If you are searching for the truth, consider going directly to the other person.

Weigh this carefully. Determine the type of affair you are probably facing. (Confrontation might be damaging and less effective for particular types of affairs, better for others.) Rehearse what you want to say. Charge neutral. And… good luck.

Case study:

1. What was your purpose for confronting the OP and what did you say/do?

I had not yet confronted my wife and suspected that she would not be forthcoming when I did confront her; I had the smoking-gun evidence and figured my best chance to get a confession was from the OP. When he answered the phone, I said hello, identified myself as my wife’s spouse, told him I was not going to hassle him, but needed a question asked: did you sleep with my wife?

2. What happened? What was the outcome?

He said, ‘Aww man, don’t put this on me’ (verbatim), and hung up.

3. If you were to do it again, would you do it differently? What did you learn?

Although that was not an outright confession, his response confirmed for me that he knew exactly what I was talking about. When I later confronted my wife, and over the course of several months, bluffed her into telling me all of the truth I will ever get out of her.Being able to relay what the OP had said seemed to weaken the bond between them. Left to my interpretation, his words meant, ‘Don’t blame me, blame your wife’. I’m not sure how I would handle it if I had it over to do again. I am a very emotional person, and require that I deal with emotional experiences fully – so I guess I would handle it the same unless I was grieving differently.

Coach’s Comments:

There obviously is a huge gap in this marriage. Fear of confrontation? Guilt? Shame? We don’t know. We do know that the husband believed his wife was so tightly shut down that they could not engage in a constructive conversation. Whether this was a long standing pattern or a result of the infidelity, again, we don’t know.

Confronting the other man seemed to work well for him in discerning the truth. Direct. Charging neutral. His approach and demeanor with the other person most likely was helpful in getting a response which helped clarify the truth.

His intervention with the other man, as well, seemingly shut off some of the juice of the affair relationship. In this case, a nice by-product of the confrontation. (Do you get the feeling that the other man was “using” his wife and didn’t want HER problems?)