Infidelity: Why You Should Hold Off Telling Friends and Family
At some point in most people’s lives, they will be cheated on by a significant other. When that SO happens to be a spouse, it amplifies the negative effects and makes it extremely difficult to recover. Many victims of infidelity are caught between working through the marital issues or dumping their spouse altogether. This uncertain balancing act means that telling your support unit — friends and family — is a delicate issue that you shouldn’t jump right in to.
For starters, close family and friends have a harder time with forgiveness than you do.
If you are serious about working through the issues and saving your marriage, it’s going to be tough doing that when your best friends and closest family members want to stick your spouse’s head under a guillotine blade. And while their anger may eventually subside if the two of you are able to work through it, it will never fully go away, and that makes for a lot of awkward gatherings in your future.
Secondly, it’s not fair to tell family and friends until you know what you want.
Friends and family often have to sit on suppressed anger and animosity when you tell them about the affair while still deciding if you want a divorce. Any advice they dispense is limited. They’re being thrust into an awkward situation they’re unfamiliar with where they don’t have any clue what the appropriate response is. In other words, they don’t know how to help you if you don’t know how to help yourself.
Thirdly, whatever issues that exist between you and your spouse will not benefit from the inclusion of outside parties.
Friends and family can be a shoulder to cry on — once you know what you’re going to cry about — but they can’t make your mind up for you. That’s something you’ll have to learn on your own, and it’s something that is wholly contingent on where you and your spouse decide to go from the infidelity. Healthy marriages are healthy because of the work that the two spouses put into it. Telling your friends and family about the infidelity if you’re both prepared to do the work in fixing your marriage will only hinder that.
So when can you tell your friends and family?
When you’re sure that the marriage is over and it’s time to move forward with the divorce, they can be of great assistance in helping you heal. Until then, though, it’s information you may want to sit on.
What do you think, readers? Should infidelity be kept hidden from friends and family until you learn what you’re going to do about the marriage? Sound off in the comments section below.