Contacting the OW

[user1471855583]

A few months ago I found out that DH had been having an affair. Our marriage was in trouble l and I understand the reasons why, and we have both worked really hard on our marriage, been to Relate etc and our relationship has massively improved.
However I still have huge feelings of RAGE towards the OW - I have never met her but I expect to bump into her at some point as she is relatively local to us. I am pretty sure she has been stalking me on social media - I have blocked her on everything but before I blocked her on instagram she was doing this weird thing of mimicking my posts and hashtags. DH is no longer in touch with her but I don't feel like I can move on completely until I have confronted her. I don't feel like I can let go of my anger until I have done this. My friends all say that this is a bad idea and that I should just move on. Has anyone who has been in a similar position done this, and has it made things better, or worse?

Happy that is what I am doing - I run my own business which is doing really well so well so whether I stay with (not so D) H or not so I know am building a life for myself which she couldn't dream of and which I can be proud of. I like your hashtags diamond but she is staying blocked on instagram at this stage - I use it for my business and I don't want her to know anything about me or what I am up to.
But Sandy - yes. The first two weeks I did nothing but cry and smoke and I was thinking mostly how the fuck does she get to get off scot free and not have to face any consequences. But I also knew that calling her, turning up at her house or whatever would just feed into her psycho wife story line. So much as I am sorely tempted - on a daily basis - I won't. Have an agreement with one of my friends that I text her instead.

HappyJanuary completely agree

Completely understand your rage at her. You love your DH and have decided to make it work so the anger only has one place to go... Rightly or wrongly.

I would remind you that the best revenge is living well... I'd be inclined, rather than confronting her, to put up a few very very happy pics of you and DH were she'll stalk. That will hurt more than confronting her and you get to keep your dignity rather than getting upset or angry in front of her.

You don't have to even see or say anything to the OW to make them face consequences.

But believe it or not she is suffering at the moment. So many OW think they are super special to the MM, but when the affair is exposed they get chucked under the bus they are a terrible mess who usually need counselling to get through it. They are stuck in a terrible place mentally. I'm by no means saying they don't deserve it, but just showing you it's not happiness for their broken souls.

She will be stalking you on social media. She will be devastated if she sees pictures of you and your DH on FB. Ultimately she'll realise she was nothing more than a bit on the side.

Believe me she's living her own hell without any action from you.

The words of an OW

I believed everything ExMM told me about us, how much he was in love with me, all the flattery and good things about me which really boosted my self-image after going through a break-up a year before we hooked up.

How compatible we are, how we were going to live our lives together, do all these things together, where we were going to live, all of it.

I also believed everything he said about how he and his wife had no life together, did nothing together, just shared the same house, that they were separated, how he told her he wanted a divorce and they stopped marriage counseling. And I know now that it was all complete BS. Every single bit of it.

All of it makes me feel like a worthless piece of st.

Ditto to the words above. In my case I need to add that he told me they were in separate beds. She'd moved out for 6 weeks. However, she got pregnant by him the week she left. They are now back as she really wants to make it work. He is still ringing me and texting me daily. I need the strength to tell him to fuck off and stick to it.

Have you not found the block button yet ?

So she's pregnant too Daenerys2. Nice

I was the OW. My DH left his wife for me, no children involved (we are now happily married). I know, I'm a shitty person - I've made my peace with it almost a decade later.

Initially, I did feel terrible about the whole sorry mess. Then his exW stalked me for two years. She made death threats against my unborn baby and hacked DH's email account, sending an email to all his friends saying baby had died during labour and I was critical. She tried to get me fired from my job and called his family, telling bizarre lies about me, implying various mental illnesses.

In doing so, she lost everyone's sympathy and vindicated DH's decision to end the marriage (though not the way it happened).

Keep your dignity and the moral high ground. As PPs have said, she had no loyalty to you and she never will. Ultimately, you won't feel better.

You don't have to go psycho to make your point though do you, I would have just punched you in the gob Amber and moved on, that would have made me feel better.

Fair enough pissed, I'd have deserved that.

Yes she's pregnant but he is still constantly ringing and messaging me. I feel like showing her the messages. But that is just being more cruel to her and I don't want to do that.

Daenerys2 I thought your above post (from the OW perspective) was interesting.

However your repeated wittering on this thread about how seemingly powerless you are to resist the charms of this MM is at best stupid and at worst fucking outstandingly tactless.

Now you add in the fact the MMs wife is pg meaning you're drip feeding your shite drama into the thread of an OP who is in the throes of her own despair because of twats like you.

Have a fucking word.

I did this last week, contacted the OW because i felt like i could not move on, it has been 18 months between me contacting her and my husbands relationship "fucking" her.She was shocked when she answered the phone, and i told her i wanted to speak to her. In a nutshell she went into victim mode, im so sorry, it was just ego massaging, he made me feel great, i made him feel great, lots of we were in a bubble basically, it just didnt amount to anything. This did make me feel better, i had closure from what was the worst episopde in my life, from this day foward she does not figure in my life, i have got free , i hope you do too xx

Would it make you feel better? I don't think she's going to fall to her knees and beg forgiveness (although she should )
It's not worth your energy or headspace, she's not worth it.
I think it was a thread on here where I picked up this saying, "bitterness is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die"

Also, she is still a little victim, her husband doesnt trust her and how she has made a mess of her own life! like i give a shit, i am happy now i know she wasnt all that and i can move on x

it is annoying for people to say OW owes you nothing.

It's the discrepancy that is hard to understand. That when the cheatee and cheater tries to repair the marriage and all the venom and demonising is directed at the other man/woman and yet the cheatee is in a romantic relationship with the other part of the affair. All this talk of 'why should they get away with it' doesn't make sense when the cheatee is trying so hard to forgive their spouse so ultimately their cheating partner has 'got away with it'.

And the ow/om isn't going to be hurt by what the cheatee says. It's not them they were in love with. To me it would make more sense to have a go at the ow/om if you had broken up, but even then it makes no difference to them because they had long since excused away the collateral damage of you being hurt.

Ultimately, we all have this idea of how a confrontation would go... You'd see her, you'd yell at her, tell here what a disgusting person she is and how dare she have an affair with a married man. She'd feel awful about herself and never do it to another person.

The reality though is unknown. She may, like someone mentioned above, simply be waiting for it and you're arrested for harassment etc. She may tell you some truths (or lies) that make you feel worse.

Honestly, ask yourself what she could possibly say that would make it okay, whether it would ultimately make a difference. It won't.

As others have said, you're trying to work on your marriage so you've displaced the very understandable anger from your husband towards this woman. He brought this woman into your life. He made her a factor in your life and something you needed to deal with. He's the one that hurt your and your children. In the name of "fixing" things though you've bottled some of that anger and rage and it needs an outlet. Try writing the many letters that you've written to the OW, to your husband instead. Try writing down all the angry rage filled thoughts and see how that makes you feel. I'd also consider journaling for the same reason

You have so much anger burning away inside you about how you have been treated. Totally normal.

However, as you are trying to make a go of your marriage, you cant let fly at the man that caused that pain because it will prevent you reconciling. So you have to hate her and put all that anger her way.

I dont think that it is her that you are really angry with, but she is a safe person to blame because if you did confront her and kick off then the worst that would happen is that she would argue back and slag you off to people you dont know or care about.

The healthiest way to get your marriage back on track is to vent that anger at the person who hurt you. If he can take it and work with you to get through it then you stand a real chance, but swallowing the pain down and diverting the anger outside will leave you with nothing but an ulcer.

I'm always interested in the 'misplaced anger' theory that I see a lot of on here.

I don't agree at all, and often feel irritated that someone is trying to tell me what I should or shouldn't feel.

I hate my ow. My anger wasn't misplaced. It was directed both barrels at my stbxh. I said what I needed to say, and so did he, many times. Full closure before telling him he had to leave.

We are amicable now. We have shared memories, children and all of the kindnesses he did for me over the years that tip the scales ever so slightly towards balancing out the devastating hurt. I can see how full of regret he is at how his life is turning out.

I have had no such closure with ow. I haven't had an opportunity to rant and scream. I haven't heard her side of the story. She has never shown me any kindness, in fact everything this woman has done was designed to hurt me and my children. She has expressed no regret.

I did not seek any of this from her, and do not expect her to provide it. I'm just trying to explain why that anger endures.

Anger is not a finite pool. I directed it at my husband as the main culprit but there is lots left over for his accomplice.

He did a terrible thing, but so did she.

I genuinely cannot see how marriages recover from this I really can't.

I read on a solicitors webpage, women can forgive but they never forget what they've forgiven. To this I can't look at him tbh

Keep your dignity and the moral high ground. As PPs have said, she had no loyalty to you and she never will. Ultimately, you won't feel better.

You know it pisses me off when OW say to keep the moral high ground. Why should a BW do that when you OW didn't? You want the BW to rise above it, well she may just decide not to.

Amber , I hope you maintain that OW owes you nothing if you husband steps out and cheats.

Just like you owed her nothing, she owed you nothing either.

There's still an OW mindset in your views.

TheLegendOfBeans completely agree

The views on here are very interesting. I don't think any of our reactions to the OW are right or wrong, they are what they are. Just our reactions.

I always wondered why I felt no anger towards the OW. The one my ex ran off with, after two long years of denying her existence. Twenty years of marriage and three doting , gorgeous kids and he left us all for her. I've scrutinised her on Facebook, only natural. She's older than me, not the gorgeous well preserved woman I expected. A bit dowdy, a bit careworn.
Just an ordinary woman.

But I feel indifferent to her. Two of my kids spend a lot of time with her, they are equally indifferent to her.

I think I feel this way, because twenty five years ago my ex made vows to me. She never promised anything, he promised everything. He knew what he was losing, he later regretted it, wanted to start again, but I'd moved on.

So the blame is his, and his alone. Nobody stole him. He opted out on his own accord. The blame is entirely his.

Thanks for those kind wishes Sandy. I don't feel a vast amount of loyalty to the woman who made death threats against my baby, no. I'm ok with that element of my character.

I am as sure as anyone can be that my DH won't cheat. He gave up a lot to be with me and didn't strong me along. Nothing is certain in this life, but I have faith.

I also agree with Legendofbeans.

I don't accept any normal adult would buy this seperate bed shit. As for why he's with her and not you? He prefers her. It's simple really.