That moment when you accidentally run into the OW

[SassyOlaf]

Today I met the woman my husband had a month long affair with for the first time.

She was working somewhere I had to collect a delivery from. She saw my name and I'm guessing she knew who I was (I have a pretty unusual surname and I was in a lot of my husbands FB pics and they were friends on there).

I probably stared at her for a little bit too long.

A little part of me wanted to scream at her and call her all sorts of names. Realistically I know I have no beef with her, my husband did the chasing.

It was weird.

I dreamed for years about meeting my ex's OW.
Obviously I look immaculate and have a little smile on my face because my life is so fucking perfect, but they're looking fraught and on the verge of a massive tiff as we bump in to each other in town...

Are you feeling ok? Weirded out?

Just feeling very strange. I knew her face from photos but hearing her voice, seeing mannerisms, it just made it all real x 1000!

Viv I love that!!
I never want to meet the ow! I'm scared what I'd do. & in a perfect world I'd be looking gorgeous, confident, happy . Just wouldn't happen though. I'd turn into a beet root & cry or make sarcy comments that her parents (she's young) would then use their friends facebooks to pm me threatening messages (yes they already have , don't want to meet them either!)

Once upon a time, in a place very far from home I found myself in temporary accommodation overnight, waiting for transport to an even worse place.

I was sharing this accommodation with two other girls; one I knew slightly and one I'd never met before. The one I knew was the same age as me (24), the one I didn't was 18.

We all started chatting, swapping experiences etc. I told them I was recently separated from my DH (couple of months) hard, but getting through it. 24 year old fancied someone I knew (so I said I'd play matchmaker) and 18 year old was totally, blindly, deliciously in love with her boyfriend.

18 year old talked about him a lot. He really was the perfect man, good looking, attentive, hard worker, great in bed, loving, funny... And all of a sudden I realised she was talking about my husband. The one I'd been separated from for two months. The one she'd been seeing for 6 months.

Hmm. Awkward.

Eww I saw the OW once outside a work building (we work for the same organisation) and t was weird. I don't think she knew what I looked like by that point (though she does now). She looked massively different to her Facebook profile picture, she obviously picked a very old/weirdly flattering picture! Also horrible trousers.

And mum boots. Yuk.

OMG Eve . Did you tell her?

omg eve !

Yep I told her.

I said "You know, that sounds like XXX Dallas, works at YYYY"
She said "It is! Do you know him?" (Big smile)
I said "Yes, I'm Eve Dallas"
"Huh?"
(Silence, no penny dropping)
"His wife, Eve Dallas"
"Ex wife you mean" she says
"Nope, it's only been two months, you can't get divorced that quickly"
"But you split up a year ago"
"Nope"
"But..."

Silence.

I left the building then. Went back when I'd calmed down (tbh I was ready to kill her, but knew it wasn't her fault, didn't want to do anything stupid). We spoke for quite a while (with the other girl looking on in horror). I believed her when she said she didn't know, that she'd believed him when he said we'd been split for more than a year.

She stayed with him though. Told me the next morning that she "couldn't help loving him" that they would "work through it."

Poor deluded cow.

I would have loved to have been the third woman in that cell with you.

Oops, sorry not sure where "cell" came from, imagination got carried away there filling in the gaps

Nearly a cell :) It was a Corimec. The military used them as 'bomb proof' sleeping accn. Not exactly luxurious

I don't know if the stayed together Alpaca. It did turn out that she had been one of his students, so he shouldn't have been with her and I know that the 'powers that be' somehow found out about it so there was a bit of trouble for him. But whether they remained loves young dream, I don't know.

I didn't change the divorce petition when I knew. I just wanted it over.

Misread thread title as 'when you accidentally run over the ow' ...

Now there's a plan, Humble !

One of the more surreal moments of my life was when during a protest in a Palestinian village in the middle of nowhere, I got chatting to an Israeli woman about my horrible boyfriend who kept doing disappearing acts from our house in Ramallah. While people were preparing themselves for the arrival of the Israeli military, she called over her friend to share what a horrible person my boyfriend was. Friend started asking questions, I answered, after two or three I felt the horror rising, and I guess she did too, because she stormed off with her phone, screamed at it for a while out of hearing range and then came back to hand the phone to me to have horrible boyfriend tell me he would kill me for what I did (what that was, I'm still not sure), while in the background soldiers were dragging away unruly protestors. A fbizarre ending to quite frankly a bizarre relationship.

She did stay with him on and off for a while, and she and I stayed in touch on and off too. Once, more than a year later, I rang her on a whim and she was in total shock, because he was actually walking in the door as I rang, after she'd kicked him out but started having thoughts of taking him back.

Someone up there was looking out for both of us.

The OW in my case was supposedly my best friend who still lives 200 yds up the road and whose DD is in the same class as my DD in our tiny village school. Made a very uncomfortable few months for me in the playground as we both pretended the other one didn't exist but word got out and she's very rarely there these days. Apparently people weren't as understanding as she expected. I have gained great kudos for my dignity and calm and the fact I didn't put a brick through her window or pull her hair out at school pick up.

Wow, thanks so much everyone, those have cheered me up in an odd sort of way. At least I recognised her before I had to speak to her I suppose, (& I had actually done my hair and makeup this morning, luckily!) it could have been worse!

Am so tempted to drop in there again to get a coffee another day, I don't know why, morbid curiosity I suppose. Will probably use my head though and give that place a wide berth in future.

I did bump in to the OW once. I knew her because she had searched me out on fb and messaged me. Although my instinct had been to correct the spelling mistakes in her message and send it back, I let dignity win and ignored it. It had her photo on it though...

Anyway, fast forward a few months and I pop in to a diy store in my lunch hour. I'm in my work clothes, think boots, pencil skirt, fitted jacket, makeup. I see her. She's in badly fitting jeans, roots showing in hair and - best of all - she's about 4 times my size. I very pleasantly say " Excuse me, but are you ....?". She agrees before realising who I am. I nicely tell her that she is very welcome to exdp, that there really is no need to worry as I won't be inviting him back but suggest that she doesn't give him any money as he had proved to be very untrustworthy in that area.

She is mortified, apologises for email claiming to have been "drunk" ('how classy', I think) and then starts apologising for looking such a mess. We walk out of shop together in rather surreal manner to find we are parked next to each other. She opens boot of her old, dirty car. I climb carefully in to my sports car (which, thank you god, I had cleaned the weekend before).

I drive off, having received an apology and been complimented on my appearance. I go back to work and tell EVERYONE I can think of. At least twice.

Ok, maybe I could have kept it to myself in manner of mature, generous-spirited adult, but it just felt too gooooooood!

Many years ago I was paying for something in a shop. The assistant at the paydesk wore a badge with her name on and I smiled as I handed her my bank card, saying "Same surname as me!" She looked at the card and froze. I then read her first name on the badge and realised the embarrassing truth, she was my ex husband's new wife. (I'd kept my married name.) It wasn't all that long after the divorce. I felt a total fool for pointing out our identical surnames. She was blonde, younger then me, quite glamorous and attractive. About a year later my ex husband had a terrible fall from a roof and was permanently disabled as a result. Then the poor lady contracted breast cancer and died not long afterwards. I felt dreadfully sad about them both as I sincerely would have preferred them to have had a happy life together. So tragic.

OMG Eve I cannot imagine how that must have felt :( Sounds like you handled it with a lot more dignity than I would've

I've met her, usually during drop-offs / collections when xh can't be bothered to be there (they live together).... Most of the time I've snubbed her.
But, recently, she spoke to me about washing (long and not relevant story). I answered her and was quite civil.
I've just come to the conclusion they deserve each other, and that I'm not going to waste my energy feeling bothered about it.
It was quite cathartic.

Perhaps I should say they had been having an affair for a whole year during our marriage which I hadn't known about until he confessed and left to be with her! I still think it was a very sad ending for them.

ow was pharmacist in local boots, I'm afraid I took perverse pleasure in dropping off scrips so she had to call out 'mrs ho' when they were ready....