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Mea culpa minefield
Sincerely and humbly confessing an affair may be good for the soul, the psyche and society, but be careful how you do it -- it could compound the harm.

By Mark Kendall
The Press-Enterprise

That gruff film noir cop called your conscience is gonna rough you up if you don't sing. Or maybe the pressure is external: You think your wife has gotten wind of your affair. Or maybe you've watched one too many Jerry Springer shows.

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Whatever the reason, you're ready to confess, come clean, tell all: "I did it."

Now, hold on. Don't rush to spill your guts.

Confession may be good for the soul, the psyche and society. Lately, there's been a clamor for President Clinton to confess if he did indeed have an affair with Monica Lewinsky and lied about it.

But when it comes to your own relationships, pay attention to how you go about 'fessing up. Admitting wrong can be just the start of a good confession. And in rare cases a confession may compound the harm.

Why you're confessing is key, says psychologist Evan Imber-Black, author of "The Secret Life of Families: Truth-telling, Privacy and Reconciliation in a Tell-All Society" (Bantam, $23.95).

One good reason to confess is if the secret is hindering the relationship by blocking emotional intimacy. Another reason is if you find you're needing to lie to someone in an important relationship, says Imber-Black, director of program development at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York.

You may be obligated to confess because the other person has a right to know the truth. That would be the case, for example, if one spouse is cheating and the other thinks the marriage is fine. Imber-Black suggests asking yourself: "Is the other person unable to make good decisions because important information is being kept from them?"

Confessing shouldn't be just to make you feel better, "dumping the problem off your back and onto someone else's," Imber-Black says.

"It really needs to be about rebuilding a relationship or rebuilding a sense of integrity."

That requires a commitment to work through the problem. "It can't be a hit and run," she says. "There has to be the willingness to really deal with whatever the issue is."

Timing matters. Don't unload at Thanksgiving dinner, Uncle Bob's funeral or your sister's wedding. Some people say to themselves, "Well, I've got everyone here, what better time than now." The problem is, people are already tense because of the expectations that come with those events.

Most people don't know how to clean up the mess when they've done wrong, says Will Joel Friedman, a Loma Linda psychologist who often incorporates spirituality into his practice.

Part of the process is promising not to repeat the wrong and committing to a fresh course, he says. The wrongdoer also may need to make amends to the person.

Righting the wrong is essential, says ethicist Dennis Prager, founder of the Micah Center for Ethical Monotheism in Los Angeles and host of a KABC (790 AM) radio talk show.

"Some people think that if you confess and apologize you're off the hook," says Prager. "You have to confess, apologize and make restitution." Otherwise, it's a selfish act to clear your own conscience.

Take the example of an employee who took sick days but wasn't really sick. Confessing would not be enough. Restitution would mean giving up vacation days to make up for the bogus sick days.

The behavior is more important than the sincerity of the confession, which is hard to gauge, Prager says. He'd rather get an insincere confession that comes with restitution than a sincere one without restitution. Of course, both sincerity and restitution would be best.

Confession with restitution is also part of 12-step groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Step four in the self-help recovery program is taking "a fearless moral inventory" of yourself. Step five is to admit to God, yourself and another person the exact nature of your wrongs.

Step eight is making a list of the people you have harmed and becoming willing to make amends. The next step is to "make direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others."

In rare cases, a confession to the person you wronged could cause more harm than good. The most commonly mentioned situation is a long-ago affair that no one knows about. Should you tell your spouse to relieve your conscience? You have to weigh the benefits vs. the harm it would cause your spouse, Friedman says. "In my experience, most of the time it just does unending and irreparable harm," Friedman says.

You'd have other options for working through your guilt, such as writing in a journal or confessing to someone else -- a therapist, member of the clergy or God, Friedman says.

Imber-Black says that confessing even a long-ago affair could be beneficial in one scenario. Telling might help if the secret is undermining your relationship today by blocking your ability to be emotionally close to your spouse. Improving the relationship may be worth dredging up the wrong, she says.

On the other hand, Imber-Black says it's OK in some cases to keep secrets about things you did before meeting your current mate. Sometimes young people in a relationship feel compelled to tell all about their pasts before the relationship is strong enough for them to handle the information.

These caveats aside, confession is good "because it releases you from prison," says Friedman, alluding to the punishment people inflict on themselves when they do wrong.

Confession also can be practical. To use another metaphor, Friedman likens confessing to a kid who falls and gets muck and gravel in his knee. It hurts to clean out the wound, but if you let it fester it could get worse, maybe requiring amputation.

Making a mistake is one thing, but to lie about it can bring a harsher judgment, Friedman says.

In fact, the legal and political difficulties Clinton is now facing focus more on his denials than on the alleged sexual relationship with Lewinsky.

When people lie to cover up a transgression, they prove themselves unworthy of others' trust, Friedman says.

"We've all fallen in the mud -- what else is new?" says Friedman. "But now what do you do? Do you pull yourself up, hose yourself off or wallow . . . and go deeper?"

Of course, it's nobler to come clean early as opposed to confessing only after being confronted about your wrong. But Friedman believes even a belated confession -- except in the rare cases mentioned earlier -- is better than never. "If you can do it anywhere along the way, that's somebody I want to know," Friedman says.

"Since it happens so little on this planet, I'll take it any way I can get it."

Published 8/9/1998