just found out his friend isn't just a friend # 2

[binders1]

Binder army, please find me.

In summary found out 10 days ago OH has been having an affair for the 14 years we have been together and we have one DS 8 yrs. OW is someone he has been sleeping with since college. She is married with 2 dc' s and who knows OH could be biological father of child(re n). She is also someone we have been to lunches and dinners twice yearly where she has acted inappropriately. When questioned OH years ago he said I was mad and denied a relationship except friendship. Found porno photos of them over the decades in the loft.

I don't know what else to say as so much info was in thread 1. I have relied on the support of the old thread. I call them my binder army. Tomorrow is d day, he leaves the house or we do.

Binders are you worried that if you the OWH that you'll get a lot more nastiness from the ex? Like people have advised, just deal with him through messaging, reiterate to him that nothing is to be discussed face to face and that handovers are done with him staying in the car.

My ex was very angry after I left him. But I didn't rise to it. And I know that you don't, you've handled him so well and it's very hard when they are like that. Things will settle down. But OWH deserves to know sooner rather than later.

Hi Binders - too many people are going to know what has happened for ow to keep it a secret. I suggest you make your decision about telling her DH based on what you believe is the best for him, not on any desire for revenge. He is as innocent as you, so make your decision with a good heart and with his well being at the forefront of your mind.

The person I loved, so much is gone, I don't even know who this person is anymore, I don't recognise him. And when I cry, I cry for the person I knew or thought I knew and how I loved him and now he's gone. I don't know if that's a form of grief sadwidow.

Binders, that IS grief.

This isn’t sadness, or worry, or feeling ‘a bit down’. The man you loved has gone - virtually overnight. If you had fallen out of love, you would have had time to process your thoughts. If you had embarked on an elicit relationship, you would have been able to disengage your emotions.

You are experiencing the same grief as a sudden bereavement. It is intense, debilitating and very hard to work through. You have the lost the man your thought you knew, the life you enjoyed and the dreams you had for the future.

I lost my DH to cancer within 2 months; my younger sister waved goodbye to her DH when he went on a bike ride and he died 2 hours later on a pavement; my younger brother who lived with me didn’t come home one night - and the police arrived at my door-step at 10.20am the next morning to say a body had been found at the top of the road. Then another brother was scheduled to get a bus to travel to me (I offered him/his family respite care because of his illnesses) and he had a seizure as he was getting into the taxi and was dead on arrival at hospital. I told you that I have the t-shirt for grief!

So here we go Binders - we are walking the grief path together. Can you see me a little bit in front of you? I am holding out my hand - just grab it!

Grief is not linear:

There are 5 accepted stages:

• ANGER
• BARGAINING
• DEPRESSION
• DENIAL
• ACCEPTANCE

You can start at any point and deal with the phases in any order. You will probably have to re-visit some phases to re-process, but you will eventually reach Acceptance.

You see, when you write about the anger you felt at OW’s text message, I think “tick”- anger is good for the grief process. (To be honest, I think Rottweiller Sis takes the biscuit for Anger!) But you have to own the Anger stage as your own. Don’t watch Rotty doing it on your behalf - this is yours! I walked up a mountain and screamed from the top until I thought my lungs would burst. I beat the ground until my hands bled. I rolled around on the ground sobbing loudly with tears streaming down my face .... But I walked back down the mountain a different person.

I think you are currently in Denial. Denial isn’t about not facing up to the truth - it is a stage that helps us to pace our feelings of grief. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle. At this stage you often start processing and accepting the reality of the loss of your relationship. You start to become stronger but then all the feelings you were denying begin to surface. So Anger might re-surface - or Bargaining - or Depression.

Bargaining is when you have tried to go to sleep and say ‘I would give anything for this not to be true’. It also includes “What if...” What if I had been a better wife; what if I had noticed sooner; what if I had stopped us going to the couple meals. The ‘what if’ statements are because you want to go back in time - to find the place where things were normal and happy. You can’t avoid this stage even though YOU told EX to leave the family home. You were in control of the living situation and called on Rotty and PILs to help you - but you would still rather go back to 3 weeks ago when life was hunky-dorey, calm and happy.

Depression usually follows bargaining. It is a very deep level of grief, deeper than anyone can imagine. You may feel that you are working in a fog - that is not a mental illness, it is grief. You will wonder about and question how you can go on. You are doing so well with this stage (as many parents do when they have been cheated on) because you are focusing on DS and he is your prime importance. However, you have to go through this stage Binders - it cannot be avoided.

Acceptance is the stage you want to reach ultimately. Don’t think that this stage means you think that EX’s infidelity is “all right” or “OK. Most people who considered themselves to be in a mutually loving, supportive relationship don’t ever feel OK about the ending. This stage is about accepting the reality of the situation. The relationship is over permanently. You will never like this reality, nor will ever be OK, But eventually you will be able to accept it and live with it. I call this stage the “New Normal”.

Finally, I will say to you that if anyone says “Time is a great healer” you have my full permission to kick them where it hurts! Time doesn’t heal - it just allows you to learn new strategies to cope with tomorrow.

Other people can advise you on the reality of breaking up and how to handle DS. But I will always be here to hold your hand through the grief journey.

I think to tell OWH a half story would be more painful for him. If you tell him, tell him the whole story.

It's a tough one, to be sure. What are your reservations about telling him? What exactly do you fear?

The thing about the story is that it's not your story iyswim. Or, well, it is but you are the victim of the story - the story is ex's and OW's. And the OWH is the victim too - with more at stake re potential paternity.

Yes it's a vile story but the story is out. It's too late, it can't go back in. Yes the fallout could be awful but that is OW's doing (why she thinks you have a part in the denouement is anybody's guess - it isn't your story, it's hers!). Their marriage is a lie, just as your partnership was a lie (sorry binders). There are two people either side of a clear line, two each side. Two (five ) are the victims, two are the perpetrators.

I would want to know if I were in his position, especially as their skanky story is bleeding out left and right. What he does with it is his business, his choice, not yours. You aren't responsible for what he does with ex and OW's story.

I think it's a decision between telling him up front now, so he learns in relative privacy before it's too common knowledge, or having him find out later in the public arena in the glare of the spotlight, as it were. And you may very well be damned if you do and damned if you don't. He may take his anger out on you if you tell him a la 'kill the messenger' or he may be angry that you knew and didn't tell him. I guess it's what is easier for you to live with, iyswim.

And so now the 'righteous anger' begins from Ex. What a jackass. I think you can expect him to be nasty for quite some time. Just remember you no longer have to listen. You can put down the phone, block his number, or shut the door on him. Have you gotten those chains on the doors yet?

Perhaps you could set up a new email account and tell him to use that email only and only for 'official' communications. Then let Rotty screen the emails for you and give you only the needed info without any rhetoric. I did that for BFF during her divorce.

Of course you're grieving. It's not him you're grieving, it's the death of the dream.

I think that the OWH deserves to know. Do you have any mutual friends who could talk to him. His hurt is going to be equal to yours but with the added humiliation of every body knowing before he did - through the grapevine is a horrible way to find something like this out.

(Sadwidow - what a beautifully written, sensitive and bittersweet post.)

I think that binders should concentrate on herself and her son.

There are other people who care about OWH and will, no doubt, ensure he knows. Binders is not the only person in the vicinity who knows. She has her own responsibilities to concentrate on.

I agree that he should know. Not telling him is not sparing him.

If you could unknow what you know, painful though it is, would you? So they could continue mocking you?

But if you are not ready to tell him binders then don't. You have enough to cope with.

But equally I would not let the prospect of his or your ex's anger stop you if you do want to tell him. Your ex is angry already. You cannot count on any of his reactions being what you could have expected from him before, as the gloves are already off so to speak. He no longer fears upsetting you. If owh is angry you don't have to absorb that or feel guilt. His anger will pass and I doubt you and he can be friends now anyway.

So, make your concern how telling him will affect you and your dc emotionally.

If you did have a mutual friend you could get to do the telling then that might be best for all concerned.

As I said upthread he will find out sooner or later. It is just a question of when and how.

Now ex has moved out I wouldn't use the information as a bargaining chip as I think that is the only thing you might regret later not because ow and ex do not deserve it, they do but because owh is already an unwitting pawn in their sordid affair and he really does not deserve to be used as a bargaining chip without even knowing it.

As for his dc, I agree with sadwidow I think they will always be his, regardless. (And I am glad your dh thought that way sad it makes him the better man by far).

So if you tell him make it for his sake not revenge and if you do not tell him make it for your sake and not a bargain.

I also think the other bloke should know.

This is no ordinary situation. There are children involved in a far different scenario to the usual one and for this reason alone the truth has to be told.

Im also involved in a situation involving children and different mothers and it really does add a huge amount of things to very sad goings on.

He is angry with you because he no longer has the thrill of being in complete control of the situation. The OW isn't clinging to her marriage even though her path to Tosspot is now clear.

Both of them liked the illicit nature of what was going on. Both probably felt very superior and smug, and above all cleverer than you or her H, deceiving you both in front of your very eyes. They probably enjoyed your couples' dinners on many more levels than the merely sexual.

They are both angry that their little bubble has been burst. They both resent you bringing them down to earth, where they are no longer superior in any way to you. OW wants to stay cleverer, in control, and feeling like she is getting away with something when it comes to her H. She knows you could ruin that little game if you chose. Her marriage means nothing to her. Getting her kicks via infidelity in plain view is all she cared about and you have taken that away too.

So yes, they are both angry with you, and that anger will continue. DO not expect this man to ever confront himself and give you any sort of a break just on the basis that you are the blameless party here and he is a cad. He is far to immature to behave decently. He will probably get a lot of enjoyment out of treating you badly until something else turns up to supply him with his superiority fix.

In the meantime, you are the punchbag because he needs some external focus for his bad feelings, and you are left wondering 'who is this man?' As Sadwidow says, there is a lot of grief associated with the loss of the certainty you thought you had about that, and with the loss of the future you thought you had together, and the family you thought you were creating for your son; you have gone through all of this before.

Cheaters put everyone they know in a very difficult position.

About two years before I found out about exH (or I should say, before I learned what he chose to tell me; I found out the truth myself over the next few years) he pestered me to come down to his office with newborn DD4 and the older children as everyone wanted to see the baby, have a little party, on a Friday afternoon. It was an enormous pain in the ass for me to get everyone to the city, find parking, schlep five children including a three year old and a baby a few weeks old with all the stuff that babies need through busy city streets and into the office, but heyho. There was a cake and lemonade and a few bottles of beer. The secretaries and receptionist and the other lawyers and the children and exH and I all had a nice time. I noticed one of the senior lawyers and the office manager exchange a look, however, and I thought about that afterwards. It was a look that told me they knew something that was causing them to throw up a little in their mouths. At the time I didn't know what was on their minds but a year later I found out. I really wish the office manager had sat me down and told me what she knew of exH's internet interests.

People make decisions based on information they think they know. I made two decisions between then and confession day that I wouldn't have made had I known what I know now. The first one was to refinance the mortgage and pay off a credit card bill. The second was to have unprotected sex. I got away with that one, mercifully, but refinancing the mortgage was something I absolutely would not have done. We could have sold the house and made a large profit and then paid off the cc bill. As things turned out we ended up selling the house anyway, as part of our divorce settlement, but a few years later when the house price bubble had burst and our equity was well reduced from what it would have been had we not refinanced.

In other words, I would be very inclined to tell the OW's H. I would certainly be inclined to tell him before she concocts a story about you and exP. But he needs to regain the control of his life that his wife has stolen from him.

excuse typos

Just read Sadwidows post about her husband's daughter.

So without going into all the ins and outs of my situation because Im surprised to say I just dont have it in me anymore , and its all here at MN anyway - I just want to say I have a young man in my life who I look upon as 'my son from another mother'.

He's the result of one of my husbands affairs, and I love him. My husband sees him maybe twice a year but he is a big part of me and my children's lives. I have nothing to do with his mum and she has nothing to do with me but it was decided by the laws of the all powerful mother nature that he would be in mine and my children's life and he is. There was never going to be any getting away from it

Just recently I found out there are another two in a country about 4 hours from where I live. My husband believed in making himself right at home anywhere he had to set up camp for a while but I doubt very much these children will ever be in my life or that of my children's due to them having 'green cards' and more than likely going to live in the States soon.

My husband? Well I havent seen him for over a year now. But my son from another mother? Thats quite a different story altogether.

So as someone who's been through it - the OW's husband should be told whats going on. And last but not least - perhaps he's been suspicious of the 'frinedship' between his wife and Binders husband but has been feeling a bit daft to have been thinking about it so has just kept quiet.

Then I misunderstood it. I stand by the point that telling the poor man isn't revenge.

Yes.

I dont agree with the view point that telling the other party involved is dishonourable and or revenge.

I agree dame and it is the heartbreak I feel that I don't want to inflict on someone else. Plus it could turn against me when she feeds him with her own lies and as I am sure she would and he resents me for trying to hurt his family. The only other route would be to tell her she needs to tell him or I will and hope she does or she could take the risk and call my bluff and then what?

You would be providing someone with information that enables him to decide how the rest of his life is going to pan out.

Would it turn against you when she feeds him her own lies? Her lies don't matter and what she/her husband thinks of you doesn't matter either. You know the truth of it all and thats the bottom line.

Re her telling him - she's a cheat and a liar, will tell you she told him, and that they're staying together anyway.

I also just wanted to say that its perfectly possible to maintain your dignity and composure in a situation like this. Ive gone about my separation and grief very quietly in real life, friends and family have known what was going on but its only two and a half years later people are now saying to me and my children - WHAT? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN? WE HAD NO IDEA!!!!

Doing the right thing and letting someone else know what's going on in their life does not equal being dishonourable or revengeful.

If you had never met OWH I may be inclined to be in the don't tell him camp, but the fact is that you sat and chatted to him on numerous occasions during the years that both of you were being made unsuspecting patsies of by your ex and his dw and, in this, you share a common bond.

If the situation were reversed and it was he who'd discovered his dw's infidelity with your ex, I have little doubt that you would want him to spare you the indignity of being the last to know or to be a told a matter of such magnitude from someone who was little more than a stranger to you.

To my mind revenge does not come into the equation as this is a straightforward matter of courtesy and consideration for his feelings by honouring the, albeit occasional, aquaintanceship you shared with him and to this end you must put aside all of the variables in terms of how he'll react, the impact on his marriage, his dcs, what he/they may think of you etc, in order to do right by him and by yourself.

As texting is definitely not the way to go in delicate situations such as this and as tatty Titty BangBang is no doubt vetting his mail, I would suggest you call him and tell him that you and ex have split up due to you discovering that he has continued the sexual relationship he began with (the dw's name) back in (approx year) throughout the time you have known him which is now some 14 years.

I also suggest that you say that, having thought long and hard about imparting this information to him, you concluded that you did not want to be party to him finding out through common gossip with all the hurt that would entail.

Say also that at the present time you are still reeling from the shock of your discovery and that you are too distressed to say any more except that you wish him well and that he should feel free to call if, at some future date, he wants to talk to you. And then end the converation with a straightforward 'Goodbye'.

Keep it factual. Keep it dispassionate. Keep it short. Dignity retained, honour satisfied, and anyone who thinks otherwise can go screw themselves.

I'm not advocating that you pick up the phone and call him this minute but, for obvious reasons, this onerous task shouldn't be left for too long. Needless to say, any such call should be made at a time when he's unlikely to be at home.

delurking, binders, to say how angry I am that OW is now worried about her marriage and her husband. Incredulous that she would even think about contacting you saying she is worried about this. You, in the meantime are doing a very good job, ably assisted by darling Rotty.

How many women who have been cheated on ultimately wish they never knew so it could have continued?

You could always send that sister of yours around to tell OW to wind her neck in and leave you alone....

I have an idea. I don't know whether or not your sister would go for it, but maybe she could let OW's DH know? That would save you from the "shoot the messenger" fallout, but would also let him know what she'd been up to.

If your sister knows him, then she's a concerned friend and sister to you - if she doesn't, then she's just an outraged sister.

Would that work for you Binders? Would your lovely sister do it?

What goddess said. It's factual, kind and tells him the information he needs sensitively.

What Godess said. Sounds perfect, however it might be a case of 'don't shoot the messenger' and he could get angry with the OP. People often lash out at the person bearing the bad news.

It's a tough call.

I agree with goddess too. It would be so awful for him to be kept in the dark about this. He deserves the opportunity to make his own decisions about where to go from here, even though it is going to hurt.

Don't even worry about the OW and her DH. Keep her dangling for years, why not? I doubt she'll get much enjoyment out of jumping into other beds at the moment!

mathanxiety - what you say makes perfect sense. For 15 years he was abusing binders, not just with the affair but also with the mind games and power trips involved. You can't love someone if you set up situations like dinners, precisely so you can get your kicks from knowing you're having sex with two people at the table. That was a form of hatred. It's now simply changed into another form of hatred.

He felt himself superior to you, Binders, and he intends for that to continue. I did think that his anger was him turning his guilt outwards, but sadly, I think mathanxiety has it spot on.

Sorry I fell asleep after my last post.

Sadwidow - I'm so sorry for the grief and sadness you have had to and are still dealing with in your life. Your most resonates with me in many ways.

Man and Sansoora - thank you for sharing your stories, they definitely help me think. Making decisions that you may not have made was also a good point man. Sandsoora you are an amazing woman and son from another woman is very lucky to have you too.

I've read all the posts on this and I've spent a long time thinking about it and I don't want to spend a load of time worrying about it but....you have all helped me make a decision that I am going to tell him myself within the next few days.

Goddess you have made it easier for me by giving me the words I couldn't think of and they are words I can see myself saying.

I feel more anxiety at telling owh than I did telling my own family. I think I am doing the right thing, I hope I am doing the right thing. I also think that if I didn't know him then it probably would be different.
Thanks again everyone x

You are an amazing woman.

I would still be a snivelling heap in the corner.

I think your ex is massively going to ramp up his bad behaviour towards you now he knows you are out of the box he assigned you.

Takes care of yourself and your DC.