I Let My Wife Have an Affair. Do I Have to Console Her Now That It’s Over?

While she is grieving about it, I feel relieved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/magazine/wife-affair-ethics.html

I have been married for many years, and I still love and care deeply about my partner. Over the past year, she had an affair, and I knew about it from the beginning. She said that she needed it, that it gave her vitality, that she enjoyed a sexual freedom she had longed for and that she felt it was wrong to do this in secret and without my consent. I agreed; what she said made sense to me, and she convincingly assured me this was no threat to our relationship. At the same time, I always suffered when she was away with her affair partner and could not find a way to take this easily.

She recently decided to break it off because the overall emotional burden for both of us was too great. But while she is grieving about it, I feel relieved. Even though I wish that I could have better coped with a situation I rationally and ethically consider OK, it conflicted with something deeper inside me that I can’t easily change.

My question is: Should I feel sorry for my wife? At the moment, I don’t. I understand her feelings and I care about her, but at the same time I feel it is not my job to console her for this particular loss. What do you think about this? — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

We don’t have voluntary control over our emotional responses, at least not in any straightforward way. You’re glad; she’s sad. And neither of you can simply choose to feel otherwise. From what you say, it sounds as if she gave up the affair for you and for her relationship with you, just as you consented to it for her and for your relationship with her. You most likely felt you had little choice about acquiescing to what she wanted, and, in time, she may have felt that she had little choice about acquiescing to what you clearly wanted. Your partnership would not have gone well, you perhaps thought, if you had withheld your consent; it would not have gone well, she perhaps thought, if she had persisted. Beneath the velvet of sweet reasonableness lurked the edged steel of unspoken ultimatums.

But while your sense of relief is unsurprising — and while you can’t simply resolve to feel otherwise — maybe you could help her deal with her loss out of gratitude for her belated acknowledgment of your needs? Solace is one of the gifts of marital love. And consoling someone you love when they’re in pain doesn’t require that you share that pain.

Still, these distinctions may be elusive in practice. And so it may be worth your both talking this all through with a counselor. Neither of you will ever be able to adjust your feelings on demand, but it could help to give them somewhere to go, in a way that helps you stay connected.

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Kwame Anthony Appiah is The New York Times Magazine’s Ethicist columnist and teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. To submit a query, send an email to ethicist@nytimes.com.

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