Cheated on my fiancée a bit over a year ago. Have been together for 5 years. We got engaged over the summer and are getting married next month. She doesn't know that I had a short affair while we were dating (4 years into the relationship). I think I can keep the secret from her forever. Am I a horrible person for not wanting to tell her? I have been able to keep it a secret for over a year, but with the wedding coming up, I have had moments of guilt. Am I risking my marriage because I am walking into it with a big secret? I don't want to lose my fiancée, but I feel like a horrible person being so dishonest, and feel that having such a big lie will always negatively impact our relationship. Am I a horrible person for lying to her this way? Will a lie like this always come between us in some way? I want to have a healthy marriage.

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Originally Posted by BWHXM

Cheated on my fiancee a bit over a year ago. Have been together for 5 years. We got engaged over the summer and are getting married next month. She doesn't know that I had a short affair while we were dating (4 years into the relationship). I think I can keep the secret from her forever. Am I a horrible person for not wanting to tell her? I have been able to keep it a secret for over a year, but with the wedding coming up, I have had moments of guilt. Am I risking my marriage because I am walking into it with a big secret? I don't want to lose my fiancee, but I feel like a horrible person being so dishonest, and feel that having such a big lie will always negatively impact our relationship. Am I a horrible person for lying to her this way? Will a lie like this always come between us in some way? I want to have a healthy marriage.

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I believe that you should tell her the truth.

You owe her that.

You don't want to start the marriage with lies and deception. Not a good way to start.

Yes, you may lose her, but at least you were honest with her as well as yourself.

Honesty is the best policy.

Also, if the tables were turned, wouldn't you want to know?

What the heck were you thinking, seriously! You ask this woman to marry you, the wedding is coming up, oh and now you want to fess up about an affair you had on her. You develop your set of manhood and tell her this little situation BEFORE you ask her to marry you.
You are going to have to make the choice here. You are the one who created this mess, and only you as her future husband can decide how to start this marriage off.
#1 to tell---you can ease YOUR burden of guilt so to say. You need to be prepared that she might be done with this relationship. She may choose to forgive you, and put it behind never to be brought up again in your marriage. She may choose to SAY she forgives, move forward and bring it up every fight you have.

#2 You don't tell---You go into this marriage on the bases what she doesn't know will never hurt her or YOURSELF.
In this instance I would do some reading on other post on this site, because one thing I have experienced in life and saw here is that " what goes around, does come back to knock you on your backside". So lets just say some years down road that you find out she has had an affair what will be your reaction. Of course you would be extremely understanding due to you also having an affair on her.

You are in a rough spot. I would see if anyone else gives you advice on best way to approach this. I hope you get your answers, good luck

Yes you are a lousy person to have cheated, and even worse one that has to lie about it. Are you still that person?? What has changed??Once you start with a lie, you have to lie again, and again to deceive someone that it's the truth. Can you do that?

I understand your fear of facing consequences for your actions, I really do, but that's unavoidable no matter what you do, so face them now, and avoid more lying, and more guilt, or later, after being guilty of continuing to lie.

Its really your choice, just like the cheating was, so its YOUR decision to make.

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. There are so many different perspective to this type of situation. I suggest you consider these factors:

1) Do you really want to start a marriage based on a lie?

2) How would you feel if the situation was reversed? Would you want your wife to tell you the truth?

3) At the end of the day, you're the one who has to live with your decision. You're the one who has to sleep next to her at night.

If you do decide to tell her the truth, I hope that you would offer a sincere apology and chances are you'll have to be crawling on your feet to win her trust back, if she's even willing to give you that chance, in which case you're going to need a lot of patience. If you can't display any patience to repair the damage, would you feel like you really deserve her?

1 lie.. rolls into 2 lies... 3 lies..

<<SNOWBALL EFFECT>>

How would you feel if she came and told you after 6 months of marriage that she'd had an affair 4 years into your relationship?

I have to agree with the above.

Regardless of when it happened, why it happened, and that it will likely not happen again (my impression), when you had the affair, you breeched the most important attribute in any committed relationship, and that is trust.

The basic common denominator to any successful relationship, is trust, and it is still a trust issue.

You are not giving her the opportunity to know the truth, and decide for herself whether she can trust you. You don't allow yourself to be truthful, in order to risk that in so doing, you are actually showing her that you can be trusted.

If the consequence to being truthful, is living with the lie of not being honest, that sets the denominator a little bit lower, and plants a little more doubt, as to how trustworthy you are about other things. And what happens when big problems happen that you have to face together, and she is not 100% sure she can trust you, or you are not 100% sure you can trust her.

Breaking trust is one thing, but it also leads to deception, and holding back. It is always knowing that you have something you need to confess, but are afraid to do so, because if the person finds out, there could be some heavy duty consequences. Until you confess, you keep a little bit of yourself, to yourself, and carry the deception throughout your relationship. You are not being true to her, and you are not being true to yourself.

I would have a lot more respect from a man I was about to marry, if he told the truth, and didn't sugarcoat it, thus undermining it as somehow being inconsequential, or a meaningless little omission. I would much rather prefer to decide for myself, whether the affair has meaning to me, or not. And I would be much more inclined to believe you would be honest in the future, because you were honest about your past.

You are actually removing the seed of doubt now, instead of taking the risk that you will eventually tell her anyway (which I think you will because of the guilt, and also because she could find out anyway).

My opinion is, as the others have said, tell the simple truth. Take the lumps, and get on with it.