I get a lot of emails from wives who are considering confronting the woman their husband had (or is having) an affair with. There are many motivations for this. Sometimes the wife reacts more to anger. Sometimes the most persuasive emotion is curiosity. Other times, she wants the other woman to know that she is no longer in the dark. Or, she wants to tell the other woman to stay away from her. Some wives really want information from the other woman. And sometimes the wife wants to threaten the other woman into leaving her husband and her family alone.
Whatever the reason the wife wants a confrontation, I admit that I rarely encourage or condone this. Instead, I encourage the wife not to go there. I believe from experience and from other wives I hear about that this matchup rarely goes well and almost never gives you what you expect. Honestly, most of the time, it just makes you feel worse, more insecure, and question things even more. However, I know that not all wives are going to be able to let it go and that some are going to have the confrontation anyway. Sometimes this backfires terribly and you have to clean up the mess. And there’s nothing to do at that point, just accept that things haven’t gone well and swear that now is the time to change that.
You might hear a wife say, “Honestly, I thought confronting the other woman was going to make things better. I was meaning to go and tell her to leave my husband alone and that I didn’t want her in our lives anymore. I’m a very calm and introverted person by nature and this confrontation was very difficult for me. But I was so angry that I was more than motivated to do it. I really wanted to tell him to stay away from my husband. So I did. Very calmly he told him I said I didn’t want any more of her. I told her I didn’t want her anywhere near my family again. I told her not to tell my husband about our conversation. Instead I was supposed to break up with him and move on. with her own life. Well, not more than an hour after our meeting, my husband called me and was furious. Obviously, she had run right up to him and gossiped to him about everything we had discussed. My husband instructed me not to ‘harass’ her for more weather. He told me to stay away from her and it actually sounded like he was defending her from her. He was so angry about this. And now it seems that he is more interested in her than ever. He is now taking the attitude that it is them against me. I’m so sorry we had the confrontation. It failed as horribly as it possibly could have. What can I do now?”
Unfortunately, there is no way to recover this. You can’t delete it. You can only deal with the consequences of what has happened. I suspect it’s tempting to react in a very dramatic way and defend yourself, get angry and outraged, or go to the other extreme and apologize. I would not encourage any of these reactions.
Instead, simply say that you felt it was your right to see who you are dealing with, emphasize that you were not the one who brought this person into your lives and your marriage, and then leave it at that. Sure, you may think you’re even closer now that you have a common enemy, but I’ll tell you what I tell wives in this situation before a confrontation even takes place.
Honestly, most of the time, you don’t need to do anything to end the relationship. When you fight it, sometimes you make it stronger. But when you focus on yourself and step back, knowing you have no control over anyone but yourself, the adventure often wears itself out.
It’s just not that exciting when it’s not a secret anymore and relationships based on dishonesty have a very low success rate anyway. Frankly, you often don’t need to confront her for this to happen. And you paint yourself as the negative bully when you do it.
You can’t take this back, but you don’t have to make it worse. You can still focus on yourself and let them worry about themselves. It is my opinion and experience that the best thing you can do is behave with respect and act with the same integrity that you have always had.
Don’t let them change who you are and what you stand for. Sure, the situation has failed momentarily. But that doesn’t change that they are the ones who start this very difficult thing. You just reacted to it. You don’t have to keep reacting to it. From now on, make sure that your actions are above reproach.
I know it’s hard to feel like you’re not doing anything. But often when you do something, it makes things worse and makes it seem like you’re the one doing the negative behavior. And you don’t want or need any of these things.
