A friend confessed to me that she has cheated on her husband. It started with texts, before she met up in secret with a man she doesn’t know and they slept together. I am good friends with her husband and close to their young children. She wants me to be supportive, but I am struggling. She told the man she slept with that she was recently separated – he initially rejected her when he thought she was married. She says she feels no remorse and wouldn’t care if her husband had an affair, either. She says she wants to escape the clutches of being a mum and a wife and experience a thrill again. I am not convinced the affair is over: she is desperate to see this man again and can’t stop thinking about him. I feel awful knowing all this and still seeing her family. She says I am the only one who knows. How can I be there for her when I think what she has done is so wrong?
You ask how you can be there for her when you don’t like what she has done, so presumably you want to continue the friendship. This is what I am concentrating on. I havesupported people through infidelities, but I also want to remind you that you don’t have to: sometimes, it is the end of a friendship. Friendships can and should withstand rocky roads, but we all have our portcullis moments.
The line that jumped out at me was she “wouldn’t care if her husband had an affair either”. That is quite a statement. It is not your job to be a marriage counsellor to this couple, but if you can concentrate less on the infidelity and the deceit, more on the emotions going on behind them, this may help you feel more supportive to your friend: see her actions as symptomatic. Her marriage sounds broken and comes across as very unhappy. “Escape the clutches” was another telling phrase. I wonder how old her children are. This fling sounds like a huge distress flare. Can you help her work through these feelings, help her be curious as to why she is doing this, rather than focus on the logistics of her affair?
It is heady and exciting for your friend to reveal the details and meet up with the new man. Those are the bits she understandably wants to share with you. But perhaps once the first flush of this has abated you could ask her what she wants to do, where she wants to be, long term: does she want to fix her marriage; what would happen to the children if they split up; what would be the impact on them; where would they all live? This may bring much-needed reality to the situation and make her realise the “thrill” can soon turn. The sad fact is your friend’s marriage may be over. That may be hard for everyone to accept; this affair may be a way for her not to think about that.
Are you worried you are complicit simply by knowing about it? Because you are not. You are not the one being unfaithful; you are not facilitating this. The alternative would be to say something to her husband and you cannot do that. I am always amazed when people write to me about family or friends having affairs, worried it will “blow the family apart”, but then want to tell the other partner, which would do just that. It is never easy to keep these things to yourself, but sometimes it is the kindest, most productive thing to do.
You are not condoning the fling by being there for her (in emotionally supporting her, you are also helping her children). But you may have to set yourself some boundaries, and the details of these are up to you; perhaps you don’t want to hear intimate details, and you won’t lie or be an alibi for her. If you find it all gets too difficult for you, that is OK, too: you don’t have to be supportive every day. She has thrown herself down the river; you don’t have to jump in with her.
Your friend has to take responsibility for her actions and on paper they don’t look great: lying, deceit, infidelity (although presumably she also has good qualities if she is your friend).
None of us aspire to these things, but sometimes perfectly good people find themselves in this situation. It is easy to judge, because judging creates a distance between us and the other person, and we can kid ourselves it could never be us. We like our friends to be predictable: people we know doing things we didn’t expect can make us uncomfortable.
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