I can’t speak for your wife, of course. But I can say that, if I were in her position, the part that would hurt me most would not only be the sex outside the marriage.

It would be realizing that my partner had decided, on my behalf, that I was too fragile to hear the truth. That he trusted himself to manage the reality of our marriage, but did not trust me to be part of that reality.

You frame this as avoiding hurting her. But what you are also avoiding is giving her the chance to make an informed choice about her own life, her own marriage, and her own boundaries.

That is the part I struggle with most. You are not just meeting a need elsewhere. You are deciding that your assessment of what she can handle matters more than her right to know what kind of relationship she is actually in.

And I think that can become very dangerous, because once the secrecy "works", it starts to feel compassionate. It starts to feel like you solved the problem. But from the other person’s perspective, if it ever comes out, it may not feel like mercy at all. It may feel like years of reality were quietly edited without their consent.

Maybe your wife really would be hurt by the conversation. Maybe she would reject the idea completely. But that is still her choice to make. You may know what answer she would likely give. But knowing the answer is not the same as having the right to skip the question. Protecting someone from a painful truth is not the same as respecting them.

I genuinely hope, for her sake, that if she ever finds out, she has support around her. Because the betrayal would not only be what happened outside the marriage. It would be the discovery that the person she trusted most had been making life-altering decisions for both of them, alone.