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Original poster

Anonymous letter

74 replies

WinterGold · 17/04/2023 15:48

Reasonably amicably separated from DH, but trying to keep things currently on an even keel to bring things to a tidy conclusion.

I’ve been seeing a work colleague for a couple of months, keeping things very discrete, our paths don’t cross in the office and we meet well offsite. I’ve confided in 4 close girlfriends who appear very happy for me although one does seem to be very keen on the drama and can’t resist messaging me and offering unasked for advice. I particularly asked her not to tell her DH as he has already weirdly said that until I am legally divorced, he would not be prepared to ‘cover or lie’ for me and if my DH ever contacted him, he would tell him everything he knew - which rang a few alarm bells.

Unfortunately, this week my DH received a typed anonymous letter telling him I had been having an affair with a work colleague for 6 months + which he did not react to at all well and as I knew it would, has set back our negotiations. The letter has left a really nasty taste in my mouth if it was sent by someone else in my department that I work with daily, however it didn’t actually name the man I’m seeing.

My random question is; surely someone who actually knew who it was and was motivated enough to write to DH would have specifically named him - and there is no way my friend’s DH would have any idea of his actual identity? I’m now wondering if she did tell him and he’s felt some perverse moral obligation to reveal all, or do you think I am barking up the wrong tree and blaming an innocent man?

OP posts:
HowRatherGolly · 17/04/2023 19:01

Live your life. You have separated and its non of anyone's business what you do now. Non whatsoever.

Duckingella · 17/04/2023 19:07

Mmm I've often seen the husbands/partners of friends of women who have the courage to leave their shitty relationships are oddly threatened by it.As though their scared their own wives might take note and not accept their (the husbands) often crap behaviour and also leave.

I think your friends husband is projecting his insecurities onto you;he's likely the culprit here behind said letter;maybe he's unable to wrap his head around a woman having the guts to walk away and has to make an assumption that you must be having an affair in order to leave.

determinedtomakethiswork · 17/04/2023 19:12

Have you told her about the anonymous note? I would tell your friends that your husband's response had been that the letter writer must've been a really sad bastard.

herlightmaterials · 17/04/2023 19:19

I would let your stbxh that you're terribly sorry he has had the needless distress of thinking your new relationship has been going on longer than it has because you did make a mistake confiding in the crazy woman.

GoodChat · 17/04/2023 19:19

Do you think subconsciously you might have told Drama Friend because you knew she'd spill and it'd get it out in the open? It sounds like it's done you a favour, albeit in a shit way.

Maybe DH knew something and typed it himself in the hope that you'd confess all?

The timing with the fallout is very suspicious though. It's almost certainly drama friend.

5128gap · 17/04/2023 19:20

My money is on your friend. She's already told you (through the medium of what her H allegedly would do) that she thinks your H should know. So she's told him.

confusedallthetime1 · 17/04/2023 19:26

HerrickForever · 17/04/2023 16:31

Make up
a “fact” that you only tell her; that your new man is a secret millionaire or something. You
know like how Colleen outed Rebecca Vardy!

This!!

Catshaveiteasy · 17/04/2023 19:27

I think it's a bit odd to tell a friend they can't tell their husband. You can't really expect someone to be more loyal to you than to their life partner. Of course it's possible the anon letter is nothing to do with them, but I think you were too lax in telling 4 friends something you didn't want your ex to know.

5128gap · 17/04/2023 19:30

Catshaveiteasy · 17/04/2023 19:27

I think it's a bit odd to tell a friend they can't tell their husband. You can't really expect someone to be more loyal to you than to their life partner. Of course it's possible the anon letter is nothing to do with them, but I think you were too lax in telling 4 friends something you didn't want your ex to know.

Of course you can when it's absolutely nothing to do with the husband. Different if it was something affecting him, but as far as this goes it was just gossip to him, and really poor form of the friend to betray OP.

MysteryBelle · 17/04/2023 19:45

Affair partner’s partner/ex. Take it to the bank.

MysteryBelle · 17/04/2023 19:49

A woman is much more likely to have written an anonymous letter, not a man. Agatha Christie 101. And it’s true.

I’d bet on ex of affair partner, if there is one. Would explain leaving out name of affair partner, would explain effort gone toward typing out and posting a letter, would explain the emotional attachment required to do such a thing.

The friend you’re suspicious of would have to really harbor a deep seated malice against you to go to such lengths.

Turfwars · 17/04/2023 19:52

LAMPS1 · 17/04/2023 18:41

If it’s drama friend, she will be wanting to know what repercussions her or her DH’s cowardly interference has caused.
Presumably, you haven't told anybody that your STBEX received the anon letter so all you need to do is wait to see if she reveals herself by probing or hanging around waiting for you to share the latest bit of news to feed her drama appetite.

Yes!
If it is her, she'll be waiting for the shit to hit the fan.

Don't give her the pleasure. Never mention the letter to a soul.

MysteryBelle · 17/04/2023 19:52

See “The Moving Finger”

Hawkins003 · 17/04/2023 19:58

This is why I prefer to just talk to the kettle, as humans are a mix, and you don't always know the angels. The saints, ect @WinterGold

Plus to quote friends, we were on a break

MysteryBelle · 17/04/2023 19:59

This could be an interesting mystery to solve. Employ the little grey cells and try an experiment to out the letter writer. You will have to raise the stakes to get her to bite though. Tell the suspect that you are pregnant and that ex will then have upper hand in divorce negotiations if he finds out, and crucially, tell her that your other close friends know about the pregnancy and so does a mutual friend of you and your husband as she saw you buying a pregnancy test. For this to work, you cannot tell anyone except the suspect herself. Otherwise like now, you won’t know whom to suspect!

Hawkins003 · 17/04/2023 20:42

@WinterGold
There is a method of working out the traitor, @WinterGold
Varys used the method in game of thrones, give each person a specific piece of information or "story" then see which one is known by your ex.

Original poster
WinterGold · 17/04/2023 22:43

Thank for all the thoughts and contributions. Had a quick chat with stbx this evening and already he seems much more ‘over it’ and now as puzzled by the letter as I am. I suspect he just needed time to process the fact I was moving on and it wasn’t great that he had to find out about it via anonymous letter.

I mustn’t fixate too much on it as, in the grand scheme of things, the letter itself isn’t that important, just unpleasant, but if I can I want the sender to realise that what they did was merely reflection of their own sad little life. I’ve decided to step back from drama friend for a bit and not mention the letter for a while just to see if her curiosity might trip her up. She usually asks for an update on how things are progressing with stbx so I’ll tell her that things between us are getting much more amicable and how amazing it is that we are getting on even better now than we did during our marriage. Her reaction to that might be revealing.

OP posts:
Original poster
WinterGold · 17/04/2023 22:44

MysteryBelle · 17/04/2023 19:59

This could be an interesting mystery to solve. Employ the little grey cells and try an experiment to out the letter writer. You will have to raise the stakes to get her to bite though. Tell the suspect that you are pregnant and that ex will then have upper hand in divorce negotiations if he finds out, and crucially, tell her that your other close friends know about the pregnancy and so does a mutual friend of you and your husband as she saw you buying a pregnancy test. For this to work, you cannot tell anyone except the suspect herself. Otherwise like now, you won’t know whom to suspect!

Love this though!

OP posts:
Whywouldyoudothat123 · 17/04/2023 22:52

Can I add something else to the mix and a very similar thing happened to my BFF last year - turns out after a lot of finger pointing at friends and colleagues it was actually the new man she’d been seeing, something to consider? It took a year for him to admit it in a drunken rage because she kept going on about it and he must have felt a bit guilty / wanted her to stop talking about it. It was such a shock as the new man played a really good part acting like the innocent party!

LexMitior · 17/04/2023 22:59

I had this on my divorce. I told my suspected friend a plausible lie to see if it got back to my ex.

It did - and she was history after that.

Catoo · 17/04/2023 23:15

I doubt drama friend’s husband gives a shit at all. She made that up I expect for the drama of saying it. Likely she wrote it. Or anyone else from the office - they will all know. Or anyone else from the people who will have found out via your 3 friends’ networks.

Glad StBEXH has got over it.

I like some of the ideas to test out drama friend though! 🤣

Turfwars · 18/04/2023 14:28

Catshaveiteasy · 17/04/2023 19:27

I think it's a bit odd to tell a friend they can't tell their husband. You can't really expect someone to be more loyal to you than to their life partner. Of course it's possible the anon letter is nothing to do with them, but I think you were too lax in telling 4 friends something you didn't want your ex to know.

My husband is more loyal to me than anyone else, and vice versa.

But neither of us would divulge something private about someone else to the other if it's nothing to do with either of us. That's just gossiping

I keep my friend's secrets, and actually DH would think less of me if I gossiped them to him. In fact, one friend did exactly that to me about her partner and it made me see that she wasn't ever to be trusted with my private information.

Whywouldyoudothat123 · 30/04/2023 08:37

Any update @WinterGold ?

MrMarkham · 30/04/2023 08:50

Bit odd that drama friend's husband apparently told her that he'd tell
Your ex all he knew when he didn't actually know anything at all. So she must have at least hypothetically said to him 'what would you do if winter Gold was seeing someone else?' Or she's just told him all, and then relaying his actual response to you under her guise of 'I've not told him but randomly he's already gone into detail about what he'd do if I did.'

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