Should You Contact Your Cheating Spouse's Affair Partner?

Consider all the ramifications before you do.

Photo by Burst on Unsplash

In seven years researching infidelity after being the Other Woman, this is a topic that doesn’t come up much. Not many betrayed spouses contemplate this as an option, and even fewer actually do it.

On the whole, this is probably a good thing. So many cheated-on spouses feel insecure, especially if their spouse slept with their affair partner. There’s nothing like outside sex that’s been sneaked into and lied about to make a person feel less-than.

Some cheated-on spouses yearn to set eyes on the affair partner, as if the discovery that this person is preternaturally handsome or beautiful, successful or rich, might make them feel perversely better and worse at the same time. As in, No, I could never compete with that … but then again, who could?

I have to tell these folks that they are likely to walk away mystified. Take me, for example. I am thirteen years younger than Wife in my instance, but trust me, we are twins from the neck down. Both of us are plump.

I may know a bit more about clothes and makeup, and I did keep my hair long, but Jennifer Lopez, I am not. If Wife ever looked me up on the internet, she might see the very cutest photos that have ever been taken of me, but in person … I ain’t all that hot. Really.

Why was this guy with me? The reasons are all in our heads, not in one another’s finances or looks. That’s why you might want to think a bit about what kind of childhoods and relationship you and your spouse had before you think about hitting up any love rival for a chat … or a spat.

What was your spouse looking for in this person? Were words of love spoken? Was this person perhaps expecting or even waiting for your spouse to leave you for him or her? Because this is going to affect what your meeting would look like, if you actually went through with it.

Be ready for the schizophrenic experience of discovering that your spouse said radically different things about you to their affair partner than they ever expressed to you. Holly Bradshaw, a popular writer on Medium, discovered this when she blundered into a cache of secret texts between her husband and his beloved.

He expressed a stunning degree of scorn, such hatred, and such vitriol about her to the woman he wanted to have an affair with, anger he had only hinted about to her, that she was shocked.

A ton of anger flowed underground like lava in that marriage. But it all got expressed someplace else, to the extent that Holly had no idea his feelings were as strong as they were.

Later, when confronted about it, the husband backwalked all of it. “No … I didn’t really mean all that … I was just angry …”

Can anyone really live with someone who does this?

News of this sort might illuminate your situation if you’re wondering exactly how much you’ve been lied to, or exactly how fragmented the different versions of your spouse’s “truth” really are.

Of course, your spouse has been lying about being emotionally or sexually faithful, but if they’ve also been lying to you about their true feelings about many aspects of your relationship, I think that casts serious, serious doubt on whether you can ever trust that person again.

Not every marriage in this situation is unsalvageable, though. It depends on the people and the situation. My point is, if you speak to the affair partner, be prepared for some very rude shocks!

On the other hand, if Wife had ever spoken to me, she’d discover that Husband had never said anything particularly ugly about her.

He had things he was resentful about, of course, but he kept telling me things like, “I really don’t want to say anything bad about her. She’s a good person. She’s been a great mother, and all of our friends really love her.”

He tended to take the things he was unhappy with as evidence that he was not good enough in some way, rather than assuming she was the problem. I would hear heartbreaking things like, “If this is the only person who’s supposed to love me … and she doesn’t love me … I must be unlovable.”

You might hear things of this sort from your spouse’s affair partner. If you do, that’s a good sign. This spouse is somebody you can work with.

If they’re willing to sit in marriage counseling and work on themselves and your marriage, take them up on it! (My bet is you’re going to need some good reading about codependency if you do.)

Some affair partners will lie to you through their teeth. Often this is a situation in which the affair partner is in love with your spouse, heavily dependent on him or her, and will do anything to pry them away from you.

Or, you could have stumbled into the unfortunate situation where the affair partner is seriously disturbed. (Think Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.)

Lastly, there are those situations in which, if you’re there asking the affair partner for the truth, you need to be prepared to accept some serious ramifications for your life.

One woman became friends with the wife who’d contacted her about her affair with her husband. Together, the two women probed and uncovered an entire web of lies this man had told both women.

At first, the wife planned to move out and divorce the man. Then, she panicked.

As the husband spun tale after tale, painting the affair partner as a liar, the wife became placated by the lies, ended her friendship with the affair partner, moved back in with the husband, and blamed the other woman as a homewrecker.

Now he can do no wrong in her eyes, and the affair partner is heartsick.

Not because the affair broke up, but because she knows what a snake this guy really is. She feels sorry for the wife and is sure he is right back cheating on her again.

Some people have a vengeance motive in contacting the affair partner. They want to stand up for their children and themselves and make the other person sorry for the pain they participated in causing. If this is you, be aware that if you speak to the affair partner, they’re likely to speak to your spouse about it. Is this something you want?

As you can see, confronting the affair partner can open a nasty can of worms.

At best, you are going to get an apology along with some very difficult information you didn’t want to hear, information that will challenge you to make big changes in your life you may not feel ready to make.

At worst, you risk an ugly confrontation that will smart every time you remember it, for the rest of your life.

P. D. Reader is the author of Struggling In or With an Affair? A Guidebook.