Friend had affair and husband has just found out.

[blueselephant]

My friend has been having an affair and her husband had just found all the evidence of it.

Her DH is close friends with mine and has been confiding in him, they are both shocked as no one suspected, the thing is she told me about it and I've kept it secret.

I'm so lost as to what to do, should I tell my DH that I knew? He will be devastated that I kept it from him, and I'm not sure what will happen between us, we are working different shifts this weekend so I can't come clean until we get chance to sit down and talk about it.

My friend has been having a crisis for a while now, drinking way too much, being very chaotic and I just wanted to support her, I've always said that she needs to finish the affair and sort her marriage out but she was adamant that she was happy.

There is so much anger with her DH and they have a DS and a DD who want to stay with Dad and don't want to talk to their Mum, which is totally understandable.

I don't know any details about the man she's had the affair with so don't know if they'll get together now, what a mess, I wish I'd said something so many times and now it's too late but should I come clean that I knew or just keep quiet?

I would tell your dh now. Your friend put you in a shitty position and there's no right or wrong way to deal with that but you need to be honest now. The fact you were encouraging her to be open and no enabling her speaks volumes.

Her dh probably will see you at betraying him, your dh might even think the same but i would ask what he would do in your shoes without the benefit of hindsight.

I would tell your friend how pissed off you are to be put in this position if you havent already.

Would your husband actually be "devastated" to learn that you knew about it.That seems a bit extreme. No offense intended, I just don't understand why he would be that upset.

Of course he would be upset. By colluding in her knowledge of her friend's affair, he might think she would be o.k. about having one too.

Not that that is true of course. You can still keep a secret for a friend while not condoning it.

Ironically i lost a friend due to her dh cheating and confidence sharing. My dh knew, in fact all his friends did and their wives. I didnt have a clue as dh doesnt like gossip and saw it as a confidence. Because dh was the best friend she cut me off citing i must have know when actually several of her friends did instead.

I have to agree with a pp that 'dishing the dirt' is an extraordinary phrase to use in this context. As if confusing adultery with gossip magazines.

There are too many people (usually women) who seem to think that them betraying their friends' secrets is a sign of some virtuous partner

I don't know anyone who thinks that so you must know some peculiar (or not very intelligent) people.

Ironically, you seem to believe that keeping schtum on adultery is a sign of virtue. You don't seem to have understood that this is not any old random secret but a deep life changing betrayal of the whole family.

Because dh was the best friend she cut me off citing i must have know when actually several of her friends did instead.

That's the position OP's DH will be in.

It will be difficult for DH's mate to be around OP if he ever finds out she knew.

I don't know anyone who thinks that so you must know some peculiar (or not very intelligent) people
Seen it many a time on MN. Some say anything that isn't made explicitly clear to be kept quiet is fair game to share (ignoring common sense to be honest). Apparently friends should never tell other friends anything they wouldn't want DP to know according to some on here.

Ironically, you seem to believe that keeping schtum on adultery is a sign of virtue.
I think not burdening others with information that's not mine to share is better than placing another human being in a shitty situation.

Say Friend tells OP. OP is (rightly) unimpressed and makes her feelings known. OP tells her DP because it's her DP. DP tells the betrayed spouse. Betrayed spouse confronts friend. The thing is there's no evidence of adultery so all that's happened is placing a bomb with no evidence in someone else's marriage, in the absence of evidence they nay work through it but live in doubt and paranoia and the OP has betrayed their friend. For what? Some ridiculous attempt to appear like the virtuous one?

Or friend has an affair. OP makes feelings clear abd stays well out of it. Friend makes their bed and will have to lie in it. The likelihood is the affair will break in its own time, evidence will emerge and although it all kicks off, it kicks off with some evidential basis behind it rather than hearsay because one person didn't like being in an awkward situation.

I think you were placed in a difficult position OP. Personally - I would never betray a confidence unless necessary - and someone else’s relationship is not obviously an absolute moral imperative. You can’t be expected to share all your confidences of others with your DH. But this seriously affected his friend - and he would have had to break your confidence. I think he’d forgive you if you confessed you knew. He should at least be able to understand your dilemma!

For what? Some ridiculous attempt to appear like the virtuous one?

???? For ethics.

If friend tells me, I tell friend she has some time to come clean with her DH. Otherwise I will be obliged to tell him myself.

Evidence is completely irrelevant. If friend has any ethics at all she will be honest. If she lies in that circumstance that would be the end of our friendship. Doubt and paranoia she caused her DH would be entirely friend's responsibility.

Two deal breakers for me: breaking the law and adultery. I will not be complicit in either and if you do it you may lose my friendship. You will certainly lose my respect.

Evidence is relevant. Anything else is hear say. You only have to look at threads on here to see how many people explain away hear say (which may or may not be true) and you can also see threads where people's relationships havd been ruined because of 'someone said...' Some of it will be true. Some of it will be rumour.
Why do you think so many threads on here where someone suspects there are so many people saying 'step back and wait'? Because storming in quickly alerts the cheater, they deny it because there is no evidence and then get better at hiding it.

The cheating has happened. The responsibility for the cheating lies with the 2 people cheating.

The friend has put OP in an awful situation. The OP has opted not to put her DP in the same awful situation.

Hmm should have shared it with him from the beginning but now what’s done is done - don’t say anything, nothing to gain from it. But if he asks you outright then tell the truth. Good luck, hope it turns out ok.

Agree with MaisiePops you can have boundaries without needing to blurt out every bloody thing to your spouse. It's incredible the number of women who do that, thinking that their spouse also does and having the rug pulled out from them. Their friends are long gone by then.

You don't have to be complicit in any activity that you're not comfortable with, don't partake in it then - but you don't have the right to disclose other people's secrets and better that you have the 'moral compass' to make it clear to your friends up front that you will tell your partner anything that you see fit to tell.

Respect goes every which way, each person decides what and whom they will and will not respect.

lying
You've put it better than me.

It's like my friend who knew someone was cheating. She told her cheatinh friend that she didn't want to be involved, wouldn't be offering a sympathetic ear to i love the other man chats and would be there when she needed advice on ending things. It wasn't her secret to tell. When it all came out she supported her friend and helped her through. She didn't like her friend's choices, but we don't agree with everything friends do.

By staying friendly with her through it all...you can be perceived as supportive and complicit of the affair.

If your DH knew your good friend was being cheated on and didn't tell you ...how would you feel? ...and how do you think her H will feel when he finds out you knew?

That's perception though, not reality.
I'd like to think most adults are capable of understanding that social relationships are not always black and white.

Thankfully I've never been in that position, but if it happened my DH knows my character well enough to trust that I would try to make the best decision possible in an awkward situation. If wider people wish to assume they know the private discussions between me and my friend and make their own assumptions then that is on them.

Maisie this is not what hearsay is.

If OP had been told by another person that her friend was cheating, that's hearsay. Instead she was told by the cheater (witness) herself.

Hearsay is what a person heard about someone from others, not based on personal direct relationship with that person (witness).

All of which is irrelevant and we're not in a court anyway.

The rest of your post is strange as friend as confessed to affair and DH has discovered 'all the evidence'. All the stuff about rumour and alerting the cheater is beside the point.

you can have boundaries without needing to blurt out every bloody thing to your spouse

You certainly don't need to 'blurt' everything to your spouse, but this one thing. Lumping all kinds of minor info together with cheating doesn't do you any favours as it indicates lack of discrimination.

As if you can't discern the difference between not sharing about menstrual issues and new outfits, and the fact that your friend is betraying DH's close friend.

You are complicit in keeping the affair a secret if withhold the truth from the DH. If you're 'not comfortable' with that behaviour, then don't collide in it.

collude ^^

Don't tell your DH, no good can come of it. It's water under the bridge now he knows anyway.

I’d fess up but if you don’t you live with the likelihood of being found out or assumed that you knew anyway, being such a close friend.

Trust me I don’t think highly of any fucker who knew about my husbands affair.

All the stuff about rumour and alerting the cheater is beside the point.
It's not in the context of a discussion about whether people felt the OP should have told her DH sooner and whether keeping a friend's confidence is similar to actively covering for an affair.

As it is, the affair is out. We were debating whether the OP should have told her DP before it came out/when she was first told. Some say she should have told DP straight away, others (me included) feel it wasn't the OP's information to divulge.

Should add, I do think the friend was very shitty for putting the OP in that situation. It's one thing to confess cheating when it's a casual partner and the friend doesn't really know the partner (although the cheating is still bad). It's spectacular poor form to tell a friend knowing her husband is friends with the betrayed spouse. It put the OP in a needlessly difficult situation.

No, Shambu, if you can't keep your mouth shut then don't set yourself up as a friend, somebody to confide in. Set out your stall at the outset with your 'terms of reference' at least. Then you can smugly sit back safe in the knowledge that you can go running to your spouse with whatever you like.

... and hope that your standpoint doesn't bite you in the arse later on when your husband - who keeps secrets from you - leaves you for somebody else/has an affair at the least.

I don't tell my husband my friends' confidences, why would I? Nothing to do with him. I don't want to know his friends' secrets either. It's up to the adults involved in whatever personal stuff they have going on, not for me (or you, or anybody else) to poke their sticky beaks into.

Maisy's post makes perfect sense. It doesn't to you because neither she nor I agrees with you. I wouldn't have friends like you and vice versa. I'm ok with that.

Also agreeing with Maisy that this scenario was foreseeable and the friend should have known that and been more aware of the implications of involving OP. That was indeed a shitty, bubble-headed thing to do but that's what affairs can do to a person - make them purposely oblivious of the people around them and the consequences of those actions.

it doesn't change my stance though that if you can't keep secrets, declare that upfront. That is the decent thing to do.

Question is... if your DH and his mate have been having discussions about his marriage... did your DH come back and tell you about these chats? Did he ever ask you, do you have any idea what’s going on with her because X is baffled.

Have you already lied?

I think you need to blame her. She put you in a really shite situation by blurting this out to you and you really wished you could rewind the clock and unhear her. You knew if you told your DH you’d place him in the same shite situation she placed you in and you didn’t want to do that to him. I’d also tell him there’s two sides to every story and you don’t want to end up in the middle of their marital problems.

Stress how much you disapprove of her actions and how disappointed and shocked you are. Because he’s going to wonder at some point at 3am when he can’t sleep... well if you can stay friends with someone who does that....