Affair - stirring or not?

[UghNo]

Okay, bit new to this but need some advice... my dp had an affair with a woman at work last year. They work at a school (she was his class assistant) and he had just left to go elsewhere, so it was over the summer holiday after - mostly it was texts and declarations of love / wanting to be together forever on email plus long phonecalls when I took dcs to sports. But once her H went away for the night and they went for a drink and ended up sleeping together at hers, then he came home, looked guilty and I searched for and found the texts.

I can honestly say we had no probs with our relationship before, went out together lots without dcs, had sex, were best friends too. He'd said he had a crush on her before but I thought it was nothing serious - we used to talk about things like that so they were out in the open. Anyway, five months on I have found some cds she gave him. he says he never intended to sleep with her but she asked him to come and get them from her house that night as a present and that's how they ended up sleeping together as she started kissing him and he made a bad choice etc etc blah blah the usual...

After I found out he moved out for several weeks to get his head straight about why he'd had feelings for her and if he loved me enough but eventually came back, though only after a 2 week blip when she started texting again and he replied. I found this and asked him to finish it or I'd never take him back and so he sent her a final email. I asked to see it before it was sent but he ignored my suggestions and did things I was really unhappy about like sign it 'love' from and told her he really cared about her and hoped she'd find happiness though he had to go back to us as too much hurt had been caused etc. Her H meanwhile had gone nuts and was threatening him / harassing him online - not death threats or anything, just silly posts on his blog and facebook requests so more annoying than anything.

In Dec my dp told her H finally he was going to get the police in if he didn't stop, which it now it has. DP also now realises it was a midlife crisis or something and deeply regrets nearly throwing everything away. Trouble is, I really, really want to get rid of those cds because of their significance and how to do that is causing endless trouble. Although dp has sent her H emails saying he doesn't love her, doesn't want to hear from her and that it was a massive mistake, he never sent anything like that to her directly (though I'm sure her H has shown them to her, but knowing it was meant to prove stuff to her H it won't have the same effect). So though dp is happy for me to take them to Oxfam I really, really want to post them back to her - at work, so it doesn't wind up her H - to show dp doesn't want any reminder of her in our home and they now have no romantic significance. Dp thinks she'll tell her H and the harassing will start again, though if it does I've said I'll deal with it. Am I being unreasonable in wanting to send a message and prove a point here?

No - I'm more amused / bemused that even after all the fuss before he then comes out with 'but I like the paper' (he genuinely does - it's handmade) rather than saying 'okay, it's up to you, I understand you might read something into it' etc. Please tell me - are men actually emotionally backwards or is it just mine????

No, but they seem more able to separate things than women do.

To you - it's a symbol of her
To him - it's paper

Ughno, I know it's hard but you should really try not to even think about the OW. Believe me, there are many women out there who your husband could have had an affair with. From your perspective, your husband should be 100% the one to blame. She is irrelevant. She is nothing. Every ounce of anger to her is misdirected, IMHO.

I have been that husband, and I can tell you that as despicable as what I did was, I never once allowed the anger to shift from me to the OW. Because I was the betrayer. Not her.

The "she says you are stalking her", "thing about the lost baby", all of those things... I'm sorry, but your husband is manipulating you to divert your negative feelings towards the OW. She could be a prostitute, crack head, mum of ten, psycho or nun... What does it matter? He cheated. He needs to accept it. So do you.

Good luck

PS forget about the CDs ;) Tell your husband to deal with his mess and that you don't want them in your life. It is his duty to end it, not yours.

It won't make you feel better. It will make you feel like a childish prat once you have cooled down. For one thing, it may very well trigger another round of harassment from this woman's husband and/or the woman herself. Because sending someone something through the post is initiating contact.
COncentrate on the positive: enjoy the good things in your life and don't waste any more energy on this woman.

It's also, as others have said, so much better to Be Happy with your partner if he/she has chosen to end an affair and come back to you. Yes, the straying partner needs to apologise, earn trust back, etc, etc but if the betrayed partner overdoes the martyr act and insists on public humiliation or punishment of both the straying partner and the OW/OM it can backfire severely.

Thanks, to be fair to him he hasn't blamed her at all, bar saying it was both their faults, and my dp told me about the stalking accusations as once she said it he knew for sure she was full of shit. I did get involved with the baby thing as her H said she was lying but she was so functionally normal at work for years and swore her H was lying about it not being true that dp wouldn't believe it. So I took him to family records and looked it up. No baby. Gooddadbadhusband (love the name) - thanks for being brave enough to admit it and good advice. As a bloke, is it true you can just forget about it after and that to be healthy?

UghNo, whether he can forget about it depends on him and the reasons for the affair. From my point of view, I am now neither healthy (psychologically), nor have I forgotten about it. I am trying to deal with it though and so is my DW (who has been amazing throughout, I honestly don't deserve her). I am facing up to what I did and fully accepting of the consequences, whatever they will be. The fact that you are together, and he isn't just staying with you "for the sake of kids", suggests he is serious about the relationship and loves you.

You really want to forgive him, I can see that, and he wants to be forgiven. The danger is that in focusing on her, you are moving emphasis away from those places where you should be concentrating. i.e. why it happened. Forget her. She is the past. She is not even your past, she is his past. Look at where you are now and work on that. Don't brush the affair under the carpet. Try to understand it. Work out how you both allowed the relationship to leave space for the affair to happen.

Also, as far as you are concerned, it is not "both of their faults". It is his fault. He needs to understand and accept that and so do you. There is no blame to be shared with the 3rd party. She is responsible to her H, not to you.

I really hope things work out for you.

Excellent advice gooddadbadhusband, great to see a bit of male perspective.

Thanks Reality - don't tempt me, I had just convinced myself I should rise above it!

Gooddad - he says he never even thinks about it anymore (denial of what he did, methinks). At the time, our relationship was totally fine in all ways, which is why it was so unexpected and odd - he just made a radical change of jobs and one of his very good friends moved abroad, too. She was someone he'd had a vague crush on, he admitted it one drunk night and thought he was off so wouldn't see her again except the odd hello in Tesco (so his fault really for starting anything at all, though apparently she had dropped the odd hint before), then she told him all the sob story and pretended she liked everything he did (mostly gleaned from his facebook profile, he was too daft and caught up in it to remember he'd put the names of all these obscure bands up there and she had access to it, idiot. I must admit I'm not as into such things as he is (and she pretended to be) but then, who is? I think he just used the lack of total shared interest excuse to have a mad fantasy romance escape thing with a pretend perfect person, rather than saying to me he was completely upset about so much change and letting me help - self destruct mode, though I do need to prod him to make sure I'm not jumping to conclusions on this. I think that's why he's not bothered now - the woman he liked never really existed. It's a bit of an unusual situation for an affair I'll admit, but plenty his fault...

You should DEFINITELY not send them.

I totally agree with the others who say this will make her think your H is trying to make contact. Just dump them. Keep your dignity. Rise above it. Get some couples counselling with your H, concentrate on eachother, and stuff her. She isn't important. And neither are the CDs, they are becoming more important in your mind than they are in reality.

At risk of offending, in my experience (which is H having affair, leaving, us getting divorced, me now with new partner, he still with OW) your relationship couldn't have been fine if he had an affair. I too thought my relationship was fine, from my perspective it was. But from ex-H's, it couldn't have been or he wouldn't have strayed. Now don't get me wrong, I am not putting any blame on you at all for what he did - if he had unhappiness, he should have shared those concerns with you, not with someone else. Reading your last paragraph, you acknowledge that he wasn't happy, he had changed job, he wasn't coping with the changes - this put stress on your relationship, and he didn't deal with that as he should have. So really you're saying that your relationship WAS under stress at that time.

I really really think you would both benefit massively from counselling, and from talking openly with an independent facilitator who can help you open up to eachtother. If you don't open up honestly and truthfully you are at risk of writing your own story about the affair, and what your H felt and thought - and you may get it totally wrong. Likewise, he may make assumptions about how you feel that you may find surprising, and which are totally inaccurate. When ex-H and I went to counselling I found out he had had concerns for years, but he'd never shared them with me. You can't know about what he doesn't share with you, so starting to learn how to communicate and share your worries, dreams, fears etc is fundamental, IMO.

I see what you mean - he was under stress, but there was nothing wrong with US in that communication hadn't stopped, neither had the physical side (all this was fine), it was just that he was physically attracted to someone else - no matter how happy you are, surely it's possible to be physically attracted to someone else - and decided dealing with reality wasn't for him. Believe me we have been through this time and time again as I would love to hear there was a reason. But I'll ask again as it's been a while and maybe he can shed light on it now.. Thanks this is giving me something else to think on. We won't do counselling though, bad experience ages ago (old relationship) by him.