My Wife is Having an Affair This Week is Worth Watching Despite it Ratings

My Wife is Having an Affair This Week explores the complexities of marriage, betrayal, and emotional recovery. Despite its mediocre ratings, I consider it one of the best K-dramas I’ve watched in a while. In my opinion, the affair in the story is primarily Soo Yeon’s responsibility. Her emotional detachment, failure to ask for help, and decision to engage in an affair with a client underscore her accountability. Although Hyun Woo isn’t without fault, the bulk of the burden lies on Soo Yeon’s inability to manage her own struggles.

As I reflect on the show, I’m reminded of a lecture I attended on academic cheating, where the presenter explained it follows a bell curve: 16% are chronic cheaters, 16% would never cheat, and the remaining percentage could cheat depending on circumstances. When applying that framework to relationships, it suggests that most people, like Soo Yeon, are redeemable and capable of growth. Initially, I was harsh toward her character. I wanted to hate her, but over time, I found myself pitying her. Her explanation for the affair felt weak, and like her husband, I searched for a deeper reason. Ultimately, there wasn’t one. Sometimes, the lack of a clear reason is the hardest part to accept.

Although I have seen some who criticize Soo Yeon for her apparent lack of remorse at being discovered in the affair feel that his was an sign that she would have continued. Without her being discovered she of course would have had no reason to change her behavour it was the massive weight of discovery that caused her to reevaluate what had happened. She lacked the self awareness to even know what led her to cheat in the first place.

Did she love Sun Woo? I believed that she thought she did, but as the Hyun Woo’s mother explained to her that it is hard being married and it does become boring and routine. Soo Yeon was a woman who longed for the attention that Sun Woo gave her, and the chemical rush that you get at the start of a relationship probably felt like love to her compared to cooking and cleaning and sucking up to the other mothers. I think as the story progressed she began to realize the superficiality of the relationship and her loss.

On the other hand, Hyun Woo’s emotional journey is marked by immense burden. Throughout the series, he bears most of the weight, even suggesting he could forget the affair to keep the family intact. This felt unrealistic, as true healing would never consist of forgetting—it requires forgiving. The psychological wounds left by the affair are too deep to simply brush aside. While Hyun Woo’s growth is evident, I found it frustrating that the series consistently placed too much guilt on his shoulders. If I were to assign blame for their marital breakdown, I would say it’s 80% Soo Yeon ’s and 20% Hyun Woo’s. Soo Yeon ’s failure to ask for help and her unrealistic expectations about being the perfect wife and mother contributed to her choices. While Hyun Woo could have noticed her struggles sooner, he was also dealing with his own challenges, as he told her, "everyone lives like this."

When we apply the stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—to Soo Yeon and Hyun Woo’s experiences, we get a clearer understanding of their emotional responses. Hyun Woo goes through these stages visibly throughout the series. In the earlier episodes, we see denial, even when he catches them at the hotel and asks if they were just playing with fire. Later, his anger builds, and by the end, his acceptance is evident when he agrees to the divorce.

Soo Yeon, on the other hand, seems to skip many of these classic stages. Instead, she is consumed by shame and guilt. Her avoidance of conflict and emotional detachment suggest that, rather than grieving the end of the marriage, she focused on the consequences of her actions and the harm she caused, particularly to Hyun Woo and their child.

Soo Yeon’s pride and emotional detachment were at the heart of her downfall. Her inability to communicate her struggles and her desire to maintain a perfect image contributed to her poor decisions. The moment when she mentioned ending the affair "for now" felt especially cruel. It seemed that she underestimated the consequences, assuming the marriage would survive unscathed. The scene at the funeral, where she acknowledges that she loved Hyun Woo first, was one of the few moments where she showed real emotional depth—but it came too late.

Engaging in a relationship with a client was not only morally wrong but also highly unprofessional. Her personal and professional boundaries crumbled as her mental health deteriorated. Her affair partner, who came across as a "player," exploited her vulnerability, further fueling her downward spiral. This relationship damaged not just her marriage but also her career and her sense of control over her life.

Soo Yeon’s emotional and mental health struggles seemed to be the root of many of her bad decisions. Her inability to seek help or communicate her struggles led to a downward spiral that affected not only her family but also her career and social connections. This internal battle contributed to the affair and her deteriorating work performance, reflecting how untreated mental health issues can lead to destructive choices.

I found it interesting that Hyun Woo’s date with the woman downstairs may have served as a catalyst for their reunion. It seemed to boost his confidence, making him realize that his return to Soo Yeon wasn’t out of a lack of options. Soo Yeon, meanwhile, was starting to acknowledge her own failings, particularly in her chat room interactions. Here, she recognized the pressure she had placed on herself and the breakdown of their marriage. When she saw Hyun Woo with another woman and noticed the prepared food in the refrigerator, I felt she finally began to understand the pain and jealousy Hyun Woo must have felt. Yet, unlike him, she didn’t fight to keep the family whole.

At first, I interpreted Soo Yeon ’s inability to fight for her family after seeing Hyun Woo with another woman as evidence that guilt still held her back. But after further reflection, my perspective changed. I now believe Soo Yeon didn’t reach out not only because of guilt but also because she felt unworthy of a reconciliation. Her long post defending Hyun Woo from criticism showed that she was reflecting on her actions and their consequences.

It’s possible that Soo Yeon believed Hyun Woo deserved happiness, even if it wasn’t with her. By stepping back, she might have thought she was giving him space to move on. Not reaching out could have been her way of repaying the sacrifices he made throughout their relationship. Watching her giggle when speaking about Hyun Woo shows that she had emotionally reconnected with him. However, despite this, she still held back. She likely felt her past actions disqualified her from having a future with him. In her mind, sacrificing the future she now desired may have allowed Hyun Woo to heal and find happiness elsewhere.

This internal conflict—a mix of guilt, love, and an understanding of the harm she caused—leads Soo Yeon to act in ways that, from her perspective, could be seen as an attempt at redemption or reparation. While Soo Yeon often failed to communicate her feelings, I did note how the sound track, especially the song “Mistake”, could be viewed as our gateway into her thoughts that she was incapable of expressing to Hyun Woo. The placement of the song at critical moments was our chance to look at her feeling of guilt and remorse.

The ending left me somewhat unsatisfied, initially, I thought the final scene—where they wrap their arms around each other and walk back to her home —was too easy, it lacked the emotional complexity and needed to be more authentic reflecting the complexity of the situation. In the final voiceover, Hyun Woo, still accepted most of the responsibility for their breakup, this felt unbalanced, as it didn’t address Soo Yeon ’s role in the divorce. I would have preferred more time spent on the couple’s emotional reconnection after the divorce, rather than the subplot involving Yoon Gi and Ah Ra. Their divorce was short-lived, as evidenced by Soo Yeon moving into her new apartment just prior to their reconciliation, more time was needed to deal with Soo Yeon recovery from her mental health issues. Additional development in this area would have been valuable.

Overall, I was considering a 9/10 rating, but the final episode may bring it down to 8.5. The show’s exploration of guilt, trust, and the difficulty of healing after betrayal was compelling. Even though the ending left me conflicted, My Wife is Having an Affair This Week remains a highly engaging and thoughtful drama that resonated with me.

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Don't Waste Your Time On This One

I just finished “The Third Charm”, and this was a drama that made me angry after investing my time in this disappointing program. I thought that his was a new drama when it came up on Netflix as a New Release, I wished that I had seen that it was several years old and I had checked the reviews. I think that potential viewers were misled by the producers and broadcasters for this drama. This was a classic bait and switch, the promo and introduction for the drama seems to promise a lighthearted romcom, the first few episodes lived up to the promise, but by the end we have was a gloomy story that disappointed on so many levels. Even the artwork for the show was misleading, it shows the male and female leads together in Portugal, although they were both in Lisbon at the same time they never met.

I don’t even understand the significance of the title “The Third Charm”, I was thinking that this was a reference to the common phrase third time is the charm, to say that two attempts failed but the third will be successful. This would lead someone to think that they will have a successful third reunion. They met for a third time, but it was not a lucky charm.

I have done some thinking about why this drama didn’t work for me. It just didn't feel like there was a coherent story line and the screenwriters lost, or never had an idea where they wanted to go with the story. Some of my issues come down to the ending, and I have read some of the comments and most seem to agree that the ending was not the best, although some say it was “realistic”. I don’t agree that the ending was realistic, and in thinking about it, by the end of episode 16, I didn’t care if they got together. The series could have ended at the end of episode 10, with some additional scenes clean up some of the other characters story arc’s and I think that it could have been more satisfying.

The first two episodes were excellent, and I was expecting a solid series. The nerd meeting the beautiful girl and falling in love with each other was well done. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out due to Yeong-Jae’s family tragedy. Although short lived, their time together seems to have been meaningful to both. For Joon-Yeong it devastated his already low self confidence and impacted his ability to trust women.

I think that this was the basis of his major character flaw which was the inability to trust Yeong-Jae. But her relationship with the creepy doctor didn’t help him. I think in the beginning of a relationship a couple needs to develop trust and this happens through communication, a skill lacking in both. Joon-Yeong would ghost Yeong-Jae whenever anything upsetting happened rather than confronting the issue.

But my biggest issue with the drama is that I consider Yeong-Jae to be emotionally cheating on Joon-Yeong. The haircut when the creepy doctor reached out and touched her shoulder, and all the “accidental” meetings often at difficult times. The creepy doctor was not an old friend, and his intentions were obvious. The Birthday dinner and the spicy food dinner, the singing in the street to Yeong-Jae. Although she was clear that she had a boyfriend, she should never have agreed to meet him, especially knowing the impact on Joon-Yeong. When they had the volunteer trip to the island, “we can’t uninvite him now”. If there was any respect for Joon-Yeong’s feelings they would have asked the creepy doctor not to come.

Joon-Yeong knew from the beginning what the doctor was trying to do. Yeong-Jae wouldn’t acknowledge his concerns and even when she saw the creepy doctor ogling her “sexy” photos, she acted like it was only a friendship. If you consider the bulk of issues between the two, the majority were related to the creepy doctor. When she showed up at the restaurant married to the creepy doctor it only confirmed that Joon-Yeong had every right to be concerned. This was also the point when I no longer cared what happened to their relationship and didn’t want them to get back together.

The screenwriters tried to explain away the marriage that he wooed her after her breakup this is not in keeping with the events shown in the drama. Based on the age of her child he married the creepy doctor was not long after the breakup. Her love for Joon-Yeong wasn’t that important to her, or she was following through on her desire to be rich. The change in her economic status in Portugal when compared to Joon-Yeong was striking.

The reasons for their second breakup never made sense to me. Yeong-Jae felt that she was growing and changing but Joon-Yeong wasn’t. Yeong-Jae never gave him the feedback he needed to grow and to better support her, she kept it bottled up inside. She thought that being with someone who liked spicy food was more important than a person who loved her. Joon-Yeong's career was taking off, he was leading a major crime unit, his team took down a major criminal. He was going to be given a commendation medal for his work. He was destined for great things in the police force. She was a hairdresser although she was having success it was not more impressive than Joon-Yeong. She didn’t want to keep hurting him, well stopping cheating and communicating could have gone a long way in achieving that.

I liked the Joon-Yeong character, but what he did to Se-eun was unforgivable. The writers tried to minimize Se-eun, having her say that she isn’t brave or was a weak person. I think that Se-eun showed great strength and bravery, “Bravery Is Not the Absence Of Fear; It Is Being Afraid And Doing It Anyway”. Se-eun, although scared to death went undercover to meet the Snakehead. Se-eun also flew halfway around the world alone and had the courage to announce her love to Joon-Yeong although this was totally out of character. What Joon-Yeong did to her was almost a mirror of what Yeong-Jae did to him, emotionally cheating and not being honest and throwing her aside when all she did was show love and loyalty. She was a much nicer person than Yeong-Jae.

For Yeong-Jae, the writers used the nuclear option and the death of a child plotline. How could you ever rebuild a romance without another time skip. The death of the child was cheap technique to build sympathy for an unsympathetic character. Yeong-Jae’s drunken phone call to Joon-Yeon about having nobody, she drove everyone who cared for her away, she was reaping what she sowed.

Joon-Yeon was a fool, he threw everything away for a woman with whom he had spent less than 6 months of his life and brought him only misery. Sure, people can carry a torch for a person after the end of a relationship, but after having such a short time together and much of it being filled with angst, I don’t see why he would want to restart anything with her. And even after ending things with Se-eun, he once again left Korea to become a celebrity chef. Yeong-Jae buys a beauty salon in her old neighborhood. Their life goals seemed to have reversed and were not compatible.

By episode 16, I no longer cared about the two of them, there was too much drama, too much tragedy, and too many coincidences, chance meetings and misunderstandings. The whole drama became overbearing. A lesson for the screenwriters is that sometimes less is more, the screenwriters used a sledgehammer to drive emotional engagement, where a well-crafted story would have worked better.

I recently watched “Our Beloved Summer” and “Twenty-Five, Twenty-One” two drama about young love and the challenges of evolving in adulthood. Both did a much better job of exploring the subject.

I do wonder how a drama like this was ever aired, don’t they do any audience testing like they do for movies? If they did, I think that they would have made a few major edits to the plot.

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