Q&A Is Their Friendship Okay?

Submitted by Rick_Reynolds Tue, 01/26/2016 - 17:34

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Question: 

Hi Rick. my wife & I are both unfaithful & betrayed. I told her I fell for someone and without knowing it, was during the same time she was having a sexual affair. She has been grieving a lot. I know letting her know who I was emotionally involved with would hurt her more. I am not keeping any information from her. She has told me she'd rather not know who. But that person does contact my spouse once in a while. To say hi and chat. They've been friends since childhood. But have grown apart with time. I don't know what to do about this ordeal. If she were to invite my spouse to go anywhere with her, my spouse might want me to come along. I know I can decline and tell her it's ok if she just go with her. But I know deep down inside I'd feel so stuck, like if I'm hiding something. Although my wife doesn't want to know who. Her friend is calling my spouse and it makes my spouse happy because they don't really talk or see each other often. So this is a huge problem for me. I love seeing my spouse happy and there's a glimpse of joy in her face when she talks to me about her conversation with her friend. I can't explain the feeling I'm feeling. is it ok to let her friendship continue, so long as I'm not the one contacting her friend? I'm so confused. Please help.

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I'd want to know

Submitted by [name hidden] on

Hi there - I'm commenting because I actually disagree with Rick on this one. I'm the betrayed spouse and I totally understand why your wife doesn't want to know who it was, and I understand why Rick suggested to honor her wishes. However, I truly feel that somehow, someway, it will come out, and when it does...it will feel like another D-Day to your wife. It will be new information and she could feel be deceived again by you (even though you were just doing what she asked - she may see it as you not protecting her and letting her carry on with a friend who also deceived her).

Infidelity, the keeping of secrets, the loss of control, are huge aspects of what we are healing from, not just the actual actions of what happened. Right now, again to me, I would feel like the friend has more control because she has more knowledge than your wife does. She knows what happened and is choosing to be friends (and possibly with a dark motive as Rick suggested). Your wife doesn't have the correct information to make a choice here. Which is the same feeling as the affair...if you keep having the affair without disclosing, you aren't giving us the chance to make an educated decision.

It's really a hard call here. I don't know your wife obviously so I don't know if she'd rather live in ignorance and just maintain friendships blindly. I know if it was me, and If I found out later that I had maintained a friendship or in any way interacted with my husband's AP without knowing I was, and she of course knew, I'd be livid and very hurt. Again it's about getting that sense of control of our lives back.

A question you could ask yourself could be: when your wife told you that she didn't want to know, did she know there was a possibility of the AP being someone she actually knew or was friends with? Because if that was the case...and she knew there was that chance...and still didn't want to know, then I would leave it alone. But if that wasn't alluded to then I think it needs to be brought up again. Maybe even start the conversation by bringing up that you saw a video on the AR site about this topic and what does she think about it?

As Rick says...what do I know? Just offering my take. Good luck - sending my prayers to you both.

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