I’m missing my lover after I ditched her for my wife

Dear Coleen

I’m a 50-year-old man and I’ve been having an affair with a woman I care for dearly for the past seven years. I’m on my second marriage and have two teenage children.

It was perfect until I foolishly left my mobile phone at home one day and my wife went through it and saw messages between my lover and me.

I brushed it off as “just banter” and cut contact with my lover soon afterwards.

However, I spent a week away with her once things calmed down, but my wife was still suspicious and checked up on me all the time. In the end I decided to prove to my wife that I’m trustworthy and again cut contact with my lover.

This hurt her, and me, but I don’t want to put my kids through a separation or divorce.

I’m now missing my lover a great deal. Yes, I know I’m a coward for choosing the easy option, but have I done the right thing?

Coleen says

I’ve got news for you – things were far from “perfect” before your wife found your mobile and rumbled you!

You were cheating and leading a double life for seven years, so your marriage certainly wasn’t perfect.

If you genuinely feel you’ve made the right decision, then you have to throw yourself 100% into your marriage. Just because you’ve cut ties with your lover doesn’t mean everything will suddenly go back to normal. It certainly won’t.

You’ve destroyed the trust your wife had in you and that’s going to take time and a lot of hard work to rebuild.

You need to be honest about why you had the affair and what was wrong in your marriage, so you have a chance to work on it.

If you’re not prepared to put that work in, then walk away now because it’s not fair on her or your kids. Look, children aren’t stupid – they understand when things aren’t right and know when their parents aren’t getting on and that’s harmful, too.

You have to stay because that’s what you really want to do and because you love your wife and don’t want to lose her.

Remember – once the kids reach a certain age, they’ll leave home and you’ll be alone together.

It was perfect until she looked at my mobile