Is it Possible to Get Closure After an Affair?

Dear E. Jean: I’m a well-known figure in the business world, with a television show in the works, so my reputation is precious to me. I am striking. I am fabulous. I have star power. But I’m married to someone who resents my professional success. Three months ago a man swept me off my feet, and we began an affair. Like me, he’s married with children. He proposed immediately—our plan was to divorce our spouses and marry each other. However, my husband found out about it and outed us to my lover’s wife.

She told the gossips in our tightly knit community that I “stalked” and “seduced” her husband. By now everyone has heard this version and believes it: I’m the evil temptress! I’m the destroyer of families! He’s currently showering his wife with gifts, vacations, and attention. The Facebook pictures are nauseating.

I’ve tried to move on and be happy. My husband is working to become a better father and partner. But I’ve never heard a word from my lover. I’ve never gotten closure. The stories are still making the rounds about how I enticed this innocent married man! I’m sick of it, E. Jean!

I have tried many times to reach out to him and ask him to shut up his wife. He never responds. So I want to expose him. I have texts, pictures, and e-mails showing how he pursued me, how he gave me Chanel bags and Louboutin shoes and took me away for romantic weekends. He’s telling everyone our affair was “a few meetings at Starbucks.” I’m attaching a picture of him and me in Key West, where he took me while his wife was home, crying that she was “losing him.” Don’t you think it’s time she finds out? Isn’t it time he pays the price? I just want everyone to shut up, and to make him give me the closure and respect he owes me.—He’s Got it Coming!

Got it Girl: Now, now. Let Auntie Eeee’s calming hand fall upon your gazelle-like shoulder. Are you quite, quite certain you wish to flash around this Key West shot of you and the chap? You’re a glamorous tomato—practically royalty in your business—but this looks like a photo of two bumpkins recovering from a three-day binge in bed with one of Jimmy Buffett’s flip-flops.

This letter is from the Ask E. Jean Archive, 1993-2017. Send questions to E. Jean at [email protected].