I found out my wife and my best friend had a physical relationship before we got married, I don't know how to react

[jhkyg]

I genuinely don't know what to write or how I'm supposed to react to this.

My wife and I are both in our mid 40s. My best friend is also the same age. He has been my best friend since childhood. He's the godfather to our children, and my wife and I are godparents to his children.

For a bit more context, my wife and he are also very close friends. They actually knew each other before I knew either of them, and they've always had a very good friendship

Our families are extremely close. We normally see each other every week for breakfast or a BBQ in one of our gardens. We go on family trips together, celebrate birthdays and holidays together, and our children are all teenagers and are basically like cousins.

My wife and I have a genuinely good marriage. We've been together for decades, we love each other, we're financially comfortable, and as far as I knew there was absolutely nothing wrong between us.

Then on Friday night, my best friend told me he needed to confess something that had happened a very long time ago.

He told me that when we were 18, during a six month breakup between me and my now wife, he and my wife had a sexual relationship for around 2–3 months.

I honestly felt physically sick when he told me.

I didn't know how to react. I cried. He just stood there and kept telling me that it ended years ago, that nothing had happened since, and that I shouldn't be angry with my wife because we weren't together at the time.

I got angry with him and told him I didn't want him to contact me again. Then I went home.

For context, yes, I broke up with my wife when we were 18. I was an idiot teenager and I broke her heart. That's on me. We were apart for about six months, then eventually got back together. We've been solid ever since.

In all those years, I've never had a reason to believe she was cheating on me. Not once.

Yesterday, I told my wife what he'd confessed. At first she said she had kept it from me because she didn't want to lose me. She apologised for hiding it.

She confirmed that they had been together for around three months while we were broken up. She said they eventually stopped because they realised remaining friends was better for them, and then around three months later, she and I got back together.

But then she also told me that technically it was none of my business who she slept with while we were broken up. It was her body and she was single. If this had been some random person she slept with during those six months, I probably wouldn't care now.

But it wasn't some random person. It was my best friend. The man who stood beside me as my best man at our wedding. I've trusted for most of my life. I've allowed into my home every week. That man who is godfather to my children.

And they've both known about this for 26 years while I had absolutely no idea. That's the part I can't get past. I keep thinking about every BBQ, every family holiday, every time the four of us have sat together talking, and wondering whether they were both looking at each other and remembering something I didn't know. My wife keeps saying that nothing happened during our relationship and that she has loved me all these years. And honestly, I believe her But something has changed in my head. I can't look at my friend the same way anymore. I can't even look at their friendship the same way.

Part of me wants to completely cut him and his family out of our lives. No more breakfasts, no more BBQs, no more holidays together. I don't want my children caught in the middle, but at the same time I don't know how I'm supposed to carry on having him around as if nothing happened.

And then there's my wife. I know technically she didn't cheat on me. We were broken up.
But she deliberately kept this from me for 26 years, and so did he. I'm struggling with the fact that two of the people I trusted most in the world knew something incredibly significant about my own life that I didn't know. I don't know whether I'm overreacting because it happened so long ago, or whether the fact that it was my best friend and was deliberately kept secret makes this completely different.

But right now I feel hurt, betrayed, embarrassed and honestly a bit stupid and Jealousy so much

Get a grip. They were teenagers ! And you had dumped her.
Were you chaste for this entire 6 month break ??!!

you dumped her, she was single and could have sex with whoever she wanted. You were not in a relationship and it was nothing to do with you. I had an ex like this, broke up with me and such want me but didn’t want anyone else to have me.

I think you have massively over reacted here and are blowing up a successful marriage.

Your loss though 🤷‍♀️

I don't think anyone has done anything wrong. Especially since you broke up with her.

However I can also understand why it spells the end for your relationship. The emotional safety is eroded.

No I get it. I’d my dh has been sleeping with ym
best friend while we split then we got back together I’d want to know.

Otherwise in this situation I’d feel like they had been laughing at me behind my back. Like a mug playing happy families while they had this big secret. Especially after confiding in my friend that I wanted to do right and still loved my ex while they were fucking away.

I’ve never trust either of them again.

If I was the best friends wife I’d be pissed if I didn’t already know and want to stop the big family get togethers. But not as bad as being op.

Do you really consider them exes?! They were friends for years before a very brief teenage experiment.

Literally this.

The amount of posters I’ve seen on this thread telling OP to grow up, get over it etc, are the exact same ones forbidding their DHs to socialise with other mums on the school run, laying down the law about their partners female friends, kicking off about a female work colleague sending their husband a message outside of work etc.

I highly doubt they’d be so blasé about it if it were them in OP’s situation. Sure, it was “decades” ago, but I think OP should have been allowed to make an informed decision whether he wanted to rekindle the relationship after his best friend had been there too. You can argue that he has no right to know what his now-wife got up to during the brief time they split, but I think transparency and honesty would have been the best policy.

It isn't that she had sex when they'd split up. It's thst that this man has stayed close to them both and neither thought to tell the op. It is a bit weird.

I get it. If it was an old friend who you rarely see, I would say you were overreacting. But if they are still close friends then I get that you are hurt. I do wonder why your friend has told you now though? I think you need to speak to your wife and tell her how you feel. You may not get the response you want, but it will only fester otherwise.

Despite the technicalities of her/them not cheating, there is obviously a betrayal here.

I would feel embarrassed and foolish at this point, and i would question a lot of things.

I struggle to understand why they have kept it a secret from you, it's incredibly significant. I would be thinking of all thr time they've spent together and I'm sorry I would be looking at my kids and slightly wondering why my best friend agreed to be so close to them.

OP, would you have still resumed your relationship and married your wife if you had known this? Still have had your best friend as close?.

This is a crap situation and all these 'cool' mumsnetters saying THEY WERE ON A BREAK' would feel very different if they found out their best friend and husband had previously had a 6 month sexual relationship that they knew nothing about for over 20 years.

I have known a couple of people who have had best man before groom relationships and
and bridesmaid or sister having had a fling with groom years before.

People tend to have friendship groups that intermingle especially if they live long term in one place or have worked/been to uni or had other common ground

Difference in these cases is that no one is bothered as they have all moved on. There would be no histrionics over who had gone out with who.

I get the impression this is someone who wants to know everything but then cries when they get told everything

Why should they tell him? It’s private who you sleep with.

You're being a bit of a baby about this to be honest. You dumped your 18 year old girlfriend and she slept with her good friend while single. You since got back together and also became friends with this person. Neither of them did anything wrong. I can imagine they kept it a secret because you're the sort of person who would react like this. Although I am curious why you're being told now.

I think this is a tricky one. My first reaction was similar to lots of people here - it was decades ago, you weren't together, etc.

But it's not as simple as that, is it? It was decades ago to them, but YOU have only just found out and are trying to process this information that you feel has turned the foundations of your marriage and your friendship to sand.

Tbh I feel sorry for the wife. She got dumped, she started seeing the friend (maybe on the rebound?) then the guy who dumped her wants her back and she wants him too - but now she's in a shit situation where if she tells him, he might not want her (and you've confirmed that is probably what would have happened) even though she hasn't actually done anything wrong. So she risks losing you or she decides not to tell you and put it behind her. I can understand why she might have done that, and you've got 26 happy years that suggests it was a reasonable decision.

The friend, however, is another matter. He knew you wanted to get back with her and was actively deceiving you AND her (by keeping that info to himself). On the other hand, he was an 18 year old kid and who hasn't fucked up at that age?

But my main reason for thinking the friend is the problem here is, why the hell has he decided to tell you now? After all these years he's decided to pull the pin on the grenade and blow up your marriage. Why?? That hurts both you and your wife. Who does it advantage? Certainly not you or your wife. It does make me wonder if he's been holding this over her and threatening to tell you for years. Maybe he still holds a candle for her? That is obviously speculation but I think it's something you need to find out. What were his motives for telling you after all this time? What he did when he was 18 could be written off as youthful stupidity I think, but that combined with his recent actions suggests that he is a bit of a snake, I think.

Meh. MASSIVE overreaction. Your friend is a dick for telling you now. YOU need to find a way past this or if you truly can't, leave. What you can't do is keep bringing it up or behaving in a way that suggests your wife did anything wrong. She didn't. YOU need to do this work yourself and quickly by the sound of it. Good luck.

Weird it is not.
Nobody knew they'd end up married. Nobody knew that the friend would remain so close in their lives. They were 18, that's very young to hang on to these kinds of relationships for so long.
I can see why as the years went on it would've been harder to tell the OP and actually not even needed. They were all happy. Besides, it has nothing to do with the OP.

Assuming the OP is straight up (and I agree that’s a big assumption), I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all to be suspicious of what went/is going on between the OP’s wife and his best friend.

What would be normal is that if friends had a go at a relationship and it didn’t work, at least one of them would be upset and they would have a cooling off period before resuming their platonic friendship. Of course, it is possible that they both realised at an identical moment that they were better as friends and immediately resumed the friendship. However, it is a low probability.

I don’t think it is ridiculous to wonder whether the physical side continued for a while (or even for many years), despite them both being in other relationships. The fact that they both clearly agreed to keep a 3 month relationship secret kind of suggests that. Maybe the physical side was great, just not the relationship side and secret FWB suited them better.

Otherwise, you would want to get it out of the way nice and early in your relationship, at least before you got married. Otherwise, if they had friends in common, which it sounds like they did, he could have found out any time. And they both had to trust each other not to let it slip, something he kept to for 26 years, and then failed to.

Is it him blowing up the message or them?

You can't forgive her or him, can't trust them again, think they have lied about other things and even that your kids arent yours. Gently, this seems like an emotional (albeit understandable) knee-jerk reaction, from an outsiders viewpoint.

Right now the infomation is new and you need time to process it. I don't think anyone would be particularly happy about what happened but is it important enough to lose a life-long friend and a marriage over?

Remember you do know these people. They haven't become strangers just because of this. Good people do eff up. So what kind of people are they? Have they loved and cared for you for decades? Knowing them, is them not telling you likely to be malicious, selfish or just bad judgement on their part? What can you forgive or grudingly understand?

If you decide you can't forgive either of them then you will have to lose him as a friend and divorce her. You'll lose a lot. Only you can decide what is worth it.

I would give yourself time to feel your feelings and let them even out, then see how it goes.

OP I really think you need some perspective. It was nothing, it meant nothing. The fact you have a happy marriage and have become like family with your mutual close friend, his wife and their kids is wonderful.

I could only really see this being a huge deal if they were secretly in love this whole time or you noticed certain moments between them.
In a way, they got it out their system as teenagers and it's probably why you have such a close friendship now.

Absolutely be cross and certainly find out why he's suddenly telling you, and whether his wife knows?

But in the story of your intertwined lives this brief teenage experiment is just that, brief. It fades into the background in its unimportance, compared to all the major life events you've shared - weddings, children, and all the milestones between. You will probably see each others children get married, the sadness of an empty nest, probably become grandparents at similar times, find joy in grandchildren and spend your golden years on cruises and looking back at the shared memories.

Don't throw all of that away. Let them know you're hurt and ask why you're being told now. But then let it go. It is rare to have lifelong friends who you grow with and in decades to come you will kick yourself if you lose them over something so silly. And for goodness sake never tell the kids.

OP, haven’t rtft but I read all your responses.

You have to make a decision now about how you’re going to let this affect your life from now to the end. No point wishing things aren’t what they are. But take a look at all that you have. A wife and a friend who both love you very much. Your children. Two families who are close and support each other. Security. You are incredibly lucky, and you have to think carefully about how much you might lose in how you accept and come to terms with this new information.

It’s absolutely OK to feel hurt and upset, but do look at the bigger picture here. A marriage, a family and a friendship that has lasted decades and is based on real love and compatibility is richness and it’s worth fighting for them. Do not make big decisions or rash proclamations now - you’re hurting and you need to give your mind time to process this.

What @Tunaboona posted. Good grief. Pull your socks up and stop being a drama lama. Lick your 'wounds' then get on with it 🤷‍♀️🙄

I think if the genders were reversed, people would still tell the OP that it wasnt cheating and that its the secrecy that is the issue.

It was three months and not six. They were not on a break. The wife was single and could do what she wanted. It may have been a mistake not to tell him but only because if it is a deal breaker it would have been better to split sooner rather than after marriage and children.

They were teenagers and you dumped her over the football. They probably thought it wasn’t worth telling you as you might be weird about it and then the years went by…

Goodness knows why he saw fit to tell you now though!

I am really surprised by some of the responses on here. I can totally see why you feel so hurt by this and the timing of it makes it even worse. I hope it is all just as it looks at face value and there isn't anything else being kept secret.

I would do all you can to communicate with your wife and consider couples therapy. Definitely take a long break from seeing your friend. Maybe in time you can work it out with him. I hope your wife understands why you feel hurt and you can be kind to each other as you work through this.