When Anita* and her husband became friends with another couple, it seemed like the perfect dynamic. They’d go to dinner as a foursome, and even went on holiday together. Then Sadie*, the wife of the other couple, told Anita a secret: she was having an emotional affair with another man, and asked Anita to not tell anyone.
This, Anita tells me, was an enormous weight to carry – and made her feel like an accomplice to Sadie’s infidelity. Sadie’s husband was her friend, too, and now Anita struggled to look him in the eye. “He didn’t deserve to be cheated on,” Anita says. “When I saw him, I felt terrible.” Feeling entirely uncomfortable about the situation, Anita advised Sadie to end her affair and even offered to babysit her children while she and her husband attended couple’s therapy. “I didn’t want to carry that secret anymore,” Anita continues. “It was such a miserable burden.”
