Divorcing Friends

[Stickinthemuddle]

Pretty sure everyone is BU but would appreciate some perspective!

I’ve been friends with a couple since school- nearly 30 years. Equally friends with both.

The husband 2 years ago began an affair and they’re now divorcing. He got caught out and the wife took it really really badly, was really spinning out for a whole year.

The husband is still with the woman and they’re living together. The wife has started dating pretty regularly.

Me and 2 other long standing friends have been socialising with the wife openly throughout and have been discreetly maintaining contact with our friend the husband too. It’s now got to the stage where we’d like to meet his girlf (and he’s basically said it’s both of them or nothing too). Given how the wife has been I think she will just totally go off the rails if she finds out we’re meeting them and possibly becoming friends with his new partner- despite her talking about us maybe meeting this guy she’s been seeing.

I don’t know what to do. We seem to either have to continue keeping secrets from our friend the wife or lose one of them as friends we can regularly see as we always have.

Cross with both of them were in this position and can also see both points of view. She’s honestly fine now, she’s not unwell or depressed any more but I imagine will be pissed off which feels like she’s telling us who we can and can’t see I suppose.

What to do?! We just want to do pub quizzes etc!

Karma takes no prisoners op. I hope your own friends are better than you, you could quickly find yourself on the other side of this equation….in fact it’s very likely given your own dh seems to have no issue with it! My dh would want nothing to do with the scoundrel!

@Mariposistaaa

I don't know how you think like that about your remark about the wife whose was cheated on,
her being as bad as ex husband,
just cause she is back on dating scene too,

Have you ever thought the soon to be ex wife 🤔 could still be struggling with her self esteem and being on the dating scene could be a way of trying to boost her fragile sense of self,
looking for validation in men that she is still acctractive,

even if her self cofince has been restored to certain extant
she sounds like she is in her way just trying to make the best of orginal shit situation in her own mind,

She needs to be extra careful she is not on a rebound and emotionally needy so she doesn't attract the wrong types of men on the dating scene...

OP - kindly - you need to recalibrate here.

An affair is not a mistake. It’s a selfish course of action that causes heartache, pain and emotional destruction beyond imagination. Please don’t try and offset the wife’s behaviour post-affair discovery as anything other than the reactions of a victim. Not right, but she has lost any sense of control of her life. Her reality was stolen from her so the husband could “find happiness”.

You are actively trying to minimise the actions of this man in order to soothe your somewhat spineless “staying out of it” response. I understand that, but you are being pretty fucking cruel, especially if it’s just so you can not confront any pain and “do pub quizzes”.

Ultimately, do what you want. But the wife is not - in any way whatsoever - unreasonable to react to you hanging out with the two people who destroyed her life. And remember they did so in a way that will have fundamentally have changed her ability to trust herself, as well as others. And - crucially - they could have avoided it. They CHOSE an affair.

I don’t know if you have an ability to truly empathise, but the cruelty involved in an affair is impossible to describe. Stop minimising it.

@Stickinthemuddle

Let's be honest straight

You are a really shit friend

You are making every excuses under the sun for her soon to ex husband's shitty behaviour,

You even imply accuse her of being dishonest about her personal financial aspects of her in regards of her impending divorce!
which is ridiculous 🙄,

What do you expect after all the shit she has experinced from him,
He her soon to be ex is hardly a epitome of virtue,

Personally i hope she takes him to the financial cleaners and is scheming and ruthless with it,

She deserves it,

I hope she wises up in some way and her female intuition kicks in or someone who knows you makes her wise up to what a shallow self serving shitty kind of a shit so called friend of hers,

You really are,

She really deserves much better friends than you could ever be

Do her a favour drop out of her life for good be honest to her first and say you can't choose sides,
as you want to stay loyal to her soon to be ex husband

So she knows the measure of you ...

Just remember secrets have a way of coming out and not normally in the best way.

"I don’t know what to do. We seem to either have to continue keeping secrets from our friend the wife or lose one of them as friends we can regularly see as we always have."

Start as you mean to continue. Do you really want a friendship to be continued to be built on lies?? Reverse it, would you be happy to be treated this way?

I had been good friends for 25 years with a couple until recently. He was actually my friend first and we lift shared to work for two years until I had DS and by the time I had returned they had moved so we didn’t commute together anymore. We were friendly as a couple and went out, our children played together and we even went on holiday together.

He had an affair. They broke up, neither said why in the first instance.

I made my choice and she remains my friend, I’m helping her this week sort out some stuff to prepare the house for sale. I will never speak to him again.

People fall out of love, I have two other friends divorcing as well. In both instances it’s been instigated by the women and guess what no affair. It’s sad when couples break up but it’s not just the actual physical act of adultery it’s the lies. If someone can lie to the person they purport to love the most in the world how could you ever trust a world they say.

She had a terrible time, I’m glad to say she is improving. When I went to see her after I found out she told me everything. She was grateful and I specifically said I’m on your side and then many choice words about him. It really upset their teen children and one in particular has been very vocal about how much she hates it all.

Mistakes are made but you don’t accidentally fall in to a vagina. If you do this then you are no friend to her.

You have never met the OP.
What a load of crap.

So at the time of the split, your more overt loyalty was to her. It seems like in the time since, you've gone off her almost and now want to level things up. Rather you think that he's done nothing wrong, other than fall in love, and she's done bad things such as with money.

It's understandable you want to try and hang onto friendships with both of them but there has to be respect and understanding.

He did do a shitty thing and I don't believe for one minute he was unhappy for years, he's just rewriting history to suit his agenda.

The fact that he's said it's both of them or neither of them shows he has no respect for you guys.,what he should be saying is thank you for sticking with me and I totally understand if even for now you don't want to meet my girlfriend. The fact that he's giving you an ultimatum is very telling.

Re the 50th just tell him that much as you would like to invite him you don't want his ex to feel uncomfortable on this occasion you don't feel it's appropriate he comes. It's not that hard a decision to make.

Honestly, you're a grown woman and it's up to you who you're friends with but seriously, stop minimising his behaviour and justifying what he's done. He couldn't find his voice? For years? Yet was happy to have a baby?

Your mate had her world ripped out under her.... the future she thought she had was gone. Of course she was spinning out. When my marriage ended (no cheating involved) I was like a bloody loony for months. It's scary, it's hard and unless you've been there you have no idea. Add a baby into the mix and that must been so much harder. So rather than believing and justifying his actions and vilifying her maybe find some compassion and empathy and don't put her in situations that are uncomfortable.

To me it sounds like your DH is the one who wants him there, you are struggling with this idea because you know it's the wrong decision to make.

They both ‘could help’ falling in love!

So don't see him then you won't have to berate him. Are you married? Careful your partner doesn't think you're condoning this man's behaviour

He would have told them. He read the script. It wasn't sexless she'd just had a baby

I'd always side with the innocent party. I have no interest whatsoever of being "friends" with someone who can treat their partner in the way he did, it shows how fickle and weak minded he is. And now he's shacked up with the OW? Lucky her 🙄

Are you a good friend? Or are you just after a good time? A good friend wouldn't think twice about this.

@pictoosh

I am just going by the way that @Stickinthemuddle has described her dilemma in her situation on mumnet,

If this is really a true thread
not a made up senerio one?

@pictoosh if you are a "Cool friend" type of friend 😎
Who would sit on the fence in this particular kind of situation and try to be loyal friends to both of them,

Thats up to you,

You don't know @Stickinthemuddle in the either in real life too L.o.l 😂

Works both ways in that opinion of yours,

On your basis of your post,

how can you form a opinion about my opinions too..

What a load of bollocks and Crap you talk too.!👄

Life is not black and white but your responses and reasoning show you are a terrible friend to her .

You come across as pretty awful with your 'justifications' of continuing the friendship with the husband.

Hopefully she'll realise how awful a friend you are , picking over her life for your own gain !

I think it’s ok to meet the partner. People fuck up. It happens. For your husbands 50th you can clearly only invite one and it should be the one who didn’t fuck up.

But you don’t sound like you were equally friends with both, you sound like
you don’t like the wife very much at all.

Also - nah you don’t fall in love. You feed it.
You fall in love, even over a short period, because of dozens of choices you make. Every time you let a conversation go one way instead of another, every time you choose to share
something that increases intimacy, every time
you choose to seek someone’s company instead of avoid it……..choice after choice after choice leads to love. If you’re married - you don’t make the choices.

@Stickinthemuddle @pictoosh

I also think if he could shaft his soon to be ex wife like that,

when she was at her most vunerable like that looking after their 👶 baby,

I wonder 🤔 if also being so loyal to him as his friend will further sooner or later down the line

Come back to bite you in the arse in some other ways too,

His excuse for cheating on his wife

I lived under the shadow of my wife's personality and i couldn't find my voice

that's an orginal excuse that i haven't heard before,

It does come across as you are almost justifying his affair by calling her a big personality and all. Must have been so hard for him. Poor lamb.

I wouldn't want to associate with someone like him but since you seem okay with lying to your friend for your own benefit, well I guess we just have different moral codes.

Just tell her the truth and then she can cut you off and find better friends. I certainly wouldn't want to be your friend so you'd be doing her a favour.

@Stickinthemuddle

Ah bless 🙌 " I don't think "she soon to be ex wife really understands how We feel"
sad that we feel about having to choose sides 😔 as we dont want the 😩 stress of that in our comfortable world,
we don't want our good times social life to change in any way,
be affected either doing pub quizzes down our local,

Change can be so unsettling at times and the uncertainty that goes with it...

Why isn't 😪 life so straightforward and less complicated,
"look what having a friend fxcking up cheating ,
can mess up things in our lives...

Are you still also good friends with her ex-husband,
socialising with him and his new partner?

If you are, fair play - it’s virtually impossible to remain good friends with both partners in a scenario such as this, where there has been infidelity.

Oh well of course then that's ok then. FFS op just be honest with your friend, you're already showing bias when you chat about finances that she may or may not have hid. How do you know what he's doing behind caused doors in the same way? He seems to have done a good job of still appearing as the innocent party when it's a mess of his own cause when he's even got your sympathy here. If he had been upfront with his wife then maybe you could have tried to maintain both but when there's such a conflict here you can't. The fact she doesn't know you're still in touch with him and pretending to be on her side is wrong

“He’d been unhappy for years apparently and as the wife can be a big personality just struggled to find his voice”

Come on, you don’t buy this do you? He wasn’t unhappy enough to leave her or unhappy enough not to bring a child into the mix was he. Only became unhappy for years once he’d lined up a replacement. Tale as old as time (and obviously his wife’s fault of course, presumably she didn’t have this ‘big personality’ when he met, dated and married her).

@Gcsunnyside23 im trying to be on both sides I suppose. If I sound down on her it’s because he hasn’t said we can’t see her, it’s only her putting restrictions up.

I am surprised by the strength of feeling and will be sharing that I’m in contact with him.

You're a terrible friend and I hope she kicks you to the curb when you tell her that you've also been lying to her and seeing her ex behind her back.....
You have picked the wrong side.
I actually hope your DH cheats on you, and you can then decide if you want your close friends to go and meet him and his fuck buddy.

Of course he hasn't said you can't see her, he is the one in the wrong, who cheated on his wife who had just had a baby for a year. He is a liar. I don't know how you can defend him on the basis that she has a big personality and he couldn't find him voice. It's frankly pathetic.

If the woman you have supposedly supported through this could read this thread, I think she would make the decision for you. I wouldn't want a friend like you in my life in that position.