Obsessed with the OW

[Rooterfruit]

My husband had an affair 8 years ago at work. Although I no longer feel raw pain about it, I can’t help myself checking her social media.
She promotes being a supportful mother to other mothers offering advice, and speaking about how tough it can be. When she had her affair with my husband I had two small children, and the hypocrisy makes me quite sick. I know I shouldn’t look, but I can’t help myself and often am on the verge of replying to her posts and informing her followers of what a fraud she is.
How do I get past this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

@CrankiBobs I agree if she knew.

But

So many men are such bloody accomplished liars. My sister found out 2 years in that she was The ow.
He was a doctor & that explained the disappearance at holidays and overnights etc and sudden phone calls. My sister was 24 & madly in love. He was nearly 30 & (he said) in a house share with other doctors so he could afford to stay in central London near the hospital. All so believable,

Turns out he was married with 2 very small kids. Fucking creep. He was a doctor but i
Think that's the only truth that came out his mouth.

Of course the wife blames my sister 🙄 who dumped his ass the minute she found out. Didn't stop the wife trying to make her life a misery, whilst forgiving his lying ass.

(he recently tried (years later) to slide into her DM's instant block.

She didn't even have Instagram when they were together. (A long time ago)

My sister is worth 100 of either of them.

I know someone who had an affair while working for a women's refuge. People are complicated.

How would your life be different if you no longer associated this time in your life and this person with such intense feelings? Can you imagine future self, where you have stepped into this time in the future when you are able to remember this time but without the intense feelings of anger and sadness?

If you read that and can feel a sense that there is a possibility of feeling less consumed by this, I would suggest reaching out for some help. This is not to absolve anyone of guilt or for you to take responsibility for fixing what was not your fault, it is to give you permission to move on from this and from this to no long cause you the pain that you are currently experiencing.

Working for a woman’s refuge isn’t necessarily a “good” thing to do. It’s a job, pays the bills. So it certainly doesn’t make an OW into some kind of complex and misunderstood nice person.

@beachcitygirl

Yeah, you have to let it go is she didn't know. Although understandable, it's just silly, it could be anyone.

@ReneBumsWombats

People are complicated but you can't care about women/mothers and do that. It may be her job but something is lacking to be able to rationalise that. Not just cheating on your male partner but involving another innocent woman. It's contradictory

It doesn't pay much at all!

But it's an important job and as far as I'm aware, she does it well. She's grassroots level and while I've never seen her at work, I gather she's good at being supportive and understanding.

She did a wrong thing once...tbh, given the circumstances at the time, I don't judge her harshly. Her husband was not good to her. But he's not sheer evil either.

The point is, you can do a wrong thing - have an affair - while still doing right things elsewhere. You don't have to like the woman who your husband chose to cheat with, but it doesn't follow that she isn't capable of doing different things as well. After all, if you've stayed with your husband then you must have accepted he's still got good points despite what he did to you...

People are complicated but you can't care about women/mothers and do that. It may be her job but something is lacking to be able to rationalise that. Not just cheating on your male partner but involving another innocent woman. It's contradictory

People are contradictory!

I don't condone affairs. But it doesn't follow that if you succumb to temptation - and there might be any sorts of circumstances around you as it happened - that you ipso facto don't give a shit about women in general, at all.

Imo if she has genuinely changed and grown, she wont hesitate to give OP a sincere apology for her behaviour in the past. And also imo if she won't do that she's probably in the job for the wrong reasons.

Took me 3 years to stop obsessing about the OW, the only thing that helped was when I split from my exh. I no longer cared about her, or him.

The problem for me was I never got closure, never got the whole story, and the longer time went on, the more my dh couldn't remember, so I never got full transparency. Plus I chose to take the moral high ground, so didn't tell her dh either, so in my eyes she got off scott free with no repercussions for her actions.

No. But it turns a woman into a person who is doing something very worthwhile with her life, touching the lives of multiple other women in a positive way, making a difference, often life changing. And while it pays the bills, it doesn't pay them anywhere near as easily as a better paid role in the private sector, so typically women working in these roles have made material sacrifices to carry out roles that benefit others.
The refuge worker who has an affair has contributed to the hurt of one woman, but helped multiple women, so on balance her positive contribution objectively outweighs the negative.

You can absolutely care about protecting the lives of abused women and children at the same time as not caring about protecting the marriage of another woman. Often married men who have affairs give the OW a very negative picture of their primary partner, including portraying her as their abuser, also unfaithful, disinterested in the marriage. The OW is obviously a fool to believe him, but they almost always do. Few women think they're having an affair with the husband of an innocent victim.

BankseyVest

im pleased you managed to move on ☺️

id say that (I’ve never done it but have seen it ) for many women who do it with a married man - it’s rather fraught and stressful . They know it’s wrong and it’s bad juju

they are often in a weird place , which kind of makes sense as it’s a ducking bad idea !

i wouldn’t assume she got off Scot free

there’s a good scene in the sex and the city sequel where the character finally apologised to a woman with whose (then ) husband she cheated on

the cheated wife screams ‘I’m fed up of thinking about you ‘
and they make some semi peace

The refuge worker who has an affair has contributed to the hurt of one woman, but helped multiple women, so on balance her positive contribution objectively outweighs the negative.

Also known as 'the Saville defence''.

@5128gap I'm usually 100% with you when i read your posts but I have to disagree here. Maybe caring in a very superficial way, but it is at odds to do both care for women and cheat which destroys relationships and families. It is selfish so even if such a person cares, clearly not enough to control themselves.

Would be the same as a psychologist doing the same thing. At the end of the day, it may be their job and they must have basic human empathy. But not much of it.

My post was terribly worded but you get the idea🙈

Wrong! Poor you making assumptions over things you don’t understand.

The refuge worker who has an affair has contributed to the hurt of one woman, but helped multiple women, so on balance her positive contribution objectively outweighs the negative.

But if she didn't do that job, somebody else would have touched and helped those women... I can't explain it.

The impact of cheating has the equivalent impact of like ten good encounters. It will stay in the mind of that one woman (and family) much, much longer than whatever nice things she may have said/done for others

Women who work in the women's sector used to have to undertake counselling among other things, is that no longer the case?
Just applying for the job doesn't make anyone a saint. In fact, those kinds of situations attract the sort of people who abuse positions of power.

The impact of cheating has the equivalent impact of like ten good encounters. It will stay in the mind of that one woman (and family) much, much longer than whatever nice things she may have said/done for others

I’ve never been cheated on in a way that causes me this much pain , and I don’t dispute this as how can i? it’s indisputably painful

but I again question whether that accountability lies with the OW

let’s say the man decides to use a sex worker

is she or he equally guilty ? As i certainly don’t think they are

I didn't suggest it made her a saint. I suggested it made her someone who could do wrong and right things at the same time...and who could have an affair while still caring about women in general.

If doing a challenging, low paid job to secure women's safety doesn't make you an all good person, having an affair doesn't ipso facto make you an all bad one.

if she didn't do that job, somebody else would have touched and helped those women...

Yes but she DID do it, so she deserves any credit that comes from it.

And anyway, this holds for affairs too. If she hadn't had the affair with that MM, someone else would...

We're going to have to agree to disagree because I don't accept its possible to knowingly have an affair with a father and ignore the impact of that on his wife and children; let alone carry on posting on SM about my support for abused women.
If that behaviour doesn't raise red flags about a support worker, what would?

I know what you're saying, but equally you could say that if a woman has the misfortune to be married to a man prepared to cheat, if the refuge worker wasn't having an affair with him someone else would be.
Don't get me wrong, it's not something I'd do or condone, but I think there is way too much emphasis on the OW as the problem, when to me (and I've been there too) she's actually irrelevant in her own right. She's simply the means by which your man has demonstrated he's a wrong 'un, and if it weren't her, odds on it would be someone else.
If my partner wanted to cheat, that would be the only thing that mattered to me. The fact that he was prevented from doing so by a woman turning him down would not improve that situation at all, so conversely, another woman accepting him doesn't make me any worse off.

Only if you equate cheating with sexual abuse of children. Which personally, I don't.

So do you think she should apologise to OP for having an affair with her husband, if OP asks her for an apology?

Er, an actual crime? Consensual adult sex isn't a safeguarding concern unless it's between a doctor and patient or something.

If you go to hospital, the law of averages says that someone involved in your care probably had an affair at some point. You may not then want a relationship with them, but why should it mean they won't treat you properly as a medical professional?