A Love Letter To My Husband After The Affair: Is It Appropriate?
I sometimes hear from wives who somewhat regret their harsh reaction to their husband’s affair. Understandably, the wife had a strong reaction. But she still feels that she has said and done some things that she now regrets. Many fear that they have damaged their marriage with what they now see as an overreaction, and they want to try to reverse the damage. Many try to talk about this with their husband, but they still feel misunderstood. So they consider writing a letter, but they are not quite sure what to say.
There might be a situation like this one: “when I found out about my husband’s affair, I temporarily went crazy. I told my husband’s family all about it. I told some of his coworkers. I told people at our church. I was pretty much hoping that I could make people think less of my husband so that everyone would be as mad at him as I was. Well, it worked. There are now some people who are no longer speaking to my husband. He is having a hard time at work because of this. I also made my husband move out and therefore he hasn’t gotten to see his kids as much as he might like. To be honest, at the time, I felt justified in this. But a mutual friend of ours saw my husband at the grocery store. And the friend reported back to me that my husband was disheveled and broken. Apparently, my husband told the friend that his decision to have an affair ruined his life. He didn’t place any of the blame on me and he said that he would give his right arm to have me back. When I heard about this conversation, I admit that I softened. Then, I called my husband and I asked if he wanted to come over and spend some time with the kids. We had a very good conversation during that visit. And I did apologize to him for trying to smear his name within our community. I was stunned when he told me that no apology was necessary. He said that he deserved everything that came to him and that he does not blame me a bit. He said that it was his choice to cheat and now he has to face the consequences. Then he apologized to me and he started crying. He said that I will never know how sorry he is. After he left, I felt so guilty and I realized that I still love him, but he doesn’t know that. So I want to write him a letter because I don’t think that I could get this out face-to-face. I told a friend of mine about this and she said it’s bizarre that I want to write a love letter to my cheating husband. Is it? She says that it sounds like I’m letting him off the hook.”
I don’t think that you necessarily need to call it a love letter. And I also definitely don’t think that you should let him off the hook or that you should shift the responsibility from him to yourself. Yes, you may have acted a little harshly. But considering the betrayal, it is not uncommon. You have also already apologized and your husband basically accepted your apology and did not blame you. So I don’t think that you need to go overboard with future apologies. If your husband hadn’t cheated, you would not have reacted in the way that you did. There is nothing wrong with you taking responsibility for your reaction, but you have already done that in person.
It can feel very therapeutic to write a letter, but I’d suggest stopping short of alluding to fact that now everything is okay. It’s GREAT that you have come to an understanding, but you are still in the early days of this process. There is still so much work to be done. You don’t want to minimize that. You don’t want for your husband to get the impression that he doesn’t need to do the work. You can basically say that you are sorry that you brought other people into the situation and that you now regret your harsh reaction. You can tell him that you’d like to interact in a more positive way moving forward and that you still love him and hope that you work it out. But I don’t think that you need to go on and on about this because you don’t want to put yourself in a situation where YOU are the one doing the apologizing while he is the one who looks like the injured party. You are the innocent and injured party. Sure, you have both made mistakes and can take responsibility for them. But his is the bigger mistake and you don’t want to shift the dynamic that keeps him from taking responsibility for his actions.
This is just my opinion as someone who has gone through this. Of course you always want to treat each other with dignity and respect. And if you regret your behavior, there is no harm in saying so and apologizing, like you have. If you want to tell your husband that you love him in writing, there is no harm in this, either. But don’t lose sight of the fact that this is still a lot of work to do and that you still expect him to do it.
I know that I might sound harsh, but I also know that many men will take any opportunity that they can get to shortchange the rehabilitation process. That’s the same process that is going to force your husband to do the work in order to regain the trust. You don’t want to shortchange yourself of that. So I’d make sure that your letter doesn’t give him that impression. If it helps, you can read about my own recovery process at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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