- 24
- Mar
What to do if you discover your partner is having an affair–emotional, virtual, or real?
If you demand the affair ends immediately, you run the risk of your partner actually wanting to intensify the affair. After all, the affair is highly rewarding–it is exciting, secret, passionate, and vital, at least to your partner. If you say little, then you run the risk that your partner will think the affair is acceptable behavior.
Many people avoid confronting the partner who is participating in an affair because they are afraid it will mean the end to the relationship or marriage. But in marriage, only 10% of those who participate in affairs actually divorce their spouses to marry their new partner. Knowing that will give you some comfort, and help you manage the discovery in a sane manner.
You need to let your partner know with certainty that you will not tolerate an affair in your marriage, if that is your agreement. You can, however, negotiate with your partner about when it will end, and what will and will not occur until that happens.
For example, you can tell your partner that he or she has one month to end the affair. You can make rules that calls are not to be made from home, and that no visits are to take place that steal away family time.
You can also require that once the affair has ended that he or she will accompany you to marital therapy. There, the two of you will decide together whether or not the marriage can or should be saved. During your time in therapy, request that the affair not be restarted. Ask your partner to put all his or her energy into the marriage for a period of three months, and then decide whether to continue the marriage and/or counseling.
Infidelity is sometimes about sex, sometimes not. It is nearly always a signal that there is true unhappiness in a marriage. But no matter how angry or betrayed you feel, try not to act out your rage. This is a time to transcend and act as an adult, so that you can request that your partner also meet you at an adult level.
That’s your goal–two adults, talking it out, with integrity.
