In this month’s ‘Dear Fodor’s,’ we ask experts to weigh in on whether it’s worth blowing up your marriage if you cheat on your spouse while traveling.
Dear Fodor’s, I’ve never cheated on my spouse, but we’ve been having some relationship issues lately, and while I was on a business trip abroad, I had a one-night stand. I’m never going to see this person again, won’t be in contact with them, and don’t even know their full name. We used protection, and no harm can come to my partner. I’ve always heard cheating abroad doesn’t count, and I sort of feel like that’s true. If I tell my partner, my marriage might be over. What should I do?”
I don’t know anything about your relationship, and it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but I do want to offer you some truths. What counts as cheating depends on the people in the relationship and the rules they have agreed to, whether through transparent discussion or the default boundaries of monogamy.
The one thing all definitions of infidelity have in common, however, is an emphasis on secrecy. The fact that you’re keeping this one-night stand a secret from your partner shows you know it was wrong, regardless of where the act occurred. You don’t explicitly name feelings of shame about your indiscretion, but submitting your question in the first place suggests you feel guilty on some level and hope my response will absolve you. Whether or not you ultimately decide to come clean, you need to let yourself sit in that guilt and take accountability for your behavior internally, or you risk more of the same behavior in the future.
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Jean Fitzpatrick LP, a licensed relationship therapist based in New York City, advises examining what led to the mistake and what you can learn from it.
“Was alcohol involved? Did you lose your bearings? When it comes to infidelity, what happens in Vegas (or Berlin or Rio) doesn’t really stay there, no matter what you’ve heard,” she says. “In an intimate relationship, we carry it home with us.”
You say you’ve been having relationship issues recently, and that is really the heart of this whole drama. Your marriage has hit a hard patch, and it’s likely that your specific upbringing and life experiences haven’t equipped you with the tools to practice healthy rupture and repair. Marriage, as we all know, is not always easy; sometimes it requires uncomfortable, vulnerable conversations with your partner about where you’re both at. It can mean challenging yourself to confront, negotiate, compromise, and forgive, rather than harboring resentment that curdles into entitlement—the entitlement to seek a tryst with a stranger in a foreign land, for example.
Framed this way, it’s easy to see this one-night stand as an act of avoidance and perhaps even retaliation. There’s a lot of self-interrogation to be done here, and it’s going to be uncomfortable for you.
It makes sense that you’re afraid to tell your partner—everything is on the line here—but revealing a secret like this can also serve as a huge wake-up call and paradigm shift, setting the stage for a closer relationship if you handle it correctly. There’s no way to sugarcoat how painful this revelation would be in the immediate aftermath, though.
I strongly urge you to begin seeing a couple’s therapist who can help you break the news to your partner and be a support for you both as you explore the meaning of this betrayal and hopefully find a path to healing.
And don’t be tempted to jump straight to the dysfunctional dynamic between the two of you. That’s a defensive move, and won’t go down well, says Fitzpatrick: “If you do talk about the infidelity, be careful not to lead with the marriage problems. Your partner will hear that as blame, and it will derail everything.”
If you decide to confess, the repair process will require accountability, honesty, and a lot of patience. If you make it to the other side, however, your reward will be a stronger, more transparent relationship. “It is time for more honesty in your marriage,” adds Fitzpatrick, “and not just about your overseas one-night stand.”
