Men Who Actually Want to Be Faithful Almost Always Stay Away from These Things

Kim from across the street came over on a Tuesday morning in June. Tom had just left for the hardware store. She stood on my porch with her arms wrapped around herself and asked if I had a minute. I had the coffee on. She sat at my kitchen table and told me she had found messages on her husband’s phone. Nothing she could prove. Nothing she could ignore either.

I did not know what to say to her. I have been married to Tom for more than thirty years, and I have never gone through that. So I did what I usually do when I do not know something. I asked. I put a question up on the blog and asked readers to tell me what the faithful men they know stay away from. Not the big dramatic stuff. The small things. The replies came in all summer. I printed them and read them on the porch while Tom did whatever Tom does on a Saturday.

By Labor Day I had nine things that kept showing up. I also had a summer of watching my own husband with new eyes. Here is what I found.

The friendship he would not mention at home

In July, Tom came in from the garage and said a woman from his Thursday morning coffee group had asked him about our gutters. He told me her name, what she wanted, and that he had given her the number for the fellow who did ours. That was the whole conversation. It lasted maybe forty seconds.

I did not think much of it at the time. Then I read a letter from Ruth A., 58, of Lincoln, Nebraska. She wrote that her husband has a rule for himself. If he would feel funny telling her about a conversation with another woman, he does not have that conversation. She said he has never once hidden a friendship from her, and that is why she has never once had to go looking.

That stopped me. Tom has told me about every woman he has ever worked with, played cards with, or sat next to at a wedding. Not because I asked. Because he just does. There has never been a name I heard for the first time from somebody else.

Kim’s husband had a coworker she had never heard of. That was the first thing she noticed. Not the messages. The name.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful does not keep a woman’s name out of the house.

The friends who cheat and laugh about it

Tom has a friend from way back who went through two divorces, both his own fault, and who likes to tell stories about it at cookouts. Tom laughs at the ones that are funny. He does not go out with the man alone anymore. I asked him why once, years ago, and he shrugged and said he did not like who he was around him.

Dale K., 64, of Spokane, Washington, wrote me something close to that. He said the men he knows who stayed married for forty years all had one thing in common. They quietly dropped the friends who cheated. Not with a speech. They just stopped answering the Friday night calls. He said a man becomes the average of the men he drinks with, and he decided a long time ago what average he wanted.

I thought about Kim’s husband. He had started going out with a group from work on Thursdays. Kim did not know most of them. She did know that two of them were going through divorces and seemed happy about it.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful picks his friends like they matter, because they do.

Complaining about his wife to another woman

This one came up more than any other. I counted. Twenty three letters mentioned it.

Here is the thing I noticed about Tom this summer. He complains about me. He complains to his brother. He complains to the dog. He complained to our oldest on the phone in August about the way I load the dishwasher. I heard every word from the next room. What he does not do, and I have never once caught him doing, is complain about me to a woman.

Carol F., 52, of Knoxville, Tennessee, wrote that her first marriage ended that way. Her husband started telling a woman at the gym that his wife did not understand him. Carol said the affair was almost beside the point. By the time it happened, he had already made her the villain in a story he was telling someone else. She said she remarried a man who, when he is mad at her, tells her. Loudly, sometimes. But he tells her.

I asked Tom about it on the porch. He said it was obvious. You do not go to another woman and say your wife is cold. Because the next thing she will say is that she is warm.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful takes his complaints about his wife to his wife, or to another man, and nowhere else.

The extra drink at the work party

Our middle one got married a few years back. At the reception, Tom had two beers and then switched to iced tea. I did not notice at the time. I noticed this summer, looking back, that he does it at every wedding, every retirement party, every anniversary dinner. Two and then tea. He has done it since before the kids were born.

I asked him why. He said something I have been chewing on since. He said the first two drinks make him a nicer version of himself. The third makes him somebody who says yes to things he should say no to. He said he figured that out at twenty six and never saw a reason to test it again.

A reader named Pete S., 61, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, wrote almost the same thing. He said he has watched three good men in his office throw away their marriages at Christmas parties. All three were drunk. All three said they did not mean it. He said that was probably true, and it did not matter.

Kim told me the messages on her husband’s phone started the night of a company dinner. She remembered because he came home late and smelled like bourbon.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful knows his number and stops before it.

Old flames in the message box

In late July, Tom got a friend request from a woman he dated before me. I know because he turned the laptop around and showed me. He said, “Remember I told you about Sandy from the lake?” I did remember. He had told me about her on our third date. He did not accept the request. He did not make a big thing about it. He just closed the laptop and asked what was for supper.

I would not have minded if he accepted it. I want to be honest about that. But I also want to be honest that I was glad he did not.

Nancy W., 57, of Duluth, Minnesota, wrote me a long letter about her husband’s high school girlfriend. She found him again online. It started with a comment on a photo. Then a message about her mother passing. Then a message every day. Nancy said he never left, and nothing physical ever happened, and it still took them two years to come back from it. She said the faithful men she knows now treat an old flame’s message like a wet paint sign. They just do not touch it.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful leaves the past where it is, even when it comes knocking.

The phone face down on the table

I want to be fair here. Tom’s phone is a mess. He cannot find anything on it. He leaves it in the truck half the time. But I have never seen it locked, and I have never seen it face down, and if I pick it up to check the weather he does not blink.

Kim said that was the first real sign. Her husband used to leave his phone on the counter like everybody does. Then it started going in his pocket. Then it got a passcode. Then it was face down on the dinner table, and when it buzzed he would turn it over and look and turn it back.

I got a letter about this from Harold M., 66, of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He has been married forty one years. He wrote that his wife knows his passcode and he knows hers, and in forty one years neither of them has ever used it. He said the point is not checking. The point is that there is nothing to check. He said a man who flips his phone over has already decided there is something on it his wife should not see, and that decision is the whole problem.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful does not have a phone his wife cannot pick up.

The lunch that keeps happening

Tom eats lunch with people from the coffee group now and then. Sometimes there is a woman in the group. He has never once had lunch alone with one. I did not know that was a rule of his until this summer. I thought it just had not come up.

He told me it has come up. More than once. He told me there was a woman years ago, when the kids were small, who kept suggesting they grab a sandwich. Just the two of them. He said he liked her fine. He also said he could feel what the lunch was, even if she could not, and he did not go. He never told me about it because nothing happened. I told him I wish he had. He said fair enough.

Donna R., 49, of Mesa, Arizona, wrote me that her husband’s affair started as lunch. One lunch. Then lunch on Wednesdays. Then lunch on Wednesdays and Fridays. She said nothing happened for eight months, and by the time something happened it was already a done deal. She said the men she trusts now are the ones who can see where a thing is going before it gets there.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful notices when a habit starts, and he does not let it start.

The grudge he keeps to himself

This one surprised me, because it is not about another woman at all.

Tom and I had a bad stretch when our youngest was in high school. Nothing dramatic. We were both tired, and he felt like I had stopped seeing him, and instead of saying so he went quiet for about a year. He told me later that was the closest he ever came to being somebody he did not want to be. Not because anyone was around. Because he had let a grievance sit so long it started to feel like permission.

He did not do anything. He said so, and I believe him. But he told me that the quiet was the dangerous part. A man who is mad at his wife and will not say it starts looking for someone to say it to. That is where the other woman comes in. Not at the start. At the end of a long silence.

Lorraine B., 60, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, wrote that her second husband made her a promise early on. He said he would never go to bed angry without telling her he was angry. Not fixing it. Just saying it. She said that one promise has done more for their marriage than any vow at the altar.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful says what is bothering him before it turns into something else.

The idea that he is the exception

The last letter I read this summer came from a man named Gene T., 70, of Toledo, Ohio. He wrote that he cheated on his first wife, once, at forty two. He said he spent the whole year before it telling himself he was not that kind of man. That is the part he wanted me to pass along. Not the cheating. The telling himself.

He said every man who does it thinks he is the exception. He thinks he can have the lunch and not the affair. He thinks he can have the third drink and still go home. He thinks he can keep the friendship a secret and have it mean nothing. Gene said the faithful men he knows now are the ones who do not believe they are special. They assume they are just as weak as anybody else, and they build their life around that.

I read that one to Tom. He was quiet a while. Then he said that was about right. He said the only reason he has the two drink rule, and the no lunch rule, and the open phone, is that he figured out early he was not any stronger than the next fellow. He just did not want to find out how weak he could be.

The takeaway is simple. A man who wants to be faithful does not trust himself with temptation, so he keeps it far away.

What happened with Kim

Kim and her husband are seeing a counselor. I do not know how it will go, and it is not my business. She came over again in August and sat at my table and said he had told her everything, which was more than she expected and less than she feared. I made her a sandwich. She ate half of it.

I told her I did not have any wisdom. I told her what I had was a stack of letters and a husband who, for reasons I did not fully understand until this summer, had been quietly staying away from nine things for thirty years. Not because I asked him to. Because he decided to. She asked me if I thought a man could learn that at forty. I said I did not know. I said I thought the ones who wanted to could, and the ones who did not could not, and most of the work was in figuring out which one you were married to.

Tom came in while we were talking and put the kettle on. He did not say anything. He did not need to.

What is the one thing the faithful man in your life quietly stays away from?