Should Affairs Be Disclosed?

A tricky question with tricky answers in an article published in The Washington Post

I’m excited to share that The Washington Post published this piece yesterday and I was able to get the article gifted for Relational Riff subscribers. You can read it behind the paywall here.

The Thing About Affairs…

If you’re among the over 90% of Americans who believe it morally wrong to have an affair, you probably have strong feelings about such transgressions.

Yet affairs are not uncommon. Estimates show that about 16% of people report having had extramarital sex during their lifetime (about 3% in the past year).

It’s oh-so-tempting but not terribly helpful to advise people simply not to have an affair in the first place. Affairs do happen, and for so many complicated (and sometimes simple) reasons. Once they have happened, affair-involved partners often experience a profound sense of regret and confusion over how best to protect themselves, their partner, and their relationship.

It’s a catch-22. Disclosing means breaking a partner’s heart in a way that may not ever be repairable. But not telling means keeping a secret that can foster distance and make it harder to discuss unhappiness that led to having the affair in the first place. It’s an impossible dilemma for an involved partner with obvious and enormous consequences for the non-affair partner.

To Disclose or Not To Disclose?

A simple answer to a hugely complicated question is rarely the right one. Or, as my favorite quote from H.L. Mencken goes: “For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer, which is wrong.”

In fact, there really is no one right answer as to whether it’s wise to disclose an affair, even according to the experts. Even so, a huge amount of research and clinical wisdom that can help you make the best choice possible, given the circumstances.

I had the incredible good fortune to interview a marital researcher, Kristina Coop Gordon (author of Getting Past the Affair), who has developed and tested treatments for infidelity; a research, Michael Slepian (author of The Secret Life of Secrets), who studies secret-keeping; and one of the most talented marital therapists I know, Daphne de Marneffe (author of The Rough Patch). These experts offer practical guidance for making the incredibly difficult decision about whether it’s wise to disclose an affair. You can dive deep into the research and the advice in the article, linked (again) here.

Thanks for reading this newsletter and checking out the article. Please feel free to share this with anyone else you think might find it valuable.

Relationally yours,

Yael