What to do if your husband is cheating

Whether you have something specific or a pattern you cannot unsee, the first forty-eight hours matter more than they feel like they should. Most of the decisions people report regretting were made inside them.

1. Decide nothing irreversible yet

Not the marriage, not the living arrangements, not who else gets told. The situation will still be there in three days and you will read it better. The only things worth doing immediately are the ones that are easy to undo.

2. Separate what happened from what you want

These feel like one question and are two, and they almost never resolve on the same timeline. You can be certain about what you saw and completely unsure what you want to do about it — that is an ordinary place to be, not indecision.

Write both down separately. Under the first, only things you observed. Under the second, only things you want. Keeping them apart is most of the work.

3. Get your own account of it straight

If you have not already, put the observations in one place and see their shape rather than replaying the worst one. The eighteen questions do this in about two minutes, and every sign is published with its ordinary explanation so you can rule out what deserves ruling out.

This matters for a practical reason: the conversation goes differently when you can say what you noticed and when, rather than arguing about a feeling.

4. Tell one person

One, chosen for discretion rather than for how much they will agree with you. Carrying this alone is what makes the first days worse, and telling everyone is what makes the following months harder if you stay.

5. Have the conversation, not the confrontation

A confrontation invites a defence, and a defence tells you almost nothing. A conversation about one specific observation — the changed account, the checkable detail that was not true — is harder to deflect because there is something concrete on the table.

Ask what you want to know. Not everything at once, and not the version designed to catch him out.

What not to do

• Do not install monitoring software or access his accounts. It is unlawful in most of the US and EU, and it moves the argument onto your conduct. The line is set out in what you can lawfully check.
• Do not contact the other person. Nothing you need comes from there.
• Do not tell his employer.
• Do not post about it. It is unrecoverable, whichever way this goes.

When to bring in someone else

If the pattern is wide rather than a single incident, or if the conversation is not possible at all, this has moved past what a questionnaire settles. A counsellor — individually, not necessarily as a couple — or a solicitor if finances and children are involved. Wanting help early is not a decision about the marriage.