To tell the fiancée about her husband-to-be's past affair?

[PastMistakes]

Long-time member, have name-changed. I'm really unsure about this so I'd appreciate honest answers. I'm prepared to be flamed.

Back story: as a student I had a part-time job where I worked with a man who I got on with very well, but was not especially attracted to. Nothing went on whilst we worked together.

I eventually left my job, and moved to a new flat elsewhere in town. Ex co-worker owned a car, and offered to help me move a few things. One thing led to another and we ended up having sex. I was flattered, but thought this would just be a one-time thing. However, he was quite keen and so it carried on fairly regularly for a couple of months until I ended it after meeting the man who is now my DH.

Ex co-worker was, and continues to be, in a long-term, monogamous relationship. I was aware of this, but I'm not really here to defend what I did or explain why I did it. I never met the girlfriend, and at the time I had absolutely no interest in 'stealing' her boyfriend or letting her know about the affair in any way.

Fast forward a few years, and I hear through the grapevine that ex co-worker proposed to his girlfriend and they are engaged to be married next year. Ex co-worker has intermittently tried to contact me in the intervening years, but he's apparently lost my number and can only do this though emails that I ignore. (DH has always been aware of everything, and I have never been - or ever will be - unfaithful to him.)

I have no great desire to, but should I/WIBU to now let the fiancée know about the past affair before she married this man? Would she want to know? Or should I just leave well alone?

And, frankly, is there ever any innocent reason to contact the person you cheated on your fiancée with?

You're on very shaky foundations if you're trying to take the moral high ground on his cheating.

Codeine the OP isn't claiming any moral high ground with that question (she hasn't claimed any throughout this thread). She's merely pointing out that he is almost certainly still trying it on now, years later.

Charolais How do you know their marriage is wonderful? How do you know he’s not had several affairs in all these years?

Things are never as rosy as they seem! And one thing is for DAMN sure - Once a cheater always a cheater!

Definitely tell her

Tell your DH about your part in it too, if after 6 years you've found your morals. Then nobody's in the dark are they?

Mind you telling this woman may not have the outcome you hope for. You'll be telling her you had an affair with her man. Shoot the messenger may be end result

Because I am not the same person as I was 6 years ago. Are you?

Yes, in that I wouldn't have shagged someone elses boyfriend then same as I wouldn't now.

Do you think it would have been better for me to find a way of contacting her and letting her know at the time? Was it my responsibility to let her know?

it would have been better had you not fucked her boyfriend repeatedly. It was your resposibility to not do that.

The fact that you are even considering for a moment contacting her says you are no better now than you were then.

He will know you’re opening an reading them if he has any kind of tracking on his email. And as a programmer you’ll know this. It may be a bit of hassle but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just block him. You are getting something from reading the emails - you know what’s in them, so you’re reading them not deleting them unread.

Notanumberuser as a programmer she will be well aware of how to block email tracking like that, and most probably have that blocking turned on by default. But regardless, it's has nothing whatsoever to do with the OP's current dilemma. Whether she reads the emails or sends them straight to spam. Is curious about them or bored by them. It makes no difference to the AIBU she came here with.

She’s aware he knows she is reading them.

Why is she reading them? She knows they’re chatty and full of detail -she wouldn’t know that if she wasn’t reading them.

That’s not deleting them unread or sending them to spam.

I’d be looking to why I felt the need to read them if I were the op. But I wouldn’t have shagged an attached person in the first place. Not even as a teen.

Are you ok OP? This has been a very rough thread for you. I'm not surprised to hear that you were dealing with the aftermath of an assault. Men like this are like sharks and they can smell blood in the water. I think you're as much a victim of him as his soon-to-be-wife.
Do you have RL support for any of this? You give the impression here that everything is fine in your life now, and I hope it really is.

Where does she say she's aware he knows she's reading them? She responded to him once 5 years ago and told him it was weird he was emailing. I would probably read them because I'd be curious about what they say. No other reason.

I've never slept with someone attached (even as a teen) that I know of either, but all the shit on this thread that is being thrown at the OP is ridiculous. You're trying to dictate the way you think she should privtely react to further advances in order to what? Justify how contrite she really is? Prove that she isn't some Jezzabel man stealer who convinced the poor vulnerable male into her wicked boudoir? It's just bitchy, controlling crap. Focus your ire on the adulterer, instead of telling the OP to let him off the hook and flagellate herself.

Where did you get all that in my post?

All I’m saying is he knows she’s reading them and she could do with unpicking why she still after all this time feels the need to read them. The excise of it would be a hassle doesn’t really wash.

I would suggest the OP blocks him and doesn’t read the emails. I don’t’ know what else is going on in her life but the fact that she is still readying emails from this man suggests that she is not completely happy and is getting something emotionally from reading emails and feeling that this man still desires her.

Otherwise, why wouldn’t you just either send them to spam and let them auto delete or block him or just delete them unread (which she doesn’t do)

OP all people mistakes and to err is to be human . so let the past go and BLOCK him .
He is clearly synonymous with a very painful period in your life

Leave the past in the past and even if she does find out - you get better protection legally as a married person anyway

OK, those who are saying it will ruin the wife's life to tell her, explain to me how the wife's life isn't ALREADY ruined?

I don't understand the argument that the caring thing to do is to stay well out and let her be humiliated in her palatial false consciousness. How is that kind? Living with a lie is no kind of life. Just because a revelation will cause hurt is not an argument against doing it. No-one wants to hear that they have cancer - it's an incredibly painful diagnosis to receive. But a necessary one if a patient is to be able to give their informed consent to treatment - and hopefully a cure. Should the doctors just hang back, as they did in the nineteenth century for fear of hysteria, and not tell a grown, adult, competent and capable woman what is wrong with her?

It makes no sense as a course of action, morally or practically.

Wow a few bitter women on this thread. Not sure why OP is getting such a hard time?
I would tell her. It's the fact he is still sending the odd email. She can do what she wants with the information but if it was me yes I'd be devastated but would rather know the truth.

Oh and OP, I'm so sorry to hear about your assault. The fact that some people are still trying to heap opprobrium on you for what you did, when you clearly already feel bad about it, in light of that piece of information, is a bit sickening. I think many women experience a kind of sexual disengagement after being assaulted, and it can lead to some decisions that they wouldn't otherwise make. Please don't blame yourself too harshly, and ignore the very Manichean view of some posters on here. Mumsnet is not the real world.

The vitriol levelled at the OP by some of the posters here is appalling.

No one least of all her is saying what she did was ok. But she was a teenager and unattached. She made a mistake.

HE was the one in a relationship and by his continued emails hadn't changed a bit - now he is marrying this poor woman. Save your spite for the cheater in all of this!

When my ex cheated I hated the women he cheated on me with with a passion. In hindsight the ONLY person who owed me anything has the ONLY person who hurt me was the man who married me and fathered my children.

I'm split op? If it was me I would want to know.but we don't know what type of relationship the have now? Whats their sexual contract? He sounds predatory. Please block him.

Oh and acting out sexualy after an assault is a normal reaction. You sound likea a good woman op.

How often are the emails over what space of time?

I still think the OP should walk away and not make it her mission to inform the wife-to-be. To me, it is wrong to do it. Sometimes you have to let things rest. To me it honestly seems as if - by telling her - it is some sort of exorcism of your past. You don't know after all these years what their relationship is like, leave well alone.

For those who are adamantly on the side of contacting her, what would be your time limit? 10 years, 20 years, more? I'm sorry but to me it's just troublemaking and all this 'she deserves to know' does not wash with me. There will always be another reason for doing it.

roussette because she hasn't yet married him. Because he continues to try his luck with OP years later. Because being engaged hasn't stopped this behaviour. Because in all likelihood OP isn't the only one.

We don't know what their relationship is like, we don't know the circumstances at all, OP doesn't know the wife-to-be, lives can be very complicated and no one can tell me it is 100% altruistic and selfless. Somewhere along the line telling the wife-to-be will be cathartic for the OP. If this were a friend she'd known for a long time it would be different.

I'm not really sure what blocking the one or two emails a year is meant to prove? I'm not asking him to send them to me, and I don't reply. Reading and deleting is not an upsetting experience - and they absolutely do not make me feel 'desired'! They're, for me, basically just quite weird spam I get very infrequently. He's not bombarding me, if that's the impression some posters are getting.

Everything is happy and stable at the moment in my life, thank you to the posters who have asked. My DH is a wonderful and caring man who, having led a full and complex life of his own, is well aware that I made foolish mistakes before I met him. This is definitely the worst one, but we have open conversations about most things. I never sought support for the assault (I posted about it on the 'one sentence that changed your life' thread under NameChange1989 - I don't really want to go into it here), but my DH is extremely patient and supportive and the work I'm doing at the moment is very engrossing so we talk about that and I suppose that's very therapeutic if that's the word for it.

I said in my original post that I don't have any great wish to hurt this woman. I don't know what I'd do if someone came and told me my DH had slept with them whilst we were together. Be sick, probably. But I think I'd want to know - and I was just asking the question about whether you think it's likely she would want to, too. It's a pretty lose-lose situation either way.

Some posters say I should not have even thought about it. I'm not sure what to say in response to that. I did think about it, after being told he was indeed still with his girlfriend and now actually engaged to her. But I questioned whether considering telling her was a reasonable line of thought and came here. I apologise if my thinking of telling her is offensive.

I don't really know what else to say.

Woah, paragraph fail! I definitely put breaks in there!

And I don't claim to be doing it selflessly. I think, on reflection, the thought to tell her is a selfish one because I was thinking that I would want to know if in her position. But, like I said, I questioned that thinking & asked here.

And yes, sorry, BoomBoomsCousin is right - I wasn't trying to take moral highground. Some posters have asked if the emails could be innocent and I was just trying to address that. It's difficult to communicate tone in text so I see how that sentence could be read differently, sorry.