Am a semi-regular user but have NC'd as it wouldn't take much trawling of my post history to ID. This is a really horrible situation which I’ve written as a bloody essay, but please forgive me. I need all the advice I can get and I've seen this place help many people before.
A very good friend of DH and I lost his wife three years ago in truly horrendous circumstances. They were a lovely couple who we have known for years with two very young DCs. He has a very well-paid, full-on job that he holds down while at the same time being a doting father. He has a child minder for when the kids get home from school but she leaves when he gets home and then he throws himself into parent mode. After he puts them to bed he'll stay up past midnight finishing work that he could have done at the office but would rather come home to be with his girls instead. We know this not by him moaning about it but by things we've picked up in conversation over the years. While others may have crumbled in his situation, he has never complained, never outright asked for help and has worked hard to ensure his DCs have come through quite a nasty business unscathed. In short, his behaviour since his wife's death has been nothing short of extraordinary and both my DH and I admire him a great deal.
A female ‘friend’ of mine (she’s more of an acquaintance that I know through work) separated from her husband almost a year ago after he discovered that she had been cheating on him, not with one man but with loads. He was quite a nice guy but a bit of a doormat and after he found out she really rubbed his face in it, declaring publicly that she’d enjoyed threesomes with random men while they’d been married. She was incredibly spiteful about it with seemingly no self-awareness of how mean it was making her look. She never offered up an explanation other than that she’d been bored. Luckily this couple had no children and have separated (her husband has since moved far away).
This acquaintance and my friend have started seeing each other in the last three months after meeting at the gym. Because his DC have now become slightly older he has had time to start going back to the gym - he was very healthy when his wife was still with us, something he has had to give up to be a parent and breadwinner. She is very attractive and on the surface is a nice person (I was a lot friendlier with her before she and her husband split).
While he hasn’t introduced her to his DC yet they are now very much together - he even brought her for dinner at ours. He’s aware she has been married before but I’m not sure how much he knows about why the marriage ended (they didn’t know each other previously). Both DH and I were unsure of whether to raise it and while we love our friend we trusted that the topic must come up at some point. When they first got together DH hinted about her infedility and our friend seemed to gloss over it with “well she’s told me all about it.”
This situation has now come to a head - I was in the work canteen the other day and she was the only person in there, sitting in the kitchen area and fiddling with her phone. I went over to make a cup of tea and said hello and she very rapidly turned her phone off and put it down. We chatted for a bit and I got up to make a cup of tea - the kettle and kitchen worksurface is behind her and as I was standing behind her she turned her phone on again to read an email to me and the screen she had been on when I walked in popped up - it was a dogging website.
She was facing away so probably didn’t realise that I’d noticed, but I got a fairly good look and was too surprised to say anything. We chatted some more and then I left.
I haven’t told my DH. There have been hints that she’s into dogging before from what she’s said. If I thought for a moment that our friend was joining her then it would be a case of ‘Well it’s not my cup of tea but live and let live I suppose’. However I’m pretty convinced that he is not into this - frankly he doesn’t have the time! She’s already complained that they don’t go out enough, but I know that he makes time to take her out once a week (leaving DC with child minder/family).
I’m now totally unsure of what to do. It could be a case of:
- She was looking at it to get kicks and doesn’t act on it (which in itself is very odd)
- They’re both into it (very unlikely)
- She’s doing it without him.
Do I tell him? I love this man like a brother and desperately don’t want to see him hurt further down the line, especially if it comes after he introduces this woman to his kids. I’m also wary of getting involved in case I’m making more out of it than I should be and lose my friend. Advice please!