Dan Savage

And then we feel that way when we learn that that we were cheated on. Yeah, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's another way to understand it. Life is long. Relationships are complicated. People, as Esther Perel writes in State of Affairs, people often cheat, not because they don't love their partner, but for reasons that have something to do with a need of theirs as an individual.

And it doesn't negate the love and the commitment that existed but was complicated by the affair, tarnished by the affair that your father was so close to getting away with. You know, I have a letter, very different circumstance, from a married man who for a few years was going to places, massage parlors during a low point in his marriage and getting happy ending massages.

And it doesn't negate the love and the commitment that existed but was complicated by the affair, tarnished by the affair that your father was so close to getting away with. You know, I have a letter, very different circumstance, from a married man who for a few years was going to places, massage parlors during a low point in his marriage and getting happy ending massages.

which he stopped doing like four years ago. And he's wrestling with whether he needs to tell his wife to shift the burden of knowing from his shoulders to her shoulders, to relieve himself of the guilt by relieving himself all over her and destroy in the telling, her idea of what their marriage is and how their marriage has functioned over the decades they've been together.

which he stopped doing like four years ago. And he's wrestling with whether he needs to tell his wife to shift the burden of knowing from his shoulders to her shoulders, to relieve himself of the guilt by relieving himself all over her and destroy in the telling, her idea of what their marriage is and how their marriage has functioned over the decades they've been together.

I think he should keep his fucking mouth shut. If I could jump in a time machine and snatch that phone out of your mother's hands, I would because yeah, it would have been better if your father had gone to his grave, having successfully hidden this affair from your mother and your mother, never found out about it and you kids never found out about it.

I think he should keep his fucking mouth shut. If I could jump in a time machine and snatch that phone out of your mother's hands, I would because yeah, it would have been better if your father had gone to his grave, having successfully hidden this affair from your mother and your mother, never found out about it and you kids never found out about it.

But what you found out was something that you should have always probably assumed, which is not that your dad was a cheater, but that your dad was a complicated and contradictory person capable of bad, shitty, selfish, inconsiderate, potentially really damaging to the people he loved actions like this one. Action makes it sound like a one-off singular.

But what you found out was something that you should have always probably assumed, which is not that your dad was a cheater, but that your dad was a complicated and contradictory person capable of bad, shitty, selfish, inconsiderate, potentially really damaging to the people he loved actions like this one. Action makes it sound like a one-off singular.

I'm using action to refer to the affair, this three-year affair. I would encourage you kids to tell yourselves that you just don't know what was going on in your parents' marriage. You don't know what sort of compromises, contingencies were made over the decades your parents were together. And I was talking to your mom. I would just tell her,

I'm using action to refer to the affair, this three-year affair. I would encourage you kids to tell yourselves that you just don't know what was going on in your parents' marriage. You don't know what sort of compromises, contingencies were made over the decades your parents were together. And I was talking to your mom. I would just tell her,

to look at the sum total of the marriage, not just the betrayal of the affair, but everything that they were to each other. And to regard this as... a serious betrayal that caused her a lot of pain, particularly to find out in the way she found out about it.

to look at the sum total of the marriage, not just the betrayal of the affair, but everything that they were to each other. And to regard this as... a serious betrayal that caused her a lot of pain, particularly to find out in the way she found out about it.

And at the moment she found out about it, where she wasn't then in a position to confront your father, to process it, to, to work through it, to ask, be asked for forgiveness that maybe she could have gotten to a place where she could extend that forgiveness to him. No, she finds out and he drops fucking dead. And so this is always going to be,

And at the moment she found out about it, where she wasn't then in a position to confront your father, to process it, to, to work through it, to ask, be asked for forgiveness that maybe she could have gotten to a place where she could extend that forgiveness to him. No, she finds out and he drops fucking dead. And so this is always going to be,

Not that the resolution of a pain like this makes the pain disappear or makes everything uncomplicated and rosy again, but to have some resolution, even if what you resolved is I'm mad and I'm sorry. And that's as far as you could get before your dad dropped dead. That would be something. And your mother was denied in the moment that this all came out, even that.

Not that the resolution of a pain like this makes the pain disappear or makes everything uncomplicated and rosy again, but to have some resolution, even if what you resolved is I'm mad and I'm sorry. And that's as far as you could get before your dad dropped dead. That would be something. And your mother was denied in the moment that this all came out, even that.

And I just ache for your mother, but I would encourage your mother to see this marriage, not only through the lens of this affair at the very end of it, but to see the totality of it. And maybe if she can see the totality of it, it will not erase, not disappear the affair and what it meant, but dilute it.

And I just ache for your mother, but I would encourage your mother to see this marriage, not only through the lens of this affair at the very end of it, but to see the totality of it. And maybe if she can see the totality of it, it will not erase, not disappear the affair and what it meant, but dilute it.

You know, I think when you're in a longterm relationship, I think what all relationships are stories that two people create together. The couple is a story that's told by the couple to each other. The couple is also a story that each of those people in that couple tell to others together and separately about who they are and what they mean to each other.