Lifeschoice, forgive me if I have read this all wrong but I have the most curious impression that you just really, really want to dump your best friend. What I do not understand is why this is so much on your mind four years after the fact. Making a decision to sever your friendship directly after the affair or even after DD makes more sense but as you said you were not aware of MB concepts at the time. Still, since so much time has passed, I really can’t help but wonder what prompted this desire now.

I remember accidentally running into ExWH in a store once and having no choice but to say hello. Mild surprise yes, but in terms of emotions…nothing, blank, nada. Same thing with an FOM sighting…nothing, blank, nada. When a relationship is really OVER, there are few, if any emotions to draw on. Emotions that are Strong are signaling a problem. This is where my questions for you come in.

It sounds like your marriage is not at its healthiest point right now. Affair-free marriages have the luxury of examining other causes for problems but you don’t have this choice. What you do know is that your H is depressed. He’s told his therapist that all you do is talk about the A. This is his perception….perhaps you are not aware of how much time you really spend thinking/talking/wanting to talk about it?

Having an agreement with the “best friend you’ve ever had” to never again discuss something weighing on your mind obviously puts a damper on that relationship. Your H encouraged you to tell her in the first place partially so that you could have a sounding board. Now that you’ve spilled your withdrawal guts to her, discussed it ad nauseam (maybe she’s tired of it?) and have an agreement not to discuss it further (was this recent?), I can see how it would be difficult to want to spend time together.

Perhaps your closeness had everything to do with the affair in the first place. We’ve all had friendships based on transient interests, could this be the case for you? I could see how she could be a trigger in her own right if you’ve always tied them together in your mind.

My real concern for you right now is the time and energy spent on something that should be OVER and done with. Despite your stated intent, you do not appear to be personally/internally DONE with FOM, four years after the fact. Why?

I feel your intent/question is noble by MB standards but really why is this conversation continuing if the affair ended four years ago? Have you really let go or is this a current struggle??? If so, this is important to address, much more important than your original Q!

Questions to ask yourself in a quiet moment would include, how is my Love Bank doing? Am I feeling lonely, tired, sad, angry…….?? Affairs have a way of adding huge drama to life, am I bored? Why does my husband think I talk about the affair all the time?

Why does he use the word “selfish” to describe my desire to end a close friendship? Was my relationship with BF based on true friendship or was it something else? Is this why am I uncomfortable with the friendship when my husband obviously is not?

This one is important: What has actually happened to prompt me to think about ending the friendship now (ie: contact, however slight with FOM, a triggering comment on her part, something else entirely….)?

There would not be so much concern about “little windows” for FOM…. if FOM was a completely moot point in your life. I’m not so much getting the impression that he is a non-issue and dealing with THAT is FAR more important that butting heads with your H about dumping mutual friends or involving yourself in “making” the BF tell her husband. Really. Best, KB

I agree with shinedthrough too.

The OM knows or suspects your best friend (his sister in law) knows AND is keeping it secret from her husband (his brother).

He may be wondering whether her habit of being dishonest with her husband can benefit him in some way (either by her vulnerability to adultery with him or as a way to somehow, someday restart his adultery with you. I wouldn't be surprised if his adultery-altered mind isn't already fantasizing about a threesome with you and his SIL.

Dishonesty is dishonesty. "In a perfect world" is a phrase employed to introduce a justification for knowingly making an immoral choice.

Don't hide behind your BH's failure to see the danger or his fear of telling you what he wants. Don't exploit his lack of knowledge or his insecurity - do the right thing to protect your marriage and your best friend's marriage by exposing the truth and burning all bridges to possible reconnection with the OM (including ending the friendship with your friend). You betcha your husband would be relieved if you did what's necessary to protect your marriage! I don't think it would be wise for your husband to trust you, your best friend, or the other man until all the let's-keep-secrets malarky ends! What does your husband say when you tell him it's OK for you and your friend to be dishonest with her husband because you don't think he'll find out?!?!?!?!?!

Don't hide behind a promise you made to your friend. That was a promise that never should have been made. The promise of marriage she made to her husband, and the promise you made to your husband to keep OM out of your future, trumps that promise between you and your friend. You're failing to clearly see that TWO MARRIAGES trump one friendship! (BTW, WHY would you make a promise to anyone to help them lie to their spouse about anyting?) So basically you're saying that because you promised to do something wrong then you are going to do the right thing by keeping that promise to do wrong?!? I'm sorry but that sounds like some pretty foggy thinking to me. The rationalization that her husband will never find out is the mindset that breeds adultery.

When all this secrecy is exposed (and eventually it WILL be) everyone involved with keeping the secret will lose credibility and respect. There's really no good excuse to keep secrets from a spouse. Once you stray from radical honesty - ESPECIALLY if the secret is something that you share with OP but not your spouse - you have already strayed quite a way in the direction of an adultery acceptance mindset.

You're worried about the possible damage to the friendship if the friend's husband is told the truth? Who cares - you should have ended the friendship with her years ago anyway as part of no contact with OM. You're worried about OM lying about why your friendship with him ended? Why would you even be thinking about him and what he says anymore?

I only have time for a quick reply. I'm taking a small break and really need to finish mowing my very long, very saturated lawn.


I read this right before I went out to mow and I keep finding myself laughing a bit over what you said. I agree and can picture my H say "OMG, you did not really just say that, did you?"

It goes to show that I am still capable of saying things that don't make sense. LOL, thanks for pointing out the humor in this ridiculous statement.

Now back to mowing.

LC

Knewbetter,

I am not doing this for me, I am doing this for my H. Due to recent events I do believe the friendship does bother him, even though he has always stated he was fine with it. I have no idea if it has bothered all along or if it is new. I'm still working on this part of it.


Actually my marriage is very healthy by comparision to what it had been in the past. Is it perfect? No way, which is why I ended up here on MB's. Yes, it is his perception that I talk about the A. I don't ever bring it up or any aspect of it, trust me I am VERY over it and have been for a long time. I am clueless as to why he said what he did. Edited to add: I am willing to find out why he thinks as he does, obviously something is bothering him about it.


No, this was 2 years ago. Yes, we did discuss it ad nauseam and she heard about every bit of my withdrawal, as sickening as it was. What I noticed about her lately is she has lost her sense of humor. She said some things to me about a conversation we had that didn't make any sense. It was nothing related to FOM or the A. I feel like our friendship has changed. She has told me in the past her knowledge of the A has had an effect on our friendship, but certainly not enough for her to want to end it. There are just aspects of her life she is no longer able to share with me, that's all.


Edited to add, because I missed commenting on the first part of your statement when I replied last night: Trust me, I am personally/internally and anything else done with and completely over FOM.

I agree we should be past this and believe me I wish we weren't doing this now. My H chose to ask for details, refuse to talk about anything else, process the information on his own, stuff the rest and tell me "he's over it". Here we are 2 1/2 years after my confession dealing with this. The end of 2006 and beginning of 2007 were rough for our family, not A related but other things. Finally enough stuff piled on him, he can't stuff anything else so he is forced to face things he chose not to in the past.

I have been pondering many questions and thank you for your suggestions. Some I can already answer very easily others I will think about. IMO, my H is about ready to really face this, something I wish we had done a long time ago.

Thank you for all of your thoughts.

LC

My H certainly thinks he is a predator. There is no way even if he made a move on her, she would tolerate it. JMHO, if you knew her you would believe me on that.

Edited to add: IMO due to the way he is FOM would be more likely to celebrate in the fact "he got away with it." than make moves on his SIL.

I have explained to her the importance to her marriage of telling her H. We have had many conversations about this matter. She isn't going to do it, period.

I have to run.

LC

MM,

One more quick reply and I really do have to go.

I agree with everything you said. My plan is to show this thread to my H and let him decide what he feels is best to do.

LC

Meremortal - perhaps so. It's not that I would disagree, but there is also the immoral choice of gossiping to consider so that informing the Best Friend's husband is not gossip.

It IS the BF's marriage, and it is the BF's choice.

The "decision" is whether or not to maintain the friendship, and the decision-maker (if LC doesn't choose to end the friendship herself) is LC's husband's and what he is comfortable with.

LC - consider this possibility; your husband might equate your relationship with your BF as "talking" about the affair all the time. He knows she knows but he has no idea what the two of you talk about all the time. I know I would be thinking you two DO talk about the affair, about him, etc. So why might it have appeared that a "weight" lifted from him when you broached the possibility of ending your relationship with her? I'm also betting that your husband has not had anyone to talk to about the affair, which is why I am glad he IS talking to his therapist about it.

The affair may be in the past for you and you may be "over it," but trust me on this one as one who has been on the BS side of the equation, your husband has been isolated in the recovery process and is nowhere near "over it." He may not talk to you about it because he doesn't want to or doesn't know what words to say, but trust me, he DOES think about some aspect of the affair every day and he does "hear" everything you say through that filtering thought process.

Why do you think your friend has been changing? Because dark secrets ARE depressing, and the person she should be able to openly talk to about things doesn't know about his own brother and she doesn't want to be the "outsider" who brings him bad news about his blood relative. I don't know a whole lot about his family, or your BF's own marriage to say much more, but carrying secrets of the magitude of adultery are hard, even for trained counselors. She may even want to not lose you as a friend, which would likely happen if her husband did know, perhaps because she doesn't have many friends either. Just speculating, but there a lot things "in play" here it would seem.

God bless.

FH,


Any idea why he says he's over it? Is it because he wants to be.

You are also correct he talks to no one. I tried to get him to go to MC to no avail. I also expressed to him it would be a good idea to confide in one of his friends. He never wanted to. He just tells me he doesn't want to talk about it. I suggested journaling, he did for about a week after d-day and that was it. I suggested different message boards and he has not been interested.


Again, I agree and I have told her similar thoughts in the past. After our odd conversation not that long ago, I asked her if the secret was having an effect on her, she denied it was. She knows if she chooses to tell I will take full responsibility for my part and accept the consequences. She also knows I don't care if she tells him, that isn't an issue for me.

My internet time is up. My H will be home soon and I have a nice night planned for us.

Thanks again for your insight. What you are saying about him makes perfect sense and matches more of his actions than when he tells me he's over it.

LC

Hi Lifechoice,

How was your special evening? Hope it went well.

You asked:


After D-Day #4 when I saw what appeared to be my WH's choosing to change, I often pretended that things were OK because I did not want to see the pain in his face when he was so depressed by the depth of his depravity. It was a DJ, actually and it did not help us heal.

The same thing may be happening with your best friend:


She may be trying to protect you, judging that you may not be saying what you really want to say. I'm only guessing here....but radical honesty must be her choice....you can't force it on her.

That's why it may be best for YOU to sever the relationship yourself if you really want your husband to heal inwardly as well as outwardly. And you could honestly tell her why. Just my very humble opinion.

Ace <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

P.S. LA just posted on my "Smiles and Trials" thread about the difference between "coping skills" and "life skills", which may be helpful. I haven't been able to grasp the concepts completely yet.....but maybe you can check it out and let me know how you perceive it.

Ace,

We had a very nice evening, thanks for asking.

There may be times she does watch what she has to say. I will have to ask her.

I'll check out the thread you suggested, thanks.

LC

We have our first "official" POJA.

After dinner Fri night my H and I were sitting it the hot tub relaxing. I asked him if it was a good time to talk about the situation with my BF. He said it would be fine. I brought up my thread and mentioned I would like him to read it, he said he didn't really care to read it, I could just tell him about it. We discussed everyone's thoughts. I tried to recall as much as I could and feel I was very thorough. I made sure he knew his feelings on the matter were most important in our decision.

I wasn't surprised he didn't care to read my thread. Prior to my confession I had been secretly posting on another board for about a year. After I confessed he asked to read my posts so I gave him my username and password. He read for a few days, said it made him physically ill and stopped. He read posts from when I was deep in withdrawal, posts where I was completely irrational, posts about my guilt, posts about him (he disliked those the most) and post were I was being 2 x 4'rd for not "getting it" from people who were trying to save my sanity. I thank God for them every day now. He said reading my posts were too traumatic. I'm sure that is why he chose not to read this thread. I would be willing to bet he would much rather poke needles in his eyes.

We talked about the friendship itself and I asked him if he knew BF and I do not talk about the past. He said he knew. I have no idea exactly how long we talked, but we were both cooked and prune-like by the time we were done. We finished our conversation sitting on the edge with just our feet in.

Here are his feelings and what we decided.

He thought it best we keeps things status quo and in the next 2 years slowly put distance between us, when they move we will let the rest of the friendship die. He said there is no way in he** he would tell her H, that choice is hers to make not ours. He said he doesn't hold it again his brother just because FOM is a POS. I also asked him if he ever changed his mind to please tell me. He agreed he would.

Sat morning I was thinking about our conversation and have to admit it was the first time in a very long time I felt uncomfortable talking with my H. I was very afraid I was going to say something he would interpret as talking about the A.

In the afternoon I asked him if the conversation we had caused him any problems or if I crossed any lines. I mentioned I was checking because of the comment he made to his doctor. He assured me if or when I cross any lines he WILL inform me.

It's been almost 3 weeks since he saw his doc, this is the closest conversation we have had to talking about the A, I've changed nothing about our normal conversations. Obviously something made him think that way for him to say it. I am glad to know I wasn't taking about the A and simply didn't realize it.

I really wish he would come here and read what people have to say, especially the male posters. He would see what he has gone through and is going through is normal and maybe he wouldn't fight the feelings so much. I don't know.

LC

Ace,

I did want to comment on this from one of your posts and forgot to add it:


What I plan to do is relax out of the friendship. With life being very busy and kids running us all over the place, in the next few years we will have very little free time to spend together. This should make it relatively easy to distance from each other. I do believe it can start now by taking it one step at a time. First I will slowly stop sharing certain aspects of our life with her and over time things will just filter off to nothing.

LC

Thanks for the update, LC. And congratulations on breaking through your fear and discussing things with your H.

One question: Has your BF read anything about MB principles? If so, what does she think about it/them?

Ace

Ace,

Sorry I didn't answer sooner, I missed your questions. No, my friend does not know about the MB principles. I have mentioned the Harley books I have read, but "she doesn't need them." (her words) <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />, so she had no interest in them.

I decided to flat out ask her how she feels about our friendship and to also express my concern to her about keeping a secret from her H. I emailed her a message pretty much using a lot of the wording from posters here about keeping secrets from her H and how damaging they can be, etc, etc.

In a nutshell her reply was that she isn't going to tell him and the secret has no effect on her marriage because she doesn't ever think about anything I shared with her. Her next sentence went on to say she doesn't like to come over and chat because she doesn't like the fact my H talks about FOM and the A. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Color me confused. Why in the world would my H talk about FOM and/or the A? He hates those subjects. When he got home from work this morning I showed him our exchange. He was dumbfounded as to what she was even referring to (actually asked if she was on drugs, LOL). She said some other things that left us both shaking our heads and questioning what she was talking about.

In our opinion, although she says she doesn't ever think of the A, it is obviously on her mind, especially when she sees my H. Once he gets a little sleep we will be re-evaluating our former agreement about the friendship. I do believe it's time to fully cut the ties now. As for telling her H, I don't know. The info is affecting her more than she knows, but I will leave that decision up to my H as to what to do about that.

Edited to add: I'm hoping my H sees the correlation between her saying he talks about the A when he doesn't to him feeling I talk about the A, and I don't. I figured I will ask his opinion on that later after he gets some sleep.

LC

Thanks for your reply LC. Amazing how the years can pass and certain 'events' keep re-occuring.

I just had an 'A Hah' moment that has little to do with this thread so I won't go into details (you can check it out on my Smiles & Trials thread if ya want). It does relate to "years gone by reoccurances" ......and now I've gotta change my sig line.

I'm so glad you can talk frankly with your H about your BF. If she'll withhold info from her H (lie by ommission), why would she NOT do the same thing with you? I think you will get POJA on the matter sooner than you think. But it seems you are wise to let your H decide how he will treat his part of the sitch.

Ace

Ace,



Pre-A we lived such separate lives and shared very little. This came with being 100% transparent. What I found is as I learned to share with him, he started to share with me. I probably share more than he really cares about, but it's working.


It's very interesting you should mention this because in her reply there are a few items she totally contradicted herself on. She's been telling me things one way for a long time and told me just the opposite in this message. I believe she has not only been lying to me, she has been lying to herself.

LC

Berry In-terrrr-esss-ting......maybe it's a good thing they are moving soon. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> Does that make your original question any easier to answer?

btw, how old is/are your child/ren?

Ace

Very interesting... and weird...

Ok, this may be coming from the fact that my WXH was a serial adulterer and therefore I'm probably way more suspicious than normal... but the thought has occurred to me that maybe the reason the best friend said your BH talks about the affair a lot, AND the reason neither the best friend or the BH want to tell the best friend's husband anything, is because the best friend and the BH have been secretly talking to each other about the affair (and other things)?

Hopefully I'm just being creepy paranoid LOL

Ace,


It does and it makes me not feel so bad about it. I try no to overthink things because it tends to add to the problems, but I have to admit her last message irritates me a bit. Perhaps she just had a realization and her opinion has changed. Who knows. Maybe she also feels we have grown apart and she simply feels differently than she did before.


We have 3 DD's 20, 17 and 11.

LC