How to End an Extramarital Affair Before your Spouse Comes to Know

If life were a movie, you would live happily ever after once you got married. Unfortunately life isn’t so and there may come a juncture in your marriage when you find yourself involved in an extra-marital affair. The worst part of having an affair is knowing that you are being unfair to three parties at a time – your spouse, your lover and yourself.

It is this eventual realization, no matter how exciting the affair, that compels one to try to end an affair before any more damage is done. If you too find yourself caught up in such a situation and have the feeling of perpetually walking on eggshells, take matters into your hand. Make a clean break with your lover and end your affair before your spouse and your family is devastated at your infidelity.

TIP: Read the guide to prevent a break up or get back with your ex.

Take a firm decision

You can begin to end your extra-marital affair only if you are completely convinced of the correctness of the decision. Understand that what you have been doing is not only devastating to your marriage and your spouse but is inordinately unfair to your lover as well. On one hand you are breaking the bond of trust with your spouse and on the other you are creating a mirage of hope. So take the decision to end your affair and stick to it.

Consider how to end the affair

The most honest way to end an extra-marital affair would undoubtedly be to meet your lover and let him/her know of your decision. However such a meeting could get messy and confrontational. Moreover once you meet your lover, you might be tempted to give in and back away from making a clean break. So consider other impersonal ways of breaking up for instance by email, phone or a letter. You may be accused of being low and unfeeling but recognize that at this time being honest is a bigger priority than being gallant and generous.

Sooner the better

If you sincerely want to avoid your spouse finding out about your affair, decide to break up immediately with your amour. The more you dither, the greater are the chances of your affair being exposed. Recognize the signs of the start of an affair and nip it in the bud. If you have just spending more time with a co-worker or a pal from school than usual, refuse to meet him or her the next time. Or if you are frequenting a particular shop or restaurant in the hope of meeting somebody, decide to go to another place. Even if your affair has been going on for some time now and your spouse has not yet found out, thank your stars for the luck but don’t push it.

Make it clear

While breaking up with your lover, make it clear that this is the end and you will not be seeing each other hand. If you are doing it in a letter or email, keep the content concise and to the point. You might want to be compassionate and understanding of your lover’s pain but this may be construed as your willingness to let the affair continue. So don’t let there be any ambiguity about your decision or hopes about continuing to be friends. This might happen in a perfect world where two adult people from opposite sexes do not give way to emotional or sexual weaknesses. But in a real world, such a thing is impractical and difficult. So be emphatic in your decision that this marks the end of all forms of personal relationship between you and your lover.

Cut off all contact

This is the most definitive step in ending an extra-marital affair and may mark the difference between an unaware and a livid spouse. End all forms of contact with your lover, whether in real life or by electronic means. You should not only stop meeting your lover but also stop communicating with him or her by phone, text message, email or posts on social networking sites. If it is impossible to avoid your lover completely, like when he or she happens to be a co-worker, see if you can get a transfer to another office or at least another department. If that too seems impossible, restrict your communication to strictly professional matters. Remember the less you see of each other, the easier it will be to break off an affair before your spouse comes to know about it.

If necessary, take help

It is a good idea to seek the help of a counselor or a therapist when you are trying to sort out the mess in your personal life. Professional counselors can offer an objective view on your problems and can come up with effective means of resolving them. While friends and close family members can also offer support, they are unlikely to have a completely impartial perspective and worse may be tempted to reveal your infidelity to your spouse. Counselors and therapists on the other hand make it a matter of their professional principles to maintain the privacy of their clients so that your spouse is unlikely to know about your affair from them.

Focus on your marriage

If you are trying to end your extra-marital affair before your spouse finds out about it, it is presumably because you care about your marriage. So turn your attention to your marital relationship and see if there are issues which left you dissatisfied and eventually tempted you into an affair. Talk to your spouse and try to re-connect with him or her. Consider which areas in your marriage need to be worked at and do so before it is too late – again!

Ending an affair is not easy – no matter for how long it has been going on. However taking the right steps while going through it, is likely to make the breakup cleaner and more decisive – something that is essential if you wish to put the affair behind you before your spouse gets wiser.