Ask the experts: My wife cheated on me – 50 years later she still won't admit who it was

It is much debated whether couples should talk much about the details of sexual infidelity or if it is best left well alone. Photo / 123RF

Hi Verity & Nic,

Four years into our marriage, more than 50 years ago, my wife went to a dinner with some friends and I looked after our two boys. The dinner was 7pm and she left at 6.30pm but did not get back until 4.30.

During the next day I asked her about the dinner but she was reluctant to talk about it. Finally, after several days, she admitted she had left early with someone and had several hours of love-making, including having unprotected sex twice. I was devastated and despite asking more questions she would never tell me who it was or where they went. Somehow we got through it and the next year we moved away.

Over the years she would never tell me who it was and we had a lot of arguments over it. The years went by but it was always with me until recently I asked her again and she just said I should get over it and it would hurt me more if I knew. For me this made it worse and although I tried to accept it, every night now my mind keeps going over and over it and I can't sleep. Can you help me? - James

Dear James,

It is much debated by professionals and the public whether couples should talk much about the details of sexual infidelity or if it is best left well alone. Our experience is that, because of the amount of shame and distress involved, many couples just paper over the incident. You and your wife sound like you fit that pattern of limping along with periodic revisiting of the festering issues from the infidelity that did not get fully addressed.

While obsessive questioning and focusing on every small detail is unhelpful, going once over too lightly is equally problematic when trying to process infidelity productively. It is easy for the focus on processing this kind of situation to be all on the wronged partner "getting over" the hurt and trusting again. That's what the person who broke trust keenly wants and is clearly still your partner's hope, even after 50 years of that strategy not working.

Instead, the focus needs to be on the unfaithful person. There are usually significant forces at play when someone normally trustworthy breaks that trust. We usually find that behind that infidelity there is an important yearning for something. Typical examples are hunger for more aliveness, for feeling special or cherished, a need to escape fears of mortality and ageing or to contravene a sense of inadequacy or unimportance. If you were busy fighting over her decision to protect the other person's identity, it's unlikely you got to explore those aspects of the incident with your wife.

We refer to the intimacy that can flow from this kind of exploration as "making compost out of crap", implying that you can grow something beautiful out of the compost. Achieving this requires having conversations that may seem "impossible". If most people who have breached trust believed they could address what was going on for them in their relationship, they probably wouldn't have gone behind their partner's back. Our experience is that many good, kind, and decent people find themselves with dilemmas (of which they may not be consciously aware) for which infidelity somehow seems a solution.

The trouble is that if, for example, your spouse felt taken for granted, routinely talked down to, or neglected, and they end up having a drunken one-night stand, they have made their situation worse. It's now harder for them to assert themselves with you. It would be prudent for you to be open to hearing this kind of context for the infidelity. It doesn't excuse their breaking faith, but it may help make sense of it.

So, the key to resolving a situation like this is not so much the details of the incident but a deep understanding of the motivations (again, which may have been unconscious). However, the identity of the other party will likely be important in making sense of what went on all those years ago. We doubt that you can have the necessary deep exploration of the event without your wife being willing to be open about this. One of the vital factors in restoring trust after fidelity agreements are broken is for your partner to practise radical honesty.

It is reasonable for you to need to have an accurate picture of your partner and what has gone on. As well as providing the information you need to make sense of the incident, giving you that knowledge shows their allegiance is with you and not with anyone else.

Your partner can claim they are protecting you from further hurt by not telling you who the other person was, but that is somewhat patronising. People often say and believe things like that when they are unconsciously protecting themselves. It's evident that not knowing is a torment to you. It's undoubtedly preventing you from "moving on". One can only move on when something is dealt with properly; when you understand why your wife behaved as she did and then can find a way to make peace with it.

People who have betrayed trust are often apprehensive that their partner will leave them and so are hesitant to be fully honest. Our experience is that most marriages, particularly where children are involved or ones that have lasted more than 50 years, are more robust than this. Even if partners have said, "If you ever cheat on me, I will leave you", we find this is often not the case.

It's even less likely infidelity like this would lead to the ending of a marriage when it was admitted, rather than hidden and lied about (for more than a couple of days). That behaviour suggests a desire for honesty and possibly genuine regret.

There may be other consequences your wife fears – like you confronting the third party and disrupting your social circle. It may be wise to anticipate and reassure your partner about their fears as far as you can. For example, reiterating that you have no intention of ending your marriage and have no interest in seeking retribution or causing upset in other people's lives. Stress that this is about sorting things out between you and making joint decisions about what is best going forward.

Psychologists Verity Thom and Nic Beets are specialist relationship and sex therapists. Photo / Dean Purcell

Of course, if the third party is someone close to you, you must be prepared for that relationship to change, at least internally. But a historical incident like this may not require any behaviour change. Certainly nothing that isn't explored and negotiated with your partner first.

The crucial focus is on you two restoring full openness and intimacy between you. Hopefully, you have both reached a stage where you can make compassionate meaning of mistakes that you made when you were younger. Viewing things from a distance usually means a philosophical approach is more achievable than at the time of the original crisis.

Because processing infidelity, especially a historical one such as yours, is a situation where there are usually a lot of big feelings and complicated motivations, we would encourage you to consider using a suitably trained and experienced relationship therapist. We have offered training in this area for many years, so we know there are dozens of therapists out there who have done a specialist course.

To finish, let us say that we fully support your desire to return your relationship to one of openness and integrity and hope you can persuade your wife of the safety and wisdom of that course.

• Verity & Nic are psychologists and family therapists who have specialised in relationship and sex therapy for more than 25 years. They have been working on their own relationship for more than 40 years and have two adult children.