Confessing is selfish

The argument

Some marriage counselors and sex therapists feel that confessing to infidelities is, in a particular set of circumstances, a selfish act rather than an honest one. The reasoning turns on who the confession is for. If the sexual betrayal is finished and you don't intend to do it again, telling a partner transfers the burden rather than resolving anything: the person who strayed is relieved of their guilt, and the person who did not is handed pain they were not previously carrying. On this view the honest-seeming act is really a way of setting one's own discomfort down, and the more considerate course is to keep your guilt to yourself and protect your partner from unnecessary pain. The case is stronger where the encounter is barely recoverable. If your one night stand was fuelled by alcohol and you can barely remember what happened, confessing offers your partner an injury without even offering a clear account of it, which is why proponents hold that it can cause your partner more harm than good. What silence does not do is remove the underlying problem, so the work shifts to yourself: if alcohol was involved, committing to changing your drinking behaviours is what actually prevents a repetition, and it is something you can do without asking your partner to absorb the cost. The same logic extends beyond the incident. Cheating can also be a wake-up call that something else is wrong in your relationship. Someone who wants to stay in the relationship and does not want to confess still has the substantive work available to them: figuring out why you strayed in the first place, and which of your needs may not be met, creates the opportunity to repair and strengthen the relationship, and seeing a couple's therapist can help with working through deeper-rooted relationship issues. The relationship improves either way, which is why, on this account, you should keep it to yourself.

Premises

Counter-arguments

It's best to come clean if your partner has suspicions you have cheated and asks you directly. While it's not easy to hear your partner has cheated, lies and cover-ups make things worse. Honesty can prevent your partner from feeling additional pain.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Motive and obligation are being run together. That confessing relieves the confessor's guilt may well be true, but a disclosure can serve the person making it and still be owed to the person receiving it — the premise gives no reason why a benefit to one party cancels a duty to the other. [Rejecting P2] Sparing a partner pain assumes the concealment holds. Where it does not, the discovery typically inflicts the original injury plus the deception, and the counter-argument on record presses the case where the partner already suspects and asks directly: at that point silence is an active lie rather than a withheld truth. [Rejecting P3] The premise also treats the decision as the cheating partner's alone to make. Deciding unilaterally what someone may know about their own relationship — including matters bearing on their sexual health — removes their ability to make an informed choice about whether to remain in it. [Rejecting C] Working on the underlying issues and confessing are not alternatives. Couples therapy premised on one party concealing the event proceeds on a false account of what needs repair, so the remedy the argument recommends is undermined by the silence it recommends alongside it.