Advice please- close friend & (STB Ex) husband problem

Are you not going to tell her how massively inappropriate and intrusive this is?

Is she offering you any support, OP?

What would annoy me about her approach (at least as I understand it from this thread) is that she seems keener to help your DH than you. However well intentioned and kind-souled she is, that’s just not what you want from a friend.

What you need is someone to tell you it’s okay to break up over this. That you are right to stay strong about it and not spend more of your life trying to fix him. I get that that’s hard for her if she’s still stuck in fix mode, but as a friend she shouldn’t be actively undermining your resolve like this.

My response would be 'good luck with that' and carry on. If she wants to glory help him that's fine, but yes she needs to leave you out of it as you need to move on.

I'm sure it will impact your friendship though so be prepared to have to distance yourself. Which is a shame but you need to look after yourself.

Ridiculous - she needs to concentrate on saving her DH-not someone else’s.

I may be misreading your post but your husband is meeting up with your friend? Or the therapist? Aside from the fact that it's bad enough that your friend has hugely overstepped here by involving herself in your situation, I'm really confused about why your husband would have to meet up with her? I could just about understand if she had contacted him to say here are the details of a therapist my husband is seeing, but I'm really at a loss as to why it involves your husband having to meet up with her to discuss it. That sounds really strange.
I would advise you to be very clear with your friend that you don't want to know anything about what is going on with your husband from now on. I'd also advise you to keep a distance from her. It all sounds very very strange. I'm not really sure what your friend is hoping to achieve or why she has inserted herself in the middle of this as some sort of expert. Whatever she's up to, it's not with your best interests at heart.

I think she has massively overstepped and if it was me the friendship would never be the same.

So she has not had enough trying to save her own husband, she now wants to save yours too? It's disrespectful to the friendship specially when you told her you don't want any involvement in his recovery and you are ready to move on.I would keep her at arms length.

I agree, I think she believes she can save your marriage and if she thinks she can, I bet she discusses it with your husband.

I think I would respond with something like, “I appreciate that you’re attempting to do a good thing; please respect that I am no longer invested in his recovery and am focusing solely on moving forward for me and DC. Please don’t give him any ideas that recovering would be a way back for us, because that would be deeply unfair to him and to me and my children.”

Maybe not exactly that, but I do think it’s important to let her know that she can’t be telling him that recovering might fix his marriage, because I can 100% imagine that she might say something like this to get him on board with this method.

Sounds like she needs to “fix” your husband to prove to herself that hers can be fixed also.

I think she was wrong to contact him without giving you a heads up first and I’d just be clear that while you still value her friendship you need some clear boundaries for your own sanity going forward (like her not parroting his apparent “recovery” back to you at every turn) and she’s massively overstepped what you need at the moment.

I’m sure she’s a nice person but very much she’s choosing herself over you in this situation. I’d understand more if you’d all been close friends and she was trying to help him too, but since she’s primarily your friend and barely knows him then she’s really just trying to benefit from your issues and prove that her own husband isn’t a mess also, at the expense over throwing her closeness with you under the bus.

Are you sure that she’s got a good heart?
As an outsider it looks like she wants validation that she’s making the right decision of staying by proving that people with that issue can be fixed. It’s one thing for her to support her h while he tries the fix but completely inappropriate that she’s trying to fix your ex too.
FWIW I think that you’ve made the right decision and that this friend is prioritising her need for validation through rescuing without considering your feelings. I think that she’s massively overstepped and would not discuss the topic of my ex or the rescue therapy in future.

I'd back away from the friend. She's too caught up in being the Saviour and that creates a complete conflict of interest between you, your ex, her and her husband - who might not appreciate her having private meetings with your ex, irrespective of him also having the same issue (which she hasn't 'fixed' in fifteen years - because it's impossible, frankly).

You do not want to be dragged into a potential affair/utter clusterfuck situation and, like with your ex, you did not cause, create or cure the issue, so you're going to have to leave them to get on with it.

She probably doesn't want to end up single and sees you not being able to fix the your DH's issues and is terrified it's going to happen to her so she's projecting massively and overstepping.

She's not yet accepted that women are not rehab centres for broken men children who need to sort their own shit out.

I do not think you are over reacting at all. Although as you said, she is doing this from a good place, however it is completely out of order that she didn't check with you first. I would be furious and also feel betrayed. This is crossing a line and I would find it very difficult to move forward with the friendship.

If anything, she has completely no consideration for your feeling here, this is very new and you're going through alot. It sounds like she is desperate to fix him in order to prove she can fix her own DH. Regardless, you are her friend, not him and she's totally by passed your feelings in this situation.

Have you told her how you feel?

I actually think you’re under-reacting OP, I’d be furious. Your friend has no real prior relationship with your partner and on being told you’ve made the difficult and brave decision to put yourself and your children first, she inserts herself into the situation to support HIM?! I’d be totally withdrawing from the friendship, her priorities are all wrong.

It's possible that you being strong enough to end your relationship is very confronting for her - she knows deep down that she should also leave but can't. So to avoid these feelings she is switching to trying to fix your husband, to reassure herself that she is making the right choice by staying in her marriage.
Her actions are not about what's going on with your marriage and are all about what's happening in her marriage being projected onto your situation.
It is hurtful and confusing for you, but I would suggest that you take some deep breaths and do your best to ignore it and see how things play out. In time she may realise how inappropriate she is being and still be able to be there for you as a friend, or she may not - cross that bridge when you come to it.
Right now focus on yourself and your kids. Well done for doing what you have done!

It's the hope that's the worst of it.

I would take a similar approach to you in this situation. He cannot be your priority now and if he does recover fantastic, but I fully understand you not wanting to be part of that. You've tried for long enough & I'm sure it must have been very draining.

She doesn't seem to be as far down the road as you and is desperately clinging to the optimistic hope that someday it will all be better.

She may even but proven right in time and I hope she is but I wouldn't share her viewpoint. The stats aren't in her favour.

Neither of you are wrong. I just suspect you are letting your head & logic guide you. She is using her heart & hope guide her.

I would be absolutely fucking furious. How dare she inject herself into your relationship with your husband, which is exactly what she is doing. Does she fancy herself to be some sort of rehab for broken men? She doesn't have enough of her own shit to deal with? She hasn't just crossed a line, she's annihilated it.

I would not be able to move past this.

Well I would be absolutely furious and tell.her straight how inappropriate it was to contact him after you confided in her. It's zero to do with her, and she's broken your trust. I wouldn't be able to trust her again and would be distancing myself from her.

This sounds very hurtful. You have confided in your friend and trusted that she will support you and put your needs first. Instead your friend has projected her hopes of saving/fixing her own husband onto your situation, and in doing so she has not listened to you, has interfered without your consent, and has not respected your knowledge, feelings and decisions.

She is indirectly suggesting that you have given up on your husband too soon, or that a meeting with her will get through to him more than four years of effort from you!

Have you thought about saying to her that although she means well, you don’t want her to interfere in what is a sensitive situation and you would like her to cancel the meeting with your ex husband? Is that what you would like, for them not to meet?

Then actually her husband's in pretty much the same position that she is. OK she might say hello to your husband in passing, but she doesn't know him.