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

You friend is a shit stirrer. He found the need to confess about sleeping with your wife over 20 years ago whole you were on a break, before you got married and had kids etc.... what's the respond for sudden confession and you were on a break. You can argue wether she should have told you or not but she did no cheat on you.

And you broke up with her and broke her heart and she had a fling with him during that period hey your upset. Again your friend is f**king shit stirrer.

Why TF did he tell ypu? Some things are best left unsaid

I’ve read all of your posts, and I understand a bit more now. I can fully understand how you must feel like you have to recalibrate the whole of your relationship. You feel you need to go back in time and make sense of everything that has happened and conversations that you’ve had and I think you are in shock.

It makes sense that you feel like you have been lied to.

It is a lie by omission. And it’s making you feel like so much of the last 26 years has been a lie. I think in time you will be able to make sense of this and things will settle but at the moment you are stunned, shaken, shocked, and feeling really really destabilised and betrayed.
In time when you pieces altogether, you will remember what is good about your life and your marriage.

Get some support and just hang on in there

Think you've added in a detail there.

Clearly not, if OP's best friend decided he'd tell him after 26 years.

If they thought enough of him not to want to hurt him for all those years, why has his best friend decided it's ok to hurt him now?

Friendship should be over. He's a tool if he continues this.

I would be devastated to find this out, and I would really struggle to keep up the relationships with both of them.

It is such a shame he felt the need to tell you.

It was a 3 month relationship after OP dumped her and broke her heart when they were 18.

And she ended that relationship another 3 months before they even got back together so it had nothing to with him.

Yes she should have said something then but the friend bringing it up 26 year later is freaking arseole and a shit stirrer.

She did nothing wrong sleeping with him when you were broken up. But given the closeness of your relationship with him, I do think it was wrong that they didn't tell you when you got back together. Doubly wrong when you asked him to be best man, and again godfather. I would also feel deeply hurt by this. Your feelings are totally valid.
You need to gradually work through whether you can rebuild knowing what you now know, perhaps with the help of therapy, and certainly giving yourself plenty of time to allow feelings to settle. Your wife owes you lots of patience in this case. Don't let anyone belittle your feelings, and take your time. The relationship may survive or it may not, but it won't be your fault either way. They have been sitting on a time bomb and it means nothing to them, but the world to you.

Perhaps shag his wife and call it even?

On a serious note, I hope once the shock subsides you just let it go. It's such minor significance in the grand scale of your whole lives. The worst thing you can do is ignore them or shutdown. I really think you have something really special here OP. It really is nothing and they have treated it as a non-event.

Be mad, be furious. But don't break up two families. You've got kids who are like cousins to each other. There are lots of lives involved in this, beyond just yours.

Wait, you finished with her because she said something you didn’t like after her football team beat your football team then you were 18? And now you’re upset because your friend and now wife had a brief fling when they were both single and didn’t tell you? TBH, if you throw such a strop of a bit of a football ribbing you can see why they wouldn’t want to tell you - you’d have gone into full meltdown (oh wait, that’s happening now). I wonder why on earth he chose to tell you now.

You're full of shit. Everyone had their own boundaries. Some are comfortable with thier significant others being friends with exes, some aren't, etc.

She hid her sexual relationship with someone who's shes extremely close with..making that decision for her so called husband.

I'm hoping we get further updates. I'm wondering if there's an illegitimate child somewhere.

So there should be no secrets in marriage, but just think about it this way. When you got back together again, you were not going into marriage. You were dating again after you broke off with her and you were all teens, managing things the ways teens manage things.

Nobody wanted to jeopardise anything, so no one said anything And once again, I remind you everyone was 18. Young people who manage things in what makes sense to a young person of 18

You continue to be together and nothing was sad until it got to the point where on one hand it was a now a complete non-issue between them and on the other hand it now becomes incredibly difficult to say anything because of the reaction you’re having now

After any significant period of time when everyone was older enough to understand the importance of secrets it had gone past the point of being able to disclose it without you feeling like big secrets had been withheld

But the secret was withheld because at the start, when you were all teens.

do not jeopardise what you have. You self acknowledge you have a great marriage and a good friendship. You are blessed.

Why he suddenly felt the need to tell you now is the weird thing to me

So your stupid immaturity led to this?

Well you have 3 options, try to get over it and move on or cut off your friend and work on your marriage or cut if your friend end the marriage.

It’s a hypothetical question about how much we can police people. About how much it matters, or not, that we don’t know all there is to know about our partners that we enjoy life with.

i think you may have taken it literally and imagined I was somehow making stuff up about anyone in particular!

What, no, he's saying he doesn't know if she knows, it's been a day what are you expecting? Him to have this news thats blown up his life, and just go out making phone calls asking and telling everyone?

No, he's here. Asking if his feelings are valid whilst he processes it all, but you think he should be concentrating on telling the guys wife? Mental

Nothing better illustrates the misandry on this thread than the comparison of him breaking up over football vs wife sleeping with his best friend.

He was 18 and yet everyone is criticising him for acting like an 18 year old.

She was also 18 but even most 18 year olds know to avoid their ex’s best mate, especially if the break up is recent. And yet that is ‘just what 18 year olds do’ and not a biggie.

That seems very blinkered foolhardy advice, especially if the other parties have been protecting the OP. Wife could heavily resent the inappropriate control, OP could loose all his important adult relationships and what about the kids?

Because they've been in love this whole time and all the kids are actually siblings. Sorry couldn't help myself.

"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."

Take your friends advice.

It must suck to hear but he's right.

And what a sad outcome that would have been. You have said you have a wonderful marriage filled with love. And a best friend who has been with you through thick and thin. You would have lost all that due to being an 18 year old who couldn’t have dealt with a fling between them

I suspect if they had told you at the time you would feel differently about it now - it's the fact that they decieved you for all these years that is the betrayal. I also think it's shitty and disloyal to get with an ex of your best friend almost as soon as they broke up. In your shoes I would also feel absolutely betrayed and be questioning everything. It makes your life feel like a lie, which is actually really traumatic.

This forum astounds me at times.
So if this was a wife posting on here about finding out about her best friend and her husband would the thread get the same reactions and would she be basically told to chill out and she's over reacting. I think not!
I hate how men get a raw deal on here just coz they are male.

I hear you OP and I don't think you're over reacting at all. I would totally feel the same and I think you need some time, space and a lot of talking to both your wife and friend to see what the real deal is here because I suspect it's not as clear cut as it's been made out to be. It's the disrespect over the years that would be the killer because you've been kept in the dark. It's not a stranger that she met on a night out of in the gym, this is your best friend. I would feel absolutely gutted.
Good luck 🤞

I posted my initial response to this post.

Reflecting on it, had my DP told me this after decades (I know it wasn’t the OP’s wife who told him) I would want to know why there had never been an earlier time to tell me — including pre wedding or in any of the apparent conversations about honesty.

However, it is beyond me why anyone would marry someone whose red line is a comment about a football team. Does man’s best friend support the same team as his wife??? Is that the real, long-term betrayal?

There’s no info about how the conversation with the best friend went, if the wife has been told this info is now known, if the other wife has any opinion on any of this or any conversations between any of them.

I think this might be a spoof post.