Carolyn Hax: He cheated with one half his age

Dear Carolyn: Last month, I found out that my husband of four decades had an “emotional affair” for the past year. He is 60, and she is a 32-year-old at his workplace. After I questioned her frequent calls, he would always blow me off with one excuse or another. When our (grown) daughter questioned the appropriateness, he started deleting calls and text messages. I checked our bill and was shocked to discover hundreds of calls and text messages between them.

He has apologized many times, swears there was never anything “physical,” and says he was stupid for being flattered that a 32-year-old would spend time talking to him. He called the week I found out “the worst week of my life” – and I have to say, “Good!” Perhaps he was only upset he had been caught?

Since then he has called me a lot more, been more attentive, but I still do not trust him while he’s at work with her. He’s been true to his word that there were no more calls/texts after I found out. He keeps saying he wants to stay married and she is nothing more than a friend, but I am still full of anger that he would allow this intrusion into our marriage.

I have seen a therapist to figure out how to deal with this. This is always on my mind, and I often have trouble sleeping. In a weird irony, he will soon no longer be working there, for unrelated reasons. – Anonymous

That’s not irony, that’s a gift.

And I realize what I’m about to suggest is counter to everything your feelings are telling you right now, and is likely to offend your sense of justice.

However, here it is anyway: Please consider regarding your husband with sympathy.

I’m not minimizing his betrayal. In fact, he made a huge mistake that caused huge damage to a huge element of his life – you – and it’s in this very hugeness that the potential for sympathy lies. Why does someone starting his seventh decade of life and fifth decade of marriage, who is well-established in a highly respected profession (edited from the letter to preserve your privacy), who has raised children and apparently hasn’t strayed before, abuse his cellphone like a teenager with a woman half his age?

Because he’s a person and people are fools, that’s why.

We’re especially moronic when a little harmless-looking, ego-pumping thrill ambles by after a long stretch of dependability, predictability and, often, high performance in service of institutions both societally and personally revered, be it marriage, family, clients/patients/ customers/readers/ students/congregants/ voters/fans.

Not everyone cannonballs into stupid the way your husband did, like an 8-year-old at a pool, and so your anger is justified. You’ve served your institutions, too – where’s your juvenile fun?

But even when it’s justified, your anger punishes you more than it does your husband, and that’s why it’s so important for you to find a way to face it, break it down, and purge it from your home. Good counseling will help, I think, since you can unload at will there and bring a more reasoned self to bear on your marriage.