What happened when you told the husband/ wife

[Molly333]

Following on from a recent thread in here what happened when those of you told the partner/ husband/wife of the person who was part of the 'affair' ?

Ooh really? never knew my absence would be noted. .

Your absence has been noted AND lamented over... it's the closest thing you could get to attending your own funeral and hearing all the nice things said about you.

I don’t quite know what the thread was intended to do, but I’ve found it quite interesting to read.

I have never been OW or been cheated on, but I did once get shoes thrown at me by the wife of a friend of mine. He was a mate from uni, I introduced him to a hobby group I was involved with and he met OW through that. They had an affair, his DW found out and came round my house to demand that I tell her where he was – she didn’t have OW’s address, but did have mine.

I refused, because she was hysterical and screaming. Not sure if that was the right decision or not, but I don’t react very well to people yelling at me and I tend to just shut down and dig my heels in. I think it’s a response to EA years ago – I just won’t do anything once voices are raised. Anyway, the W screamed more, and then took off her shoes and threw them at my head while accusing me of all sorts. I got a cut on the forehead. I didn’t report it to the police although I was pretty sharp about her afterwards, which again, was probably me showing a lack of empathy – I called her ‘psycho Cinderella’ for a while. But I was pretty unhappy about being hit in the head by a casual acquaintance.

Anyway, her H didn’t go back to her, and I think the way she reacted meant he got quite a lot of support from his friends as I think we felt she was a fairly nasty violent person (rightly or wrongly) and were happy to accept him and OW. Having read the boards here I can now see the other side in a way I never could – I just thought that there was no excuse for violence, and anyone who was violent was just an awful human being who no sensible person should stay with or be near. It’s been really illuminating reading this thread.

That was really out of control behaviour from her, BraveDancing. I think it's very true that in real life, like WannaBe has just said, affairs are forgiven and new partners are accepted. That being the case, particularly where there are children involved, it's obviously better not to publicly explode if that's at all possible.

There are some posters on Relationships board dealing with the outfall of affairs by their husbands who have then subsequently left them, and the husbands' new partners are behaving really shoddily to the ex-wives. It's really shocking to read some of those experiences and when you hear from the posters themselves (the ex-wives) how much they've had to put up with, you can understand the anger and upset.

Affairs are never a good thing but they are a fact of life and they happen far more often than we ever hear about, I think.

Absolutely no need to pull the thread, Bubble just needs to leave it because it's distressing her.

BraveDancing, nobody has the right to abuse you and throw things at you, especially not when it's because you're refusing to help them to abuse and throw things at someone else. It doesn't mean the wife is an evil person, but you don't owe anything to a person who physically injures you over something that's nothing to do with you. She deserved an assault conviction.

Welcome back WannaBe - there have indeed been several threads about you

BraveDancing - that is awful! What a psycho. I guess she just lashed out at you as you were the first person she came into contact with.

I think it is true what they say that in times of extreme stress and upset people show their true colours. Just because you have been wronged by something or someone it does not give you a fast pass to act like an irrational loon and break the law.

As for pulling this thread.... really? Because one poster can't take as good as they give?

Bubble has come across as a thoroughly unpleasant individual on this thread. It should be no surprise really given that she seems to think being 'wronged' gives someone carte blanche to treat other people how they like with no repercussions.

mrssapphire well done for keeping your cool in the face of Bubble's abuse

Ooh fame at last. .

TBH it never ceases to amaze me what people will justify in the name of hurt caused by an affair, but only from women. After all, if a woman told her H she was leaving him for another man and he beat her up would people be saying it was no more than she deserved?

I totally agree with lying that there are some women who treat the first wife appallingly even though they have been the OW, so there are definitely wrongs on both sides. I had a friend at school whose dad had the same OW for around fifteen years. She even used to ring the house phone to speak to him. no idea why his wife put up with it for as long as she did, but when her youngest left school she divorced him, he moved in with OW and it lasted for another six months before she saw the light and threw him out. .

Conversely however my ex MIL's aunt was the OW for about 40 years and even had a child by him. His wife had threatened to kill herself and their children if he dared leave her (something which was later confirmed by his children when they got older), so he didn't. Even after his wife died he never moved in with her because that was the relationship they had always had. I always felt sorry for her, because she had been prepared to settle for that all her life. The wife was a deeply unpleasant woman by all accounts, someone who he should have left years before but in truth back then it wasn't the done thing to leave a marriage anyway. I certainly couldn't look at him as a bastard or her as a home-wrecking bitch. Life just isn't that black and white.

Indeed WannaBe and, I think if life were truly black and white in ALL things, there's not one of us who wouldn't fall off that scale into the 'unforgiveable' pit of grey-dom.

WannaBe I think that is an interesting point. We seem to get so fixated with the idea that either the first (ex) wife is a psycho bitch loon or the second (current, maybe OW) is indeed the psycho bitch loon, that it in some way has to be one or the other.

We here so many stories on here, in RL, from our own experiences etc about the second wife / OW / stepmum etc being a husband stealing bitch, evil step mum ('i'm not having that women near my dc' mentality), ''hope he leaves her and screws her over', judgemental accusations blah blah.

And yet so many first wife rants - 'my dp's ex is a psycho', bitter and twisted first wife, money grabbing ex, screwing the kids over etc. as well.

The reality is most people are just normal! First / second wife, OW or not. Most people just deal with stuff, get on with it and live their lives like a normal rational human being. Obviously there are some immature, deranged, bitter, revengeful, psychotic people out there, who may or may not be a first / second wife (or OW).

It seems like society (at least Mumsnet) need to focus on finding the 'baddy' when a relationship breaks down.

It's hilarious to apply in real life. To my knowledge, both of my parents have reached retirement age having had two sexual partners each in their entire lives.

They aren't some sex mad hedonists trashing the lives of others. In fact they are boring old farts who mainly wear beige and who's marital conversations are mostly about remembering to take their statins.

But in the minds of many, their behaviour one summer back when Wham were number one marks them for life as lying, untrustworthy whores who shouldn't be allowed to run a cake stall.

I'm like, wtf.

I discovered the Chump Lady website through MN and spent quite a lot of time reading it. There were a lot of commenters who had been deeply hurt and damaged by appalling behaviour from their partners and I felt for them. There was also a handful of commenters who spoke about their exes in such a way that it didn't sound to me as though they had ever loved them at all, even before the affairs. There were even a couple who seemed to seek out opportunities every day to relive the wrong that had been done to them years previously, to such an extent that I couldn't help feeling that I probably would not have stayed with such a bitter person myself.

I know the line on there is that if you're unhappy you should end your marriage before sleeping with someone else and in an ideal world, yes you would. In the real world, people in dead and loveless marriages, who see a chance of happiness, might not want to waste however many weeks or months of life waiting for it all to be rubberstamped. Like Sapphire pointed out, a lot of people are likely to be just as hurt and angry by the marriage's end even if the new couple hadn't consummated anything.

I know a man who was always screaming and swearing at his wife, calling her foul names, throwing food across the room if he didn't like it, and so on. But he was never unfaithful and so in his mind he was better than anyone who was. She never cheated either, as far as I know, but I can't say I'd have strung her up if she had.

Mine too MorrisZapp :)

My step mum was not evil and did not 'steal my dad away' (she was quite young and naive and fell for his cheesy charm though). She is normal, quiet, quite plain and my dad clearly thinks she is a goddess (its quite sweet actually).

My mum, although hurt and let down by my dad did not go round to OW's house and beat the crap out of her, or harass her and my dads family.

She ranted and raved at him a bit, ignored him for a few years and then moved on. She is not a psycho bitter loon who poisoned my dad and step mum against me.

i am certainly not going to judge my parents, or my step mum for stuff that happened years and years ago, or for mistakes they have made in their relationships.

ShebaShimmyShake, my exdh admits he was more upset by split than the affair. He did not see it as OM taking me away from him, or replacing him, or being better in bed / better looking etc. He obviously wanted to know details and was hurt that I had cheated rather than just be honest and tell him I was in love with someone else etc. but what he was most upset about was the usual traumas of splitting up; what would happen to the house, impact on the dc, wasted years , end of an era, re-adjusting, sense of loss, change, financial worries etc.

And I think all breaks up are absolutely devastating. I had a v abusive partner when younger. She was never physically abusive, but there was a lot of emotional and verbal abuse, and it all turned into a total horror show. Yet even so, the break up was really upsetting and scary. I was devastated at losing my home, shared pets, shared friends, by the financial upheaval and that wasn’t even taking children into account.

The wife who threw her shoes at me was obviously in a place of trauma. She’d found out about the affair that day. Apparently she phoned her H and screamed abuse at him down the phone so he hung up on her, switched off his phone, and gone over to OW’s place and just said “I think I need to move in”. She couldn’t find him or OW so turned up at mine. At that point she already blamed our entire friendship group I think, including me, because I’d introduced her H to OW. And she wanted to vent at someone. Although I guess it’s probably just as well it was me and not OW because god knows what she’d have done to OW.

As a note, my friend and his OW are still together. They’ve got a couple of kids and are very happy, and I’m pretty sure neither are cheating, although of course you never know.

Love is pain. We all learn that to our cost. My worst breakup was with my first bf, he was a bit of a knob but god I loved him. A few weeks after we broke up I saw him holding hands with another girl and I literally collapsed in pain, grief and visceral jealousy. I've had other breakups since which have been horrific in other ways.
Breaking up is utterly shit, even when it's for the best all round. Nobody has a monopoly on the right to feel pain, anguish, betrayal.

Married couples promise to stay together until death. To break up is a huge betrayal of that promise regardless of the reasons.

There has been a lot of wisdom on this thread & many posts that make you think. It has been one of the best for not giving in to the pressure to toe a certain line as so many threads do.

I assume the OP (who hardly seems to have been back?) didn't have an idea how it would turn out, it was just curiosity. I hope they are not a journalist?!

ocelot, I agree, many of the posts written have been very thought-provoking indeed. I too am glad that there have been enough posters with perhaps a wider experience who've either been there - or come out of the other side of the situation - to keep the thread from the usual mud-slinging before deletion.

Considering that affairs really are more common-place than we think, there does need to be a venue for discussion about it. Any discussion wouldn't be from the standpoint of cheerleading somebody having an affair anyway, nobody would stand for that and nor should they, they'd get zero support from anybody.

I'm glad that MNHQ have let it stand. :)

I was the one who had an affair. My ex husband and I divorced. He handled the whole sordid business with grace. There were no fisticuffs or shouting matches. We have both remarried. Truth be told, I frequently miss him.

That's sad, Silver. Do you regret the affair and divorcing or was it something that happened and 'needed to'? I hope you will be happy and the pangs diminish as time passes.

Lying, I regret the way I ended my marriage. I am ashamed I had an affair. I regret the hurt I caused my ex. I'm guessing our marriage would have ended anyway. I just wish I had been honest enough to tell him I was done.
I miss his sense of humor..

I feel exactly the same as you Silvernight. Sounds like near enough the exact same circumstances too.

for both of you, Silver and Sapphire. It's not easy to end a marriage that isn't abusive or awful in some other way and sometimes affairs give the impetus to exit to try and find a better relationship.

The affair wasn't right, obviously, but that doesn't mean that the outcome was wrong, if you see what I mean?

Gosh silver and sapphire it's so reassuring to hear someone else say that! I thought I was the only one. If I had my time again! Does the hurt ever go away?! The guilt is immense. Even if it would have ended anyway. Gut wrenchingly hard at times :-(