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.

I don’t think you should have to meet her. You’ve acknowledged what you did was wrong. I find it interesting that it’s you she wants to meet and not the ex-husband who was unfaithful to her.

I think she would be better speaking to a therapist than meeting you. There’s every chance that meeting you will cause her more harm than good anyway.

There are many of people here saying it’s not healthy for either of them.

And the posters saying this sound a great deal less emotional and more balanced than the ones screeching “you owe her”.

OP should focus on her child and her pregnancy.

Meet up, apologise, help her move on, she’s obviously stuck in the past and thinks meeting up will help.

I don’t think we will be getting ostracised from the community ? His friends are still his friends, his family is still his family same with my friends and family. The friends we shared still came to see our son when he was born etc. Maybe I’m from a horrible community from the looks of it. They know me and who I was in my 20s I different to who I am now.

I get it though.

I don’t think he’d meet up with her. She asked him a few years back after the divorce. He said he didn’t want to as there’s nothing left to really say she said she wanted answers he was honest and said there’s no answer he’s just a shit person.

You won't.
People just want to see you suffer.

You haven’t “moved on” though - you’ve done the antithesis of that, you’re still with the guy.

Moved on would be if you’d drawn a line under the relationship that was tainted by infidelity and found someone new and available.

As it is, you’ve decided to stay in that relationship.

Meeting up may not do anything for you but she clearly thinks it will do for her. I agree with those saying it’s the least you can do.

You may think you’ve drawn a line under things but she clearly thinks this would be useful to her in order to draw a line. You owe her that at least even if it’s uncomfortable for you. Go, and go with a non confrontational point of view of owning what you did wrong and how it could understandably have life long effects for her mental health, her self esteem and her ability to trust.

I’m afraid you don’t get to draw the line and pretend you didn’t hurt someone this badly to get your own happy ending.

Might be worth me saying that I’ve never been in the shoes of anyone in this scenario as I know the above is strongly worded - I don’t have an axe to grind.

That was unforgivable of him - he owe her direct answers to her specific questions.

Poor woman.

You should be upset for life!, people like you make me sick. You should talk to her and give her peace, it's the least you can do for that betrayal.

My opinion would be offer the phone call.
Don't offer your number, you can withhold yours & call her.
As you are pregnant you need to keep yourself safe.
What you owe her morally is for you decide.

I haven’t said that I didn’t hurt her?

And how does OP being 'upset for life' help anyone?

Illogical. They are still together 12 years on showing that it was not just a meaningless affair. I would take heart in that if I were the ex.

@Greeneham I hear contrition in your posts and I also can sort of understand why, especially since you're 6 months pregnant, you're hesitant to meet her in person. However, I also understand why she may feel she needs to meet (or at least speak) with you to get closure (in whatever form that may be). I think your offer of a phone call is about right. But I wouldn't prejudge that nothing will be able to come of it or that you've necessarily burnt all your friendship bridges with her. You have also repeatedly said here that there is nothing more you can say, or that at least you don't know what more you could say to her that won't be hurtful. In that case, I'd let her lead the conversation. She knows (or at least has some idea) what she wants to gain from contacting you now. Let her ask you whatever she needs to ask, and try to answer without letting your ego interfere. You are of course responsible for having set in motion something that has caused her great pain, but you are not responsible for how she is processing that pain. So don't try to be her shrink or conscience. That is, it's not for you to determine what might be useful or helpful to her: that's her decision to make. I'd be generous and give her the opportunity to make it. Good luck to all of you (and I don't wish you ill at all regardless of your past actions).

This is very good advice IMO.

@Greeneham
Since you came on asking for advice on whether to meet someone:

I think it would be unwise to meet her face to face and pregnant. The meeting could take a wrong turn and escalate and you don't need that.

A phone conversation would be just as good for this, and it reads as though you are going to offer that which I would say is the right thing to do - you are not responsible for her getting more upset by talking to you.

Yes what you both did was bad OP but you already know that. My advice would be not to meet the ex wife. I can see no benefit to her from the encounter, in fact quite the opposite. I'd also be rather suspicious of her motives after so many years. I know it's hard but after 11 years one would've hoped she'd moved on with her life. My DH had an affair so I know the devastation, but it's not going to define the rest of my life.

Deary me, bizarre amount of hate coming your way - married for nearly 35 years here.

Yep, you messed up, there ya go, shit happens. We don't have to be proud of it (doesn't sound like you are) but that doesn't mean we should be re-examining it over and over again. Plus, you're right, at a certain point it's really unhealthy to be carrying around a bag full of shame and thinking there's some form of eternal punishment.

As for some strange meet up for a chat with the OW a decade on, seriously? This is bunny boiler territory. The only way the ex will get closure is if she does the emotional labour. And that doesn't include forcing you to do some of the emotional labour, when pregnant, as seems to be the case here. Unlike many others, I'm actually getting a sense of why that marriage didn't work.

Unless you want her as part of your life and part of your consciousness, I'd keep away from her. There's no benefit to you or your family whatsoever. You don't owe her anything. Don't fall for it. Pretty psycho behaviour on her part. Do you need that in your life right now?

Look I’m not meeting up with her anytime soon. I’m 6 months pregnant yes I know you’ll all say you hope my baby dies and you hope I suffer or my children suffer too etc etc my children are innocent from my actions.

I will offer a phone call and see where we can go from there. The messages she sent were very lovely I don’t know how to feel she messaged out of the blue it’s been 11 years I don’t know what she’s up to she gave me a little update she’s recently split up with her husband and they didn’t have children and then that’s when she mentioned my son.

As much as you all think I shouldn’t have any say in anything I think I still have to think things through it’s been a long time I haven’t spoken to her or even see in her in all that time then suddenly she sees me a picture of us from 20 years ago and wishes me a happy belated 40th as it was only a few weeks after my birthday out of the blue.

Me suffering for the rest of my life for mistake I made in my 20s doesn’t necessarily help anyone as much you all think I deserve to suffer okay I agree but also who benefits from that.

Hard agree here.

Tbf I think it’s bad because I would never betray a friend like this and because I wouldn’t cheat on my husband. It’s not that controversial, I would just struggle to reconcile the person I think I am (honest, acts with integrity) with the person I would become which is someone who lies and pretends to be a friend to someone when I’m not.

How many times would OP have been with her friend, laughing and joking whilst knowing she was having sex with her husband. It’s that what gets me, if OP hadn’t known her at all I could understand. But to look a woman in the face and smile at her whilst I know I’m doing something behind her back that would destroy her is fundamentally dishonest I think, in a very deep way, you have to lie with words and your actions.

I’m not sitting in judgment of OP as such, just reflecting on why I would find this would be beyond the pale for me to do. I do also acknowledge that sometimes you may meet someone who is for you perfect but they are with someone else. Life isn’t perfect and neither are people, it is what it is and whats happened has happened. I just think the biggest favour OP can do is to ask this woman to stop contacting her. It’s been a long time and she hasn’t been able to move on and contact with OP isn’t going to improve the situation for her. I don’t wish ill on the OP at all, I couldn’t behave in the way she behaved but people are rarely simply good or simply bad. Life’s just very messy sometimes and all of us have probably fallen short of being our best selves.

I sincerely wish the best for the ex and I really hope she can move on to closure on this but when you’ve been deeply wounded it can take a long time to heal. She absolutely didn’t deserve this but she also has to give herself the gift of letting stuff she can’t control go, she can’t do that and whilst I agree OP doesn’t seem overburdened with empathy this is one thing OP can do for her. Because the answer is “you had something I wanted, so I took it and he came along willingly and it was more important that I get what I want than the harm you suffered”. The reality is as well that the marriage may not have survived anyway if he had his head turned by OP, it could have been some other woman. But she’s not going to see that, she’s looking for an answer that doesn’t exist. OP has nothing for her. What she will see is that OP has her husband, has the family she perhaps thought would be hers and kept the friends. I mean OP basically won and I don’t know how healthy it is for the ex to know all this and see it as well.

Tbf to OP she could see her and rub it in but she’s not and she’s accurate in that nothing she says or does will make any of this better. I can’t imagine letting something like this haunt me for 11 years, at this point I would think it’s tipped inti a mental health problem if I’m being completely honest and the best thing for her is no contact. I don’t think theres harm in a phone call if she has something she wants to say but past that no, this isn’t good for her.

Of course there are consequences. I have lived those consequences and so has OP. You wake up every day knowing that you set a grenade off in your life and the lives of others and you get the wrath of MN and others when they learn of what you did.
They don't involve usually being ostracised by everyone you know because humans have the gift of forgiveness and understanding. And tbh
I think people who have admitted their culpability, the fact they did a bad and wrong thing, who worked through what led them down that path with professional help and so on, they don't deserve to be ostracised by everyone.
People can be rehabilitated. Or is it simply death penalty for anyone who has committed a crime?

Meet her. You owe her answers to questions that have been burning in her head for years. Poor woman

If this friend had moved on from this, she wouldn't be asking to meet up. There'd be no point.

If she were at a good place in her life now, she'd be wanting to just put you and your dh as a memory.
She may even be neutral about it now but she wouldn't want to meet up that's for sure.

I've moved on from exes who have treated me like shit.
I don't want them to come to harm any more, I don't want to see them, though.
What's the point?

She's clearly got some info that your dh has cheated on you, or been having an affair with him herself.

You might as well meet up, she'll only write to you or something.

Not as satisfying about telling you face-to-face but it'll have to do.

May as well rip off the band aid.

For you . Not for her clearly. But then again it's all about you 🙄