THAT'S MEN:There is more to confession than avoiding pain
A READER has taken me to task for suggesting that confessing out of the blue to an affair that is long over might have more to do with a selfish need to salve one’s conscience than with principle. Such a confession, I suggested (“Be selfless and keep your guilt to yourself”, HEALTHPlus, July 5th), may destroy the happiness of the partner without achieving much else.
On the contrary, a reader writes, “Confessing could even be viewed as an act of love, since one is setting one’s ‘beloved’ free by revealing the truth. And yes, there is suffering, but at least the betrayed is free to choose to either stay (assuming they are still wanted) or go.”
My article had been written in the context of the case of Surrey man Tony Wakeford who, when he was in hospital and convinced that he was dying, confessed to his wife that he had had an affair with her best friend many years previously.
Wakeford, who was 70 at the time, did not die but returned home to be cared for by his wife, who was extremely upset and angry and remained so for the next few years until she killed him during a row. She was convicted of manslaughter but was allowed to walk free from the court (she had spent time in jail on remand) in what the judge called an act of mercy and compassion.
“I am not so naive or idealistic as to imagine that every man and woman could or should always remain faithful to their beloved,” my reader writes. “We are human and betrayal is a fact of life. I just don’t see the hiding of it as serving us in any way, except perhaps as you say, in death-bed scenarios.”
The act of revealing oneself with all one’s faults has a value of its own. “What a confession may do is serve to reveal to the betrayed who the betrayer actually is in truth. Yes, the betrayer is revealing his naked self in all its glory, failings, weakness.”
On a practical level, “apart from relationship disease caused by betrayal, there is also the possibility of physical disease resulting from sexual betrayal. Keeping your guilt to yourself means you are putting the sexual health of your ‘beloved’ in jeopardy. Surely this is as good a reason as any to confess.”
And she seeks clarification: “Are you advocating that in all scenarios where a person decides there is nothing to be gained by revealing details of a betrayal, it should be kept hidden? I certainly get that sense, but perhaps you advocate hiding betrayal only in death-bed scenarios.
“In my view, if a person is willing to break a commitment in the first place, they are hardly best placed to make an objective decision about the rights and wrongs of revealing such a betrayal to their ‘beloved’.
“Why facilitate a person to believe one is honest and committed and loyal and true when that is in fact a lie? By facilitating a person to hold on to inaccurate and unreal perceptions of who one actually is, the betrayed is doubly duped – duped by the fact of the betrayal and by the continued living of a lie, in the form of a relationship that cannot possibly be called authentic, congruent, honest, true. For one is no longer truly relating to the person one thought one was in the relationship with, for they are not the person they said they were.”
What I was saying was that in the Wakeford scenario, the affair was long past and all a confession could achieve would be to salve his conscience while destroying the happiness of his wife. I accept that my approach is not a very principled one but is based on the desirability of avoiding pain.
“I note,” my reader adds, “you don’t suggest that Mr Wakeford could have considered divorce rather than conducting a long-lasting affair with his wife’s best friend. Rather you suggest Mrs Wakeford should have divorced rather than murdered him.”
Fair point.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind - Mindfulness for Daily Living,is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail.