Emma Thompson’s face in Love Actually should be required viewing for anyone over 60 contemplating forgiveness.

You remember the scene. Christmas. Joni Mitchell on the stereo. A beautifully wrapped box that she thinks contains a gold necklace – the one she found hidden in her husband’s coat pocket. Instead, it’s a CD. Her smile trembles, her eyes glass over, and in the privacy of the bedroom she allows herself exactly one quiet cry before pasting her face back together for the children.

We never quite find out if he slept with the other woman. The film suggests flirtation, temptation, emotional betrayal. But here’s the point: the precise detail almost doesn’t matter. Something shifted. The marriage was no longer what she thought it was.

And that is the thing about cheating at our age.

When you’re in your 20s, infidelity can feel like a blazing red flag: pack a bag, block the number, start again. But when you’re in your 60s or 70s, you are not just leaving a man. You are leaving a shared history. A mortgage paid off. Adult children. Grandchildren. Decades of in-jokes, griefs survived, illnesses nursed, holidays taken, dogs buried.

You are dismantling a life.

Cheating isn’t just about the act. It’s about the rupture of trust. And trust, especially in later life, is the scaffolding that holds everything up.

So is there a way back?

Sometimes yes. Sometimes absolutely not.

Here are five questions to help you decide.

1. Is he genuinely remorseful – or merely sorry he was caught?

There is a difference, and you will feel it in your bones. Real remorse sounds like: “I hurt you. I broke something precious. I will do what it takes to repair it.”

Defensiveness sounds like: “It didn’t mean anything.” Or worse: “You’ve been distant for years.”

At this stage of life, we have finely tuned instincts. If he cannot sit with your pain without minimising it, forgiveness will feel like swallowing broken glass.

2. Was it a symptom – or a pattern?

Long marriages contain seasons. Illness. Empty nests. Retirement identity crises. Sometimes an affair erupts not from lack of love but from panic about ageing, relevance, desirability. That doesn’t excuse it. But context matters.

A one-off, confessed and owned, is different from a long history of deception. If this is who he is – a man who chronically strays – you are not forgiving an event. You are accepting a lifestyle.

3. Can you live with the story once others know?

Here’s the part people rarely discuss: cheating changes everything once your friends find out.

Over 60, your social world is tightly woven. Couples holiday together. Grandparents sit side-by-side at school concerts. When infidelity surfaces, people take sides – even when they promise not to.

If you choose to stay, you must be prepared for the sideways glances, the well-meaning “Are you sure?” conversations, the subtle shift in how your marriage is viewed.

Can you hold your head high in your own decision? If you can’t, resentment will creep in.

4. Do you still like him?

This sounds almost absurd, but it matters enormously.

Beyond the betrayal, beyond the shock – when the house is quiet and the grandchildren have gone home – do you still enjoy his company? Do you laugh together? Does he reach for your hand without thinking?

Love in later life is less fireworks, more warmth. If the warmth is gone, forgiveness may only prolong loneliness.

If it’s still there, bruised but present, that’s something real to work with.

5. Are you forgiving him – or are you afraid to start again?

This is the hardest question.

At 65 or 72, the idea of dating apps, solo finances, or empty Sunday mornings can feel terrifying. It is tempting to forgive simply because rebuilding feels exhausting.

But forgiveness born of fear is fragile. It curdles.

Forgiveness born of strength – “I choose to stay because this life is still worth it” – that has a chance.

In Love Actually, Emma Thompson’s character stays. We see them together at the airport at the end, family intact. But her smile is altered. Softer. Sadder. As if something inside her recalibrated.

Perhaps that is the truest depiction of forgiveness in long marriages. It is rarely a clean slate. It is an adjustment. A renegotiation. A quiet understanding that the fairy tale has matured into something more human.

Cheating, whether on a ski track in Norway or in a suburban kitchen at Christmas, breaks trust. But sometimes – with humility, remorse and a shared will to repair – trust can be rebuilt.

And sometimes the bravest thing is to walk away.

The question is not whether forgiveness is noble.

The question is whether, in the long arc of your shared life – with all its highs outweighing its lows – there is still enough love left to make the repair worthwhile.

Only you can answer that.

And you will know.