Friend in denial about affair.

[AhBiscuits]

A couple of months ago one of the school dads contacted my friend and told her that her DH was having an affair with his DW. He had become suspicious, followed them and found them in a pub together. He confronted them and has now split from his DW.

My friend's DH denies an affair. He alleges that he's been having some mental health issues, this woman has been through them too and speaking to her has been helpful for him. They had a bit of a rocky time and she felt betrayed but ultimately she believes him.

The school dad was very frustrated with friend for buying this. This week he sent my friend loads of recent pictures of them together in different places. He'd paid a private investigator to follow them. My friend was very upset, because he had lied to her about where he was and who he was with on these occasions. But she STILL believes it's not an affair and talking to this woman is like therapy for him. She's spoken to the other woman who is supporting this story.

It's bollocks isn't it? Would you believe that?Do I try and make her see sense or just listen and be ready to support when it all crashes down? Now the other woman has been dumped by her husband, I fear it's a matter of time before my friend's husband leaves.

If she wants to be stupid and humiliate herself then let her go ahead. If she has solid evidence and still refuses to believe him, then she’s made her bed. I don’t know why you would get involved in this. You must know you will be in the firing line. So let her get on with it.

You do not require evidence of anything for divorce, so why would you be bothering to hire a PI and then throw the evidence at someone else?

WTF are you on about?

You can't really do anything but be there for her, something will happen or she'll reach the end of tether and saying "I told you so" won't help her. She needs to get there on her own and have a kind ear as she makes her way there. Equally, if you've ever seen the play The Constant Wife, sometimes it's easier to turn the absolute blindest of eyes. If she doesn't want to leave him, if she's financially insecure without him, even if she just likes his company, maybe she's very happy for it to be hidden in plain sight. I suspect she might be thinking that he will come back to her and the affair will fizzle out if she just holds her nerve and waits it out and doesn't cause a fuss. Especially now the other lady is single, having a big row with him and dragging it into the open may well guarantee he leaves and she might not want that, regardless of what's going on. My dh told me if he heard I was having an affair he'd absolutely ignore it and avoid thinking about it, because he just would not want to know - people have different perspectives on the value of the truth.

All those saying he’s definitely having an affair and she’s in denial MAY be jumping the gun, IMO!
I mean it definitely depends what the pictures the other husband has doesn’t it?!?
50 pictures of them sat in Costa is very different to even one of them both sneaking out a Travelodge 🤷🏻‍♀️
The other woman denying it even though her marriage has imploded though does possibly suggest it’s the truth as she has nothing to lose and your friends husband to gain if she “helps” his marriage fall apart too.

Your friend definitely has to decide if the closeness and weird fucking emotional dependency they have on each other is a line she considers emotional affair territory and what that means for their marriage.
Some people (soooo often men!) get completely caught up in that white knight syndrome and the sort of attention of being someone’s confidant and maybe he’s a stupid tw@t who let his ego take the wheel!

She 100% needs to tell him it’s this other woman or their marriage and not budge in the slightest!

This exact thing happened to my best friend. Her husband and her best friend (school mum) denied it and now are together and still they and deny the cheated lol people are pure evil because to do this to your other half and lie in bed with them night after night, then look your “friend” in the eye at school drop off knowing you have been for secret drinks (at best) and shagging (at worst) is the lowest form of pond scum! Involving 2 sets of children who are friends at school too it’s just pure evil!! Like KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS FFS

in answer to your question, all you can do is be there and listen. This has been going on for years now with my fiend and that’s all I’ve been able to do. It gets very hard listening to it , but it’s all you can do. Don’t get too involved or emotionally invested. Try to set boundaries for your own peace of mind and so that you can be there for your friend. If you crumble you will pull away from her and that won’t help anyone. You could even express this to her; “look X it’s obvious to anyone watching that he is having an affair. I will be here to listen and support you once you accept that, but until then I can’t feed into this narrative”

This has made my blood boil but good for you for staying in YOUR family home and making that cheating POS leave. Good god who brings these “men” up to have no morals or decency good god I’d be mortified if that was my son

I agree with this.

She knows. She just doesn't want to believe it so she's choosing to completely ignore what staring her in the face.
I don't know how you can get her to acknowledge it. Some people would rather turn a blind eye than be alone and maybe your friend is like this. Either way all you can do is be there for her.

The other DH just wants your friend to leave the cheating so he can feel vindicated. But it’s not up to him. If she wants to start with her cheating husband then he needs to leave her alone. Having pictures sent etc is just upsetting. He can divorce his cheating wife and move on.

Because he wanted confirmation that his wife was having an affair? Thought that was obvious TBH!

You say and do nothing. There’s a chance she might turn on you if you do unfortunately. Just stay her friend and be there if the shit does hit the fan.

For those querying the private investigator... I know of two married men who have went down this route to prove their wives were unfaithful. They wanted absolute proof before doing anything and they got it.

I had a friend like this - her husband was bought red handed looking for men for casual sex in X. Showed her the proof, she refused to accept it. You can lead a horse to water……

Why shouldn’t he hire a PI? He’s done nothing wrong. Are you the cheating wife? You sound unhinged.

She definitely knows and is choosing to believe the lie. That’s easier for her than her whole life caving in.

If she mentions anything to you again I would personally tell her that you don’t believe it is innocent but if that’s what she believes then fine. Just let her know you will be there for her when she needs it.

Its her choice what she wants to believe and what she chooses to do. Stay out of it and be a friend.

I don’t think he sounds like a nut case , he just wants concrete proof because she keeps denying it , maybe he was hoping for a reconciliation, but now sees sadly she is still seeing this guy, & it is exactly what he thought it was , his head wrecked cause she keeps lieing & lieing, he just needed to make sure 🤷🏻‍♀️

I had a friend who spent a year looking for evidence of her husband’s affair. And every bit of evidence she found proved he was having one. She’d confront him, he’d deny it and then the cycle would continue. In the end he left her. This was probably the best outcome because she just couldn’t bring herself to leave. I listened, I told her what I thought (that he was lying) but ultimately I couldn’t make her do anything. If you know the school dad can you ask him to ease up? Because this isn’t helping him either. Breaking up someone else’s marriage isn’t going to make him feel any better about his own ending. He’s putting his energy into revenge instead of recovery.

Why is someone obsessive just because they havent conformed to something in a way you see fit.

Every single affair thread on here supports gathering evidence and getting your ducks in a row. Just because he has paid someone to do this doesn't point directly to being a nut case.

This is one of those situations were the phrase “not my circus, not my monkeys” needs to come into action. Personally I’d steer clear of the situation

Thanks all. So far ive just listened and made supportive noises, which i will continue to do. I know it's none of my business, but I'm the only person my friend is talking to about it so she's bringing me into it a bit.
They've been together since they were teens and have small kids. There's likely an element of her choosing to believe him because the alternative turns her life upside down. I just can't see it ending well and I can't even look at him atm.

Seriously this is your reply?
why would he not ? The dh who was cheated on why would he not get his cheating wife checked up on for proof for divorce and peace of mind, when he has a cheating lying soon to be ex wife .

What??

Her prerogative to believe what she wishes or to put on a front trying to rescue her marriage. You sound like a lovely friend, be there to support her.

You do not require proof for divorce. The sole grounds for divorce in the UK are irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, and no proof of anything is required. It's a bit odd if you get "peace of mind" by proving that your wife has spoken to a man, because that is all there is proof of. But each to their own. At the point where you believe your partner is having an affair because they spoke to someone else on multiple occasions, whether or not an affair exists you already have an irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.

And I am unclear how either of those things relate to showing your evidence that your wife spoke to someone else's husband to the other persons wife having any bearing on anything at all. Other than, of course, to hurt the other person's wife. Which is a pretty nasty thing to do.

Whether or not they have had an affair or are simply friends supporting each other, the PI has not proven anything other than they talk. And whatever anyone here thinks they suspect, and whether or why the wife choses to believe her husband is nobody elses business.

As for why they might lie about meeting up, they have said that they have met up to discuss something of a personal nature. Hypothetically, and not at all uncommonly, wife has a crazy controlling husband who she is struggling to leave, and talking to a friend who has his own issues around mental health helps them both to sift and work through their respective situations. Husband finds out and his first reaction is to go to the other persons wife, possibly having screamed at/shouted at/abused his "cheating" wife. So yes, you might continue to be friends and just keep that to yourself because of the awful fall out last time. A misjudgement or a stupid decision perhaps. But people never do stupid things or make misjudgements, do they? It doesn't take much more than a very slight amount of further information to shift this entirely story to something else entirely. But instead of that we leap to assuming that the wife is either stupid or delusional or has some other "odd reason" for what she believes to be the case. I wonder if a bunch of men assumed that a woman was stupid or delusional because she didn't think like them, if we would be quite so keen to assume they must be right.

I think what makes it hard to accept that it's innocent and they are friends theory is that prior to this my friend didn't realise they knew eachother particularly. They might wave hello when passing, as you would another school parent, but she thought they were barely acquaintances let alone friends.
The school dad became suspicious of his wife's behaviour and decided to follow her.