Dear Christine,
I have observed people from places other than Barbados seek your advice and I am hoping you’ll find it possible to give advice on the problem of just another appreciative reader of your column.
I started reading your column when I was on a long vacation in your beautiful island and learnt while there where I could get copies back home or read it online. Now to my problem.
My husband and I have just celebrated our silver wedding anniversary. We did this in grand style as we have a number of good friends and three children. Two of them are already married.
A few days after the celebrations, a woman called me and said that my husband had sex with someone we were once close to but had somehow drifted apart from.
I confronted him with what I had been told and after some hesitation, he admitted this was so. He said it had only happened twice while I was away and that was some ten years ago. He said he felt very guilty and had never been unfaithful since.
I am so hurt that I just feel like leaving him. He has begged me to stay and I have been trying to do this, but I am finding it very difficult, especially as I know the person.
Can you help me, Christine? He has always been such a good husband and father.
– M.R.
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Dear M.R.,
I understand how you feel about being betrayed by your husband and friend, but ask yourself if you should give up 25 years of marriage because of your husband’s brief period of infidelity? Please, do not get me wrong or think for one moment that I am trivialising what your husband did. I am not! I am simply saying that sometimes we have to forgive and move on. This is not always easy and is in fact easier said than done.
Do not let that slip ruin your marriage, which from all accounts is a very happy one. That woman has done enough damage with news on something that happened so many years ago. To leave might delight her, but it could devastate you.
Don’t give her that satisfaction. Your husband made a mistake. It does not mean that he does not love you. We don’t know what his reasons were at the time but surely they were not enough to cause him to leave you.
It was such a long time and I do urge you to forgive him for the lapse. Choose to stay with your good husband and father of your children and try to forget the past.
– CHRISTINE
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