Approaching Your Spouse's Affair Partner When I first discovered my husband Wayne’s infidelities the first question I asked was “Why?” Why did he do this? Was it something lacking in me? What did they have that I didn’t? Why did he choose them over me? These torturous questions ran through my mind like a CD in the ‘repeat’ mode. The friend who had been with me when I broke into Wayne’s email and discovered his secret life begged me to call the girl with whom he had been having an emotional affair. She thought that if we talked to his affair partner we would get the real story, or maybe even tell her that he was married and beg her to leave him alone. Had she been the only one with whom he had been unfaithful, I may have been tempted to think that my problem was with her. But during the week that followed my discovery, Wayne confessed that there were many people with whom he had been involved, most of them were people whose names he had never known. Even if it had been possible to wade through the countless numbers of people that he had been with, what good would that have done me? They did not betray me. He did. My pain was caused by his choices. My heart was wounded by his actions, not theirs. During those early days following discovery I felt that my heart was already full of grief over Wayne and our broken relationship, so there wasn’t any room for other random people to emotionally move in and take up residency. On top of that, I didn’t have any energy to spare on them either. My feelings were completely spent on him. So, out of a need to preserve my sanity and protect my heart I chose to forgive them all at once. After that, approaching them became a non-issue for me because I simply had no desire to. I have talked to several women who felt the way my friend had, and chose to approach their spouse’s affair partner. While I am sure there are exceptions to every rule, I have never talked to anyone who was glad that they had. In fact, they told me that it just caused them more pain. That season in my life was hard enough as it was. Carrying around the heavy burden of his affair partners would have only made it that much harder. I am so grateful that I dropped them at the starting gate, thus freeing me to press in on my journey toward healing my heart and my marriage without their heavy weight pulling me down.
