My Boyfriend Cheated With a Married Woman
By: Roz Warren
Tags: Relationships, Trust, Revenge, Love, Infidelity

My Boyfriend Cheated With a Married Woman

Would You Tell Her Husband?

Photo by Jamez Picard on Unsplash

Four years ago, when I discovered that the man I’d loved for 20 years had had a secret girlfriend on the side for the last 10, I knew what I had to do. I threw Mike out, changed the locks, got a good therapist, and, with the support of my friends and family, I moved on.

I was left with just one question. But it was a big one.

Should I tell Maggie’s husband?

Yup, Mike’s side chick was married. Mike and Maggie were double cheaters. For a decade, he’d cheated on me and she’d cheated on her husband.

They kept their affair well hidden. Their secret relationship flourished until I stumbled upon evidence of their intense, passionate union.

That’s an experience I don’t recommend to anyone. You’ve been with a guy for decades. You think you know him. You love him. You have no doubt that he loves you. Then you discover that for years he’s been in love with somebody you’ve never even heard of.

Learning about the affair was one of the worst moments of my life. I was shocked. Horrified. It felt as if the Universe had gut-punched me.

So — should I tell Maggie’s husband? Should I give him his own eye-opening devastating gut punch?

Why on earth would I want to do that?

Because the only thing I know for absolute certain was that if he’d discovered the affair first, I would have wanted him to tell me.

It made me sick to think that I could have continued to be a trusting chump in love with a liar with a secret girlfriend for the rest of my life!

As painful as it was, I was glad I finally knew the truth.

Wouldn’t Maggie’s husband feel the same?

If it were just a stupid little fling, two people who met and maybe had too much to drink and fell into bed together, and then repented and fessed up and said it would never happen again? I wouldn’t tell.

A strong relationship can recover from that.

But if your wife has been phoning and texting and meeting for furtive sex in hotel rooms with another man for years, wouldn’t you want to know?

(And no, Maggie wasn’t in an open marriage. When I discovered the affair, Mike begged me not to tell her husband.)

At first, I imagined phoning him out of the blue. “You don’t know me,” I’d say, “but you and I have something in common. Your wife is in love with my boyfriend.”

But I never made that call. What stopped me? Maggie and her husband had a teenage son. Did I really want to do something that could break up his parents’ marriage?

I’m an honest person. I was raised to believe that telling the truth is the best thing to do. But, as every grown-up knows, sometimes it’s necessary, even ethical, to lie. To spare somebody’s feelings. To save a life. To preserve and protect something valuable.

If I told Maggie’s husband the truth and he left Maggie, it would hurt Maggie (Yay! Hurrah!) But it could also hurt their kid.

Being a teenager is tough enough without your parents’ marriage imploding because of a long-term secret love affair.

Over the years, I’ve reached for the phone many times. But I always held back. And now I’m glad I did. Because someone who knows us both recently told me the story of Maggie’s marriage. Her husband had been married to someone else when he and Maggie fell in love, so Maggie became his side chick. Then she got pregnant — and he left his wife to marry Maggie.

I don’t have to tell Maggie’s husband that marriage vows mean nothing to her. He already knows.

( Writing Coach and Medium Sherpa Roz Warren writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, has been in 13 Chicken Soup for the Soul collections, and is the author of Our Bodies, Our Shelves: Library Humor. Drop her a line at roSwarren@gmail.com.)