I was watching a movie the other day, "Valentine's Day", and one of the stories seriously piqued my interest. There was this couple who was married for 55 yrs, and they were too adorable for words. A couple of months before they renew their weeding vows, after 55 yrs of marital bliss, the wife decided to confess to her husband of an eternity that she had an affair with his business partner, more than 4 decades ago. So here's the morally plaguing question that's been on my mind since then...Is confessing to infidelity pure selfishness?
Now, before you decide to throw stones at me, let me elucidate the thought process that brought me to this conclusion. When the earnest and truly loving wife Estelle decided to reveal her ancient affair to her husband, she explained through her tears that it "was tearing me up inside" and "I didn't want to renew our vows with this weighing over us". So here's the real question, did she tell him because it was the right thing to do? the morally sound thing? Or because the guilt was too much and she had to relieve herself. This can be confirmed by Edgar's question that prompted her answers, "why tell me? why now?" Why? Because confessing to any act of betrayal, if you are truly a decent human being, has nothing to do with the other person. I will repeat this for emphasis, confessing to an act of betrayal has nothing to do with the other person. Human nature does not make us want to confess out of concern for the other person...mainly because we are aware that the pain caused by such revelation is far greater than any imaginary pain we imagine they will feel from not knowing. The truth is, in my opinion, ignorance is indeed a blissful state. The reason these confessions end up occurring is because the pain and guilt that it causes us, the iniquitous party, somehow ends up surpassing the level of the "imaginary" pain, and the need to relieve ourselves becomes much more exigent than that to spare the other party's feelings. Since we acted irresponsibly, irrationally and selfishly to begin with, we sometimes have to be willing to live with that guilt, as long as we know that we are the only ones being affected. Why make someone else suffer unnecessarily for your mistakes?
So when that moment of apologetic, heart-wrenching, guilt-ridden revelation occurs, we are in fact, no matter how inadvertently, freeing ourselves of a heavy burden and transferring the pain to the other party. And in this case, after 55 yrs of marital felicity, was it really necessary to reveal this affair, knowing what we now know about confessions of betrayal? The pangs of infidelity truly have no room in such a long-standing love affair (the marriage, not the actual affair which has been rendered insignificant by the fact that the marriage outlasted it by the way). Please understand, I am in no way, shape or form, supporting the act of cheating on or betraying a loved one. I am simply saying that if and when it should happen, we should take a closer look at our motives (usually correlated with the amount of elapsed time) for confessing, and evaluate the pain that we are transferring to the other party in comparison to our own; understand the selfish nature of our actions and their consequences on others.
Just something to ponder...
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