Should The ‘Other Woman’ Ever Tell A Wife That Her Husband Is Cheating?

 Six months after getting married in 2006, writer Tracy Schorn received a very unexpected call from a very unexpected person: her husband’s mistress.

“The woman hissed, ‘I bet you wonder where your husband is. He’s with me,’” Shorn, the author of Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life: The Chump Lady’s Survival Guide, recalled the voice on the other end of the line telling her.

As the other woman relayed more details about the affair ― even boasting of having broken up the man’s earlier marriage ― Schorn struggled to take it all in.

“Then, I told the woman on the phone, ‘Oh my God, I hope I’m not pregnant.’ After hearing that, she burst into tears. It was surreal, to say the least,” Schorn told HuffPost.

Before ending the conversation, Schorn thanked the other woman for making the call.

“She was a toxic person but I’m still grateful she told me, even if her motivations were not pure,” the writer said. “It took me a while to act on the knowledge but I left him.”

Schorn’s experience highlights an ethical conundrum for people who have had affairs with men and women in long-term relationships: Do you tell their primary partner? Is it your story to tell or is the impetus to come clean all on the spouse?

Before making the call, it’s important to consider if the affair was a one-time encounter or an ongoing, deeply involved relationship, said Megan Fleming, a psychologist and sex therapist in New York City.

“If the affairs are in the past and the other person is committed to their marriage, I would counsel not to disclose,” she said. “Holding onto that secret is painful but as I see it, it might very well destroy a relationship the couple had already gone on to rebuild if you dump the info onto the spouse’s lap.”

Writer and one-time mistress Kate Rose was faced with this dilemma years ago. At the time, she had the full support of her lover to do whatever she felt was right. Ultimately, she kept it to herself.

“We had been together for two years and for me, I didn’t want to make someone else’s choices for them,” she told HuffPost. “I didn’t want to force my lover’s hand or betray the trust that we had built. I left the telling up to him. After all, it was his relationship that was affected. I thought it was his choice to be honest, not mine.”

Source: huffingtonpost