Dear Roe,
I’ve been married for over 20 years and for the last five years I’ve been seeing another man, whom I love and I want to leave my husband for. Eighteen months into this relationship I had a brief fling with a younger man, which my boyfriend learned about it after it had happened. I told him it was over, and it was. Four years on, my boyfriend and I are still together, but he doesn’t believe that the fling with the younger man is over.
Now he wants me to talk about that period of time, for me to explain how, why etc it happened, and if there were others. (There were not.) He says he wants no grey areas in our relationship, only the truth. I wish he would just try and forget it and move on. How do I make him understand and forgive me? How can we advance and put this behind us? We are both mad about each other and we have both mentioned a possible future together. He is married too but separated physically from his wife at present.
The way you have thrown in the fact that this man is also married at the very end of your question, like a minor detail, is very telling. Your question is all about the fling, avoiding the more glaring issue that both of you are married. And this avoidance is your issue.
You say you see a future with this man – yet you are both still married to other people. You say he wants a relationship with “no grey areas, only truth” – yet you are both still married to other people. You want him to forgive you for being unfaithful and trust you completely – yet you are both still married to other people. You want to put all this dishonesty and betrayal behind you – yet you are both still married to other people.
You’re both pretending that this fling you had four years ago is the problem, because that situation is over, and so feels like a safe and manageable way to discuss jealousy and infidelity and betrayal. It lets you avoid addressing that both of you have decided every day for five years that you’re fine causing jealousy and infidelity and betrayal within your marriages. By focusing on the fling, you’re avoiding discussing how a possible future between you could work, given that you both know you have cheated on spouses and have never held yourselves accountable.
Moral high-ground
This avoidance of accountability is why your boyfriend keeps returning to this fling instead of your marriage as the example of cheating he can’t get over. By focusing on your fling, rather than your marriage, he can assert blame and the moral high-ground without addressing his own actions within his marriage.
This relationship doesn’t “have” issues of mistrust and infidelity – it is built on them. Stop avoiding the issue here. You are both married, and cheating. Stop. Come clean to your spouses, and either try be together honestly, or finally end this dysfunctional fling that’s enabling both of you to be the smallest, least honest versions of yourselves.
Start dismantling
You will never find honesty and trust in a relationship while dishonesty swirls around it. You will never find honesty and trust with a man who can’t be honest with his spouse, you or himself. And you will never find trust and honesty with someone else if you can’t be honest with yourself first. Start dismantling all this dishonesty; it is not a safe place to build a life. Get back to the truth instead. Start again. Build something real.
Roe McDermott is a writer and Fulbright scholar with an MA in sexuality studies from San Francisco State University. She is researching a PhD in gendered and sexual citizenship at the Open University and Oxford
If you have a problem or query you would like her to answer, you can submit it anonymously at irishtimes.com/dearroe