Dear Coleen: I found out my partner's been having an affair with an ex

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Dear Coleen

I was engaged to my partner, but earlier this year I found out he’d been having an affair with an old girlfriend. I couldn’t believe what he’d done and I broke off the ­engagement.

Since then, he’s made a huge effort to win me back and, because I love him, I agreed to go to counselling to find out if we can move forward. But there’s still so much about this woman and the affair that I don’t know, and he’s been pretty sparse with the details.

In one way, I don’t want to know, but there’s another part of me that thinks I need to know every single grimy detail to get past it, even though I know it’ll hurt.

So far, he’s been quite vague in counselling, saying he never felt things had ended properly with this other woman and also about ­realising what a huge commitment marriage is.

I’m confused by this commitment thing, though. He’s 35 and I’m 31, so it’s not like we’re in our early-20s when it might feel like you’re being tied down.

I’m just so sad it’s come to this – one day I was looking at wedding dresses and planning my dream day, and the next it was all crushed. What’s your advice?

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Coleen says

It does really hurt to hear these things and maybe your partner is holding back from telling you everything because he knows he’s already hurt you a lot with a bit of the truth and doesn’t want to crush you.

So, what I’m saying is, keeping things back isn’t always a selfish decision.

But if you want the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so you can look it in the eye and work through it with your partner, then he has to tell you – and counselling is the perfect forum to have these discussions.

Keep going with it because it can take a while to have a breakthrough and to get ­absolutely everything out on the table.

It’s a process, not a quick fix and it can be very painful. But once you’re a few weeks or months down the line, you will start to see things more clearly and have a better idea of what you want.

If you decide to stay together, then my advice would be not to rush into marriage. Take your time, give it some proper thought and just see where you are.

A wedding isn’t going to fix what’s happened because you’ll wake up the next morning and your old life and old problems will still be there. But counselling can help you, so you’re doing the right thing. Good luck.

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