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.

You are correct- this does not sound healthy at all. Neither for you or for her.
Whatever unresolved issues she has at this stage have to be worked out with a professional. There's nothing you can do to fix it at this stage, and it's ridiculous to think you can be friends.
The most courageous thing you can do now is tell her you cannot be friends, you cannot offer closure and cut any avenues of contact.
May you and your husband will het uour comeuppance/ maybe you won't. This has to come to an end though. There's nothing to salvage at this point.

Potentially I agree by without any context I think there are so many unknowns OP wouldn't be unreasonable to say no. I don't actually think it would help anyone anyway but that's irrelevant.

😂
Can it be arranged

The assumption that original wife is still stewing and wants revenge is wild, or that she’s childless so she must be unhappy.

She’s been married again. Chances are she’s completely over cheating ex and has with time, forgiven them both. While your friendship will never be what it was, could it be that she wants to call a truce and be on better terms?

I’m just using the word in a literal sense.

You are not using the word in the literal sense at all. It wasn't a mistake, it was an awful thing you deliberately chose to do - repeatedly, and sustained over a period of time.

By your own account these choices have led the best 8 years of your life. You are happy, married, have a 5 year old child, pregnant with number two and ready to move on/ not interested in meeting with your former friend even though she would wish to.

None of this is appropriately captured/ described by the claim that you supposedly feel you "made a mistake". That's not honest at all.

Indeed - some people just love this kind of stuff - I reckon too many episodes of Eastenders. And you have no idea how the ex wife might be - the last thing OP needs if pregnant is being spouted a load of upset vitriol that the ex may well be storing up - yes OP did a shitty thing and is aware of it and feels bad , raking over old muck won’t help and meanwhile the H will be sat there cool as mustard having very much been the 50/50 party to this

Give it a rest

I’ll send my postcode. I think it should be a bank holiday

Fair enough

She did say she wants to be on better terms I’m not sure what that entails but I can’t see a friendship with her after everything. I don’t even know where we’d start

People can be left with massive betrayal trauma, cptsd, flashbacks, constant looping in their brains of past events that didn’t add up, the why of it all. The fact she left the country is very telling … it must have been incredibly painful for her. Unless you’ve experienced severe betrayal you really just don’t know. You’ve moved on OP because you didn’t lose anything. You don’t have trauma or cognitive dissonance … you know what happened behind the scenes and the why of it all … it’s easy to move on when you got the outcome you wanted .. of course you can move on. I’m not judging you.. but I think you need to sit with the realisation that your actions and his have severely damaged someone. Severely. Possibly permanently. You’re not carrying the consequences, she is. Do I think meeting her will help her.. probably not .. do I think you owe it to her for her to find that out for herself … yes.. you do owe her that. It’s not nice to leave someone broken on the ground and just never look back. Yes you can’t apologise every day or live with guilt every day… what’s the point. But you can give her what she’s asking for now, she deserves that.

@Greeneham , 100% this. You have moved on, that’s nice for you but that poor woman was betrayed by her ‘friend’ and her husband and now she is trying to move on. You owe her this meeting in my opinion.

You'll get yours.

It doesn't matter if it's about her feelings, the OP admits that what hapened was wrong etc but she has no obligation to be free therapy for his ex. If she's, the ex, allowed to start now the OP will never be rid of her.

I think I would probably speak to her but not meet up. I think that the meet up has the potential to be very difficult for you in terms of guilt - maybe she met her second husband in a time at which she wanted to settle down to repair the loss, maybe she wanted kids and can’t have them, maybe she is feeling extremely low about having lost the man that is now your husband. But maybe she isn’t and the failure of another marriage has prompted her to look at things afresh. You did something bad and should feel awful for her about it, but I don’t agree that you have to live in a state of misery or expect your life to fall apart. I’d be kind and generous towards her, whilst maintaining a level of healthy skepticism about having an ongoing friendship.

What did you want to put out into the world by posting that?

This. You cannot keep doing the 'you owe her'. At some point OP is allowed to protect herself. And if she's decided it's more than a decade later pregnant with a child, then that's ok. Fucks sake.

Nasty.

Im good. Im not fucking other people's husbands. Ill take whats coming to me.

Well no one here knows what you’ve done, do they? But we see your character in a single post.

I can't stand it.

The concept of karma isn't some supernatural force of justice that makes sure everyone gets what they deserve. Clearly, many people don't get what they deserve, good or bad.

Karma is a complex, nuanced concept but in a nutshell, it essentially means that your actions now shape your future, and your past actions shaped your present.

If you think there's some cosmic force of vengeance out to attack everyone you don't approve of, that's you believing in your own personal God. Start a religion and do some good with it. Fundraise or something.

That's not what karma is.
God alive.

That, like so very many people, she doesn't know what karma is but she likes to use it to threaten people she doesn't know. It's a vengeful God for this millennium.

That can't work, can it.
I think in any other circumstances you would have just closed it down but maybe deep down you feel some empathy for her situation and want to try and make some amends with her. I would say there is a minimal chance of a meeting having any positive outcomes.
And you're right. There has to be some stage when you shouldn't have to accept being berated for a decision or action that you made years ago. People that actually do kill people, by poor decisions like dangerous driving, and get convicted of manslaughter are permitted to move on by society in less time than since you had an affair.

Not even a vengeful God so much as they believe vengeance belongs to them. And you can feel the twisted enjoyment.