I can't face my daughter's teacher, as my husband had an affair with her

A woman wants to change her daughter's school because her husband once had an affair with the teacher. Mariella Frostrup says it's time to bury her resentment

The dilemma Three years ago I discovered my husband of 10 years had an inappropriate relationship with a teacher at our children's primary school. He has always denied that the relationship was sexual, but it certainly involved a lot of secrets and lies. It nearly destroyed ourmarriage, but we found each other again. My way of dealing with the teacher has been to ignore her, even though I "see" her regularly at the school. I really do not wish to have anything to do with her, which is my way of coping with her still being around my family. But now she will become the class teacher for my six-year-old daughter, probably for more than just one year. I am thinking of finding another school for my daughter but am heartbroken for her, since she desperately wants to stay at the school – her friends and siblings are there. I cannot see how I could communicate with this teacher in a healthy way and cringe at the idea of having to give her responsibility for one of my children (again). How could I ever trust this person?

Mariella replies What a nightmare scenario! And how tricky for you. You ask me how you can ever trust the teacher, and I have to say: in the same way as you've learned to trust your husband again. She is simply expected to educate your child, and I presume that's something she is competent at.

Three years is a lifetime in love, and unless this duo are enduring romantics, their shared past is most likely an uncomfortable memory, not a tinderbox waiting to be re-struck.

It's always seemed peculiarly illogical to me that when it comes to affairs and deception the person we blame is most often the third party, not our trusted partner, though obviously we have every right to question the morality of a person who decides to embark on an affair with somebody else's lover.

Holding those around us to a strict moral code is all very well if we're convinced we can live up to it ourselves. I remember many decades ago being berated by a girlfriend for an ill-considered affair with a man who was already spoken for and old enough to know better; quite rightly, she questioned my motives, my lack of responsibility, my immorality and so on and, impressionable as I was in my late teens, I reacted to her tirade by ending the affair. A year later she got together with the same guy, whose marriage was by then a total shipwreck, and they got married.

I mention it only to highlight the dangers of judging others before our own motives have been similarly scrutinised. You can't police your husband's encounters with the opposite sex forever, even if he has forfeited the right to be trusted. Relying on your ability to keep temptation at a remove rather than on your partner making the right choices is no way to live a life together. It's a position rock stars' and actors' partners – too often women – occupy. What a squandered life choice, standing guard outside the on-set trailer on set or at premieres, gigs or dressing-room doors. In the many instances where I've witnessed such poor souls sacrifice themselves to policing their beloved's potential for liaisons, the controlled member of the union has invariably made a dash for freedom on the arm of the first person who managed to break through the human cordon.

A cuckolded woman told me the other day that she was best friends with the husband who abandoned her a decade previously, but despite second marriages and shared custody of the children she had never spoken to her "love rival" or forgiven her for "stealing" her husband. In black-and-white print we can all see how misguided that enmity sounds. You can't steal someone who doesn't want to go unless you kidnap them, which is a criminal offence rather than a crime of passion. The person who vowed to love and honour you did the real betraying.

So back to you. Keeping your enemy close seems very like very good advice. The nicer you are to those who would betray you, the harder you make it for their dastardly plans to come to fruition. You now have the perfect opportunity, in the name of good parenting, to lay out the olive branch, befriend your kid's teacher and show both parties how mature and magnanimous you can be. Whisking one sibling out of school is just not an option unless all the others follow suit. Should it be your child who pays the price for her parent's transgression?

My sense is that the hangover from this affair (whatever form it took) will be vanquished the moment you elect to bury the memory and douse the embers of resentment that still burn. You've got your family intact and can afford to rise above the legacy of the past. It's not the easiest route to take, but it's definitely the smartest, and surely worth it to experience how good that higher ground feels, particularly when you may be the only one standing on it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jul/14/husband-affair-teacher-mariella-frostrup