QUESTION: I had two affairs in the early years of my marriage when my husband’s work often took him away from home. At the time, I was a mess and a drinker. My husband forgave me and we put it behind us, although he sometimes says: “You owe me one”. Now, 20 years on, he says he wants my permission to have a fling with a woman he met at a conference. I know I haven’t got a leg to stand on, but the thought of him sleeping with another woman is destroying me, and I’m not sure our marriage can survive it as I am a far more jealous person than my spouse.
ANSWER: I hate trite phrases such as “what goes around comes around”, but who can deny that certain betrayals breed a desire to repay in kind? You created an imbalance in your marriage when you had these love affairs and it seems that the intervening years have not properly resolved the issue.
You say your husband forgave you, but it doesn’t sound as if that was truly the case. What he seems to have done instead is to have cold-stored the grievance until he found himself in a position to pay you back.
The fact he has occasionally said that you “owe” him shows how the hurt has been kept on life support over the years.
I wonder if there is even something a little passive-aggressive about the way he has held the threat of retribution over you all these years.
His attitude is hardly that of the truly selfless soul who wipes the slate clean. Not that this is surprising; most of us find it near impossible to totally forgive infidelity in our beloved.
But I wonder if your spouse’s particular way of coping - casting you as the penitent for two decades and now extorting extra punishment - is not a little manipulative?
Did the pair of you ever talk about the circumstances that led to your affairs? If your husband was often away and you felt insecure and alcohol-dependent, then there were circumstances that, if not extenuating, help explain your betrayal.
Does your husband accept this version of events, or does he feel that you have distorted the facts to give yourself an excuse?
If you didn’t seek counselling at the time or talk the matter through properly, it could explain why he seems so cold-blooded now, demanding his pound of flesh.
I am not surprised you feel so jealous. It is often the people who are most easily tempted into infidelity who feel most insecure. Their own capacity for treachery leads them to mistrust those close to them and to torture themselves with thoughts of abandonment.
It’s also true that this pathology is particularly typical of people whose parents were inconstant presences in their lives.
Were you, I wonder, repeating childhood patterns all those years ago by testing your husband’s love with your adultery - behaving like a little girl who wants her parents to love her despite her bad behaviour? It does sound like a classic cry for help.
My point is that you won’t be able to resolve what’s happening in your marriage now if you don’t re-examine the past. It is, perhaps, particularly instructive to do so now you so keenly feel how devastating sexual betrayal is when you are the betrayed.
It’s also true that your husband needs to understand the mechanism by which some insecure people put love to the test precisely because they feel unlovable - and how devastating the blow can be if they prove their proposition.
Your husband found strategies for coping with your faithlessness, but it seems doubtful you can do the same. It’s hard to turn a blind eye to something that has been placed before you so starkly. So I certainly don’t think the answer is to simply sanction your husband’s infidelity. If I were you I would take the whole matter to a relationship counsellor, so you can talk openly and without rancour.
There’s no doubt you caused your other half serious pain in the past - but no marriage can be maintained by treating one spouse like a felon who has no rights. You cleaned up your act and recommitted yourself to a united life. Surely your steadfastness of the past 20 years counts for something?
Isn’t it also true that your husband has been guilty of his own hurtful behaviour in the past decades?
Infidelity isn’t the only marital grievance. Unkind, manipulative and disparaging behaviour can prove just as - or more - corrosive. I know of no marriage on this planet where one partner is totally without blame.
It seems cruel that your husband has been keen to wield this “get out of jail free” card over you for so long. In a balanced relationship both sides learn to abandon grudges.
Above all, what you need to explain to your husband is that if you give the green flag to this “fling”, your marriage will be destroyed by jealousy and pain. Surely that’s not the outcome either of you desire after working for 20 years to keep things together? - Daily Mail