Why would I want my spouse to know all the details of an affair?
Most of the time when I hear people on the subject of affair details, 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 how much to reveal. Usually, there is concern that the information will harm your spouse or make things worse.
It’s relatively rare for me to hear from cheating spouses who have absolutely no problem coming clean and willingly giving up all hurtful details. But it happens from time to time. 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 anything other than 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 it would come to a natural end. However, my husband got me. And unbelievably to me, he didn’t kick me out of his life right away. He says he doesn’t know what he wants to do yet. But he says to make a decision , he needs some information. He wants all the details on the matter. At first I felt very uncomfortable with this. I didn’t want to hurt my husband about all the details. But he continued to press me on them. And once it all started to spill out, I almost couldn’t stop him I mean I let it all go I told him how I got a second phone so he wouldn’t suspect a thing 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 have never done with my husband. . I have no idea why I handed over all this information. My husband acted like he wanted to, but now I can tell that he hurt him a lot. The weird thing is, if he asked me for more details, I suspect he’d blurt out even more. Because? Why don’t I have a problem giving him the details that are going to hurt him?”
Well this is just my opinion, but it sounds like there are two potential possibilities here. One, maybe somewhere deep down, you want to hurt, shock, or scare him enough to pay attention. Perhaps you had the affair because of pent-up resentment, or your perception that your marriage was missing something. Perhaps you hope that by sharing the details, it will wake up her husband and inspire him to take action. Or maybe you want to hurt him in some way because you were harboring some resentments.
If this is true, you should know that betraying someone and causing more problems in your marriage is not the way to handle this. Sure, your spouse deserves the information he’s asking for. But there’s a big difference between giving him the details that will let him know what he’s up against and then saying things that are 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 on and perhaps try to save the marriage in the future, you will have to be honest with him. I understand 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 for you to get all the pieces of the puzzle.
But then again, there is a difference between wanting to be honest and wanting to hurt. People often ask me how much to tell your spouse. I think your spouse needs to know who he is dealing with, what he is 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 specific details in terms of sex and little details that don’t 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 fact. And your husband already knows this, but adding insult to injury by being explicit and hurtful isn’t necessary.
If you’re not sure why you might be freely sharing hurtful information, it’s important to dig a little deeper. Understanding your motivations is part of healing. And it’s part of making sure this doesn’t happen again. It’s not always easy to understand what drives us in times like this. If you have considered all of the above and are still unsure, I would strongly suggest having a counselor listen to you. In fact, that’s good advice, even though we’re often too close to the situation to clearly see our motivations. But understanding our motivations is vital to healing and making sure we don’t repeat the same disastrous behaviors.