My ex is having an affair with another soccer mum and I feel complicit. Do I tell the husband or keep it quiet? | Family

I left my ex-husband two and a half years ago. He told me the day we broke up that he had feelings for a married woman and she for him. I knew. It was part of the reason I wanted to leave him, along with a very long list of reasons why our marriage no longer served either of us.

A few months later, he began actively (but secretly) pursuing this woman, who is my son’s sports team mom. Other than my ex and this woman, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who knows.

I feel complicit in their horrible lie and I feel sick knowing it will hurt a lot of people. My son is 17 and his football team is like extended family. I I fear that this relationship could destroy not only their family, but also my son’s relationship with his father. Should I tell the husband or do I keep silent?

Eléonore says: The question of whether to reveal an affair is a classic example of what feels like a tension between fulfilling a moral duty – telling the truth – and avoiding harm. On the one hand, there is a feeling so strong that they are getting away with it and dragging you into their cover-up.

On the other hand, everyone has a story to tell a partner and things blow up in ways they didn’t expect. The spouse says, “I wish I didn’t know.” “Why was this your business?” Or the existing relationship was ending anyway and it turns out that the affair is the relationship that lasts. And we might not In fact know. From what you said in your letter, there is no reasonable doubt (to me) that they are openly flirting without having crossed into affair territory, which can be different for different people.

So, I wonder if there is a question before whether to tell the husband. Could you maybe talk to your ex?

They probably underestimate how much it would cost you to keep this secret. In fact, they may not even think about it as keep a secret. They might think your silence means withdrawing, not participating, “staying out of it,” when to you it feels as much like a decision as saying it.

Additionally, if they have an affair, they might find themselves in what people call the “affair fog,” where things people normally enjoy disappear into the heady haze of novelty and secrecy.

You could fix both of these things. You could say to your ex-husband: you have put me in a very uncomfortable position. You haven’t made much effort to hide what I think is going on. And now I I am contaminated by this knowledge and I am staying up at night worrying about things you should be worried about: what impact would that have on children? Is there a way out of this situation that does not harm many people in the blast radius?

In other words, you could tell them: You’ve put me in a position where I’m doing something every day that I don’t know if it’s okay to do. I’m not comfortable staying in this state. I need to know that you’re not blowing up everyone’s lives, and if you can’t handle this in a way that minimizes injury, I won’t continue to keep your secret.

This way you remove the illusion that everything is fine and no one notices. You put them on a clock; Either we stop this, tell the truth, or find another way to solve this problem.

Obviously the right thing to do would have been not to do it in the first place. Now that they’ve done it, they’re left with bad options: come clean and hurt a lot of people, or walk away and keep it a secret. Either way, they will be responsible for the things that should keep them up at night. But You I can’t know the intricacies that determine which of these is the right choice.

What you do know is that you have leverage. And you can use that to make sure they know that it’s not a void that you’ll stay in forever.

Ask Eléonore a question