Dolly Parton Revealed the Surprising Way She’d React if Her Husband Had an Affair
Dolly Parton has joked about her crushes over the years, but she said she never actually cheated on her husband. The couple was together for over 60 years, and she said they were a good fit. Because of her flirtatious nature, though, people have asked her about affairs. She said if she did cheat, she would never tell her husband. She wouldn’t want to know if he was cheating either, but she said she wouldn’t be overly upset if she discovered an affair.
Dolly Parton said she wouldn’t have too big a reaction if her husband had an affair
Parton felt confident that her husband, Carl Dean, would never cheat on her. If he did, though, she never wanted to know about it.
“I wouldn’t want to know and he wouldn’t want to tell me,” she told Playboy in 1978, per the book Dolly on Dolly. “But if he did, it wouldn’t be like the end of the world for me.”
She added that she’d probably spend a day being upset about it before moving on.
“I would just say it was as much my fault as his,” she said. “I would probably cry and pout for a day for the attention of it, and then it would be over. To me, life is life and people is people. You cannot control every emotion that you have.”
She joked that she might be happier if she had an affair
Just as Parton would never want to know about Dean’s hypothetical affairs, she said he wouldn’t want to know about hers. She wouldn’t ever tell him if she cheated.
“Whether I do or whether I don’t [have an affair] is my concern,” she said. “If I was ever weak enough to do something like that, it would never involve [Carl Dean], he would never know it, he would never feel any effects from it.”
Though she said that no man could ever take Dean’s place, she joked that having a fling might benefit her.
“Those are very personal questions and I’m a very private person, but I’m just like you — you don’t always tell everything, do you?” she asked. “Let’s put it this way: If I wanted to do it, I would; if I should do it, it would affect nobody but me and the person involved. Maybe it would be something that would even make me a happier person.”
Still, she said she wouldn’t want to do anything that might put her marriage at risk.
Dolly Parton admitted she probably wouldn’t pursue anyone but her husband
While Parton flirts with affair rumors, she has sometimes spoken about it more candidly. While she has felt connections with people besides Dean, she wasn’t sure she could ever act on her feelings.
“I know that there have been people who have wanted to share more with me, and I would have probably wanted to share more with them, but I was already, well … I just wasn’t the kind that would go on and do that, because of my own principles and my own morals, and because of my own marriage and my family,” she said, per the book Dolly: The Biography by Alanna Nash. “To me, sex is a part of life, but it’s also a part of love, and in order to share sex would mean that I would have to share love as well.”
She noted that even when she did feel close to someone, circumstances would prevent her from pursuing anything.
