I have a complicated question. Iâm a woman in my 30s who has been married for a few years to my husband. We are very much in love and have a wonderful relationship. We met when I was in college, and worked at the same place together. Eventually, we became friends. We maintained a long-distance connection after I moved away, we fell in love, and then the rest is history. But during the time that we were friends, I had a mildly physical, mostly emotional affair with our boss, who was much older than us and married at the time. The boss and I never had sex. We only made out a few times and exchanged dirty messages. This didnât last very long. By the time my husband and I were actually dating, my affair with my boss had been over for years, so there was never any overlap between them or any infidelity on my part.
My husband knows that I had an emotional affair with an older man during that time period, but I never told him who the older man was. I didnât tell him because I felt shame about it. I also didnât know HOW to tell him, even though he is a really rational, emotionally intelligent man. I am still worried that telling him would hurt our relationship or that he would think less of me due to the age gap between our former boss and me. But recently, my husband has expressed an interest in reaching out to our old boss. He is proud we are married, and he wanted to let this boss know because he thinks that the boss will find our story heartwarming. I donât think the boss would say anything about our affair to my husband, and I honestly think my husband is correct in how he thinks the boss will receive the news of us being married. I actually do think it would warm his heart.
Should I tell my husband about this affair before he reaches out? Or should I let him e-mail the boss without telling him? Is this something I should have told my husband years ago, or is it okay for me to have kept this to myself? It feels icky to let my husband reach out to our old boss and share life updates without him having this information. But I am also concerned that telling him could ruin our amazing relationship.
Brooding Over Serious Secret
Tell your husband who the old man was.
In general, your spouse is not entitled to your complete sexual and romantic history. A married person, like any other kind of person, is entitled to some privacy and enjoys â or should be able to enjoy â a zone of erotic autonomy. So, yeah: Itâs okay to keep some things to yourself. Omitting arguably irrelevant details about your past⊠because the detail isnât important or makes you look bad or makes you feel bad⊠is allowed. For instance, if you fucked your best friendâs boyfriend in high school and she found out and it was a whole thing and sheâs not your best friend anymore and you moved away after high school, you donât necessarily have to share that information with the guy you met and married a fifteen years later.
But personally, BOSS, I wouldnât want to be with a guy I couldnât share that story with â I wouldnât want to be with a guy I couldnât laugh with about what a piece of shit I was in high school. (It was me. I was the one who slept with my best friendâs boyfriend in high school. It was a hole thing.) Donât we all want our spouses to love us for the fallible human beings we are? And donât we deserve spouses who are smart enough to appreciate that our pasts â including mistakes we made â helped to shape us into the people they met and fell in love with years later?
All that said, BOSS, this detail â who the old man was â isnât exactly irrelevant. Your husband knows you had a brief thing with an older man, but you never told him who that old man was. (Stop calling it an affair! It was never consummated! It was a flirtation!) So, if your husband was going to judge you for messing around with an older man, he wouldâve judged you for that already. The potential problem here is the old man knows who your husband is⊠but your husband doesnât know who the old man was⊠and if your husband finds out on his own, BOSS, he could feel humiliated (your former boss knew and he didnât) or he could feel hurt that you didnât trust him enough to tell him yourself (and tell him sooner).
While you believe your former boss would never say anything â and maybe he wouldnât â people change as they age. So, while itâs possible the old man you made out with in college wouldnât have said anything, you canât be 100% sure the even older man he is now wouldnât blurt it out. So, you need to get out in front of this thing: âHey, honey. before you reach out to our old boss, thereâs something I shouldâve told you a long time ago. Before we dated, I had an emotional affair with an older man â that part you knew â but I never told you who that old man was. It was our boss. It ended years before you and I got together and I never told you because I was embarrassed and it was awkward. But I donât want you to be blindsided if you reach out and he says something, so Iâm telling you now. And, again, Iâm sorry I didnât tell you years ago.â
P.S. Reaching out to your old boss yourself â and first â and asking him not to say anything to your husband, as your husband doesnât know, is also an option. But if your husband finds out you were running interference behind his back, youâll have three things to apologize for: two ancient errors (fucking around with your boss, not telling your husband about it years ago) and a more recent mistake (an attempted coverup).
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 I have been in a long-term relationship with a man for over ten years. Iâm a bisexual woman in my late 40s. I love my partner, but for the past several years I have seriously thought about leaving the relationship. I feel stuck. We have had a lot of conflict in the relationship and have tried couples counseling. Although things feel slightly more peaceful, the spark feels gone and I canât regain my desire for him. Because I donât want to be intimate with him, I feel guilty a lot of the time. I have talked to him about opening the relationship so I can explore my sexuality, but he is not on board. I feel afraid of throwing away our years together, being alone and starting over. I have seen a therapist the last year to try and decide, but Iâm no closer to knowing what to do. Any advice to help me get unstuck?
Canât Help Myself
You could let your partner make this decision for you â or you could let him make this decision for himself, CHM, and by extension make it for you, too.
But to make an informed decision about whether he wants to stay with you, CHM, your partner needs all the information you have, and it doesnât sound â reading between the lines here â like he does. So, you need tell him you love him, CHM, but youâre no longer sexually attracted to him. If you went into couples counseling with the expressed intent of working on repairing your sex life, he may think youâre still open to working on it or that thereâs some âregain attractionâ fix you havenât stumbled over yet. But youâre not working on it, CHM, and there isnât a fix. If you ever have sex again, itâs not going to be him; if he ever has sex again, itâs not going to be you. And since you wanna have sex again at some point, CHM, and so (presumably) does he, the only outstanding question is whether youâll still be together when you start fucking other people.
P.S. There are lots of people out there in sexless companionate relationships and marriages, CHM, but companionate relationships only work â theyâre only loving and low-conflict and fulfilling â when theyâre what both parties want. And since it doesnât sound like an open-but-sexless relationship is something your partner wants, he will most likely make the decision youâre afraid to make.
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Iâm in a marriage thatâs been unhappy for about a decade. Lots of fighting and periods of serious loneliness. We are non-monogamous. Five years ago, I was at a conference and met a radiantly handsome man and we hit it off. He was, and still is, in a monogamous marriage. One evening we were in my room, and I pressured him to go to bed with me. I saw that he wanted to, and I convinced him to set aside his commitment to his husband. I saw that he was conflicted, and I didnât care. We didnât kiss, we didnât take our underwear off, we just spooned, my arms around him. I got what I wanted, but he was clearly very uncomfortable. After about 30 minutes he went back to his room. I feel enormous guilt. No, we didnât have sex, nor did I force myself on him physically, and heâs an adult. But I did manipulate him into breaking a vow â even the cuddling was a transgression. So, while what I did might not have been criminal, it felt deeply unethical. I want to apologize. I have his contact information, and we have mutual acquaintances, although I havenât seen him since. I worry about sending a card that his husband might ask about. I worry about sending an email and having him share it with others. Which is to say, I want to apologize but I donât want anyone else to know what I did because Iâm ashamed of it. What would you do?
Feelings Of Guilt
Read the rest of this week's column here! And this week on the Lovecast: A 60 year-old woman wonders where she can score some poppers. A lesbian would like to score a queer dominatrix to work her over. And on the Magnum, Dan chats with Rich Juzwiak of Slateâs love and sex advice column, âHow to Do It.â They talk about how to make anal sex pleasurable when your partner is very, very (some might even say âtooâ) well endowed. They discuss how promiscuity can enter dangerous territory. And age gap relationships: have we reached peak daddy? LISTEN HERE!
