My aunt and uncle, my mother's brother, have been married for about 20 years. Rather than starting a family each chose to pursue careers. My Aunt is a barrister and my Uncle owns a surfboarding shop. They live on a farm in the New Forest on which they breed horses.

I have always thought that they were one of the few couples in my family who were genuinely happily married and in love with each other. That was until my Mum told me the following story.

The other day my Uncle visited my Mum in a bit of state. My Aunt, for one reason or another, had become cold towards my Uncle and out of loneliness he turned to a friend, a married woman, for comfort and the relationship eventually grew into a fully fledged affair which lasted for just over two years ago.

About a month ago my Uncle and the other woman decided to leave their respective partners and live together. As he drove home to break the news to my Aunt he received a phone call from another friend to tell him that the woman he had been seeing had just had a heart attack and was critically ill in hospital. She died later that night. She was only 36. (My Uncle would later deduce that the heart attack had occurred before she had the chance to tell her husband that she was leaving him.)

My Uncle immediately made the decision to never tell my Aunt the truth about his adultery, his decision to leave or about the death of the woman he had fallen in love with. He realised that he would never meet anyone like the woman who had died and couldn't bear the idea of a life alone. For him, the prospect of a life spent in a cold marriage was better than the alternative. He also knew that the combined circumstances of his adultery combined with his grieving, would put my Aunt in an impossible situation and would more than likely break her own heart in an entirely different way.

When she finished telling me the story my Mum took a pause before saying, "I don't think that honesty is always the best policy."

I agree and I think that my Uncle is one of the bravest people I know.

[Addendum - my Mum is the only member of my family who knows about my blog. I asked her first if she was ok for me to write about this, which she was. As for my Aunt and Uncle, they probably don't even know what a blog is.]