I've Been Having An Affair For 5 Years. Should I Tell My Girlfriend?

Q: I've been having an affair for five years. When we met, my affair partner was in a troubled marriage, I was in a happy relationship, and we both had an unfulfilled need for a more active and BDSM-focused sex life. I appreciate that's in no way an excuse, and I know this makes me a terrible person.

Over the past year, my affair partner got divorced, fell in love with someone else, and broke things off with me. I was in love with her and did all the stupid breakup stuff — the grand romantic gesture, the late-night contact. Then, just when I stopped obsessing, she reappeared and said she missed me. We started texting again while she fixed things with her new boyfriend. Last week, I finally got the courage to end it.

My girlfriend is an amazing human being and we’ve been together for nine years. We almost never fight, we share the same interests, and we’re incredibly comfortable together. As with any long-term relationship, it's lost some of its edge and excitement, but this is exchanged for understanding and security.

I love her and really want to try to be a good boyfriend now. But she seems genuinely happy and completely oblivious to what I've done.

If I can live with it — which I suspect I can due to my uncanny ability to compartmentalize — should I just dedicate myself to my girlfriend? Part of me says she deserves to know. But what good can come from breaking her heart now?

A: My first instinct is to yell at you for a bit. Frankly, however, I don’t think it will help, and I think you kind of want that. You seem to want me to say that you’re an irredeemably sh*tty person.

That’s the easy way out.

And you’ve been taking the easy way out. You didn’t break up with your girlfriend upon discovering that a BDSM-free life was a deal-breaker for you. You didn’t give her say in your relationship’s future. And now, you’re asking if you can simply hate yourself and merrily dance along? Nah.

The harder way out is to grapple with why you treated someone you claim to love very, very, badly. You need to figure out how to move forward, atone, and change.

No matter how good you think your compartmentalization is, you aren’t Mark S. and this ain’t Lumon. The affair did affect your girlfriend.

So far, you’ve acknowledged that you behaved like a perfidious dirtbag. You’ve called yourself bad names. But self-flagellation doesn’t undo the truly magnificent amount of harm you’ve done to your girlfriend. Being the only one to hold yourself accountable conveniently lets you sidestep any real consequences, and strips your girlfriend of the opportunity to make informed decisions about her life.

This isn’t just about you sleeping with someone else. Repeatedly. For years. It’s not even that you gave another person the emotional energy and support and love that you should have been pouring into your relationship. The greater offense, in my mind, is that you orchestrated thousands and thousands of lies in order to carry out that betrayal. Every single day for five years, you had to wake up and keep the truth from your partner. Effortfully.

That is unfathomable.

You say your relationship has “lost some of its edge and excitement, but this is exchanged for understanding and security.” How would you know anything about that? You exchanged “excitement” with her for excitement with another person. Did your girlfriend get to go out and find someone else when you lost your shininess — which you no doubt did? Or did she stick it out?

“Understanding”? No, she simply does not understand that she’s spent nearly a decade with three lies in a trench coat.

“Security”? She has none! You irreparably broke that.

And now? Now! After it’s all over with your affair partner, now you’re ready to “dedicate yourself” as you should have done nine years ago? Come on. If I were your girlfriend, I would be doubly insulted by the fact that you waited for this to all end before telling me. You didn’t end it for her sake, you ended it for yours.

If I were your girlfriend, I would be doubly insulted by the fact that you waited for this to all end before telling me. You didn’t end it for her sake, you ended it for yours.

You’re asking how to do best by her. (A little late, but I digress.) Is it more ethical to let her live in blissful ignorance, or to devastate her with the truth? It’s a question philosophers and remorseful scoundrels have been asking since the dawn of time. I get why you’re tempted to sweep this under the rug.

But no matter how good you think your compartmentalization is, you aren’t Mark S. and this ain’t Lumon. The affair did affect your girlfriend. You think you moped through a breakup and that didn’t come across somehow? What about the days you were exhausted because you’d been up all night sexting someone else? Get real. You really think the twain didn’t meet? They met!

Suppose you don’t tell your girlfriend and simply do some self-loathing from time to time as penance. That leaves her stuck with a dishonest guy who is riddled with Swiss cheese holes of lies. She can do better!

As soon as possible, tell her the truth. You’ve had the upper hand — the full picture of your relationship — for five years. Can you imagine how condescending and cruel it is for someone to deny you the fundamental facts of your own life for that long? To warp your basic understanding of love? Dare to feel how badly this will hurt her, and don’t flinch.

I don’t know what will happen after you come clean. Many couples survive affairs, though to be honest, I wouldn’t hold out hope. It’s up to your girlfriend to determine if that’s on the table. (If anyone is interested in reading more, I strongly suggest Esther Perel’s State of Affairs.)

Putting aside your girlfriend for a second — you’re very good at doing that — you’ve also done yourself long-term damage. Frankly, I’m less concerned about that, but you are going to have to untangle and confront a lot about yourself in the coming years.

I’m going to say something that you likely will not believe for a long time, and that your girlfriend never needs to believe if she doesn’t want to: You aren’t an evil, horrid, damned person. However, I do think you are very, very, very broken and selfish.

The only way for you to ever become whole again is to own this. Every single part of it. Anytime you feel tempted to back away from doing the work, please remember, the pain you feel is probably nothing compared to being lied to for five years.

Now, “owning it” doesn’t mean you sit your girlfriend down and tell her every detail. She gets to decide how much information she wants. The conversation is not about unburdening yourself, or undoing harm. It’s about taking the first step to let her live an honest life. Please avoid any sentences with the word “deserve” in them, i.e., “You deserve to know…” If you believed that, you would have told her when it started. Don’t defend yourself.

Regardless of what happens with your relationship, you need to go to therapy. That’s non-negotiable. You need to interrogate why you were so willing and able to harm a person you love. It will be excruciating, and yet, it is necessary. But you are not the important one right now.

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