‘I want to leave my cheating girlfriend, but her mother just died’

Dear Roe,

This problem is tearing up me because I don't know what to do. I recently discovered my girlfriend of five years has been having an affair for nearly a year. I'm devastated. I thought we were going to get married, but now I can barely look at her. I feel like a fool and that so much of our relationship was a lie, and I'm ready to end the relationship.

Before I found out, my girlfriend’s mother had been sick, and passed away the week I discovered the affair. My girlfriend is understandably distraught, and she’s begging me to stay, saying she needs me to get through this. It’s been a few weeks and I’ve stayed so far, but bottling everything up and acting like we’re fine is killing me. Yet, I’d feel like a terrible person for leaving her now. What do I do?

I’m so sorry for everything you and your girlfriend are going through. Losing a parent is so painful, and losing a relationship that you had come to trust and depend on is also a huge loss. You are also grieving, in a different way – grieving the loss of a future you had imagined, and good memories that are now tainted with this new knowledge of your girlfriend’s affair.

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Prawns with wild garlic butter: simple and delicious

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I do believe that sometimes, if both parties are willing, a couple can navigate their way through the pain of infidelity, but you seem sure of your decision to leave, and that is completely valid.

You say that you have stayed with your girlfriend, presumably through the funeral and the immediate shock and pain of her mother’s death. You have done enough. While your girlfriend is going through something horrible, so are you – the difference is that she is getting to express her emotions, while you have been forced to not only push your feelings aside, but be a support system to the person that hurt you. That’s an incredibly difficult thing, yet you have done it, and stood by her through the start of the grieving process. It’s now time for you to get the support you need.

You need to switch the narrative that is making you feel guilty. Instead of telling yourself “I’m leaving my girlfriend soon after her mother died”, tell yourself “My girlfriend cheated on me, and I still supported her when her mother died”. You are not the reason for her grief, and staying with her will not bring her mother back. Also, your understandable feelings of betrayal and humiliation are likely to boil over soon, and an explosive fight is not going to help her grieving process.

You can leave. You can do so thoughtfully – you can ask a friend or family member to check in on her and make sure she has extra emotional support, and suggest that she see a therapist so she has help processing her grief. But she does have family members, friends and possibly the other person she was seeing. Let them take over now. You have done what you can for her. Now do what you need to do for yourself.

Roe McDermott is a writer and Fulbright scholar with an MA in sexuality studies from San Francisco State University. She is researching a PhD in gendered and sexual citizenship at the Open University and Oxford

[ irishtimes.com/dearroe ]