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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

OW doesn't know

134 replies

woollystoat · 10/04/2017 13:19

Very long story, which I won't go into (and don't want published in DM)

OW doesn't know stbxh is married/was married when they got together (I think 1 year before we separated). Aside from the fresh set of lies this has dug up for me I feel terrible that she doesn't know. He is manipulative and controlling and has repeatedly lied and cheated. I had previously assumed that she was equally unpleasant, but it seems she's an innocent party.

WWYD?

OP posts:
springydaffs · 11/04/2017 23:38

How dispiriting this thread is. The majority of posters who don't get why you would want to warn her.

fwiw a few people warned me about my stbh. At the time it confused me, I couldn't understand what they could be referring to. Later on, when up to my neck in the dark hell that was my marriage, I was SO GRATEFUL those women had risked telling me. It was a beacon of light in the thick darkness - which, ultimately, guided me out of that hell hole.

I absolutely agree it's our responsibility towards other women to warn. She may not hear it at the time but it may just save her life, as it did mine (and I don't mean physically).

phoolani · 11/04/2017 23:57

i agree with Titiana, EatsShit (I paraphrase!) and springy. If I had been in an abusive relationship and come out the other side, I would very much want to warn other women about him, and it wouldn't have anything to do with revenge, but simply trying to spare another woman going through what I went through.
I can understand not actually doing it through fear of reprisal or further shit raining down on you, but I truly don't understand people who wouldn't have that basic urge to try and stop it happening to somebody else.

RubyBluesey · 11/04/2017 23:57

Why are you obsessed with this... it is not your problem now?

AnnieAnoniMouse · 12/04/2017 00:07

I'd tell her.

If you can stop someone getting more hurt, why wouldn't you. Especially when she has children.

WicksEnd · 12/04/2017 00:41

The kids will tell her won't they? Eventually, Inadvertently?
I can't believe she's not done a bit of a snoop on social media about him.
Any of your friends have her on FB?

Original poster
Woollystoat · 12/04/2017 00:54

Did I not make it clear? The question is now immaterial. She's knows and is grateful for being told (not by me).

OP posts:
anxiousnow · 12/04/2017 02:04

Glad that she's been told woolly. Do you know how much she's been told? Hope you are feeling a bit easier now this decision on what to do, that was worrying you has been taken off your plate

Atenco · 12/04/2017 04:07

Glad she has been told. Hurrah

I agree with this comment "How dispiriting this thread is. The majority of posters who don't get why you would want to warn her"

WicksEnd · 12/04/2017 10:54

@Woollystoat or @woollystoat If you change your user name then people will miss your updates as you're no longer highlighted.
So it's not that you're 'not making yourself clear' it's that you've changed accounts one with a capital W and one with lower case. HTH.

That's why people are missing your updates.

How has she found out?

ForTheSakeOfFuck · 12/04/2017 11:38

Oh! I didn't realise there had been an update from OP. Going back to read it now.

ForTheSakeOfFuck · 12/04/2017 11:43

Okay it remains somewhat confusing even after having read the non-highlighted posts. There's a sort of gap between "should I tell her" and "she now knows (not through me) and is grateful to have found out". Did the mutual friend intervene? Has she just found out through serendipity?

I mean, I'm glad she knows, and I hope she's taking appropriate steps, but the "miracle happens" blank in the middle of the story is a bit weird.

FlyAwayPeter · 12/04/2017 12:25

And really, no need to be snippy with others posters.

Original poster
Woollystoat · 12/04/2017 12:32

Sorry if it was confused by the name change. I didn't realise people could see OP posts highlighted as I don't get that when I view threads

I was trying to just close down the discussion by saying that the question no longer mattered. I'm not going to share the details of what happened. It was rather inevitable than miracle. But I did not tell her.

OP posts:
NancyWake · 12/04/2017 12:35

I read the update but it wasn't clear. I thought maybe they'd split up.

It's profoundly depressing the number on this thread who would not lift a finger to help another woman avoid a noxious man.

Respect to all the women who have said otherwise.

Hissy · 12/04/2017 12:49

springy and others you are talking about warning that your Ex was abusive, the OP was NEVER going to mention her ExH emotional abuse, merely that he was lying that he was divorced when he wasn't.

woollystoat Mon 10-Apr-17 15:03:53
Morris - I wasn't going to contact her to tell her how bad his behaviour is, I was going to just tell her that he was married when he said he wasn't. So he was cheating on both of us.

Atenco · 12/04/2017 14:13

But Hissy that behaviour is also a form of abuse.

LilaoftheGreenwood · 12/04/2017 16:17

Nancy, that is an incredibly cavalier characterization of people's motives on this thread and it does not sit well with the emotive nature of this topic. I have been in the OP's position. It is absolutely not a case of "not wanting to lift a finger". It is a case of protecting oneself, a self that has possibly been very nearly shattered by the experience of being in this type of relationship.

I wouldn't want any woman reading this and in a similar position to the OP to be guilted into involving herself in psychologically damaging communication, just because a bunch of strangers on the internet somehow think it isn't "taking one for the team". Bollocks to that. If you've been through this kind of thing, you do what you need to survive. THEN if you have the emotional energy to spare, you help others.

I thought the OP sounded invested and overwrought (and I wasn't the only one to read it like that), I thought back to the state I was in, and all the little ways in which I was still overly interested in who-knew-what (but couldn't see this myself at the time), and the damage I did myself remaining involved in all that back-and-forth for far too long. And I wish someone had advised me to keep my nose out of it and put myself first.

That instinct to sacrifice themselves for other people's comfort, incidentally, is usually how people have got themselves into these kinds of relationships in the first place.

NancyWake · 12/04/2017 16:38

'Peoples' or yours Lila?

This thread isn't about you, if you didn't feel up to it that's fine. But you are reading your own life into the OP's.

OP was upfront that she wanted to tell OW and was dissuaded by posters here.

Nobody has guilted anyone into anything. The OP stated herself what she wanted to do.

I wouldn't want other women in the OP's position who want to warn someone to be similarly put off by a bunch of strangers. Particularly a you never know in cases like this when a person's life might depend on it.

Seeing that as a sacrifice is again interpreting it in terms of your own life.

LilaoftheGreenwood · 12/04/2017 16:48

All any of us can do is speak from our own experience, Nancy, whether that consists of situations we have found ourselves in, acquired knowledge from other sources, whatever. It's a nonsense to say "this thread isn't about you" to someone contributing their own experience. You're kidding yourself if you think your own contributions, for example, are some kind of objective higher truth. Of course, I've no idea what may be behind them, but they will be as "subjective", for what that's worth, as my own take.

I don't want anyone to be put off communicating either, if that is what they really want to do - but that is not how I read the OP, and I was not alone in that. But pfft, I've already explained that and you didn't take it on board the first time, so...

FlyAwayPeter · 12/04/2017 16:51

It is absolutely not a case of "not wanting to lift a finger". It is a case of protecting oneself, a self that has possibly been very nearly shattered by the experience of being in this type of relationship

This.

FlyAwayPeter · 12/04/2017 16:53

OP was upfront that she wanted to tell OW and was dissuaded by posters here.

Point of order, m'lud. The OP wrote "WWYD?" The first post had no indication of what the OP thought she should do. She was asking for opinions.

We gave them. They were all different. We're all different people.

NancyWake · 12/04/2017 17:33

That's disingenuous FlyAway

The OP's first few posts made shortly after the OP, made it clear she wanted to tell OW. She was then dissuaded.

I don't want anyone to be put off communicating either

But that's precisely the upshot of this thread. Luckily someone in real life told this poor woman.

I'm not sure why you're getting worked up Lila, you are not one of the posters who told OP not to say anything, I was not criticising you personally, and actually I agreed with your original advice to the OP.

CherriesInTheSnow · 12/04/2017 17:50

Can I just say, because I feel like me and several other posters (and I know I can't speak for their motives) that if I OP and subsequent posts had been, in my point of view, solely about warning the new woman of abuse, I (and probably many others) would have never questioned whether it was right to say to this woman or not.

My point specifically was, given that the OP actually categorically said that she didn't intend to mention the abuse, and this got my back up as I have been on the other side of this. I have been (still am) in the role of the new woman who was "warned for her benefit", and saw the escalation when this woman didn't get the result she wanted (i.e. me leaving OH).

I have seen the toll it took on my partner, as their was a child involved so he couldn't just go NC, when this gross manipulative woman then tried to tell everyone who would listen, family, his friends, her friends, that he was abusive and violent. And no one ever dared question it, because you don't question the word of a woman who says she has been abused.

I know that is an extreme example, but I have seen less extreme variations of this happen when a few other relationships of other people in my life have broken down. I am not at all victim blaming, I know many women suffer abuse and it is a rife problem and is so awful. But I am also aware that relationship breakdowns are complicated, and it came across to me personally that the OP had somewhat less clear cut motives than some of you seemed to think (which is also fair as it was your point of view).

It is naive to think that all women posting on here saying along the lines of "don't tell" are unfeminist or uncaring. There are lots of reasons behind thinking, from people having been through it themselves, or people like me who know all too well there are two sides to every story.

I hope this doesn't come across as me being confrontational, I just would hate for someone to come across my post and be influenced by it thinking that people wouldn't believe them and they must just be bitter. And I just wanted the opportunity to clear that up since some posts since have made me feel that the motives behind my post have been misinterpreted.

CherriesInTheSnow · 12/04/2017 17:56

Wow, sorry for the awfully written bunch of crap I just put there, hope the gist of it is still clear Blush

NancyWake · 12/04/2017 18:10

Lying to the extent that this man did is abusive. Just sticking to the facts and alerting the OW to that would have been enough.

Unless you believe that the OP is a - 'gross manipulative woman' as you describe your DP's ex, then her example is not relevant.

No-one said anything about 'unfeminist' or 'uncaring'.

Anyway, I really don't like threads that take on a life of their own long after the OP has departed. It's pointless.