181: How to Tell Someone You've Cheated on Them

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy.  I’m a relationship coach and I help people who are engaging in anything they think counts as infidelity to deal with their feelings, clarify what they want, and make decisions about what they’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgments.  If you are ready to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, I can help you do it.  There are three ways we can work together.  You can purchase the DIY version of my program, You’re Not the Only One, which contains teachings and guidance that I’ve developed through helping hundreds of clients deal with their infidelity situations, as well as assignments that help you put these teachings into use.  You can join the group coaching version of You’re Not the Only One, which contains everything that’s in the DIY version of the program, but also includes group coaching calls that are held in a way that protects your privacy.  Or we can work together one-on-one.  All of these options are great, they’re just great in different ways.  To learn more about all three ways you can have me as your coach, go to the services page of my website, mariemurphyphd.com/services.

Somewhat regularly, I get little notes from folks out there that tell me about their infidelity situation, and then ask what they should do about it.  Sometimes these come to me via email, sometimes these hit one my social media accounts, because I am at least theoretically reachable in all of these ways.  And sometimes when I get messages like these I have the time to fire off a short response.  But sometimes I really don’t, and moreover, it isn’t possible for me to coach you over email.  Or through the messaging function of any social media platform.  There are probably some coaches out there who coach that way, but I don’t.  So if you’ve written to me asking for help or guidance and you’ve gotten a very short response back or no response back, it's not that I don’t love you.  It’s just that’s not the way I provide coaching.  I’d love to work with you and help you with the challenges you’re facing, and you can learn more about how we can work together through the services page of my website.  I can’t wait to meet you.

All right.  Today we are going to talk about how to tell someone you’ve cheated on them.  

But, before you even think about HOW you’re going to tell someone you’ve cheated on them, I want you to make sure that you have made a clear decision to tell your person that you’ve cheated, and I want you to make sure you are choosing to do this for reasons that you like.  I talk about making decisions for clear reasons that you like a lot on this podcast, and I talk about it a lot because it’s important.

And it’s important to have reasons that you like for telling someone that you’ve cheated on them because you never HAVE to tell anyone you’ve cheated.  Even if someone confronts you with evidence of your cheating that is more or less irrefutable, you could still deny it.  That might not go very well, but you could do it.  It is your prerogative to lie, and it is your prerogative to withhold information.  Sometimes we think that we HAVE to be honest, or more specifically that if we cheat on someone, we HAVE to tell them.  But that just isn’t true.  You don’t have to do that, because you don’t have to do anything.  Sometimes people tell me that they told their partner they cheated because they thought they had to, but they really wished they hadn’t told them.  So let’s be clear: you DO have a choice about this.  

That said, even though you don’t have to tell someone you’ve cheated on them, you may be in a situation where WANT to tell someone you have cheated on them.  There are lots of reasons why you might prefer to tell your person that you’ve cheated on them, rather than keep that information to yourself.  

People have all KINDS of reasons that they like for telling their partner they’ve cheated.  For example, sometimes someone has been having an affair, and they’ve ended it, and they now want to do their very best to see if their primary relationship is a relationship they want to continue.  And some people do not want to continue an intimate, committed relationship with their partner without telling them that they have been cheating on them.

Now I want to make it very clear that this is some people’s PREFERENCE.  Some folks say, “I WANT to tell partner about my cheating, even though I don’t have to, because of regardless of their reaction, I believe that this is the right thing for me to do, and I’m willing to deal with the consequences of my disclosure, whatever they may be.”  Some people do not want to withhold information from their partner that they think has bearing upon their relationship with them.  

I want to be absolutely clear that I think it’s fine and great to have this preference.  But, as I’ve talked about in other episodes, I don’t believe that you HAVE TO have this preference.  I don’t believe that you have to tell your partner about cheating on them under any circumstances.  I don’t believe that recommitting to a relationship after an affair and not telling your partner about your affair will doom your relationship to failure.  Some people will tell you that it does!  There are lot of so-called experts out there who say that if you have an affair, and you don’t tell you partner about it, your big, bad secret will corrupt your relationship in some fundamental way.  I don’t agree that that has to be the case.  I think I talked about that in detail in episode number 89, which is called, “Does having an affair doom your marriage to failure?”  I believe that there are many ways we can relate to things we’ve done in the past.  There are many ways that we can compost, or alchemize our secrets so that they don’t become corrosive!

But that’s not what we’re concerned with today.  Today, we’re concerned with the fact that some people choose to tell their partners about their infidelity for reasons they like.  

Another common-ish reason why people choose to tell their partners they’ve cheated for reasons they feel good about is they know their partner is going to find out about their cheating, whether or not they tell them.  And this can happen in all kinds of ways.  Sometimes someone who is married is having an affair with someone who is also married, and one of the spouses finds out about the affair, and tells their spouse that they’re going to tell their affair partner’s spouse about the secret relationship.  And so this member of the affair couple alerts their affair partner, and that person makes the decision to tell their spouse about the affair before their affair partner’s spouse can get to them first.  Did you follow all of that?  Did I say all of that right?  I hope so.  Even if I didn’t, I hope you get the idea.

Anyway, the broader point is that sometimes, if a person had had their druthers, they would not have chosen to tell their committed partner about their infidelity, but then shit gets a little crazy, and they decide that if their partner is going to find out about their cheating, they want their partner to hear about it from them first.

These examples of why people choose to tell their partner they’ve cheated are just examples.  There are all kinds of reasons why you might decide that you want to tell your partner that you’ve cheated.  And just like it’s your prerogative to lie if you want to, it’s your prerogative to tell the truth if you want to, for any reasons that you see fit.  If you like your reasons for telling your partner that you’ve cheated, then great.  Once you have decided that you are going to tell them, for reasons that you like, THEN it’s time to think about how you’re going tell them, and what exactly you’re going to say, and what you might not say, and so on.

And we’re going to talk about that in just a moment, but first, there’s one other really important thing I want to mention.  Sometimes people want to tell their partner they’ve cheated because they want the relief they think they’ll get from confessing the bad thing they did.  Sometimes people want their partner to forgive them for cheating, and they want their partner to give them a pat on the back for telling the truth.  And these can seem like really great reasons to tell someone you’ve cheated!  You may really like those reasons!  

But here’s the problem.  You have no control over how your partner responds to what you tell them.  You may really like the idea of them saying, “Oh, thanks for telling me you cheated.  It’s so noble and wonderful of you to tell me the truth!  I love you so much and trust you so much more now.”  You might imagine them saying that, and you might imagine the relief that you’ll feel if they do, and you might love the idea of getting their forgiveness.

But there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get that response from your person.  You might!  But you might not.  And there’s no way to know for sure ahead of time.  So when I talk about choosing to tell someone you’ve cheated for reasons that you like, I’m talking about having reasons that you’re committed to liking no matter what happens.  No matter what reaction you get from your partner, or anything else.  I’m talking about getting clear on why you would choose to tell them you’ve cheated knowing that what happens after that is uncertain.  Or part of it is, anyway.

Your person’s reaction to your disclosure will be unknown to you until it happens.  But you get to decide what you think about your choice ahead of time.  For instance, you can be sure that no matter how your person responds to you telling them that you’ve cheated on them, you would much rather tell them you’ve cheated than have someone else tell them you cheated.  Right?  You can be sure of that right now.  Similarly, if you are sure that you don’t want to keep the secret of an affair you had from someone you are trying to re-commit to, that’s something you can be certain of right now.

So why are you sure you want to tell your person that you cheated on them, no matter what happens after you tell them?  Ask yourself that question, and answer that question for yourself, before you try to figure out how to tell them you cheated.

Now let’s talk about what you’re actually going to say when you tell your person you cheated.  We’re going to talk about how to have this conversation under two kinds of circumstances.  The first is that you are choosing to tell your partner about your infidelity because you are pretty sure that if you don’t tell them, they’re going to find out from someone else, or find out through some means you don’t have control over – and perhaps find out very soon.  In these situations, there may be an element of duress, and there may be an urgency factor.   

The second kind of situation we’ll talk about is choosing to tell your partner about your infidelity when there is very little chance that know what’s going on already, and very little chance that they would ever find out about your infidelity without you telling them.  And we will refer to these two different kinds of situations as situation one, and situation two.

If you’re dealing with a situation one, you may not have a lot of time to come up with an elaborate game plan.  And that may be putting it mildly.  Let’s say you’re at work, and your affair partner texts you and says, “My spouse looked through my phone and saw all of our texts, they confronted me and I told them everything, we’re totally fucked, and my spouse is on their way to your spouse’s work to tell them everything.”  In that kind of a situation, you may literally have a matter of minutes to decide what you’re going to do.

If you find yourself in a situation that’s anything like this, or in a situation where you find yourself needing to make a decision about what – if anything – you are going to tell your partner about your infidelity very quickly, here’s the first thing I encourage you to do.  And this is SO important.  Accept that what is happening is happening.  Sometimes people don’t do this.  Sometimes people have an epic tantrum, and lament their fate, and throw themselves a paralyzing pity party.  Now, I think this is completely human.  I think this is completely understandable.  And you may not want to use your time and energy in this way.

You’re allowed to not like it if your infidelity has suddenly been discovered and someone is either about to expose you, or has indicated their intentions to do so.  You can be really displeased about this turn of events, and you can still make decisions about how you’re going to respond to whatever is developing.  And you can make these decisions very quickly.

So that’s the second thing I encourage you to do, after you accept that whatever is happening is happening.  Decide that you can make decisions quickly.  This is a choice you can make, and making this decision consciously, and affirming to yourself that you have made it, can help you tremendously.  You can even say it out loud: I can make decisions quickly.

With that preparation in place, here’s the first thing you probably need to decide.  If there’s a good chance that the person you’ve cheated on is soon to be informed of your infidelity, the question I want you to ask yourself is, “Do I prefer to do my best to get to them first and tell them about my infidelity myself, or do I prefer any of the imaginable alternatives?”  Don’t give yourself too much time to think about the imaginable alternatives.  Just quickly consider what they may be, and decide if you like any of them or not.

It's really important to point out that you COULD just sit there and do nothing, and see what happens.  It is possible that even if your affair partner’s spouse told them that they were going to go find YOUR spouse and tell them about everything you’ve been up to, they won’t actually do it.  They might indeed do it, but they might not.  And so you could just wait and see.  No matter what is going on in our lives, we always have the option of just sitting around and seeing what happens.

And sometimes we choose to do that without recognizing that that’s what we’re choosing to do.  What people often tell me when their cheating has been discovered is that they want to crawl into a hole and die.  They say they feel so badly about what’s happened that they just want to retreat from everything and hide from everyone.  I’m completely sympathetic to the impulse, but unless you plan to literally crawl into a hole and die – which I do not encourage you to do – saying that you want to do this is tantamount to saying that you’re just going to wait around and see what happens.

And if that’s what you want to do, that’s fine – but if you’re going to wait around and see what happens, I encourage you to choose to do that CONSCIOUSLY. 

On the other hand, if you decide that you prefer the idea of telling your partner about your infidelity before anyone else can beat you to it, I want you to then decide how quickly you need to act.  You may want to act IMMEDIATELY.  You may want to pick up the phone immediately and tell your spouse that you need to talk to them ASAP.  Or you may decide that you need to act quickly, but not immediately.  Use your discretion, based on your knowledge of your situation.  If, to stick with our example, your affair partner’s spouse really is on the way to talk to your spouse in person, you may need to act fast.

And if you’ve decided that you want to tell your partner about your infidelity before anyone else beats you to it, and you know you need to act very quickly, here’s what I encourage you to do.  Contact your spouse, or your partner.  The person you cheated on.  Let them know that you need to talk to them about something very important.  Let them know that nobody’s safety is in danger – if that is indeed the case – but tell them you have something to talk to them about that’s extremely important, and extremely time-sensitive.  

Now, if you think that anyone’s safety IS in danger, please take your safety concerns seriously, and seek the appropriate help.  That’s beyond the scope of what I offer on this podcast, but I implore you to find the help you need if you have safety concerns.  

When you contact the person you’ve cheated on, and you tell them you need to talk about something very important, but you’re also assuring them nobody’s hurt, they may just want to know what’s going on right away.  And this is one of the many points at which you need to be able to make a quick decision.  You COULD in theory, just tell them over the phone, “I’ve been having an affair, and my affair partner’s spouse is on their way to your workplace to tell you everything and cause a huge scene.”  You could just say that, and then figure out what’s next after you say that.  Or, you could say something like, “I don’t want to tell you over the phone – or over text, or email, or whatever mode of communication you’re using – but if you can meet me at X location in X minutes, I’ll explain everything.”

If you contact your partner and you tell them you need to talk to them as soon as possible, but you don’t give them many specifics right away, they may freak out.  So may want to give them SOME sense of what’s coming.  You might want to say, “Nobody’s hurt or in danger, but I’ve done something that I need to tell you about, and it isn’t good news.  I’d really like to tell you soon, and I’d like to tell you in person.”  

Now, if you find yourself in this sort of a situation, is it likely to be a pretty crazy intense moment in your life?  Yeah.  It quite possibly will be!  Given that, I encourage you to keep in mind that there’s no way to handle this kind of situation perfectly.  There may not even be any way to handle this kind of a situation very well.  There aren’t any magical guidelines I can give you to ensure that you say and do all of the right things if you decide, under duress, to tell your partner that you’ve cheated on them and you don’t have much time to think about what you’re going to say.  So rather than freaking out about what’s happening, I encourage you to meet the moment as best as you can, and trust that even if whatever happens is messy and unpleasant or even ends up being the most awful thing you ever experience, you will survive.  

With that in mind, what do you actually say to your partner about your cheating?  What do you actually tell them about what you’ve been doing, once the moment to say what you’re going to say has come?

Here are my five recommendations:

ONE: Make sure that what you tell them is direct and to the point.  If you’ve told your person that you need to talk to them about something that’s important, they may have NO IDEA what’s coming.  If you’ve told them that you need to tell them about something that you’ve done, that narrows things down a little bit, but they still may not have a clue as to what you’re going to say.  So there’s a big difference between saying something like, “I’ve been cheating on you for the past year” and saying, “I did something that you might not like,” or, “I did something that dishonors our marital vows.”  Cut to the chase.  It’s one thing to hand someone news that is shocking, but it’s another thing to make someone have to try to figure what you’re saying before they can even get to the shocking news.  Now that’s pretty culturally specific advice.  As I’ve talked about in other episodes, being indirect IS considered a kindness in some contexts.  But in some contexts, being indirect creates a more torturous experience for someone who is already getting news they don’t want to hear.  So give them the details that you consider essential.  

TWO: I encourage you to apologize for the abrupt disclosure, I encourage you to apologize for cheating, I encourage you to apologize for breaking their trust, to the extent that you are comfortable doing so.  If you are sincerely sorry for what’s happening, it’s totally appropriate to say so, and I think it can be a very caring, respectful thing to do.  However, how your partner receives your apologies is up to them.  And, you don’t have to apologize for anything you don’t want to apologize for.  That is NOT the point here.

THREE:  You get to set a limit on how much you discuss when you disclose your infidelity to your partner.  The tricky part is that depending on the nature of your situation, you may find yourself in the position of telling your partner about your infidelity before you’ve had much time to think through what you want to tell them, and what you don’t want to tell them.  You may not have time to carefully consider what you’re willing to share, and what you aren’t willing to share.  You may not have to time to weigh the pros and cons of deciding what you want to tell the truth about, and what you might NOT want to tell the truth about.  And depending on what’s going on, and how much time you have to think about how you want to handle things, there may not be any way around this.  

However, it is important for you to recognize that you have a right to set limits on what you share with the person you’ve been cheating on about whatever it is you’ve been doing.  They may not like it if you set limits on talking about whatever it is you’ve been doing.  They may have questions, and they may want answers.  And they may want those answers NOW.  And they may believe that it is incumbent upon you to do whatever they ask of you.  Because in their mind, you may be the big bad person who dropped a big bad bomb of surprise on their lap.

Here's the thing.  They’re allowed to be upset with you.  And they are allowed to demand that you tell them everything you’ve been doing.  They’re allowed to stomp and scream and cry and yell.  And they may truly expect you to answer all of their questions, or respond to all of their wishes in the way that they want you to.

But that is NOT incumbent upon you.  No matter what you’ve done, infidelity-wise, you still have rights.  You still get to choose what you tell them about what you’ve been doing, and what you don’t tell them.  And you may need some time to think about what you want to discuss with them and what you don’t, and it’s okay for you to tell your person that you need some time to think about what you want to discuss with them.  Your person may not like that, and they’re allowed to not like it.  But even though you may be considered the party who has done the “wrong thing” – so to speak – in this situation, you’re still a person.  You still have rights.  And it’s okay to stick up for yourself and your rights.  

So in practice, this might mean giving your partner SOME specific information about your infidelity, and then saying, “I am not going to talk about this anymore today.  I know this is hard for you, but this is hard for me too, and I need to take a step back before I can talk about this anymore.”  And then take some time to get help or regroup!

FOUR:  If your person finds out about your cheating very abruptly, they may want to know where you stand in relation to your relationship with them.  That may be the biggest question they have for you.  And you may not KNOW where you stand in relation to your relationship with them, because you may not have thought about it!  You may have been operating in affair-mode, and not thinking all that much about what you want to do about your primary relationship!  And if that’s the case, it’s okay for you to tell the person you’ve cheated on, “I don’t know where I stand in relation to our relationship.  I’m going to need some time to figure that out.”  Your person may not like to hear that, but you can let them not like it.  If you don’t know what you want, you’ll probably do yourself and your partner a huge favor by being honest about that – rather than trying to placate your partner by telling them what you think they want to hear.

FIVE: Make short-term plans, but hold off on making long-term plans.  The sudden disclosure of an affair can be a pretty dramatic, and pretty uncomfortable, and pretty dramatically uncomfortable experience for everyone involved.  And that includes you!  When life has suddenly become disrupted in significant ways, we may find ourselves desperate for reassurance, or solid ground to stand on, and in the service of that, we may find ourselves making plans or promises that we really aren’t in any position to make.  My advice is to stay away from making long-term plans or promises if you’ve just told someone about your infidelity.  But, it can be really helpful to make short-term plans and promises.  Saying something like, “I’m not going to talk about this anymore today, but I will be available to talk again tomorrow at X time,” can be great.  Saying, “I don’t know for sure where I want our relationship to go from here, but I promise I will give that question very serious consideration” can be great.  Or let’s say your partner is like, “Okay, that’s it, we’re done, I want you to move out immediately.”  You can respect what they’re asking for without committing to anything long-term.  You can say, “Okay, I’m going to go get a hotel room,” or “Okay, I’m going to go stay with a friend for a week,” or, “Okay, I’m going to stay in our summer house for a few days.”  You can respect their wishes by taking temporary steps.  You don’t have to find yourself a new permanent dwelling right away.

Okay.  There’s a lot that can come after a disclosure of infidelity that was made under duress, but the next steps are another topic for another time.  For now, this is my guidance on how you can navigate the initial disclosure.

All right.  Now let’s talk about situation number two, or a situation in which you’re choosing to tell your person that you’ve cheated on them and there isn’t any urgency or duress involved.  In some ways, situation number two is very similar to situation number one.  You still have to figure out what you’re going to say.  You still have to figure out what you’re going to disclose, and what you aren’t going to disclose.  You still have to decide what you’re going to be honest about, and what you might not be honest about.  You still have to decide what boundaries you’re going to set.

But situation two is also very different from situation number one insofar as you have the luxury of time on your side.  You can think carefully about what you want to say, and you can be choosier about where and when and how you say it.  You can think about ALL the things more extensively.

And my opinion is that with the luxury of having as much time as you want to think about how you will disclose your infidelity to your partner comes an important responsibility.  If you are choosing to tell your partner about your infidelity, and you have as much time as you wish to take to figure what you’re going to say and all of that, I encourage you to get as clear as you can about what you want and don’t want before you tell your person about your cheating.  ESPECIALLY in terms of the future of your relationship with them, the person you’ve cheated on.  There is a big difference between telling someone, “Hey, I’ve been having an affair, and I don’t really know what I want in terms of my affair relationship, and I don’t know what I want in terms of the future of our relationship either,” and telling someone, “Look, I had an affair, it’s over, I’m telling you because I want to work on our relationship, and for me, the only way I can move forward with our relationship is if we both know about this and can both live with what I’ve done.” 

Now, if you don’t know what you want in terms of the future of your relationship with the person you’ve cheated on, that’s fair enough.  You can still tell them you’ve cheated, and you can also tell them that you don’t know where you want your relationship with them to go.  This IS something you can do.  But if you aren’t sure of what you want in terms of your relationship with the person you’ve cheated on, I encourage you to get really clear on what you are willing to explore or not explore in terms of the possibilities with them before you tell them you’ve cheated on them.  Like, are you even open to the possibility of continuing your relationship with them?  Under what conditions?  Or what do you want to explore with them, after having told them about your infidelity?  Get as clear as you can about as much as you can.  Otherwise, by telling your partner about you infidelity, you may effectively be saying to them, “Here’s my mess!  Now it’s yours too!  I want to see how you respond, and then maybe I’ll be able to figure out what I want here.”

Although I usually do not make it my business to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do, I do NOT recommend that you do this kind of thing.  Telling someone you’ve cheated without having a great sense of why you’re telling them, or where you want your relationship with them to go next may be received as cruelty.  

1. Get as clear as you can on where you want your relationship with the person you’ve cheated on to go, and what you’re willing to do FOR the relationship to help it go in that direction.  Get as clear as you can about what you’re going to tell your partner about your infidelity.  What are the essential facts that you think they need to be aware of?  What do they NOT need to know?  Do you want to tell them everything, even if they don’t want to hear it?  If you don’t want to tell them everything, how will you respond if they expect that from you?  Your plans may change as the situation develops, and that’s okay – but think about these things in advance and make some decisions.

Also, get as clear as you can about why you are choosing to tell your person about your cheating.  You may want to explain why you’re telling them, right out of the gate – or if you don’t tell them, they may ask, and this may be a question you want to answer.

Then, pick and time and place to tell them that is as considerate of their needs as possible.  There’s never a great time for what has the potential to be a difficult and painful conversation.  But you can probably find a less-bad time.  Telling someone about your infidelity right before they have a big day at work is probably not the most considerate thing to do.  Telling someone about your infidelity the night before they have surgery is probably not a great thing to do.  Telling someone about your infidelity the day after someone they loved dies is probably not a great idea.  But all that said, if you’re going to tell them, you have to tell them sometime, and there’s no such thing as a perfect time.

Okay.  If you want my help fine-tuning what you say to your partner when you tell them about your infidelity, you can have it.  This is something that we can work on together.  If you want to talk to me, you can either sign up for an introductory coaching session through my website, which is the way to get my undivided attention, or you can join the group coaching program version of You’re Not the Only One.  Within the group coaching program, you can request coaching on the group calls as many times as you want.  Whether we work together one-on-one, or work together within the context of my group program, we can discuss the specifics of your unique infidelity situation and how you want to deal with them.  For more information on both of those options, go to the services page of my website, mariemurphyphd.com/services.  I can’t wait to talk with you.

All right everybody.  That’s it for today.  Thank you for listening, and have an awesome week.