SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I can vouch that this has been the worst thing that can happen in a marriage, the Double Betrayal.

..@ topsy..

I couldn't agree more..

fWW and I are 4.5 years out from D-day #3 and sadly, i continue to struggle with so many elements of the near 20 years of betrayal and 40 years of lies that have tainted every aspect and stage of our marriage and courtship ...from the time we were bf/gf..

..i regret not leaving after d-day#2, but i didn't have the truth back then and we had 2 young children..so i stayed..

..now, 46 years later, it is simply too late to start over. I tell myself to make the best of a very bad situation and keep trying to push back all the horror that has been my real life.

..the anguish and heartbreak simply will not pass,.. no peace of mind, no restful nights sleep, continuing triggers and mind movies..

..just so much damage and destruction to put out of my mind..

..the only satisfaction i am left with is that the OM, best friend so i was led to believe, since BoyScouts/H.S...25 years ..died from a brain tumor at 57, i hope brought on from his living with guilt and shame for all those years of betraying me and his 2 wives..

..may he NOT rest in peace.. since i don't seem to have any either!

smy

[This message edited by somanyyears at 7:05 PM, November 8th (Friday)]

...it is simply too late to start over.

It's never too late, smy.

Your post makes me sad. I pray that you will find a way to bring joy and hope back into your life. You sound so forlorn.

(((smy)))

Wow ((smy))

Your name is so fitting for you, but it doesn't have to be the rest of your years..

TopsyTurve: Did it mean anything to you to receive that apology after two years? So many times posters here will say "if only she had/or will apologize"..

OW/xBFF apologized to me over the first couple of weeks and months following dday. Sometimes in the same conversation that she was telling me she wished it had worked out different and he had kept his promises (Oh, you know, those promises he was leaving me and she was his soulmate).

She was a different breed for sure.

The best thing OW/xBFF can do for me is continue to be silent. I actually feel a shred of thankfulness towards her for this. She is by far the last person on the planet I want to hear from, and I certainly do not want an apology. It changes nothing that has happened in my life with fWH. Anyway, I usually tell people on here that apologies do not help, as it did nothing for me.

One of the hardest parts of the double betrayal for me was that the former-best-friend and myself were so alike on so many levels, that I understood the pain and fear that drove him away from his wife. I empathized with the bastard, and I even felt a little sorry for him, all while I was hating him.

I think a double betrayal is the worst possible thing. Two people that you love and trust come together to screw you over. I don't want an apology from her. She's doing what she should by staying the hell out of my life.. No apology will ever be enough....It would be as fake as her anyway

It's like a double bomb!

I too felt sorry for my XBFF. He screwed up big time. I know him pretty well and I know what he was thinking and battling in his mind. Felt sorry, and hated him at the same time cause he SHOULD know better. He made the WRONG choice. He fucked over his wife and his best friend, plus took advantage of the situation with my wife. If I feel like crap, he must be in a world of shit.

Should have not cheated on his wife. Should have respected his BFF and should have seen that my wife was broken and this was not right and told her instead act upon it all.

Sometimes I hate him,....sometimes I miss his friendship.

I just cannot stop being sick over this. She was my best friend for 6 years. We had a falling out although she didn't know the real reason for it. I couldn't stand the way she clung to my husband. I. Knew hr marriage wasn't great but we hung out as couples a lot. After the falling out I hoped to be rid of her. But my husband runs the youth sports organization and she and I were on the board with him. I resigned to avoid being around her and those two struck up a friendship thrum text and calls. I begged him to end it. He said he did and he only would talk to her for sports business and at practices Bc our sons are also best friends and play on the team he coaches for which she is the team mom. This was in Dec. He has been distant and cold and they were just caught using a texting app to communicate. He admitted the sec started a few

months ago. He says he is in love. I am devastated and do not know how to survive this. Her husband is also devastated even though I know they had wayyy more

problems he didn't deserve this either. I just cant help hoping this blows up in their faces and is just infatuation and not love. Her husband filed for divorce. I cannot as I am a still going to school and we have a mountain of debt. I am going to see a lawyer anyway. Things have not. been good for us for 15 months....since my falling out with

her. I told him long ago (he had been sleeping on the couch for a year...voluntarily) that if things didn't improve with us (I tried so hard) that after I finished school and could support my kids we could divorce. I never thought it would happen or that my husband would cheat with her. Ever. I don't know how to do this. He has no remorse. They have ruined 2 families with their selfishness. I don't even recognize the person he has become. I want him to suffer as I am. I want guilt to eat him alive. I want their relationship to fail. I want him to see what he lost. 14 years of marriage. 2 beautiful boys 10 and 13. I feel like I am dying.

Sometimes I hate him,....sometimes I miss his friendship.

Only in rare dreams do I miss his friendship. I hate him like I've never hated another human being ever before. I still work with him too, and it's hellish being in the same building, and sitting 100 feet away. I avoid him at all costs, but I'm always on high alert and in an anxious state when at work.

If he ever even spoke to me, much less tried to "apologize", I can't even predict my actions, but it wouldn't be pretty.

I think the worst thing about a double betrayal is the inside information this person has into your life -- and how preyed upon you feel when you realize that all the confidences were used, either consciously or not, to work their way in.

Strangely, I don't see my husband as doing that because his AP was not as open as we were, but he and I both shared confidences and things with her and her H that I know 100% were used to play on his emotions at a weak moment in his life and our relationship. And, apparently, she had had a crush on him for years, and was able to pull out dozens of things he had done over the years that she had loved.

But the actual worst thing, is she knew how much I loved my H, that my H loved me, and that he did not plan on leaving me. So then it was all about this terrible thing they were doing, but they couldn't really be bad could they, because they felt SO BAD about it. Ugh. Regular f---ing Good Samaratins.

You guys will understand where I am coming from on this:

Former friend and my XWH think that now I should "get over it", and talk to them about the kids or whatever....

For that reason I only email my XWH about kids. THat's it.

They are delusional!

He brought her in his truck to drop off something for the kids. I have gotten the paperwork to file

a no tresspass order on my property. It also says she is to have no contact with me,, great,, I guess she will have to quit coming into my store and "browsing" when I am working.

I am just so confused on how this happened. OW and her BH had a bad marriage, we knew this bc we had been friends for 6 years. All they did was fight, in front of everyone. I know she was unhappy. My WH and I didn't have a marriage like that. Either way, our DS 13 is best friends with their son. The selfish actions of 2 people ruined 2 families, and when our kids find out their friendship will be over. I am disgusted by my WH and so so so hurt. It doesn't help my self esteem that instead of trading up and going younger and hot, he went OLDER (2 years older than him) and uglier. Plus she's a chain smoker and heavy drinker. He has asthma so I do get a little giddy when I think of him having an asthma attack around her and her trying to talk him down in her gravelly smokers voice (I apologize if any of you are smokers). I am just so betrayed I cannot think straight. It doesnt help that of all the people that know, NO ONE gets it. They are all in disbelief. There is something broken in him and I have to remind myself I am strong and this is not a reflection on me.

Sadly, I am a member of this club as well, although I actually had a Triple Betrayal - my WH, OW, and OW's husband. OW and her husband were my very close friends of five years. It's a long and complicated story that I posted about in JFO a few months ago - I reposted at the bottom of this post if anyone is interested in the sordid details.

Anyway, it's been 6 months now, and I am still pretty much a wreck. This has been the worst thing that ever happened to me in my life. I was devastated not only by my WH's betrayal, but by my friends and their reaction after the affair was disclosed.

Right now I cannot imagine ever having another female friend. I was thinking about it the other day, and I don't believe I have ever had a female friend (past the age of 14 or so) who did not at some point stab me in the back over a man (in one way or another). Only one of them ever even apologized to me after doing so. That is a sad, sad record in life.

In general, the thought of trusting people again makes me feel sick and scared. I honestly do not believe that I will ever have close friends again in my lifetime. I don't think I can do it anymore. I look at my coworkers and people on the street and the only thing I can think about is wondering what they might be doing behind the scenes to wreck me or injure me in some way.

My social life was also destroyed because my WH's APs were friends with all our other friends. We did end up moving, and I like our new town, but I am still homesick for our old town and feel so angry and sad that these sick people and their sick lifestyle and behaviors were what prompted the life change. These are just some of the many ways in which my WH's actions have negatively affected my life.

I am only 39, and I feel pretty much permanently friendless and alone. I feel like nobody I loved or trusted ever really cared that much about me or how I felt - they were just using me to get something they wanted, one way or another. In this particular case it was access to my husband.

I have read some terrible stories on SI, but many of the worst ones seem to me to be the double betrayals. It's like it just completely ruins the BS's ability to form and maintain healthy and trusting relationships with *anybody* going forward in life, not just romantic relationships with a partner. I wish my husband would have just gone with some random co-worker to get his ego kibble, or a prostitute or something. That way I still would have been able to keep some faith in other people too.

Anyway, I don't know what else to say. Just wanted to check in on this thread as yet another member of the club nobody ever wanted to belong to in life. I am sorry that we are all here.

____________________________

MY STORY, PREVIOUSLY POSTED IN JFO...

Six months ago, my husband stayed out all night and got drunk with another couple we have known for 5 years.

These individuals were some of our closest friends, and they were an intimate part of our social circle. We saw them nearly every week, and even took vacations with them. The wife of the couple was one of my closest girlfriends. They are polyamorous, but knew we were 100% monogamous because we had discussed it with them on multiple occasions. I didn't care what they did in their bedroom, I respected their relationship, and assumed they respected mine, as our conversations about the topic were very civil and reasonable. I never expressed any desire to move to polyamoury with them or anyone else, nor did my husband ever express such a thing to me privately or during a conversation with them.

Anyway, WH came home from this "night out" late the next morning and immediately confessed to me that he had a significant physical encounter with the wife (AP) - no sex, but many other very intimate things happened that were definitely not within the agreed-upon boundaries of our monogamous, 8.5 year marriage.

APH (affair partner's husband) was present while this happened, and explicitly encouraged the physical encounter while it was happening with verbal commentary and encouragement.

When APH found out that I was unhappy about what had happened, his only comment to WH was "Didn't she know you were attracted to AP?" - as though the mere fact of WH's attraction to AP was some kind of reasonable justification for disregarding boundaries, and as though my unhappiness about the situation was some kind of unreasonable reaction.

Four days after all of this, I found out that WH and AP had been having an emotional affair as well, which started during a mutual vacation we took in April. They had been planning for three months to start having sex with one another, and were going to "tell me after I finished my dissertation".

(To add one more layer of crap to this whole thing, I am a late stage Ph.D. student, and DDay was 2 weeks before my final oral defense. I have spent 5 years working on this degree, many 14 hour days, and July was one of the most stressful times of my entire life to date - BEFORE the affair!)

I found out about the EA by reading email correspondence between the three of them, and WH continued to lie to me about it until he was confronted with the evidence.

I had no clue about any of this. Nothing was ever discussed with me, WH and I had never made any serious moves towards any kind of open marriage arrangements regarding AP, APH, or anyone else, and I had no idea at all that he had any feelings for AP beyond some mild flirtation.

After the revelation about the emotional affair, I asked WH to go no-contact with them so we could work on our marriage and so I could finish my dissertation. He agreed immediately and with little reluctance, but we were both too naive to know how to do it correctly. So he went over there in person, and idiotically cried on their shoulder about how sad he was to be losing their friendship, blah blah. They interpreted this action as "TheGarden is a horrible irrational harpy who is forcing her kind, sweet husband to give up his loving friend and his new polyamourous girlfriend, who was only trying to help him see the miracle of non-monogamy."

The day after we went NC, APH sent me a extremely hurtful email, in which he told me that I needed to manage my "irrational hang-ups", and scolded me about destroying WH' life, spoiling all their fun, and hurting their (AP's & APH's) feelings. He also blamed me for some other unrelated social problems WH has recently had.

There was no apology or explanation made for anything they might have done to contribute to this situation, nor was there any empathy shown for me in terms of what I might be feeling 5 days after learning about this, or about the fact that this could seriously impact my ability to finish my Ph.D.

That email was absolutely devastating for me. I felt like my heart broke into 10 million pieces, because I had not only been betrayed by my husband, but by two of my closest friends. WH and I had the worst fight in our entire 13 years following the receipt of that email, and during the heat of the conflict he physically assaulted me (he has rarely ever even raised his voice to me at any point before in 13 years of our relationship, has never before even called me a name or anything - talk about being in an affair fog!)

At that point, 1.5 weeks before my oral defense, it was pretty clear that I was not going to be able to defend my dissertation, and I went in the next day and told my advisor and committee that I was having some serious marital problems and had to cancel my defense date. It was one of the more humiliating moments of my life, and I am still feeling ashamed about it.

Since that time, I have been unable to work on my dissertation, and I am now starting to seriously doubt my ability to finish at all. I do not have a job, health insurance, or funding for the fall semester, and had to put my fall tuition on a credit card.

Also since that time, I have also discovered that WH was lying about a number of other things, including exactly how far they went physically on the night in question, that there was another physical encounter as far back as last August, that he had discussed a possible relationship between them as far back as last August, and that she had sent him BSDM/polyamorous-related pornography via email a week prior to our mutual April vacation.

One of the most awful aspects of this situation is that WH and I had had a number of conversations over the years about how we both believed that fidelity was important, and about how dishonesty after fidelity was the most destructive element of an affair. We had both explicitly promised one another to tell the truth immediately if either one of us ever made a "mistake" with another person. So the first time this ever happens, what does he do? TT and blatantly lie to my face for a month.

I am absolutely devastated by the secrecy and the lies, and the utter disregard for my marriage and my personal well-being that all three individuals involved in this situation have demonstrated over the past year.

I feel like a little discarded piece of trash that three people I cared for kicked to the side of the road in their zeal to get to some teenage petting and grinding on a couch.

To his credit, WH came out of the affair fog within a week or so and has been incredibly remorseful about everything since then (including about the physical assault, even crying and demanding that I call the police on him). He crafted and sent another, improved NC letter to AP after a month, in which he explained that he was just cheating with her, that the email APH sent was disgusting and cruel, and that the friendship between us all was irrevocably broken due to their mutual actions (WH, AP, & APH).

He also read a lot of stuff about polyamoury, because I told him I didn't want to be in a marriage under false pretenses - if he wanted an open marriage he needed to figure that out and tell me instead of just making decisions for both of us without my consent. He now says he is not interested in that lifestyle at all, it was just cheating and the usual sort of affair fog crap that WSs engage in with APs.

He has also been reading and posting on SI, and we have had a lot of discussions about why he made some of these terrible choices. He's done a lot of introspection, and discovered a few things about himself in the last few months. I am 95% sure that the TT has ended (my gut says it has), but of course now I can't be sure about anything in my life anymore.

Nevertheless, I am not that hopeful about anything. I kind of feel like our entire marriage was a lie. I don't know how to trust him anymore, because he was someone I viewed as being very honorable and kind prior to this incident. I would have bet any amount of money prior to the morning he came home after getting drunk with AP that he would NEVER have been the husband to cheat on me and abuse my love and trust for him in order to get away with lying about his infidelity. I feel like my loving, decent husband was replaced by an alien being or something. And now I really don't know for sure who he is. He acts like a good person now, and says all the right things, but he did that before the affair. I don't want to get divorced, but I sometimes have such negative emotions about him and what he did that I just can't imagine being in a marriage with someone I feel that way about.

I have told him I need to finish my Ph.D. before I can make any final decisions about the marriage. I am no longer lying in bed depressed all day long, and am able to do basic life tasks, but am still having trouble working on my research.

We have also decided that if we stay together we are moving away from our town. I totally outed WH and his APs to our entire social circle (100s of people!), which actually was very emotionally freeing. I didn't want to carry shame and secrets by myself, or pretend like nothing was wrong between the four of us. And I got a lot of needed social support in return (and some shocking infidelity-related confessions from a few friends I thought had happy marriages). But nevertheless neither WH or I want to ever run into AP or APH again, and that will be hard in our town without dumping all of our other friends. So we are just going to get a new start, which is something we were thinking about pre-A anyway.

I have a lot of nightmares, many of which involve physical violence against the AP, which is interesting because of the three of them, I feel most angry with the APH - AP and WH were "under the influence" of alcohol and affair fog/dopamine, but he had no excuse whatsoever for encouraging a good friend to destroy his marriage and for being so cruel to me after the fact (to me it's kind of like the difference between manslaughter and murder).

I also have no idea how to ever trust a friend again. It kind of seems like I've been burned by every female friend I've ever had in one way or another. But then again, I guess male friends aren't always trustworthy either. It just makes me incredibly sad. I was never the "jealous" type, always watching my husband if he was talking to a woman. When we go out now, I look at all the people around me and I just wonder which of them is really a terrible, selfish person waiting to hurt someone else who trusts them, or who might be pretending to love or care for someone just so they can gain access to their spouse. Not sure how to make or be open with friends again when I feel that way.

I am also really, really struggling with the polyamoury thing - it's a huge trigger for me now, and it seems like every other article on the internet these days is titled "Polyamoury: The Relationship Model of the Future!", and they're all about these fabulously happy people who are super-enlightened and have wonderful, loving, sexy-times relationships with their wife and 3 girlfriends and 2 other dating partners and their unicorn bisexual live-in maid and anyone who can't live that lifestyle is fundamentally psychologically broken and immature (basically the same kind of stuff APH sent me in his tramautizing email). And all about how poly people are more HONEST than monogamous people, and COMMUNICATE BETTER than monogamous people, blah blah blah. Really??? Where was MY honest communication when you were plotting with WH for months, sending him kinky BSDM poly porn, letting him drunkenly grope your genitals on your couch while his loving wife (your trusting friend, who wholly respected your marriage while you were undermining hers) was at home worrying about her dissertation defense and how to find a job that wouldn't destroy his career? How is that superior to my "unenlightened" monogamy, you lying, betraying bitch?

Sigh.

It just all sucks. This is the worst moment of my life so far, bar none.

WOW I can't believe just how much this thread hits home for me.

2married2quit said

I too felt sorry for my XBFF. He screwed up big time. I know him pretty well and I know what he was thinking and battling in his mind. Felt sorry, and hated him at the same time cause he SHOULD know better. He made the WRONG choice. He fucked over his wife and his best friend, plus took advantage of the situation with my wife. If I feel like crap, he must be in a world of shit.

Should have not cheated on his wife. Should have respected his BFF and should have seen that my wife was broken and this was not right and told her instead act upon it all.

Sometimes I hate him,....sometimes I miss his friendship.

I feel very similar. He and I were BFFs for over 30 years. He was going through a divorce and took advantage of my wife's caring personality to get close to her and hit on her. I have over 400 email messages and texts between them and I can see the point, back in July 2012 when he suddenly "Saw her" and started having feelings for her. At that moment, if he were the person I thought I knew growing up, he would have removed himself from our lives for a while but instead he started coming on to her and she fell for his trap of "suicidal thoughts and loneliness".

Half the great stories of my life have involved him. I have even found myself telling the same stories but with "this guy I used to know" instead of "my friend and I". It's really horrible because even my parents and family will ask how he's doing these days. They don't know any of the story and I don't want them to because I don't want them to hate my wife.

The worst part is that we live in a small town and I see him from time to time, especially if I want to go out for a beer. A couple weeks back my wife and I ended up in the same bar as him. I ignored him and pretended he didn't exist. In fact, I've gotten really good at looking right through him like he isn't even there. On the way out he patted me on the shoulder as he walked buy. I know it's his way of saying "hello, and goodbye and I'm sorry" as he has at least had the balls to apologize both in person and in writing and so far as I know he has stayed away from my wife since then.

Sometimes I miss him more than anything though.

In general, the thought of trusting people again makes me feel sick and scared. I honestly do not believe that I will ever have close friends again in my lifetime. I don't think I can do it anymore. I look at my coworkers and people on the street and the only thing I can think about is wondering what they might be doing behind the scenes to wreck me or injure me in some way.

TheGarden... I relate to this as well. I'm a very introverted, closed-off person to begin with, and have/had so few friends. I'm a little further out, and I can say I'm making veeeeery slow strides forward in this area. Hang in there.

My W and the OM also had this whole "polyamourous" bullshit justification thing going on, and for many months, had me convinced his W believed the same thing (hence my hesitation in telling her about me catching them). I spoke with my IC (who specialized in relationship issues) about this at length, and she advised me that this is a deal-breaker in marriages... if one partner wants to be polygamous. I told my W that, and said the same thing, that she needed to be kind enough to tell me and leave, if she truly didn't want a monogamous marriage. Like your H, it wasn't what she really wanted, was just rationalization for her A. This was probably the most terrifying aspect after DDay #1, and really fucked with my head for quite some time. It skewed my judgment and perception of everything, and led to me making some bad (IMO) decisions after I busted them.

Dear, The Garden, Oh, I am so sorry for you. See my story, it's different but the same as all of us on this topic have experienced, betrayal from the one person we thought we could trust explicitly, or is it implicitly? I used to know that rule but alas, now I do not. The cruelest thing about all of this is that it undermines the trust you have. Your feeling of trust just dies. I have forgiven my husband, now if only, I could forget. I think forgiveness is a conscious action. Your brain has it's own agenda. My therapist put it this way and it made sense to me, "It's as if you drank poison and expected the other person to die", and this was what was going on in my life. I just could not go on like this, it was eating me up. My husband and I are doing well. There has been no contact with the OW, former long time friend. Some one asked about the letter. I got a letter from her a couple of years out. She apologized to me. Whether it was real or not, I don't know. We had been out of town for three weeks and our mail was held, I didn't know it was from her when I opened it, so it was sort of a surprise. I read it and saved it for a few weeks, rereading it a couple more times, then I tossed it. I decided I didn't want it in my house. So, I guess it wasn't that important to me. It was words and that's about it. By the time my husband started fully sharing the situation with me, I read some pretty scary, threatening emails she had sent and I realized that I probably never knew this person at all. We had shared a lot over many, many years. Of interest, her late husband had called and asked me to run some errands for him. He was a shell of his former self. He alluded that his wife (the OW) was making life difficult for him. I had heard her side of the story and was drinking her Kool Aid regarding their situation, in retrospect, a mistake. He died a few months later of a massive heart attack. He was 57. After that, my husband was by her side helping her with everything. He absented himself from our life. They carried on an affair under my nose and I didn't see it. I started thinking something was wrong about three months into her "widowhood". It took me another month to bring this up to my husband and he lied to me. Long story short, this was the start of the worst three months of my life. All affairs are alike in many ways. You have the lies, the gas lighting, the TT, the "should I leave my wife for the AP?, etc. When I caught him in a lie, he had broken the NC, I told him he had to leave, and he did. I learned I could do just fine on my own, except for snow shoveling, I did fine. I hired someone to shovel my snow. I felt grateful that I have a profession that allows me to be financially independent, a situation that not all on these boards have. Our son was grown and out of the house, married to a lovely woman. For this I am grateful. It would have been different if I still had a child living at home. My husband is a great father and most people would look at him and NEVER think he would do something like this. I think his need to be a KISA is the source of a lot of this. Also, after 35 years, you can get into a rut and life situations start taking a front seat to the marriage. In my case, I was leaving town every three weeks to go to another city and care for my mother who had dementia. I was doing this without any assist from my husband. My brothers and sisters and I did this for five years, she died two years ago, I miss her every day. She was a great mother. Anyway, I started out making this a short reply but boy did I get wordy. Garden, I read your posting about defending your dissertation and I thought, Oh God, such bad timing. I sooooooo agree that this is such a stressful time for you. I hope you can get on your feet emotionally to get this finished and behind you. I think the PhD will be easier to get behind you than the betrayal you are feeling. You have control over the PhD. You do not have control over your polyamorous H, AP and her husband. You are not to blame for this messed up situation. However, you have to suffer the consequences. Chin up, girl. This is so hard. I am sorry for all of us. You lose trust, your normally soft heart, hardens, and you try to run and hide from those thoughts that find their way into your brain but you just can't I read the posting from SoManyYears and I so get what you are going through. We are probably about the same age with the same life experiences. I don't know what to say, I'm sure the fact that it was a LTA and you caught them twice, plays into it. Have you heard of EMDR? They use it on people with PTSD. I tried it a few times but it just didn't work for me. However, it does work for some people. I heard that an A causes PTS in the spouse affected by the A. I can believe this. You are so not the same person after you find out. I was a hot mess. I cried, was distracted at work, cried more and more, couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, started buying box wine instead of a bottle of wine, took up smoking again, still haven't kicked the habit after five years, my bad. I hate that this happened to me. It has taken individual therapy for both my husband and I and marriage counseling but we are still going strong, amend that, we are still going. He does not want to ever discuss the A. I, on the other hand, would love to know ALL but I never will. The MC said that I know all that I ever would know and to keep beating it to death would be harmful. He lives in shame from what happened and that is probably punishment enough. When he moved out, we had to tell our son why and this killed him. Our son was devastated. I hadn't seen him cry since he was a child and he was bawling his eyes out. I never want to see that hurt on his face again. My H is very remorseful. I get what you're going through. I wish you peace of mind. Have you tried IC or MC? I think these would be very helpful. Start with the IC because the AP is dead, he's not coming back to destroy your life even more. Like me, you're drinking the poison and expecting your wife to die. He's already dead. I get it but try to be proactive and get some help, you do not deserve to live like this. it's just too hard. You're miserable, your wife is probably miserable. This misery is the poison. Kind thoughts going your way.

My WH had a real "ah-ha" moment when I told him, "Do you realize you have been screwing your best friend's wife?" I don't think he even thought about it. I think it made his feel worse than what he was doing to me.

OW was my friend too and the 4 of us were inseparable. It kills me to think of us BSs sitting with them playing cards and the WSs playing footsie under the table. How smug they must have felt to be pulling one over on us and we sat there looking like total assholes.

(is it ok to swear on this forum?)

Is it strange to feel more anger toward my x-BFF than my WW?

The person I was and continue to be most angry with in my situation was actually the OW's (enabling, polyamorous) husband, who was also my good friend. The reason why is because I feel that both my WH and the OW were "under the influence", so to speak, both re: alcohol and hormones, which, while no justification, is still a major contributing factor towards their really stupid, hurtful behavior. Part of the reason for their behavior is that they quite literally weren't thinking straight (no excuse in either case, but nevertheless a pertinent factor).

On the other hand, the OWH has no excuse at all. He wasn't in love or lust. His behavior all the way through the process was cold, premeditated, and malicious. He deliberately and with forethought encouraged his wife to have an affair with my husband, knowing full well it would hurt me and wreck my monogamous marriage. He's also the one who attacked and blamed me after DDay.

To me it's kind of like the difference between manslaughter and murder. If you get drunk and do something stupid, it's less of a crime than deliberately, soberly, and with malice aforethought doing something that you know will cause great harm.

Am I angry with my WH? You bet. I have been and still am EXTREMELY angry with WH, his thoughtlessness, his idiocy, his unkindness. But he is also remorseful and has been trying hard to work on our marriage. Similarly, I am sad and angry about OW's betrayal, but I also think she's got a lot of emotional problems stemming from FOO issues and other stuff, and I don't think she got a single thing she hoped for out of this situation, so I also partially pity her. She's not having a nice life this year either, and I doubt, given the kinds of choices she generally makes about her (sexual and other) relationships with other people, that she is likely to have a nice life in the future either.

OWH on the other hand was a fucking cold-hearted snake from beginning to end. SO many lies of omission, no thought for my feelings, no excuses or reasons for his behavior other than (probably) the mild amusement of pulling something over on me, facilitating situations where his wife could freely pursue my husband, standing next to them while they were "playing" with one another and verbally egging them on , no empathy at all for me after the fact, blamed me for all of my husband's bad life choices and tried to play us against one another by being his "supportive friend" when I was angry after DDay. Sick, sick, sick. Totally sociopathic behavior. I still have nightmares about him, 6 months out.

[This message edited by TheGarden at 5:04 PM, December 29th (Sunday)]

I don't think so, mrcpu.

For me, the decision to try reconciliation with my wife was quick and strongly felt. Her remorse was fast, and we've lived and worked together to build a stronger marriage than we had before. I have 24/7, concrete proof of her love and remorse.

The friend she had her affair with? We're certainly able to be social around mutual friends, but there's more unresolved hurt there than with my wife. Distance --physical, emotional, and social-- prevents me from seeing the depth of change in him that I can see in myself and my wife.