My husband was unfaithful throughout almost three decades of marriage. I take a controversial view. I was grateful I didn’t know about it till the end. I was glad that my two sons grew up in an intact home and did not have to suffer through all the drama that would have arisen had I known about his philandering. I did not have to make a decision about whether to stay or go, choosing to preserve security for me and my children versus splitting up to be free of someone who had betrayed me.

When I finally found out about my husband’s latest mistress, my children were already grown and out of the house. She was a young woman half his age, almost young enough to be his granddaughter. He wasn’t willing to give her up. Once I had discovered this affair, my husband didn’t hide the fact that he had been in previous extra-marital relationships. He told me that when my kids were still very young, he was having an affair with a married woman who wanted to leave her husband and have him leave me so that they could move in together. My husband insisted that that he had been in love with her, but decided he didn’t want to leave me. He recounted this story as if I should applaud him for that decision, telling me it took him six months to get over this woman. What I found out later was that she had broken off all contact once he refused to leave me. What my husband had really wanted was to preserve the status quo—to have me keep the home fires burning, and to be able to see the mistress for passion—in effect, to have his cake and eat it.

Yet for me, ignorance was bliss as regards his infidelity when the kids were young. Many of my female friends strongly disagreed. One of them declared, “I would always want to know. Even if I still had small children at home, I would leave my husband if he were unfaithful. I wouldn’t want to be wasting time staying with him rather than finding a better partner. I’ve never had a problem getting boyfriends.”

I believe that the decision whether or not to tell someone their partner is cheating is not clear cut. There are numerous grey areas and every situation is different. For example, if someone is having a lot of affairs with different partners and putting his or her spouse at risk of getting STDs, the spouse needs to know. Similarly, if a couple isn’t yet married, it is better to be informed about your partner’s infidelity before you tie the knot. In contrast, what if the affair is over, the spouses still love each other and there are young children still living at home? Or what if the marriage has become celibate—a very common story—yet the spouses still want to live together?

There is no doubt that a marriage has a much higher chance of failing if a third party tells the cheated-upon spouse about the other partner’s infidelity rather than if the adulterer confesses. I’m no fan of infidelity or the deception it almost always involves. Nevertheless, the greatest probability of a marriage surviving is if the other spouse never knows about the affair.

The mistress may tell the wife about her husband’s affair with the ulterior motive of trying to break up the marriage as a way to get the man for herself. This often backfires, as the guy may find this behavior to be a reason to dump her. Alternatively, the informant may have no concern at all about the welfare of the cheated-upon partner and be acting out of pure revenge. Maybe he or she is a spurned lover, or the spouse of the person with whom your cheating partner had an affair. Their relationship was broken, so why shouldn’t yours be also? Of course, destroying another person’s marriage won’t get rid of the mental pain the informant feels and instead will keep him or her locked in a toxic cycle of revenge.

I heard about two tragic cases where husbands whose partners were cheating would clearly have been better off not knowing. In one case, the husband killed himself, leaving his three-year-old son fatherless. In the other case, the husband shot dead both his wife and her lover.

I would still be with my spouse if I had never discovered his infidelity. It would have been a mistake for both of us, but the timing of our split was key because our children were no longer part of the equation. However, it wasn’t all roses. I had to develop a 6-part plan to deal with the emotional roller coaster that arose after I found out about his mistress.

My husband and I are now divorced and much happier apart. I’m actually grateful to him and his girlfriend because their actions were a catalyst for me to learn how to become complete on my own, with or without a partner, which unleashed creativity and joy in me that had been dormant for decades. Imagine the same thing happening to you. If you’d like to know how to do that, get my free PDF and read my humorous self-help book, Adulterer’s Wife: How to Thrive Whether You Stay or Not.