Confessions are tricky affairs.
Before you even think of confessing, ask yourself if you really should confess to cheating.
Sometimes, a confession can do more harm than good in a relationship.
But at other times, even hiding a confession could make you feel terrible.
If you’re not a particularly great liar and spend most of your time trudging around the house with a heavy bag of guilt, it’s going to make things a lot worse for the relationship.
This is especially true in a long term relationship where the nagging thought makes it hard to even look your partner in their eyes.
If you’re experiencing a bad case of guilt after an affair, this is for you.
How to confess to cheating in love
Love is a wonderful thing and life may be perfect. You sit with your partner on a little wooden bench in a park every weekend, cooing at each other and sharing those joyous moments of love.
You have many memorable moments together, dining in the plush ambience of several elegant restaurants, wandering through empty cobbled streets and markets, gazing at the sky through the sun-kissed greenery, arguing over silly nothings and kissing and making up in no time.
You know this is love, and nothing can ever come in between both of you.
But it has. It may have been a total moment of hasty lust or a well orchestrated affair that eventually fizzled out. But nevertheless, an affair isn’t like one of those little cute fights that couples have even if it involves pots and pans.
Cheating and its repercussions
You know you’ve been a little horny bunny and indulged in a few things that could seriously jeopardize your fragile relationship.
There may be nothing that binds you with this tempestuous past anymore, but what if
What if your partner found out someday, years later? What if the guilt starts getting heavier with each passing day? There are so many what ifs and you know there’s just one thing that can help you feel better. You need to confess to your partner.
But even the thought of blurting out something that you’ve been concealing makes you gasp for air. What if it ends everything? What if your torrid past brings your relationship down like the wall of Berlin and your love story just becomes an unfinished chapter in the history of your life?
Warming up to the confession
Your heart may beat so loudly that you can hardly hear yourself speak. Confessing about your enthusiastic bunny rabbit past is pure insanity, but you are ready to brave the chance and come clean, once and for all, and that’s brave.
Now this part of a relationship can take either course, but it’s got nothing to do with the confessions, but everything to do with the two people involved. So the next time you brave a dry throat to reveal a deep scary secret, remember these five confession pointers that are mentioned here.
Choose your time carefully
Your past definitely has the power to drive your love to a dead end, but it is a little known fact that even the time you choose to confess has the exact effect. The best time to confess about your sneaky secret is never at the start of the relationship.
The whole idea of “starting a relationship with no secrets and absolutely no lies” doesn’t make sense in reality. It’s unnecessary to pour out all your secrets to your partner in the early stages of your love. It would be very difficult for anyone to actually see past your early escapades and love you unconditionally. The thoughts about you and “someone else”, or “that thing” will constantly bring uneasiness to someone who is still trying to find all your positive aspects.
Don’t confess about your affair when the relationship is riding a tough wave. It’ll only make things a lot worse to handle. It could end up turning into the final straw that broke the camel’s back. On the other hand, don’t pamper your lover all weekend and burst the happy bubble with a confession. It’ll only make the whole happy weekend seem like a corny cover-up to even out your confession.
Bring up the confession when both of you have at least a few hours of time together, and neither of you have any important assignments at work or elsewhere.
Prepare yourself
You know what to say alright, but you have got to work on how you would say it right. You don’t want to mumble something and get the wrong message across. When you decide to speak up, you must prepare yourself on how you would make yourself clear without overly hurting your partner with all the details, and prepare yourself to face the questions and answer them as honestly as you can without breaking your partner’s heart even more.
Choose your words well and rehearse in front of the mirror if you have to. Be subtle in your approach. You may get a stare of disgust or an open jaw of disbelief, or you may even have a few flavored words thrown in your direction. But remember that at the end of this, you’ll feel a lot better for being truthful about your past.
Choose your place
The time you asked your lover out, the time you said “I love you” for the first time… you always tried to choose the most romantic places. The same “find-the-right-place” model works wonders when you declare your guilt. Firstly, do not pick a crowded place to have this sort of a serious conversation.
There is bound to be raised eyebrows and some “I-don’t-want-to-hear-this” expressions and perhaps, even a few gasps of horror and a lot of visual begging and pleading from your end. When you’re stuck in the middle of a crowded café, you would have a hundred bored and inquisitive heads craning to overhear your conversation.
At the same time, don’t even think of sitting in a lonely place if you have a partner who may lose control of the situation. If the overcrowded café scene wasn’t bad enough, this could turn into a helpless mob crime scene. A lonely place could give you the courage and the reassurance that you’re not being overheard by anyone else, but it would give the same to your significant other to react.
But if you’ve been in a longer relationship that’s withstood the test of time during a few earlier smaller bags of guilt, then perhaps sitting at home with each other would be the best way to deal with the confession. There may be a few slammed doors, but you knew that already, didn’t you?
Leave it open
Confessing about your past is definitely good and an impressive act of courage, especially if your partner would never have found out about the affair. But it does come with a ball of knotty strings.
It brings the relationship to a wobbly bridge where you could either cross or fall down, but the worst part is that it is your partner who has to decide the fate. You may be apologetic and repentant, and you may be willing to do anything to be accepted but you need to remember one straight fact. You can only ask your partner to trust you and forgive your past, but on no account can you force them to stay.
The option to go on must be left open for your lover to choose. It would be better to say, “If you think you can forgive me and accept me, give me a call… I’ll wait for you,” rather than saying, “You can’t leave me! It was a stupid mistake! We love each other and are meant to be together, no matter what!”
When you order someone to stay, it would bring your ego to the surface and most often, your partner would deny such submissions, especially in circumstances that involve an affair. Even when people kindly give in to the pressure, they would constantly be tormented by their guilt for having been forced into a relationship. Give your partner a chance to make up their own mind.
Time is the healer
Even the biggest of ignoramuses would know that a sordid past is hard to overlook, and your lover will need some time to grope for words to accept you or reject you. But in most cases, when you’re overenthusiastic to know your mate’s reply, things can actually go on the negative.
So plenty of time is what you should be ready to give before you get your answer. The wait would obviously be painful but the answer that comes out of clear thought and conscience is what you deserve for your “act of bravery” to confess. It may take a lot more than a few minutes or hours or maybe even days before you hear from your mate.
Even though you want to know the answer right away, a patient wait shows that you have some respect and care about what your partner wants to do rather than force them to accept you.
Men may take a few seconds to think and forgive, but it’s the way their head works. They may probably go into the deeper state of thinking after they’re done making up. With men, their instinctive reply is never the final one, especially in relationships.
Women think a little too much about any complication in love. So if you’re waiting for your girl to reply, you have a long wait in store for you. But while you’re waiting for her, don’t forget to remind her every now and then that you’re still waiting for her, with little notes of sincere apologies and bouquets of flowers.
