My wife’s been having sex with our son’s guitar tutor

Dear Coleen

I’m a man in my early 40s and I’ve been married for 15 years. I met my wife at secondary school and we started dating when we were 17, then got married when we were 25.

We’ve only ever been with each other and I thought our relationship was absolutely rock solid.

Over the years, our friends have been through divorce and affairs. We’d discuss them and feel lucky that we weren’t like them and had each other. We have two kids aged 10 and 12, and our life was really good.

So, when I found out she’d been having an affair I literally couldn’t believe it. The guy she was sleeping with was my son’s guitar teacher, who I’ve never met, and she ended it with him when I found out.

The thing is, she wants to keep our marriage together, but I just can’t do it. I’ll never be able to trust her again because I feel I don’t know her any more, or I’ve never really known her.

She just says the opportunity was there and she felt sucked in and before she knew it, they were involved.

The only thing I feel bad about is our kids, who don’t deserve to have their family torn apart. What do you think?

Coleen says

I understand the guilt you feel over your children, but you can’t make this about them. If you stay with your wife for the kids and it’s not what you want to do, it’s not going to be a happy home for them to grow up in. No one will benefit.

You’re clearly still reeling from the shock, so I’d give yourself some time and space to avoid making any knee-jerk decisions while you feel like this.

I think counselling with your wife would be a really good idea because, even if the long-term intention isn’t to stay together, it could help you to make sense of what happened and why it happened, and also make a permanent separation easier to navigate and manage.

It could help you to understand your wife better and why she was vulnerable to this affair.

Maybe there is no way back for you, but it’s clearly important for you to get a handle on what went wrong.

I thought we had a perfect marriage, now I can’t trust her