Should I reveal my sister’s affair?

QUESTION:

My younger sister has always been an attention seeker, so I wasn’t surprised when she told me she had an affair last year, but ended it. I am close to her lovely husband and he recently asked me if I thought she’d been unfaithful. I evaded the question, but felt awful that he suspects the truth. Should I tell him?

ANSWER: I would advise anyone to proceed with extreme caution when thinking of intervening in someone else’s marriage.

But I’d advise that times a million when the other person happens to be your sister.

Rare are the female siblings who don’t have a degree of competitiveness or some issues from childhood that cloud their judgment. Just look at how you’ve described her as an attention seeker. Her motivation might have been the fact she’s unhappy in her marriage.

I know older sisters tend to be a bit all-knowing, but are you certain you know all the complexities of your sister’s domestic life?

Are there pressures over children, depression, intimacy or household finances you might not know about? Infidelity is rarely to do with purely sexual needs.

Even if your sister has no justification for her actions, do you want to be the person who opens this Pandora’s box? She trusted you to keep her secret.

Surely the kinder course of action is to talk to your sister. Perhaps you should alert her to the fact your brother-in-law suspects her adultery.

You can tell her the next time he poses the question you will say: ‘How can I answer that? You must ask my sister directly.’

If your sister fails to take your advice, I’d avoid spending time with her family for a while.

If things settle down and there’s no revelation, resist the temptation to feel resentful. We all have to live with our actions.