If a woman accepts a man's proposal, believing that her boyfriend has been loyal/faithful throughout their committed relationship, and she goes on to marry him believing in the false reality that he has been faithful, is the whole marriage a sham? Since she married him under false pretenses (that he had been faithful to date), is she being disrespected by the person she loves the most?

Tricky.
I don't think the marriage is so much a sham as long as he is faithful since they married. Has she been disrespected? Of course. He cheated. She was under the impression he was faithful and he wasn't. There have been lies I am sure. But if there was no honesty before the marriage where will it be now? I am sure if it was going on before it will continue.

If your only finding out about a past cheating now,it might as well have just happened for you.

No I don't think the marriage is a sham,but I do think to have to get to the bottom of why the cheating occurred in the first place.

Communication is vital, ask questions,listen, and give yourself time to think and digest the new information.

Of course your world is rocked by what happened before, and you may feel it's a sham, but you have the right to decide if it's a sham or not. Let the emotional dust settle, and talk calmly to see if this is a sham for you or not. What if it was a mistake he made long ago, and is sorry and truly wants to do better. That's why you talk and get facts, so your decision is a good one for YOU!!

If you married a man who stood up in front of a minister and pledged his fidelity, faithfulness, honesty, and commitment, I would say that, he carried his secret across the threshold of marriage under false pretence.

While he wasn't required to make the commitment in front of the Minister to include any affairs in a retroactive sense, he should have come clean and given you the choice to postpone the wedding, end the relationship, get counselling, or whatever else the fallout from his disclosure would have caused. Had he been honest before you married him, and you chose to marry him anyway, that is one thing. Quite another to marry a man that cheated, and become totally blindsided by his actions, after the wedding.

I would feel the same way as you do. Being with someone a long time, believing them to be honest and faithful, and blindly going along planning a life with this person, planning a wedding, and being fully committed yourself, while he was living a lie. He was not faithful, he was not honest, and he chose to allow you to believe that he was never unfaithful, when he was. He took away the truth from you, because he was afraid of the consequences. Which, as it often goes, comes around and eventually bites you in the butt anyway.

It was a terrible deception to be talking of love and commitment, and marriage and a life together, while at the same time now knowing that the nagging lie of a secret affair was just under the surface, and he just tucked it away and didn't deal with it.

He was not the man you thought he was when he married you. It will take some time to work through this, and trust him to the same degree you did, before the affair came to light. And that trust has been cracked, and put a wedge in your marriage, now that you know. If he had been honest before you married him, and he had confessed, would you have married him anyway?

I am glad to get my feelings validated and to know that I am not overreacting. Jake2008 sums up how I feel really well. I would like to think, that had he confessed before marriage, that we would've worked it out, and married anyway. Maybe waited a bit, but I do believe in him and in US. It's the lying that went on for so long that I think hurts the most. To know that he can look at me and lie for so long the way that he did, truly concerns me. I says he never wanted to hurt me and couldn't tell me... but the fact that he felt that he couldn't tell me is what actually hurts the most! I thought our relationship was better than that... and I'm really upset that he has the capacity to be so dishonest about something so big. Am I making sense? Should I be concerned?

You make perfect sense, and I think the challenge is to get beyond the hurt to make a way forward that's based on truth, so if possible you can regain the trust you once had.

Maybe not as it was, but on a knowing practical level. If this was a mistake, and his lie was an effort not to hurt you, that's one thing, but if his deception was told to avoid consequences to cover up continued bad behavior, that's a totally different thing.

If you have no reason to think the bad behavior has continued, then forgive him, and work to get the trust back. Its not easy for sure, but over time the things he has done since, will be all you can judge his behavior on.

You can forgive and move forward, but I know you can never forget, but don't let the hurt feelings get in the way of seeing what's the truth now, so deal with your feelings first, and his actions once you have those feeling in their proper place.

Not acting on the feelings, just the facts is really the only way to get beyond this situation of hurt, and disappointment. Its how you cope with those feelings that will be your concern now, because you will be alert as a hawk for any sign of cheating, and you shouldn't have to watch anyone that close.

It is just as possible to work through an affair if it happened after you were married, in the same way it happened before you were married. It is as you said, the lie and deception, and taking away choices you could have had, that bothers you the most. But, you don't have the benefit of working through the affair before you married him, and he doesn't seem to understand how it has affected you. Perhaps if it had been he the one who was cheated on and lied to, he would.

Because this is not resolved, I would personally insist on counsellling together. You may feel at times that everything is okay, and you can move on without feeling that the affair is still lingering over your head, but until is resolved, and the emotional end is dealt with, you are allowing the affair to continue to affect your marriage, and it is also unfair to your husband, who shouldn't have to live with the mistake for the next 10 years or more. Your husband can only give you what he can, and he may very well be honestly telling you he did what he thought was the right thing to do at the time, by not telling you, but he too has to know,and accept the consequences of his actions. And that is, for the most part, the lie, the continued lie, and the reasons for the lie, which does not make how you feel, any better.

Counselling with a person face to face, can put the cards on the table, and while dealing with the facts, also deal with helping both of you to understand why the after the facts, are not settling right. There are two sides to this coin, and, both have to be understood.

There had to be reasons he did what he did. Being drunk and stupid after a ballgame with his buddies would only be part of the reason. He was still sober enough to decide to cross that line into an affair, and also sober enough to make a decision to keep it a secret. Maybe to him everything is the being drunk an making a mistake, but to you, it is more, and he needs to understand why. And he needs to understand that there are serious consequences, and they need to be addressed. It is only an understanding through counselling that will allow both of you the opportunity to talk, understand, and move past this.

If he truly understood how this has so deeply affected you, you would not be questioning it.

But an affair is not the same as finding out after marriage that he's really lousy with money and bought a big screen TV instead of paying the light bill. Or he ipulsively put the $5,000 you had saved together, as a down payment on a new Ford. Those things he cannot hide and lie about, and although you would be upset with what he did, it wouldn't be nearly as hard to work through what you know happened, as opposed to what you didn't know.

If HE is putting the affair forward as no different than any of the above, then he is truly missing the boat. Being caught in a lie, is quite different than living a lie, because you can get away with it.

But affairs have emotional fallout, and you can't just return the TV to the store, or borrow on your line of credit to pay the light bill, or sell the truck and clear the loan off. The consequences are much deeper, and longer lasting. I urge you to seek counselling to work through this, but also realize that at some point you will have to be comfortable enough to forgive. And he has to be knowledgeable enough to truly understand what he did, and how it affected you. Both of you have to be able to face the future, without the residual effect of an affair.

It can't keep rearing its ugly head, it has to be dealt with, and then put away, not the other way around.

May I ask did something happen for him to tell you now?

If he had tried hard to keep it a secret for this long,why tell you now?

I totally agree that with counselling you can both recover and move forward,you will need the tools to help you through the gambit of emotions your feeling and he will need tools to understand why the affair happened.

What are the details of the affair? Was it long ago or as your wedding was being planned? Was it a one night, one week or long term? How is he now for what ever reason this lie came out? Is he truly sorry? Or did someone else rat him out? Its nice to think he came to you about this on his own. Even if he was living the lie.

I think the answer rest with you. If you believe that you can work to resolve your feelings about this and live with it then no the marriage doesn't have to be a sham but if you can't move past it then maybe it is. It's very difficult to come to grips with why someone lies about their behaviors it could be fear, selfishness, etc. but the truth is a double edged sword and if it were me I'd be curious as to who your spouse truly is, character wise we know that honesty isn't 1st on the list and liars are very unpredictable.

Good Luck