We say we want the truth. Do we really?

I was relentless. My mornings began with questions: Where did you go? What did she wear? My day was filled with questions: How much did you spend on her? How long did it go on? My nights stretched late with questions: What positions did she like? Did you hang out with her friends?
When I wasn't asking questions, I was poring over cell phone bills, VISA bills, rifling through drawers looking for receipts and cross-referencing dates. I was the Carrie Mathison of Homeland: Infidelity. And sure, I was good at it. But I was making myself crazy.
I was close to making my husband crazy too when I decided upon my 24-hour rule: I would make myself wait 24 hours before I asked the question that I absolutely believed I needed the answer to. Most times, by the time 24 hours had elapsed, the question was gone. I couldn't remember it. Which told me something: The details really didn't matter. They didn't change anything.
My husband had cheated on me. For years. With many people.
That is, really, all I needed to know.
That, and what I was going to do about it.
That doesn't stop me from insisting that cheaters need to answer our questions. Rebuilding trust is a painstaking exercise that involves a delicate dance in which the betrayer is always where he says he is, always with who he says he's with, always doing what he says he's doing. There can be no untruth. There can be no stretching of truth. There can be no minimizing of the truth.
There is only the truth, offered without compromise.
There will be glitches. There will be the guy who forgot, genuinely forgot, that he also stopped for a coffee on his way to a meeting because this stopping for coffee was a non-event. Honestly. There will be the guy who says he stopped for a "couple of beers" with his friends because he, honestly, thinks a "couple" can sometimes mean "three". That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the guy who "forgets" to mention that he bumped into the OW at the coffee shop he didn't tell us he stopped at. We're talking about the guy who isn't supposed to be at the bar with his buddies at all so by saying he had "only a couple" of beers, he's really saying "why are you so bent out of shape? Jeesh. I can't do anything."
So, sure, I think that we betrayeds need to be able to ask any question and expect an honest response.
But, as a discussion is taking place on another site, it has prompted me to consider, again, just how much truth we really need. And why.
Because sometimes our need to know extends into pain shopping. Pain shopping, for those who haven't heard the term before, is about refusing to shift focus from the affair, instead keeping ourselves locked into it. Pain shopping is about deliberately driving by her house even though another route is shorter. Pain shopping is about stalking her social media. Pain shopping is about playing a song that reminds us of the affair, on a loop. Pain shopping is asking questions about details of the affair that don't change a damn thing but ensure that we're talking about the affair, thinking about the affair, and adding highly flammable fuel to the ever-present fire of fury that's burning in our guts.
Do you really need to know, as I was sure I did, what type of underwear she wore? Do you really need to know what her favorite drink was? Or whether she wore her hair up or down?
Some details change the nature of the affair. Introducing an affair partner to children, for instance. Bringing her into your bed. But, for the most part, does it matter whether they met at your favorite coffee shop? Wouldn't it be better to not know that? To continue to enjoy your latte without trigger?
And finally, the poster here makes a point about how, eventually, a cheater will agree with our versions of "truth" just to get us to shut the hell up about it. Is that what we want? Isn't that exactly what we're trying to avoid? Lying to keep the peace? Lying to avoid conflict? Lying for any reason at all? If we say we want the absolute truth, then we need to be ready to hear it.
And that's something that a whole lot of us aren't ready for. In the early days post D-Day and sometimes ever.
Our spouses will have secrets. So will we. There are things that my husband will never know about me. There are things I'm still discovering about myself. I have secrets I may or may not share – about aging, about envy, about disappointment.
Coming to a point where I can accept that there are things about my husband's infidelity that I will never know was quite amazing. I never imagined I would ever get there. Now? I honestly don't care about so much about it. It feels almost like a different life.
I know that's hard for a lot of you to imagine. You feel cemented into the life you have right now – one in which you're desperate to understand why he did this and you think that understanding will come from details. You think that knowledge is power. You think that by constantly pulling these details into the light, you will come to understand.
What she wore and where they met and who said what to whom likely won't give you the answers you really need. Those are details. The real truth, the one we truly need, is why he cheated, what he believed about his marriage and the affair, what he's doing to ensure he never cheats again, and whether he deserves a second chance. And that truth gets unburied with a whole lot of digging.