I keep coming back to a question I don’t have a comfortable answer for: if either discovery would end my relationship, could one kind of betrayal still feel worse?
In the first version, I find out my husband or partner has been having a romantic affair with a woman I don’t know. It’s lasted a couple of months, and they’ve had sex once. In the second, I discover that he paid an escort for one sexual encounter.
Neither has happened in this hypothetical. I’m trying to imagine receiving each explanation, with my partner standing in front of me, and noticing which part I’d struggle to hear.
With the affair, I think I’d get caught on the months. The sexual encounter would matter, but so would learning that an ongoing romantic connection had existed alongside our relationship. I’d wonder how often he’d thought about her while we were together, and how much of our ordinary life I’d start reconsidering.
With the paid encounter, I imagine the hurt gathering around the decision itself. The absence of an ongoing romance wouldn’t make the breach disappear. I wouldn’t find much comfort in being told it happened only once when once was enough to change the relationship.
Even comparing them makes me hesitate. Calling one worse can sound as though I’m making the other easier to accept. I don’t think I’d accept either. My assumption is that the outcome would be the same.
But an outcome doesn’t tell me everything about the pain that comes before it. Would I be more haunted by months of romantic involvement, or by a single, deliberate paid encounter?
If I were standing there hearing the truth, which explanation would I wish I hadn’t had to hear?
