My friend’s wife knows that I’m in love with him

[Lou3211]

Hi everyone,
So I’ve been quite stupid. I’m good friends with one of my male co-workers, we work closely together and keep in touch outside of work with very similar interests; it was all quite innocent as we were both in relationships and had socialised with our partners. His wife and I aren’t particularly friendly but I wasn’t too worried as she has a reputation for being quite rude in our social circle.

Fast forward two years after meeting and I was starting to have problems in my own relationship and broke up with my long term boyfriend. My friend was very supportive and offered to help me move out etc but his wife started to feel jealous and insecure about our friendship. I really sympathised as it was affecting both of them: she was unreasonable and he was feeling the strain. I tried to keep a distance but in doing so, realised that I probably did like him on another level. I also thought maybe he was unhappy like I had been.

I tried to keep my distance further until a night out where I got very, very drunk and wore my heart on my sleeve.
Nothing happened, I didn’t touch or try to kiss him but he realised that I like him as more than a friend. (It all sounds very juvenile!)
A couple of days later he raised the issue by text to say he was sorry if I felt like I’d been led in and I apologised, said I was far too drunk and it wasn’t acceptable. It was a brief but honest conversation and we both just said we’d try to go back to normal.

A week later and I’ve just found out that his wife has gone through his phone and seen our messages after the night out.
I have no right to feel this way but I feel embarrassed that she knows, I don’t want her to hate me but it’s surely understandable that she does.

Part of me thinks to just stay calm, I had a little crush but nothing came of it and both her husband and I have acknowledged it was silly. Another part of me is mortified and worried she is going to storm into our work telling everyone what a home wrecker I am.

Should I approach her?
Or should I accept the consequences of what I’ve done and keep well away? She’s unfriended me on Facebook which isn’t very mature but it shows she’s p*ssed off.
Even though ‘nothing happened’ I’m guilty of being attracted to her husband, and letting him know it.

Lou, keep your head down and carry on, until you leave.
Unfortunately, other people will have already noticed.
Stop and wear her shoes for 5 minutes, imagine how you would feel inside, if she had come on to your DP, not pretty is it. ☹️

She’s unfriended me on Facebook which isn’t very mature - seriously. You sound like you are 12 and not a grown a woman. You think his wife should be your best friend. Your posts make you sound self absorbed so leave the poor woman alone and stop meddling in other people's marriages.

You need to respect her and their marriage and unfortunately close the door on your friendship.

At the end of the day it could put a drain on a stable marriage when he has no interest in being more than friends with you.

I think the right thing to do is to apologise to the wife and tell her that you over stepped and will no longer be intruding in their marriage.

Imagine yourself in her shoes, finding such a message on your own DP/DH’s phone. Back off completely from both of them - enough damage done already.

OP, you sound like you regret what happened and don't want to piss off wife any more to minimise the chance of her telling people.

Do you accept the best/only way to do this is to end friendship? it can't go back to normal has to be work only then nothing when you leave.

Yes, things aren't "going back to normal". Your friendship with this man is over.

Just leave them alone. It's easy enough to do. You're not essential to their relationship. Unprofessional of you to make a pass at your work colleague too. Luckily he didn't act on that so he has some values at least. No more drama is easy if that's what you really want. You can go away live your life leave this couple alone then it's done isn't it ?

He will probably distance himself from you anyway; doesn't sound at all likely that he'd jeopardise his marriage for you.

You want to know how to proceed? You stop contacting him outside of work and when you leave, you have nothing more to do with him. You'll do this if you give a shit about his wife

I'll echo everyone else in saying that you need to step entirely away and that there isn't any halfway house about this situation.

In parallel - it might also be useful to be present with yourself in the sense of recognising that you are going through difficult emotions. There is little point in letting yourself feel wretched (even if many feel you deserve to feel so). Be kind to yourself as it will possibly be hard to cut ties.

But cut ties you absolutely must.

She’s not been immature by unfriending you, she doesn’t want you in her orbit and who can blame her. Time the back off whole situation.

Lou. You were never going to get much sympathy in here but I think the thrust of the advice is sound. Back off and avoid contact with him, definitely don't approach his wife as it will only make her think there is even more to it than she may be imagining. In future though be careful about how intense any relationship gets with a man who is taken other than being friends

Sorry OP, but I don't believe for one second that you are really feeling humble about the whole situation. I think you went into it with a very clear plan from the start to get him to pick you and it backfired big time and you are now trying to convince yourself that you are accepting that it was a mistake, and you should never have done it.

You were too happy to consider that he was unhappy because of her and believed that he would be so much happier with you. The whole sequence of events is so stereotypical. You become friends, then you ditch your partner, you play the innocent and can't understand why his wife would be suspicious of anything and you do feel sorry for him to have a wife so controlling. Then when after the break-up, he doesn't make a move, and you start to question whether you misread his feelings, you orchestrate the 'oops, I'm drunk, I'm telling you thinks I had never intended to tell you, ignore me', when most likely, it was another scheme to get him, hoping that he was just too nervous to make the move himself, so you thought you'd help him a bit.

It didn't work, you now know that you lost and you really don't like the fact that his wife knows it. What a victory for her to know that despite all your efforts to still her husband, you have failed because he really is fully committed to her. She must be thanking you now for giving her such an opportunity to know how much he truly loves her.

Sorry but I've seen women like you playing the innocent game in their scheme to steal a man from someone else. My OH has a very close female friend and I know there is nothing there because she would never act the way you did, even from the start. You pretended and still are, probably even to yourself, that your intentions were irreproachable, when there is very little doubt that if he had responded to your advances, you would have jumped on the opportunity and then played the 'his ex was difficult, he just didn't love her anymore, I never intended for this to happen' card.

Don't send her a message, she already knows it was all on you. The texts clearly shows he rejected you and wasn't interested.

It's not immature of her to defriend you. Why would she wish to be friends with someone who hit on her husband? She also won't think you're a home wrecker, Becayse, again, he wasn't interested, you weren't wrecking anything. She will just think you're pathetic hitting on a married man who wasn't interested,

You just need to take it on the chin, she knows. He's not interested. Keep your head up high and get through the last few weeks at work and then don't contact either of them again. What's done is done.

I have been the ‘wife’ twice in this situation, and I am sure I could have been called rude and unfriendly to them, I was unfriendly because they were overstepping the mark and being over familiar , in one case I saw a whatsapp before he managed to delete it calling me ‘insecure’ . I think she would have felt insecure with a partner who was responding to totally unnecessary amounts of communication multiple times a day and deleting as fast as he could, regardless of if it was totally innocent. Some men just enjoy the playing along with ‘damsels in distress’ even if nothing more but you were playing with fire and unless he was very naive he would have been aware, most women are quite obvious in mannerisms when they fancy someone. Just learn that it’s a crap idea to get over invested in someone who is partnered up and move on, the poor wife however may never quite see him in the same light.

That’s a very good point @yetmorecrap. Or the OP’s ‘friend’ might have form for cultivating this kind of thing in the past.

I hope you left him.

Yep but that’s not the issue of the OP who for the most part of their friendship just saw him as a friend.
The issue you are describing is squarely on the shoulders of the guy who enjoys the attention despite making their partner/wide uneasy AND knowing about it (otherwise why on earth deleting said texts/emails/WhatsApp??)
And not, for the OP describes, what has been happening in this case.

I don't think this is fair yemorecrap. There are many men who are friends with women, including in a supportive way, and don't do it for the attention but just because they can be friends with men as much as with women and vice versa.

This man did nothing wrong at all. He was friends with OP and when OP confessed to her feelings, he made it clear that he didn't share them, and that's that. It probably came as a surprise to him that OP could be so immature or naive to try to take the next step up and assumed that even if she did have feelings for him, she would realise that she had no chance and just value their friendship.

In your OP you describe the wife as "rude," "jealous," "insecure," and "immature " for deleting you from fb.

Meanwhile you've painted yourself as "sympathetic" when the husband was feeling the strain from his unreasonably jealous wife.

I think you knew exactly what you were doing; painting the wife out to be horrible and jealous whilst you got to be the sympathetic sane woman who is nothing like his unhinged wife. Meanwhile you "keep your distance" in secret hope he would "suddenly realise" he wanted you over his "crazy" wife. When he didn't do that you "accidentally " revealed your feelings when drunk in hope he was just too scared/shy to reveal his feelings too. Then when that didn't happen you suddenly downplay it all by saying it was "silly."

Meanwhile there is an innocent wife out there who has been painted as unhinged in your OP, watched as a woman became close to her husband in and out of work (but is supposed to be so so cool about it all) and has seen messages on her husbands phone confirming what she had probably been suspecting all along!

It's clear from your OP that you don't like his wife from the snipey comments about her, or you are trying to justify your behaviour by making it look like this poor man must be so unhappy in relationship "like you were" so you must save him from it.

Then instead of backing off, making a plan to finish off the 3 months employment in a professional manner and fading off into the distance, you actually think you can still be friends with this man! And the wife is still being painted out as the bad guy!

OP, if he suddenly asked to meet with you, and announced that he had been tortured since your 'accidental' announcement, and that it made him realise that he had stopped loving his wife and that he has the same feelings for you as you have for him, what would you do?

Would you tell him that it was all silly and you never meant to tell him what you did, and of course he should be with his wife and work on their relationship?

Somehow I bet not...

I think you'll find that bad women cannot be bad women without bad men. Your relationship is in tatters because your partner responded to a woman like OP.

I agree with this. It takes 2.

He messaged you to apologise for being moody at work with you because he doesn't know what to say.

Op if I were you I would politely say, if he messages you again along similar lines, that you are just going to finish your contract at work and cut ties. Also tell him not to message you again and you won't message him out of respect to his wife.

Then go off to your new job and forget about him. It's the only way.

I don’t think I described it as ‘accidental’. In the moment of course it was deliberate and I didn’t think about the short term or long term consequences.

Truthfully, I don’t know. Im realising that I’ve not only hurt his wife but also him by jeopardising his friendship. I am trying NC. The only contact since that night has been instigated by him wanting 1) to acknowledge what happened and 2) to apologise that things are a bit awkward at work.
In the moment, I felt very much in love with my friend and thought it was reciprocated. In the cold light of day, it was stupid because regardless of any feelings, he is taken.

A tough read but deserved.
I posted because I wanted advice on how to limit the damage to my own reputation and wasn’t sure if I should apologised to her and admit I’ve behaved poorly. you’re right, I haven’t described the events fairly. Regardless of my feelings for his wife, which I had when we really were just friends - or so I think in my head - she doesn’t deserve any of this. And I do know that.

When I described her as being ‘unreasonable’, this was when the relationship between her husband and I was just friendship. It did develop.

Have you posted about this before? If so you have been advised to stop contacting/emailing him. You however keep suggesting different reasons to contact him. Leave them alone.

You are fixated on him. He doesn't want to be with you.

If you are not the poster I think you are apologies. There is another poster in an identical situation who will not listen to reason.