ME: WW
D-day: 23 Aug 2019
5 months of EA/PA
TT for another 4 months
D-day 4: Apr 2020
Friends of the past
Something happened this afternoon which really upset my BH, and I would like to seek the advice from everyone here on where I have gone wrong.
Background:
Sep 2019 - now 18 months from DDay 1
Jan 2020 - AP was a colleague, and I have maintained NC for ~15 months and counting
Apr 2020 - 12 months from the last DDay (4th as I had no sense to tell the truth)
Apr 2020 - Quit my job 12 months ago.
Cut ties with all ex-colleagues, except for 2 female friends – A & B. For a year now, contact with A and B is limited to only FB and IG friendship. No chats.
Friend A: She was a close friend, who knew about my affair and condoned it. I confided in her about AP, my excuses to leave the marriage. Through our chats, I had also disrespected my BH and my marriage by talking about ease of being myself in the affair, elevating AP and highlighting mine and BH’s flaws/ faults.
After DDay 4, BH and I both agreed that we have to “right the wrong” in friend A’s eyes, and correct her views of him (BH) during my affair.
So I clarified with her that everything I had said to her were lies. I was actually wayward and made many critical errors in my life, and had grossly seen my BH in the wrong light. I was entitled, and now remorseful and regretful about my affair.
Till then, the only other time words were exchanged was when she checked in on BH’s surgery in Aug 2020 after seeing my IG post.
Friend B: She was part of the close group of friends with AP (four of us). We had all hung out together as friends, had drinks and dinner post work, and had a WhatsApp chat group between the 4 of us (which I had reluctantly agreed to leave only in Dec 2019). We spoke all together often.
I didn't outright tell her about AP like I did with friend B. I did tell her I was having issues at home, that things with BH was difficult and I wasn’t sure if it was going to work out. She was like a younger sister to me then, so she would be the most likely person to know about the affair.
Prior to leaving the firm, I had updated her that I was wrong and that I was trying to fix things at home, that I didn’t want to hurt my family anymore.
No contact since then. The only linkage was IG following.
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My BH’s words on “living the lie” had echoed with me. I used IG to mostly chart my feelings of “too late”, “too much”, rather than for anyone’s benefit. But I thought that with these posts, I could also show them I was wrong, lost, in pain (for BH and myself), regretful, hateful of my actions.
I did not want to/ need to speak with them, but because I wanted to continuously “right the wrong” with those 2 friends, I had kept them as IG friends till today.
Today, friend B had liked my latest post. BH became really angry because he feels that by keeping her on as an IG friend, I was still keeping links to AP. That my above reasoning was an assumption that “righting the wrong” was more important than his feelings of my past. I was being disrespectful by staying IG friends with A and B.
I had immediately cut off those last links to friend A and B.
I had given a lot of thought to this, on what I had missed out, where I went wrong, to not make the same mistake again.
BH feels unsafe because of that linkage.
He doesn’t trust me because I had tore everything up. In my mind, I knew if there were any contact from A or B, I would have informed BH, but he cant trust me on that, because he was made to believe something else.
One of BH’s anger points stems from the fact that we were continuously living a lie - the lie of a happy family, the lie that I could do no wrong. So I tried to fix that aspect in A and B’s eyes.
What else have I missed?
What happens when while trying to fix 1 wrong, exacerbates another issue?
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Edit to add more details on Friend B.
[This message edited by Snowyjune at 11:38 AM, April 7th (Wednesday)]
10 comments posted: Wednesday, April 7th, 2021
