Carolyn Hax Gets It Wrong on Infidelity Again

Once again Carolyn Hax blames a woman for her husband’s infidelity, in a rerun column from yesterday’s Washington Post. It’s part of a long-standing pattern of her lousy advice around cheating.

I’ve called her out for being tone deaf on this topic for over a decade. Here’s a primer:

• Carolyn Hax’s Bitter Woman Pile On (2023) where she pillories a woman who objected to having her children sleep over at the mistress’s house while the divorce is ongoing.
• When the Other Woman Doesn’t Like the Mistress Label (2022) where Hax finds sympathy in contrast to CN’s boofuckinghoo.
• UBT: Cheating Is the Symptom Not the Disease (2016) where — holy dual accountability, Batman! — Hax states “Getting past a spouse’s cheating requires honesty on both sides.” Because you’re both liars and your suckitude could drive anyone to have a double life.
• Carolyn Hax Gives Dreadful Infidelity Advice Again (2013) where a remorseful cheater wonders if she should come clean and Hax tells her that a history of cheating is akin to the mortification of being in high school AV club.

Feel the love and understanding?

Yeah, me neither.

Over the years CN has posited whether she’s just spouting the usual Reconciliation Industrial Complex party lines, or if she’s cheated. (Of course these things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, it’s probably quite a Venn diagram of overlap.) Hax had a messy divorce from her first husband, the cartoonist Nick Galifinkas, with whom she appears to be on good terms. They were reportedly separated when she got together with her current husband and got pregnant. You can read about it in the Wayback Machine here and draw your own conclusions.

Whatever the story, she seems to buy the familiar trope that bad marriages make people cheat, not lousy character. Which brings us to yesterday’s rerun letter in WaPo.

Dear Carolyn: My husband is having an affair. I have many forms of proof, and did not need to search that hard. She works in the same company. I’m not surprised; he was texting her while we were on vacation with my family. I have not confronted him yet.

Instead of his actually owning up to it, I’m expecting him to say, “Well, can you blame me?” He has pushed hard to go to counseling. I have agreed and told him to set up the appointment, but he has not.

Sadly, I’m not really bothered by it. But if it begins to affect our children, there will be hell to pay. I have several copies of emails over the past six months, including one where he calls my family pathetic. I’m not sure what he based that on, except they are mostly intellectuals and he feels inferior. That bothers me more than the affair itself.

I’m sure he thinks I am unaware. The immature part of me just wants to say “gotcha.” Should I wait for counseling to bring this up so there is a witness there?

The Chump Lady take

If “Aware But Don’t Care” had written to me, I’d ask her to examine her Staying Together For the Children motivations and how healthy that is. (Is she economically vulnerable? A stay-at-home parent?) I’d tell her to get tested for STDs and ask her if she wants to be in a relationship with someone she doesn’t respect or trust?

Instead, Hax seized on the capital crime of this woman not wanting to go to counseling when her husband suggested it. (Of course, he doesn’t seem that invested either if he never made an appointment.) And weighs that much heavier than the fact that this guy is conducting a double life, diverting time and attention and money outside his family, and most likely risking her health.

She didn’t book the therapy appointment. She alone let her marriage go to shit! Ergo, she deserves what she gets. At least he’s out on a quest for aliveness.

Hax’s take

Aware But Don’t Care: Surely you don’t mean to suggest that your raging contempt for your husband hasn’t affected your children?

Raging contempt? I’m sure eating the shit sandwich of continued marriage to a cheater breeds resentment and inauthenticity — call her out on THAT. But THIS is straight up victim blaming.

First off, the woman is going to great lengths to proclaim herself NOT ANGRY. Because in our culture being an Angry Woman is the cardinal sin. The dick wandering entitlement is unquestioned.

There are two possibilities here, each with a different answer.

The first is that you mean exactly what you’ve written. In that case, you need to lock the immature part of you in the bathroom till the coast is clear, then tell your husband what you’ve discovered about his infidelity. Then you need to say you can’t blame him (no, you can’t), because he hasn’t gotten anything from you that even remotely resembles affection for years. Then you need to say it’s (long past) time for you both to admit the marriage isn’t working, like the adults you (allegedly) are, and decide what’s best for your kids at this point.

Hax is MAKING TOTAL SHIT UP!

She has NO IDEA if “he hasn’t gotten anything from you that even remotely resembles affection for years.”

We pivoted right to the Dead Bedroom excuse. Hello patriarchy my old friend — you’re frigid what do you expect?

Also, her husband could’ve admitted the marriage wasn’t working for him BEFORE HE FUCKED A COWORKER. It is possible to ethically break up. But I guess that isn’t equivalent to the crime of an unbooked therapy appointment.

The second possibility is that you’re deeply hurt, and you’re lashing out in a misguided attempt to shield your sadness, disappointment and humiliation over the failures of your marriage that have culminated in your husband’s affair.

And there we have it. The “failed” marriage made his dick wander. He made a unilateral decision to cheat, and she caused it. Because chumps have superpowers. We can also levitate avocados if we concentrate our minds.

She’s the bad guy, really

This second possibility may be a long shot, granted. But you’re saying “I don’t care” and then squaring yourself for a fight — when a true “I don’t care” is all about not fighting anymore. Even if what you’re feeling is a passionate dislike, then that’s still passion, and that’s still having feelings for him.

If that’s the case, then you need to recognize that you’re not so much the victim of his actions as the willing, somewhat twisted beneficiary of them. You’re hiding behind him: By agreeing to counseling but letting him fail to make the appointments, and by remaining passive as you watched him crave attention to the point of seeking it elsewhere, you’re letting him be the bad guy for you.

She LET him fail? Just like she made him cheat? I’ll agree she’s being passive — I’m a proponent of calling lawyers and throwing shit in Hefty bags. But this woman is being conspired against. Cheated on. ABUSED. It doesn’t matter if we find her likable or hold her actions in high esteem. Her husband IS the bad guy because he is the bad ACTOR.

Could it be that this long, passive goodbye feels easier to you than taking the emotional risk of admitting your feelings, admitting your failings and trying to save your marriage? If so, then I hope you’ll start admitting all this before it’s too late.

Either way, the only move you have left that’s solidly in the best interests of your kids and your marriage — and your integrity — is for you to find your courage and tell your truth, whatever that happens to be and wherever that happens to lead.

Yeah. The person with the integrity problem is the one at home with the kids while her husband is out fucking a coworker. Office extracurriculars always go over well with HR.

I hope OP found the courage to call a lawyer. As for Carolyn’s Hax’s views on infidelity — here’s my truth: Evolve your thinking or fuck all the way off.