After a lot of suspicions and unexplained changes in your marriage relationship, it has now become public knowledge that your spouse is cheating on you. The thing that every spouse fears has now become an unfortunate reality in your life.

At this point there is only one of two options open to you. Try and hang in there and save the marriage or end it altogether. Now you can expect to get a lot of advice from family and friends who will understandably try to influence your decision. But as you know in the final analysis the choice is yours and yours alone.  

However there is something else that you may hear from your circle of family and friends which may surprise you; they told you so.

It's hard to explain or understand but there is something inside many of us that wants to be proven right. Even circumstances that require diplomacy and tact don't stand a chance against the uncontrollable urge to be vindicated.

What makes this phenomenon more unbearable when it concerns an extramarital affair is the amazing way many people knew what was going to happen before you did. From the first time you introduced your significant other to your family and friends so many of them knew you were in love with a natural born adulterer.

How'd they know? The way your spouse scratched their head while standing in the checkout line in the local supermarket, or the way they said "yes dear" to you while eating pasta at the family Christmas dinner.

Yes these are slight exaggerations but the point is to be on the alert. Discovering your spouse is cheating is a major burden to deal with so the last thing you really need to here is someone telling you how right they were. Maybe the people who say it really have your best interest at heart but in essence "I told you so" is nothing more than piling on to make you feel worse than you already do. 

So how do you deal with it? Of course you can always tell them to mind their own business because they don't have a clue as to what they're talking about. As you can imagine this is going to cause a lot of problems. You could also decide to grin and bear it. You accept the fact that people need to have their say and you know your family and friends really do care about you.

But if they really do care than it is up to them to understand that critiquing your relationship is your job since you are the one who was actually involved. Therefore it is up to you to set the tone of the conversation. If you don't want to talk about it then by all means let them know politely but firm. If you decide to talk about it then let them know you are not interested in I told you so. That's not going to change anything and you can let them know (again polite but firm) that discussing it is only adding to your burden.

Most people mean well. It's obvious that your family and friends care about you. That's all the more reason they need to respect you and give you room. Finding out your spouse is cheating does not affect them more than you so take the lead when the conversation comes up and let them know the ground rules.