been having an affair. “When I found out, I felt angry, betrayed, dead, a failure.” But she wasn’t ready to give up the relationship. “I wanted to stay married anyway,” she says. “He was a very good friend to me; we were soul mates.”
She hardly had a chance to tell him, however. “He told me one evening, and left the next day.” He later married the other woman.
“I sort of feel like the other shoe never dropped.” Forgiving him was never an issue, she says. “He didn’t want to be married to me any longer, so what’s to forgive? The lies, perhaps. . . . “
The feeling that the relationship was left unresolved “still gives me problems,” Rosemarie says. “I admire people that piece their lives back together and move on. I find that I still have some problems socializing with people since the divorce, sort of a recalled product syndrome. He was someone I trusted quite a bit, and now I don’t trust my sense of judgment. I don’t feel very confident. Sometimes when you feel like you’ve done the best you could, you just say, what the heck, why try this hard again?
“I hope I’ll get it together eventually. But I don’t think I can ever make someone else such a large part of my life again. I need to be a little more autonomous.”
Another woman in the same situation as Rosemarie says she still is “grieving for my relationship.”
“Infidelity is the worst way to end a marriage,” says the Newport Beach woman, who did not sign her name. “I will have to deal with him and that is tough enough, but to have to deal with a woman who took part in all this unhappiness--I really have trouble with that.”
A step removed
In fairy tales, stepmothers are wicked and ugly. In real life, stepparents don’t always get the intimacy and respect their “real” counterparts do. If you’re a stepmother, stepfather or stepchild, tell us how you feel about the barriers that keep you--or them--from blending into the family.
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