Be honest

The most important thing after an affair is discovered is that you are
completely honest about the details of the affair. Keeping things a secret on
the misguided belief that it will hurt your wife or it will be uncomfortable
for you will come back to haunt you down the road.

Linda: Your wife probably knows a lot more about your affair than you
think she does. Just from examining phone records and from what you
have told her, she has drawn a pretty clear conclusion of what happened
in the affair. A woman’s intuition is powerful. She knows if you are
keeping things from her.

However, complete honesty is not as easy as it might seem. In the course of

the conversations during recovery, some difficult questions will arise. It
can get tense and things can become quite heated and uncomfortable. If
you tend to like to shy away from confrontation, it will feel like you are in
hell.

As a result, this type of environment is conducive to telling “little white

lies,” telling your wife what you think she wants to hear or throwing up your
instinctual defenses and shutting down once you feel things are getting out
of hand. At times, lying can be very tempting. Your goal is to not engage in
these behaviors.

What’s more, lying always builds a pattern of more lying. If you feel that
lying gets you what you want, you will lie again. I guarantee it.

In the long run, these lies do not serve your relationship in any way
whatsoever. They only add to the worry, distrust and suspicion that are
lurking around your relationship after the affair.

They also prevent important issues from being discussed. If you are lying
about something because you think your wife will have an unpleasant
emotional response, it is because it is an important issue for them. These
kinds of difficult issues are exactly the things you should be talking about
and trying to work out in your relationship. Open up and air it out, no
matter how difficult, as it is in the best interests of your relationship.

Healing from an Affair Page 49

Your wife will not fully get over your affair until you are completely honest
about everything that happened. That means the physical aspect, the
emotional aspect, where it took place, how it took place. Those questions all
need to be addressed.

As mentioned before, you also need to be honest going forward in every

aspect of your life. Be open and honest with your thoughts and feelings and
how you conduct yourself.

Your relationship is either going to survive these difficult times or it won’t.

You will want your relationship from here on out to be fresh and new and
based on complete honesty. It’s important that your marriage can survive
with honesty.

Action Steps:

• Be honest and transparent in everything you do, but make sure not to
use honesty as an excuse to be cruel or hurtful.
• If lying tends to be a habit for you, contemplate why that is. What do
you stand to gain or lose by lying?

Healing from an Affair Page 50