AIBU for refusing to meet my husband’s ex to discuss the affair? It’s been over a decade now.

[Greeneham]

12 years ago I started sleeping with my friend’s husband it was casual I just thought it would fizzle out. About 9 months into us sleeping together, seeing each other, going on trips (he would tell her it was work trips abroad) he decided to leave her and try to see if we can have a relationship. We have since married and have a 5 year old boy and life’s moved on really.

Last week his ex wife messaged me and asked to meet up and talk. She told me she was still quite hurt and it’s something that has affected her a lot. I responded and told her I’m not sure if meeting is a good idea but I’m sorry for how things happened I accepted my part to play in the affair and I did tell her I’ve moved on I can’t keep apologising and she also doesn’t need to forgive me.

I don’t really see any value in meeting up. What I did was wrong and karma will probably get me for it at the same time I love my husband he makes me very happy we have a lovely son who makes us both very happy. I’d rather just move forward. 8 years isn’t a long marriage but it’s been the best 8 years of my life so far I’d rather just continue the life that we have. We both did a terrible thing I’m not excusing that but also it’s been over a decade now. I don’t want to meet up and talk things out.

Once again the OP is getting the scarlet letter treatment, the number of bitter unhappy women here is off the scale! I am in a long term relationship which is the product of my partner cheating on his wife and my previous 11 year relationship was also the result of an affair. All the clichés "once a cheater, always a cheater" or "karma will get you" are for the most part soothing mantras which will not prove true. In my first relationship the husband was an all time cheater, with tons of different women and in his own house ; we met and he did not cheat - maybe he was tired, maybe he was satisfied with me I don't know; in my current relationship my partner had never once cheated on his wife in 22 years of marriage. Some people cheat and have affairs, some don't and will happily stay married/in long term relationships. People change or evolve or mature and in OP's case, there is absolutely no point in meeting with this woman. You do not owe her this, it will hurt her more than help her and if she says she misses the friendship then I'd say it's sad and she also needs to be told, gently, that things have indeed moved on.

Ah the way you negate - you aren't married to her ex husband. You married the man who was married to her whom you had an affair with.

You broke up their marriage and then married her husband.

AIBU really is unhinged. So many people just happy to have someone to berate and shame.

What do you all get out of this?

It continues the selfishness to not meet her

Wrong. I'm not bitter nor am I unhappy or miseable. My hubby is amazing.

We are just appalled at such awful, abhorrent behaviour - happy people can still feel this way. It isn't all miserable people that think cheating is the lowest of the low.

A sense of superiority. Several posters also think they are really clever and biting.

They aren't. They just come across as bitter.

But it isn't the lowest of the low is it.
She hasn't murdered anyone.

She may have wanted children with him but he kept saying he wasn’t ready. Or perhaps they tried but never conceived.

So this woman that everyone is calling horrible names and describing as a terrible unforgivable person is somehow going to be a help to this pitiful woman that is destroyed and had her life permanently ruined?

Odd narrative.

Not even close.

Agreed. It’s like “The Lottery”.

OP, you come across as lacking empathy which I’m not the first to mention. A lot of us have likely come across the odd person IRL like yourself (and odd they are, to say the least). Can’t imagine what attracted another oddity like your DH except you are both probably similar types. For the sake of your children, you both need head back to therapy.

The meeting with the friend is pointless because it won’t actually mean a thing to you, OP. It’s clear you couldn’t give one hoot about anything you did. Don’t flatter yourself though your friend is desperate to rekindle a friendship. She’s clearly a feeling, thinking, emotional human which is miles ahead of you, OP. Probably best if she did change her mind and put any thought of you and your equally repulsive DH firmly in a huge pile of manure.

”It’s what I deserve,” will be your response. Ok, robot.

No it isn't.
You only go to prison if you break the law and there are set measurable consequences for law-breaking.
Once you've 'done your time' you get a "spent conviction".
Cheating isn't illegal and there's no tangible punishment for the 'wronged' party despite the fallout lasting possibly years with lives being upended.
That's what rankles.

Of course I’d have an issue with it and maybe that’s exactly what he’ll do

Like how you casually started this with ‘so I started sleeping with my friends husband’ like you were walking her dog. Quite telling of your character. Meeting her is the least you could do.

Tbh I wouldn’t meet up with her for her own sake more than anything else. She was treated badly, by her husband and her friend but this is just self harm at this point.

I get people are people and stuff happens and no-one is owed a relationship and no-one has to stay. But feel extremely sorry for her, it’s such a massive betrayal it must have a long term impact but again no-one gains anything from reconnecting. She needs to let it go for herself.

This is such bitter bollocks.

OP has owned what she's done.

She should never have started this on MN.

After so many years no, I wouldn’t meet up. After a year maybe, but not now.

I do think though op that he doesn’t do the same to you. Actually no, I hope he does. That will be the karma you deserve.

I’m not bitter either and a happy person. We know life is unfair and good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. Doesn’t mean we have to like it.

You can't make consensual, normal adult sex illegal in law with a prison sentence just because it means breaking a promise. Cheating is shit but that's absolutely oppressive. There's a limit on what the state should be able to forbid you to do.

Marriage is a contract that relies, among other things (cheating really isn't the only thing you can do wrong) on fidelity. Break that clause and you can dissolve the contract. You can't place further state restrictions on it.

What people think of it is up to them.

Agreed. Whatever her motives for wanting to see OP it won't help her because there's no answer OP can give.

People keep telling you that you should consider doing this for her benefit, not yours, and you keep responding that you don’t think it will help, that you don’t know what you would say, that you have moved on. I think you are scared to meet her, because this would be a situation you wouldn’t be in control of. You wouldn’t be setting the agenda, you would be answering her questions and addressing her grief and anger. Only you know whether you really have the strength of character to do this one thing for the person whose life you obliterated - but if you don’t, then at least face up to the fact that it’s cowardice and nothing else.

I get that, but thinking “here’s one, let’s attack her!” is sick.

Either the OP has had her own form of punishment, as she’s explained or she isn’t going to care anyway.

Why is it yours or anyone else’s besides the ex and their families to judge?

Why would u wish that fallout on an innocent child?
What's wrong with you to have such a sense of revenge against someone you've never met?

Who’s bitter and unhappy? 😂

You’re getting it twisted. I think cheating men are as bad, if not worse, than the women they cheat with generally. A random woman on a night out? I wouldn’t feel she was to blame. I’d feel pity that she was so desperate for validation and lacking in self-esteem, sure, but I wouldn’t blame her.

I am never surprised to hear a man has cheated, I would expect it from a good percentage of them. I would blame him, but the woman? No, because let’s face it - a cheating piece of shit man is no prize really.

In this case though, she was the best friend. This woman has confided in the OP, no doubt supported her through hard times and celebrated her successes. If your husband turns out to be a piece of shit, you expect your best friend to be there for you. My relationship with my best friend is more important to me than a relationship with any man, so yes the OP is “worse” than the husband in this scenario.

It doesn’t mean I want her to suffer for the rest of her life, or believe karma will get her. She might be a totally different person now, who knows.