To cut a long story short, when I found out about my husband's A (8 months after it ended, although EA still ongoing), I also found out that several friends had suspected. One friend saw him on the street holding hands with OW. (In our neighbourhood, where most of our friends live, a mere 5-minute walk from our house. How dumb can you be??)

Anyway, the friend that saw them immediately told several other friends. They sat around and agonised for an entire day about what to do. One called and confronted him but he denied it and they didn't say anything to me. Up until now they've all maintained that they believed him (because they "wanted to" and because we "seemed so happy"). My husband told them she was just a work friend and that she was upset because her house had been broken into and so he was "comforting" her. To this day he swears the break-in story is true, but I still wonder if it's just a big cover-up story he invented in case anyone told me about it. To make this all the more maddening, he told me his "friend from work" had had her house broken into while she was sleeping (but not that our friend had seem them holding hands) and I felt SOOO sorry for her! I kept saying "Oh please tell OW if she's upset she can come here or call anytime or we can go over there" (ha! little did I know my husband WAS going over there all the time ... to have sex with her)

Anyway, this weekend I'm out with one of said friends and, having had several drinks, he confesses that "nobody really believed him because he'd been seen with OW before". WTF? This was news to me. I don't want to let this poison my friendships -- god knows it's caused enough pain and heartache already -- but I'm really pretty hurt and mad. My friends had good reason to be fairly sure my husband was having an A and yet none of them said a WORD to me.

Yes, it's no one's fault he cheated but his but, &*^%$#, had they told me they might have saved me 8 more months of being lied to and I'd be that much further down the road to recovery. I just felt punched in the stomach all over again - angry, sad, humiliated, betrayed.

Has anyone else had to deal with this as part of discovery? What did you do? How have you moved past it?

Me: BS, 31
Him: WS, 37
Together 7+ years, married 3+, no kids
9mnth PA followed by ongoing EA until DDay (15 months total)
DDay, 9/13/05
NC started 12/05 (when he left his job)

In my case, my friends knew, my step-kids knew, WH's relatives knew, my neighbors knew, and everyone we worked with knew (we worked together).

His daughter DID tell me that he had a secret cell phone, and he has been angry with her ever since (3 years).

No one else said a word. I think people are afraid to get involved. They hope it will just all go away.

Believer, how have you dealt with that? Did it make you angry? I just feel so foolish that here I was thinking everyone thought we had a great marriage, like I did, and in fact ... One friend said later that I'd say all these things, like about how he was working late all the time, "but always so innocently". So, in other words you had lots of opportunities to tell me yet didn't.

Ok, so I haven't been in this position and I'm sure it'd be really really hard but I'm also sure if it were a good friend it would kill me NOT to tell them. I'd try to be subtle and gentle about it (and emphasise if I wasn't sure) but I really don't think I could stand by and say nothing.

But maybe that's just easy to say now ... sigh.

I would have a very hard time considering someone a "friend" who did not have the decency to warn me when they KNEW I was being destroyed behind my back. That is not the act of a "friend," but an enemy.

That is the cowardly act of someone who didn't give a damn about me and couldn't be bothered to take a risk for my best interest.

Such a person would not be in my life anymore if I found out they did something so selfish, cowardly and cruel to me. I would never knowingly choose a coward for a friend, and would not keep such a person in my life if I found out later.

Lillian, lets say you were in this position and because it was TOO HARD to tell your friend, you didn't do it. Would you then say you were somehow JUSTIFIED in not warning your friend?

My point is that not warning your friend is either right or wrong based on a moral standard, not based on whether you would choose to do the right thing or not. KWIM?

I agree ML. I think it's lousy and I am really saddened and surprised because I expected more of these friends. Funnily enough, the one person I'm not mad at is the friend who saw it with her own eyes -- who has since said that from the way he acted, awkward and weird, and the way OW stood down the road and he didn't introduce them that she KNEW something was up. This is because although I really like her we are not particularly close. We have never hung out one-on-one and were the situation reversed I'd do just what she did. That is, tell other people who were closer friends with her than I am and hope they'd do the right thing.

Another one of these friends I can't be mad at because she has been so incredibly wonderful and supportive since I found out, including having me at her house and talking to me and wiping my tears all weekend in those first horrific few days when I felt like my whole world had been crushed into smithereens.

But the other 4 friends involved ... hmm ... yes, I'm going to have a hard time feeling the same way about them ever again. They might be 'good time friends' who I can socialise with but it's going to be hard to feel they're the close friends I thought they were. The friend who told me the latest news I have known since I was 18 and I am most pissed off with him because he was, frankly, defensive and angry and belligerent with me about it when he told me this and I got upset (and I was not even accusing or awful, just hurt and upset). He started saying things, very aggressively, like, "Well, do you think R is a horrible evil person?" (Another one of the friends in question.) Well, what on earth does that mean? OF course I don't. But that doesn't mean that their cowardice was hurtful and wrong.

Oh, and get this, then he sends me this email today saying, "I hope you're ok after our conversation ... but hey, you know it's better if friends are honest with each other."

Um...yeah, it is. And you weren't. And that's why I'm mad. Duh.

Thanks for listening to me vent.

Fortunately I DO have another group of girlfriends, who I have known for 15+ years, since high school, who have been INCREDIBLY supportive and amazing. Now if only THEY had been the ones who had seen evidence. I KNOW they would have told me. Or told him he'd better tell me or they would, which is what I would do in this situation. I'd call the cheating spouse and say, "Look, I know. You've got X number of hours or days to tell him/her or I will."

>>I would never knowingly choose a coward for a friend>>

This makes me think ... my husband, by his own admission, was very cowardly in carrying on the affair so long and continuing to spend time with her and lie to me about it afterwards because he was "afraid of her". So am I a fool for knowingly choosing a coward as a life partner? Hmmm ... not offended by your comment, it just got me thinking is all.

We had friends who knew, one even caught the infidels on several occasions sitting in her truck in our church parking lot while she was waiting for her son to get out of school. But no one ever told me they were suspicious. Why? Because FOW beat them to the punch by telling them that she'd told me how she felt about my H and that I was "ok with it". Our friends came to see me as totally insane.

After D-day, it burned me that no one said anything to me. I wish I'd have been dragged down there kicking and screaming if necessary to see that they were having secret meetings for myself. But since that day, every one of them has apologized for not confronting me with what they knew. And every single one of them has come straight to me with every single suspicion they had that NC was being broken or that my H wasn't being sincere.

Many people learn from things like this. Have your friends learned that they NEED to be forthcoming with information that could shed light on a nasty situation? Has the cowardice disappeared? Personally, I know where my true friends are now--the ones who refuse to REMAIN cowards. Because let's face it, I was a coward once too.

Lillian, several people knew about my H's A, as well. His brother knew, one of his best friends knew, because one of my tape recordings caught WH making plans to meet said friend for drinks with the OW. He also took OW on a work trip for a week, and hung out with another childhood friend at a vacation resort for three days with the OW. Also paraded OW in front of a close business associate. My Brother in Law has always been on my [censored] list, so no biggie there, but the best friend, and childhood friend both went to OUR WEDDING. I cannot forgive the fact that they were witness to our union, and by their very presence, agreed to support the M. I have a really hard time getting past the fact that they knew, and have even more difficulty spending time with any of them. Seems like we have a culture in our society today that not only doesn't teach people NOT to screw around with married people, but it also doesn't teach folks to refuse to consort with the infidels. I don't know where we got this culture, but it really sucks. Sorry I don't have a solution, since I'm still seething mad 8 months later. Yeah, they all gave me the same line, "we didn't think he was doing the right thing, but it wasn't our job to tell you." Great, next lifetime, they won't make the wedding list, since they don't understand what that role entails.

My H's A was with another mother on our son's travel ice hockey team. Many people knew before I 'knew'. They lied to me for them...they were complicit. There was only one that confirmed my suspicions and 'sided' with me. A couple expressed their sympathy when they found out. There were people at the ice rink that thought they were married they spent so much time together. It was all surreal and extremely painful. Early on, OW and my H went with the kids to an ice hockey tournament in AZ.(we live in FL). No one said a word to me that they spent all their time together.

When the A ended so did all contact with the people who were complicit...they were fiendships more than friendships. We basically started from scratch with no friends. My kids stopped being involved in ice hockey...they finished out the last season and that was it after being involved about 5 yrs.

I think that most people feel uncomfortable and just don't want to get involved. They may not know you well enough to consider you a friend...maybe an aquaintence, as the one person you mentioned that told her other friends. A real friend tells their friend if they see their spouse with an OP.

Any friend or family member that knows of an A and doesn't do something about it is supporting the A. There is not one person in my life that believes that if I were to find out they were straying that I wouldn't give them 2 choices.... tell your spouse immediately... or I will. A friend that doesn't support you or your M is like a weed in a garden... they must be removed.. permanently. This is a situation where someone is either with you (by supporting your M and family) or they are against you. There is no Switzerland in this case!

I strongly suspect that at the very least, my Mother-in-Law suspected that FWH was involved in an inappropriate relationship with OW. When I told her about the affair, she immediately responded "with that woman who lives in California?"

I think my FWH was even taken back that his Mother had suspected but never said anything to him. I will never have any respect for my MIL and avoid contact with her as much as possible. I wouldn't have expected her to say anything to me, but I believe that she should have cautioned FWH about the potential outcome of inappropriate behavior. I think that a few choice words from his mother would have forced him to think about what he could lose and he may have ended things much sooner.

I agree with whoever said that people just don't want to get involved. They are readily willing to sit around and discuss things with other folks, but stop at actually coming forward, especially to the BS.

Who