This post isn't about me or for me, and it's not about or for my fellow bereaved people; it's about and for those of you who are currently coupled up (whether happily or not).
Imagine that you're happily married/coupled. Maybe you've been together a year, maybe you've been together 50 years. And your spouse dies, and you're destroyed. You're trying to get through the days, lost without your love, and then - while looking for life insurance documents or banking stuff that you need - you find a romantic card to your late spouse - but it didn't come from you. Or maybe you find a letter. Or an email. Or sexually explicit photos of your spouse with someone else. Or, even worse, the other person in that affair reaches out to you directly and tells you about it. Or shows up at the funeral and lays it on you there.
Suddenly, you're not just dealing with the emotional pain of losing your spouse, but you're also left wondering: What did I do wrong? Did s/he even love me at all? Was s/he planning to leave me? How could I have been so stupid that I didn't know? You're left with a million questions to which you can never get answers.
On top of that, you have anger that you cannot express to the person who hurt you most. It's one of the most seriously fucked up things I can think of.
The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy said in 2018 that 35% of married women and 45% of married men have been unfaithful. This includes both full-blown affairs, one-nighters, "everything but the deed" relationships, and emotional affairs.
Now, if you're one of those statistics and you're cheating on your spouse (I'm gonna use "spouse," but everything I'm saying applies to spouses or unmarried partners), I'm not here to judge you; I don't know your life. My late husband was a mental health counselor, and he cleared up a lot of misconceptions I had about infidelity - specifically, there are many reasons why people cheat, and most of them are not because they don't love their spouses. So no judgement here. But, you need to understand that if your spouse finds out about this after you die, you will have made an already unbearable situation even worse, impossible though that seems.
If you find out that your spouse is cheating on you while they're living, you have options: you can throw 'em out, file for divorce, scream every ugly thing you need to say, burn their clothes (I don't recommend it, but you can), clean out the joint bank account (again: not recommended). You can express your anger TO the person who caused it. Hell, you can talk about it, forgive, and build a stronger marriage, if that's what you want to do. But however you choose to handle it, you can make that person understand and feel the pain they've caused you.
There's no way to do any of that if the person who cheated on you is dead. So now you're mourning a person who betrayed your trust, and a marriage that you also now fear was a lie. Can you even imagine what that must be like?
For all the pain I'm in every day, that's one pain that was spared me: Doug was faithful, as was I. And yet I'm STILL so angry about my situation that I want to burn down the entire damn world; I can imagine the white-hot fury I'd feel if he'd been cheating on me.
Look, I get it: you think you won't get found out. And you're not planning to die. Well, I hate to break it to you, but LOTS of people die who think they're not going to die any time soon. Doug sure AF didn't think he was going to die.
So, on behalf of your spouses, I am BEGGING you: If you had an affair in your past, and it's over, get rid of ALL the evidence, and I mean ALL of it. If you're having an affair right now - or even a flirtation that you don't think quite meets the criteria to be an affair - make a damn decision: either end it and recommit to your marriage, or end your marriage. But DO NOT just continue like you are.
If you aren't in love with your spouse anymore, you can fix that (falling in love may be uncontrollable, but staying in love is a matter of choosing to do the work). But if you aren't in love, and you don't want to or truly believe you can't fix it, then fucking end the marriage, you coward. You're trying to have what you think is the best of all worlds: get the exciting affair and the security of the marriage, right? But it's NOT the best of all worlds, and I guarantee you: divorce will not be as painful to your spouse as finding out after your death that you'd been lying to him or her will be.
Even if your marriage is absolutely miserable, please: do not just carry on as you are. If you have even a shred of compassion for your spouse as a human being, please don't put them in the position of learning about your infidelity after your death.
Losing a spouse is awful beyond description - and that's true even if the marriage wasn't terrific. But losing a spouse and then learning that they were unfaithful to you? That's a cruelty that no one deserves to suffer.
You're going to die. You may very well die before your spouse. And if your death will leave them to discover something that will tarnish every happy memory you ever made together, and you won't take action to prevent that, well... I absolutely will judge you for that.
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