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The Need to Know the Details

He knew I needed to be free to talk about my feelings and to understand. Many months later, I learned that he was a rare spouse to be willing to share the details with me. Many adulterers are unwilling to talk about their affair, and think their betrayed spouses should be able to just suck it up and get over it. They desire to bury it when what are needed are many hours of honest dialogue. The pain of an affair doesn’t go away by pretending it doesn’t exist.

This coffee date was an important part of our healing journey. Over the next two years, Brian took me out for many more dates where we discussed the affair and why it happened. Brian willingly answered all of my questions, holding nothing back. For me the healing came gradually through learning the details. The pain is in the details, but so is the healing.

I have heard the importance of open discussion between spouses regarding affairs explained through an analogy involving a window and a wall. When affairs take place, the third party is given a window into the relationship, because the unfaithful spouse generally talks about his or her marriage with the person they are having an affair with.

However, the unknowing faithful partner sees only a wall. They are not allowed to see beyond the marriage into the affair, which is always hidden with lies and deception. If healing is to take place, the window and wall must be reversed. The faithful partner must be given a window into the affair, and the third party must be given the wall instead. Their window into the marriage must be boarded shut permanently.

I have seen no better explanation of the importance of full disclosure than in the following letter by a man whose wife had an affair. He later posted the letter on a website so others could benefit from it.

Joseph’s Letter:

To Whomever,

I know you are feeling the pain of guilt and confusion. I understand that you wish all this never happened and that you wish it would just go away. I can even believe that you truly love me and that your indiscretion hurts you emotionally much the same way it hurts me. I understand your apprehension to me discovering little by little, everything that led up to your indiscretion, everything that happened that night, and everything that happened afterwards. I understand. No one wants to have a mistake or misjudgment thrown in his or her face repeatedly. No one wants to be forced to "look" at the thing that caused all their pain over and over again. I can actually see, that through your eyes, you are viewing this whole thing as something that just needs to go away, something that is over, that he/she doesn't mean anything to you, so why is it such a big issue? I can understand you wondering why I torture myself with this continuously, and thinking, doesn't he/she know by now that I love him/her? I can see how you can feel this way and how frustrating it must be. But for the remainder of this letter I'm going to ask you to view my reality through my eyes.