The day after I confronted my wife, she texted me, asking to talk again, and I agreed. She basically wanted to discuss two things. First, she says she broke things off with her lover and wanted to know if there was any possibility of reconciliation. I found this a little bizarre, because she didn’t seem all that earnest or enthusiastic about it. She just sort of floated the idea out there. From my perspective, after what’s happened, there’s a 99.9% chance of divorce, and for that 0.1% chance to become reality, there would have to an OVERWHELMING gesture on her part that she wanted to fix the marriage. But I didn’t get that vibe from her at all.

As we discussed more, I think I understand more now. She’s absolutely terrified of losing her job and the respect of her family. The reason her job is a concern is because her lover is her boss where she works, an obvious no-no. And her family is fairly traditional, and I feel would look extremely negatively upon her for a very long time if they knew she’d had an affair. So I suppose I have quite a bit of power right now to screw up her life, and this fact probably dawned on her in the day or so after I confronted her, and I think she sees reconciliation as the path of least resistance to avoiding these dangers. I don’t think she really wants to be married to me at all.

But I am not vindictive. There is no room in my heart for hate. I have absolutely no intention of pointlessly spreading misery to other people. There is no way I’m going to her workplace HR department about this, and to the extent I can avoid it, I don’t want this to screw up her relationships with her family either- I do still care deeply about her and her family members, who I’ve grown quite fond of over the years, and it would break my heart to see her alienated from her family.

Which leads me to my current conundrum. We’re on the path to divorce, and family members will inevitably ask why. What happened with you two? Did you try marriage counseling? And so forth. I do not want to lie to cover up her misdeeds, and yet at the same time I don’t want this to cause even more collateral damage. Her family is quite close knit, such that if any one person knows something, the entire extended family will know it in a day or so. There are no secrets with her family. Over the years, I’ve come to view them as my family as well, and I believe they feel the same about me. If it’s possible, I don’t want to lose that.

Can you give me any advice? Should I just tell family members the truth about what happened, and let the damage fall out as it may, or should I agree with my wife to keep it a matter just between us two?