I’m so ashamed of myself. About 20 yrs ago I had a relationship with a married man who was 26 years older than me.
I was single and in my early twenties. He was married with a daughter my age.
We met at work and started a relationship that lasted a few months. We went on a trip together and I ended the relationship shortly after that trip when he started talking about leaving his wife and making our relationship more serious.
I don’t honestly remember a lot of details but I do remember being as ashamed of myself then as I am now.
At the time, I had just lost my father and had just gone through a nasty break up where I lost a lot of my friends.
I mention these things not to justify my actions but to point out that I was not in a healthy place and I look at this relationship as the beginning of a downward spiral that lasted a decade or more.
His wife recently sent me a private message on social media saying she had just found out about this affair two weeks ago.
That she knew about other affairs of her husband’s but never one where he’d traveled with his mistress. She outlined some other details in her message, asked why I did it, said I had a beautiful family and hoped I never had to experience what she has.
She articulated how much pain she was in and and asked me to pray for her. I don’t know what to do.
Should I respond? she didn’t specifically express a desire for a response. I don’t know what to say and I don’t want to come across like I’m defending my actions.
But I am sorry to have caused her so much pain. My husband says I should just ignore it. It happened 20 years.
But she’s in pain now over something I did a long time ago and I just don’t know the right thing to do. I’ve never done anything like that since and have worked really hard in therapy and recovery programs to get to where I am today.
But it still happened and I regret it. Should I respond to her message?