The OW seeking details/trying to pass a message...

[wrinklyraisin]

What would you do if you found out the woman your OH cheated with, a year ago now, was fishing around for details and trying to pass messages to your OH through a mutual friend? My OH has no desire at all to have any direct contact with her. But the mutual friend has no clue what happened last year so keeps talking to him about how she's doing (terribly as it happens, yay for karma!) and I want her to know that I know what she's up to and me and my OH are a team working together NOT to let her infiltrate our life again. But at the same time we don't want our mutual friend to know any of the gruesome details of what happened. We just want her to stop fishing iyswim? Am I out of order for sending her a polite and concise email saying what I've said above? And copying it to her husband too? My OH has worked very hard to undo the damage he did and he wants her to back off and stop using an innocent mutual friend as a go between. He agrees an email from BOTH of us to her, showing a united front, is the way to go. I just want her up crawl back under her rock. Her life and marriage is shit but that's not our problem and my OH will not be her fantasy escape route again.

I'm not honestly going to email the OW H. Their marriage is failing without any additional help needed. I refuse to let her scramble about trying to drag others down with her though, especially me or my OH.

Seems reasonable to tackle her, and only her first as it's her behaviour that is the problem. You can consider telling her H or not as plan B, it may not get that far. Hopefully, your mutual friend meanwhile inadvertently passes on how good you are as a couple :-)

I wonder if she's fishing to get info, or get back in contact because she sees in our community us out and about, popular and happy, and she resents that. In a weird way I feel bad for her being so miserable. I'm not excusing her, far from it. It's just sad to live life like that.

It's still unclear to me what you think he ought to do.

I think given the circumstances he ought to be giving the friend and the OW separate but unequivocal messages that he wants no communication with her.

If you do too, but you fear your partner lacks the spine to do either, then that's a character failing that still remains in him and will continue to blight your relationship.

Also, if he continues to hide behind the rather weaselly excuse that any actions on his part might bring more trouble to your door, I think you'll lose respect for him. Because you'll know it's not you he's worried about, but that he's ducking two encounters that would be difficult and uncomfortable for him.

What I want to happen is pretty simple. He tells OW to stop seeking him out through mutual friends. That he is not at all interested in hearing from her or about her. Then he tells the mutual friend that the OW family and our family are no longer friends and therefore we have no interest in hearing anything passed from them to us. If he wants to know more, then my OH can deal with him. Then I want to get on with my life in peace, alongside my OH and enjoy our life together with no further issues related to this OW.

I've not read the complete thread but I think your OH has to reply to any messages of "hi" or whatever from OW through the mutual friend with stories about how YOU and he did this and YOU and he did that and how happy he is with YOU and YOU and he say hi etc etc. hence showing a mutual togetherness and firm relationship.

Good on you, sounds like a decent plan is forming, hope we have all helped you to formulate what you want to do on here :-). I have a feeling you will get though this ok. Sadly the OW has a long way to go, but she's not asking for help in the right places (ie friend/your H) so that's not your or our concern. I wish you well. You have arrived at 2 options - tackle OW on her own, or tackle her and your friend also. Up to you now...let us know how you get on either way x

I really appreciate all your advice. I obviously cannot talk to any real life friends about this. And OH gets an earful quite a lot. So it's good to have a place to seek sense and the odd virtual slap.

Ok, so tell your husband to make it happen.

And sort it out himself. You should not be involved at all...but you feel you have to be. I would be questioning why that is.

He wants me to see nothing is hidden. I would happily stand back. It helps us both though I think to feel like we are tackling this together.

Fair enough. But you are the one on here, asking strangers to help you out with something that should be quite simple for him to execute (which was a good move, however ). For some reason though, he is procrastinating and has made the situation worse by failing to sort it out at source. Now you are dragged into it. I would be furious, actually.

I'm all for transparency, and would consider it essential here. But I would have expected my H in this scenario to cut off communication as it happened and tell me about it afterwards. Instead he wimps out and looks to you for "support" (read: to tell him what he has to do)

Yep he fully admits he's wimped out. But that's more because he's passive than that he wants contact iyswim? He needs to grow a pair and he knows it. I'm not nagging him about this. But he knows the next time he sees our mutual friend he will have to say something. And he will email the OW and blind copy me in on it too. I'm happy with this plan as long as he follows it through as soon as its reasonable to do so. Tonight hopefully.

Maybe he feels he needs the support to take the right action as previously he made a wrong decision??

Does the OW already have your OH email address?? If not, then emailing her will give her another avenue to contact him on

My knee jerk reaction was also to get H to state to OW there is to be no resumption of contact, no attempts to communicate.
Then I thought, isn't any contact better than no contact, as far as she is concerned? Not just saying that to be devil's advocate. I do agree you should not engage with her.

You've done amazingly well to keep this under wraps but imo she is a ticking timebomb. I think you have to steel yourself for some news outbreak. The consolation is it's stale news, and you are working things through with H. I'm glad he's been transparent about this but is he now sitting back? Why on earth did he not just shrug or dismiss mutual friend's remarks as some social pleasantry?

I agree I think mutual friend was fishing. Even referring to her on here as OW gives her some power, she should no longer hold. She has either hinted or told mutual friend outright. If H goes to the trouble of telling mutual friend not to bother being a messenger boy, it just provokes comment. If the storm breaks, then choose who you tell.

Much as it's a wonder why he has not sorted this out himself, tell you he did before that, so the best you can do is deal with the hand you presently have, which you are.

Any email he sends will be sent from our "family" address. That way there's no opportunity for her to harass him personally. We both have access.

I feel he does need my support in a way. The whole fiasco when he confessed and the ensuing trauma was a bit of a case of him not being able to do right for doing wrong. So now he is scared of making a move that might be construed as deceptive etc i think. I told him to use his judgement and tell me what he wants to happen. I am not his mother. I told him in the early days that if I stuck around it was an indicator I could see he was at least making an effort. But that the moment he gets complacent or fucks it all up, that's it. He's used up his one and only get out of jail free card VERY early on.

It's not surprising he's swinging the other way now and telling you stuff you really don't need to be concerned with if it's no threat, that's guilt for you. Imagine in an ideal world, where he would of sorted this himself and you would be non the wiser? But, as he's clearly not the best at making decisions, this is another one he has got a bit wrong, but not a huge one this time.
Just be sure that that you don't find yourself forever deciding things on his behalf, you don't want the stress of this long term, and if it carries on you would need to question why he's not capable of growing the pair you want?

I'm not making any of his decisions. He's over sharing maybe. But I'd prefer to know about this than not. If he dealt with this without telling me then I'd feel like he was keeping secrets. And at the moment our focus is complete honesty even about minutae.

If he can't grow a pair over this I'll know where I really stand in his priorities and that'll decide things for me. But despite a small period of procrastination he's been very quick to share info and very open about hearing my views. I take this as a positive step.

I think it is a positive step, but only if he follows through. If he drops this dilemma in your lap and then doesn't have the courage to finish the job, it smacks more of hand-wringing self-indulgence and indecision than sharing information and acting decisively to cut her off and stop her in her tracks. Now that you've told us what you want to happen, what does he think he should do about it? Without your suggestions, that is?

We will soon find out. I'll see him in a couple of hours.

I see what you're saying Charbon, but there is no contact between OW and the H, only via this frenemy.

H could have just said 'oh right' in a totally non-committal way, or ideally, "well tbh old friend, I'm not really interested in if OW 'misses me' or not, I'd prefer to not be discussed." And leave it at that.

This pathetic and frankly nauseating hand wringing of his and bringing it home to 'discuss solutions' would only be helpful if OW had made direct contact, rather than her misguided and wholly unwelcome fishing expedition. He didn't need OP's input when he was planning or executing his betrayal, why should any responsibility now fall on her shoulders.

She was testing his resolution, and tbh, from here, he didn't really pass.

The only thing he should have said to OP is after the fact, I.e "OW tried to send a message via X, but I told him I didn't want to hear it, and that it was very clear that there'd be no further discussion."

If he's man enough to commit adultery, he's surely man enough to put right the wrongs he did. All this pathetic 'oh say Hi from me', and worse putting OP in the situation where this creature has the brass balls to send a Hi to the OP is H's doing, through his utter failure to find the balls he apparently has to fix it.

He needs to rally to his wife's side, and do whatever it takes to fix her image of him, not invite some mangey OW to actually say a single word to his wife.

Hmmm....this is a bit why I often feel out of step on this site. Because I sometimes get the impression that posters think that all adulterers are alpha men and women ('man enough to commit adultery') who make a habit of targeting other men and women.

Whereas my RL experience tells me that a lot of adulterers are bumbling, indecisive and non-assertive fools who although share selfishness as a personality trait with the above caricature, often get into these situations because of blurred boundaries, not wanting to cause offence or hurt, an inability to tell someone to back off and then find themselves getting in too deep and addicted to the buzz and secrecy before they acknowledge what's happening. These are the men that people say are 'not the type' to have affairs but that's because the typecast is all wrong. If there's a type, it's a selfish person with very poor boundaries, but that covers everything from the philanderer to the man whose previous hights of excitement was winning a prize for the vegetables on his allotment....

These are just as damaging character flaws though as the men and women who set out to have affairs and regard it as a lifestyle perk, so I am not minimising the seriousness of it. But being decisive and having the moral courage to risk being disliked is usually one of the character flaws that a man like this must work on, to prevent it happening again.

I have to say equally I don't see the mutual friend as a frenemy here either. I see him as an avuncular character who lacks worldly wisdom about what individuals are capable of when lust and the common purpose of a production gets in the way.

That should read as 'being indecisive and lacking the moral courage to....'

Charbon I think you're in my head lol.

My OH is a bit bumbling, selfish at times, not good at establishing boundaries and then gets sucked into being the "rescuer". He's learning how to deal with his flaws and is being less of a wannabe hero iyswim. That's what got him into the mess before. He helped and helped and helped until he was drunk and tempted and in too deep. No excuse I know. But it's an explanation and it means he can recognize the warning signs for himself now. He's learning a lot about himself that he was completely oblivious to before.

The mutual friend is an older man who never really seemed to live in today's world. He's of an older more genteel era when stuff like this happened behind closed doors and no one spoke of it, I'm sure.