DEAR EMILY,
There was a time I went out of town. While there, a guy friend of mine attended to me and hung out in my hotel room, with my consent. One thing led to another—we kissed, we touched and we tasted (for lack of a better word).
What happened is something I’m having difficulty living with. Should I come clean to my husband? Is it considered adultery even if there was no consummation involved?
FIREPLAY: THE GUILTY WIFE
Feel free to do as you please. Confess to your husband your “unconsummated” episode and feel cleansed about it. Or keep this secret to yourself till the end and possibly hold your family intact.
How broad-minded is your husband? In confessing to him this one-time folly of yours, do you think he’d waive it away as just a hiccup in your marriage, charge it to a night of inconsequential mindlessness of his wife, and move on with life the next morning? Or is he the type to ponder and percolate with the seriousness of a judge, and damn you to hell with all the vengeance of a cuckolded husband? You are the best observer of his character.
In your desire to be cleansed of this one-time weakness, are you prepared to ruin your life—not only suffering the guilt you had earlier, but compounding this problem with something more frightening, like breaking up the very essence of your family?
For some people, they offer their most profound contrition directly to the Almighty, in the confines of their minds, fervently atoning for it by transforming the core of their existence into charitable work. They’d rather carry this suffering alone, thus allowing the world around them to go on, unaffected and unencumbered.
Do you think your husband has never ever once coveted another woman in his mind? He may not have gone through that mire, but, to paraphrase a saying, “If he can think it, he can do it.”
We’re all of us sinners. Wasn’t it mentioned in the Bible, “Let he who has not committed sin, cast the first stone?” Don’t delude yourself into believing that there are exceptions to this. Nobody among us is completely pure as the driven snow—unless you’re a child under three.
Give yourself a break. Think before you leap. There will be bigger, more treacherous, consequential obstacles you will encounter in this marriage. This molehill you’re perceiving as a mountain will just be a speck among them.
E-mail emarcelo@inquirer.com.ph or emarcelo629@gmail.com