My husband received something very strange in the post ...

[OnSilverStars]

In the post today, my husband received a letter. It was hand written with his name and address on the outside. No return info. The writing in the envelope is definitely a woman's

Inside is a copy of an "essay" I googled it and it's by Robert Louise Stevenson. It called "on Marriage"

The gist of it is that marriage has lots of ups and downs and requires communication

There is nothing else. No name, just a folded print out of this essay.

Any explanation, other than my fear? I have no reason other than this to suspect anything.

YABU - don't jump to conclusions

YANBU - he's cheated.

I'm shaking. This feels so surreal. I hope I'm overreacting. He's currently at work.

Ps. We open each other's post. We think nothing of it - usually. It's always junk or bills

@user686833

How would JW have his name?

Electoral register. It’s not them, it would be on a biblical theme if it was.

We also received had a similar weird type letter just before Xmas we'd literally just moved into the house and I thought it was some weird letter from the previous owner at first (who'd just left his wife). It looked hand written, at the bottom was the woman who sent its email address and JW was part of the address otherwise I wouldn't have know what the hell it was.

Not about Marriage, But an exapmle of one being sent at the moment in Northern Ireland. I can't post links yet so image taken from reddit.

@OnSilverStars

Has a tyneside stamp thingy on it. We live in Yorkshire

Our post comes with a Tyneside stamp, and we’re actually Teesside /County Durham. I’m fairly certain the Tyneside Mail Centre actually covers right up to the Scottish boarders too. It’s a much wider area than you think.

I think people need to get past the opening of the post. I open all the post in our house; otherwise it wouldn't get opened. It really can be that simple in some relationships.

@OnSilverStars

This is what arrived.

This is the first paragraph

Hope, they say, deserts us at no period of our existence. From first to last, and in the face of smarting disillusions, we continue to expect good fortune, better health, and better conduct; and that so confidently, that we judge it needless to deserve them. I think it improbable that I shall ever write like Shakespeare, conduct an army like Hannibal, or distinguish myself like Marcus Aurelius in the paths of virtue; and yet I have my by-days, hope prompting, when I am very ready to believe that I shall combine all these various excellences in my own person, and go marching down to posterity with divine honours. There is nothing so monstrous but we can believe it of ourselves. About ourselves, about our aspirations and delinquencies, we have dwelt by choice in a delicious vagueness from our boyhood up. No one will have forgotten Tom Sawyer’s aspiration: “Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

Mine was nothing like that.

Only the envelope was handwritten

The essay was a photocopy from a book

Sorry thought the photo would post again

I will of course ask him. I actually don't think he's cheating. It's just soooooo strange

But you were "shaking" and went straight to "he cheated"?

Come off it OP

@OnSilverStars on the handwriting issue, I am a teacher and can 90% tell whether it’s a boy or girls writing. I’ve been teaching for many years. Sometimes a boys writing looks like a girls- sometimes this is an effeminate male, sometimes it’s quite a masculine male.

Perhaps the person who sent it simply put the wrong thing in the envelope. So instead of JW bumf or other such marketing stuff you've got their/their family member's/colleague's english lit homework.

I can't believe the posters bleating on about opening someone else's post.

I am usually home during the day and DH is working. I open ALL the post whether addressed to me or him unless I think it is a birthday card, Christmas card etc.

DH gets a lot of parcels most of them work related and I open most of them too.

On the odd occasion I don't open something - if it is a handwritten envelope I may not open it thinking it may be personal to him - he laughs when I hand it to him and asks why I didn't open it.

If DH is home and he picks up the post he normally hands it all to me. I deal with all the bills, his accounts etc so he thinks it makes sense for me to open them

I would not jump to any adverse conclusions OP. My husband had a poem written for me for valentines day one year. A lovely thing which he had framed. Most likely, he is speaking at an anniversary, wedding or its for you. Logically if he were cheating, the other woman would not be sending him a note on the benefits of marriage....

I also got a letter from JW, handwritten address but with one of their brochures (printed in 2015 - I was appalled that they did not feel I am worthy of newer stuff). And a letter inviting me to contact them to discuss my marriage.

Is it related to a hobby or something possibly? DP has an allotment and is on numerous gardening forums. Someone from one of the groups sent him a photocopy of an article on the ‘cardboard box method.’ Could your husband be interested in something related to that essay and something similar happened?

Do you have different surnames on your letterbox? JW do cheks like that. They'll also send someone of your (assumed) language if you have a foreign name (happened to me).

I also had a JW letter this week, sent to “the household”
Very clearly from JW, religious theme and explaining why they were writing.
I really don’t think the OP’s letter is from a Witness. Random essay from a book with no mention of JW at all is not what they do.

I agree with a pp about age, this would be a very unusual thing for a younger person to send, so I do not think it is from another woman. I think it is either a much older female colleague or relation .

Very unlikely to be another woman. Way too obscure a way to communicate something about your marriage.

1. It was addressed to your DH - would the sender know you'd even see it - on the other hand is someone trying to let your DH know something about you?

1. Very obscure text for someone to be trying to make a direct statement to you - load of more obvious things to send - to the point of simply typing out a statement with "S/he's cheating" on it.

1. Unless you, your husband or the potential OW/OM are literary experts with a specialism in Robert Louis Stephenson? Know anyone like that?

1. If it was someone sending something to be helpful there would be another note with it - at least a post-it "Hey OPDH, here's that RLS passage we were discussing last week"

Intriguing.

I had JW turn up once stating that I'd emailed them and requested a visit. I most certainly had not! I still wonder whether someone had arranged it to be malicious (no candidates spring to mind) or whether it was a JW tactic to try their luck.

Firstly, if you Google Robert Louise Stevenson and marriage, that passage in it's entirety comes up as near enough the first result. Smacks of sloppily researched quote gathering.

The photocopy is not from book. It is clearly a photocopy of an open ring binder. Again smacks of quote gathering. Single side printing too so not a professionally gathered and printed quote collection.

The essay by Stevenson has been split into numbered quote sections as if part of a large binder full of quotes waiting to be split up ready to send to random recipients.

This just does not look personal to me at all.

What a strange choice that would be to send someone you have been shagging.

It does look like a piece of unsolicited crap from JW's or a similar group. Looks like members were given a copy of some quotes in a binder and told to harvest names and addresses to send random passages/pages to. I am thinking a lazy organisation member who was supposed to pick a single quote but decided to just idly photocopy the whole page instead.

@NerdyBird

Perhaps the person who sent it simply put the wrong thing in the envelope. So instead of JW bumf or other such marketing stuff you've got their/their family member's/colleague's english lit homework.

This. Or they forgot to include an accompanying letter or leaflet in the envelope?

It’ll be some weirdo OP

If you google the author you find out that he was JW.....Mystery over!

@dontdisturbmenow

If you google the author you find out that he was JW.....Mystery over!

No, he wasn't.

How does everyone who received "the same thing" from the JW know it was from them unless it said so? Which this one doesn't?

I had a hand written letter once about the evils of alcohol. But then I do live in a pub.