Who Was More Wrong? Her for Having the Affair, or Her Husband for Locking Her Out After?

The problem with cheating.

The Daily Mail truly has a knack for doing fascinating, albeit often somewhat horrible, human-interest stories that just draw you in. This is one such story that I initially saw via X:

Here’s an excerpt from the article that should give you the gist of it:

My hand was shaking. Was that why the key to the front door of my flat wouldn't go in properly?

It was one of those hefty Yale locks and, as I twisted and probed, I thought perhaps I was just too tired and upset even to open the door.

But no — I tried over and over again, and it was clear this key, my house key, would not open this door. I stared at it in disbelief: my husband had changed the lock.

While I was away, visiting my elderly parents, he had called a locksmith to our marital home and locked me out of it. Even now at 53, a long 14 years later, this moment remains one of the most emotionally charged of my entire life.

And it came back in full Technicolor when I read Amanda Platell's harrowing piece in Femail magazine earlier this month on being a wronged wife and ending her marriage.

Except I was literally on the other side of the door. I was the wrong-doer, the one who was having an affair.

While Amanda changed the locks then sat indoors sipping whisky and listening to her husband's ever-more frantic pleas to open up, I was the one in the hallway outside the flat, out in the cold.

When I read Amanda's story, what intrigued me most was not her devastation at her husband's infidelity, but her regret at how quickly she ended her marriage once she'd discovered it.

Looking back, she thinks the abruptness of the way she did it — the very evening she found out — was too harsh, too brutal.

And I agree. Yes, I was in the wrong to cheat, but the pain and humiliation I felt at the way my marriage of eight years ended — also within hours of my husband's discovery — affected me every single day for years.

Was my immediate exile from the marriage really the right thing for my husband to do? Is horribly wounded pride a good enough reason to throw away years of mutual support and, yes, happiness?

I knew he knew about ten hours before I came home to the changed lock.

...Does my ex ever wonder today — as Amanda does — whether he was too hasty with the locksmith? Too vengeful? I have no idea.

All I know is that as soon as I realised the keys did not work, I pounded on that door, screaming 'let me in, oh please let me in!' and feeling sorry and sickened and furious. I kicked the door several times, shaking it on its hinges. I swore and pleaded and wept.

...The truth is, my affair was a symptom of an unravelling marriage rather than its cause and yet I still maintain it could have been saved.

...Like Amanda, who admits to prioritising her career over her marriage, he was always out while I was at home all day.

Once our flat had been a wonderful sanctuary and a place for friends to gather. We were known for the huge Halloween parties we threw in the big main room with its 12ft ceiling, but then gradually, over time, we stopped partying together.

He was no longer quite so proud to have me on his arm, or so it felt.

Indeed, it often seemed as if he didn't care much about the marriage full stop. He was on the up, popular and in demand, making a lot of money with accolades and appreciation for his work, and I rarely saw him. He was working most of the time or out with his friends.

...And I didn't think marriage counselling was something he'd do. I remember asking our cleaner, who also ran a hotel cleaning agency, if I could get a shift job cleaning hotels. 'You're not tough enough,' she said, looking me straight in the eye.

That was when I began the affair. He was married, too, and we had been friends for a couple of years before the line was crossed. I crossed it because I was desperate not to feel so bleak, such a failure and so alone.

With him, I felt listened to and understood. He made time for me and that made me feel hopeful. That despite my career downturn, I wasn't a lost cause.

The affair was honestly a desperate and stupid attempt at personal salvation, not marital punishment.

I have no idea how long my husband suspected it, but I do know that it was never supposed to break up our marriage. It was a fling and I knew it would end just as easily and quickly as it had started. It wasn't a conscious cry for help, but it could be interpreted as one.

....The day I found the locks changed, I had no option but eventually to go crawling to friends, dragging my enormous suitcases behind me. There was no question of going to my lover's place, of course — there was never any long-term potential in it.

...As Amanda acknowledges now, when a bomb goes off in your marriage, you owe it to each other to take the time to find out why.

If I had been given space to talk, explain and beg forgiveness, perhaps we could have saved what we had.

In fact, it didn't take long for him to move on. The decree absolute came through and it seemed just a few months later he was married again.

...I have tried to contact him many times over the years, but he has locked me out of any communication. I am dead to him.

It does not have to be like this. Affairs don't have to end marriages. Like Amanda, now I am older, I know a number of couples who have worked through infidelity and come out the other side.

So basically, she got a little bored, a little unhappy, and a little dissatisfied with her marriage and her life. Some good-looking guy told her he understood, and she started sleeping with him. Then, although she pretty clearly wished they could have worked things out, after her husband found out what she did, his feelings for her immediately evaporated, and he had zero interest in reconciling.

Most people aren’t going to have a lot of sympathy for her, and I don’t either. You don’t get to cheat on someone and then choose how they react to you emotionally. That’s a very individualized thing, and yes, it’s entirely possible that all the affection they have for you will shut off like someone flipped a light switch.

That being said, it’s worth digging into this subject a little bit more.

In America, at least, the cheater is almost universally, unambiguously considered the bad guy in the relationship, while the other partner is considered the victim. Sometimes that’s actually true, but once you get the details, it’s often a lot more ambiguous.

For example, don’t tell me how hurt you are that your partner cheated if he’s been hitting you up for sex for a year and you’ve been blowing him off. If you put someone in that situation and they have other options, you shouldn’t be surprised if they exercise them.

On the other hand, this story is probably more typical of what happens when a relationship breaks up over cheating. It’s, he took me for granted, she nagged all the time, he never stopped working, she got really hostile, he never wanted to do anything, she didn’t want to spend time with me anymore, etc. You talk to one of them and you’re thinking, “Oh, this poor woman. How did she take this awful marriage for so long?” Then, if you happen to talk to her husband, it’s,” I didn’t know that! She really did that? Wow, being married to her actually sounds pretty awful! I never would have guessed!”

Yes, sometimes there absolutely are horrible human beings who are entirely (or at least mostly) at fault for wrecking a marriage. But an awful lot of the time, when you get more details about what’s going on, it’s more of a 60/40 situation and you’re usually not 100% sure which one is the 60 and which one is the 40.

In those situations, cheating can be very tempting. Someone you find attractive flirts a little bit with you, and you get those butterflies that you haven’t felt in your marriage for so long. The idea of having sex with a new person is thrilling. That’s because that person is all dessert without having to eat your vegetables. You get sex, excitement, novelty, and intimacy, but without having to do each other’s laundry or being required to take each other’s kids to soccer practice.

It’s easy to rationalize, too. Why, this affair is actually a positive because it’s scratching an itch I can’t get handled in our marriage, so it’s making me HAPPIER AT HOME. Besides, this isn’t serious. I love my partner, but this is JUST SEX, nothing more.

Besides, they’ll never find out… except so often they do. After all, who knows you better than your partner? So, something sets off their sensors. Some comment, expression, or strange behavior raises their antenna. Next thing you know, they check your cell phone, check your email, set up a camera, or someone gets a guilty conscience, and you’re busted.

What happens from there? It really depends on the person. They may jettison you immediately as this woman’s husband did, they may turn a blind eye to it, or you may spend the next five years going to therapy and trying to win their trust back. It’s really out of your hands, and people are so different, they may not even know how it will play out for sure until it actually happens to them.

Even setting morality aside, I think most people would be happier if they realized the grass isn’t greener on the other side; it’s greener where you water it. That may mean you need to have some hard conversations, do some things you’re not used to, or even be honest if it risks everything.

If your marriage can’t be saved, it can’t be saved, but for most people, a relationship built on cheating isn’t ever going to turn into anything real anyway. It’s easy to think it will – and of course, sometimes it does – but when things start to get real and it’s not just a fun little distraction for everyone involved anymore, those relationships usually disintegrate.

That’s not the case with marriage. That’s real. That’s serious. Give it your all, and if it just doesn’t work out despite your best effort, try to end it on the best terms possible. Sometimes, all of us have to learn the hard way, but if your marriage wasn’t important to you, you’d just get divorced and sleep with who you wanted to in the first place. Think about that before you do something that can end it.

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