Dear Roe,
I am a 44-year-old woman who engaged in a workplace affair several years ago. My partner had gone off sex years prior and I struggled to understand why. I am attractive, look after my health, have a wide circle of friends and maintained financial and social independence – all the things I thought would safeguard our relationship.
He seemed happy to show me off when out and about, but at home he was distant and more like a housemate. He brushed off all my inquiries. We were young with no kids. I took it personally. He also did not have any interest in getting to the root cause, so I worked on myself, reading relationship books and listening to podcasts. I also thought he might be secretly gay, but now, I wonder whether he is on the spectrum, or more interested in porn than sex. The affair lit me up, gave me confidence – and I felt seen.
After a few months, I knew I had to end it, and I did. His wife found out a few days later and blew up our lives, making it very public. My ex wanted nothing to do with me. I am having a hard time years later coming to terms with everything and moving on, particularly because of how I treated my ex, whom I truly loved and respected; despite his lack of affection, he had admirable qualities.
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Some well-meaning people say I need to move on, that everyone else has, and it isn’t helping me. Recently, one acquaintance brought him up and I burst into tears and the acquaintance stood frozen, saying that I am still young and had to move on, which made me feel worse.
[ ‘I discovered the affair when a text came in on my husband’s phone’Opens in new window ]
I am now in midlife and regretful that I wasted years with an unsuitable person, and broke my own moral code by conducting an affair. I am grieving for many reasons: losing my ex, letting go of the incredible intimacy I experienced. But also the unanswered questions around my ex – the abrupt ending without closure.
What strikes me is the loneliness of your situation, and how lonely it has felt for a long time: the feeling of rejection and isolation in your relationship; the stress and shame and loss that all came at once when the affair ended; and now, feeling like no one around you can hold space for where you are emotionally.
It’s always interesting when we go through a difficult situation – relationship trouble, job stress, emotional struggles - and the people around us jump to easy answers and directives, such as “just break up with them”, “just quit the job”, “just get over it”.
Often, people who jump to the easy (and obvious) extreme solutions cannot linger in what is complicated, painful and unresolved. They don’t know how to just sit with you in the hard, painful truth of a situation, so instead jump into easy problem-solving mode because it makes them feel useful and allows them to put a tidy bow on your experience and move away from it.
Some of your friends may find it hard to sit with you in this experience because of the nature of it. Affairs can be emotionally charged topics for many people to even discuss, bringing up their own fears, insecurities and value systems, and so they reach for easy answers to end the conversation quickly; your ex is wrong, or gay, or deserved it; which means you can stop feeling shame; which means you can and should move on. And so you’re left lonely and unsupported.
[ ‘If my wife discovered my affair, she might just have a nervous breakdown’Opens in new window ]
I’m not going to tell you to just move on – I know that if you could, you would have. But I would like to offer you a reframing. You seem to be obsessively trying to figure out the puzzle of what happened, and why your ex didn’t want sex. You talk about the lack of clear-cut answers around your ex’s behaviour and the fact that you never obtained closure. But here’s the hard truth: we don’t get closure from other people. Closure is a gift we give to ourselves.
You may never know why your ex didn’t want to have sex. He may or may not know why himself. So stop looking to him for an answer that will likely never come. What you do know is that you sought out an affair for the same reason most people do: not because your ex was an irredeemable person or because you’re an evil one, but because you were searching for a way to reconnect with yourself and feel alive and feel seen by someone else. You have learned something vital about what you need: to feel seen in a relationship and to be able to stay connected to the parts of you that feel most like yourself.
You broke your own moral code and that has shaken your sense of integrity and understanding of yourself. That’s hard, and your brain is trying to grapple with that by repeatedly returning to old events to try to make a tidy narrative that feels safe and understandable. But if thinking about the past could solve it, you would feel better by now.
[ ‘My friend’s affair with a married man is destroying our friendship’Opens in new window ]
The reason you don’t feel better is that obsessively thinking about the past doesn’t change it, and relying on your ex to provide a tidy narrative is outsourcing all your power to him, keeping you trapped. Accepting what has happened, taking the lessons you have learned about yourself, and deciding what meaning you want to make of it is a way of reclaiming agency and getting out of your mental spiral.
You have lived, and made mistakes – but you also have decades of life and love left. In five, 10, 20 years, who do you want to be? What do you want to say you did with this experience?
Focus on you, not your ex or anyone else. What have you learned about yourself through this? What are the things that make you feel alive and connected to yourself, and how can you centre those in your life? For your sense of integrity, have you apologised to your ex fully, so you know you have shown accountability and expressed remorse as respectfully as you can – and then have you let yourself breathe, knowing you have done all you can do?
Has this experience made you have more empathy and grace for those who make mistakes, and can you bring that compassion into your life, as well as to yourself? What have you learned about how you want to be as a friend, and how you want to support people through their messiest moments? When you think about a new relationship, what have you learned about communication, mutual effort, what you could do if you feel emotionally alone again?
You need a good therapist who not only lets you grieve what you’ve lost fully – the relationship, the sense of identity, the promise of a particular life – but who also gently helps you move out of the spirals of obsession and self-blame you’re currently stuck in.
[ My wife wants to continue her affair while we carry on as if nothing is happeningOpens in new window ]
Life is both long and short, and immeasurably complicated. You have lived, and made mistakes – but you also have decades of life and love left. In five, 10, 20 years, who do you want to be? What do you want to say you did with this experience? What values of integrity, of connection, of honesty of self-exploration do you want to move forward with?
You don’t have to forget your past and leave it behind, but you don’t have to live there, either. Look at this experience, pick up the important aspects of it, and start to take some baby steps forward. Carry everything you’ve learned with you, while making room for all the life and lessons yet to come. You can’t change the past, but you can decide how you want to shape your future. Good luck.
