would you think differently about a friend if you found out they had been having an affair for 5 yrs with their friends dh

[brimfull]

tis very weird feeling

I feel quite cheated as well

she is not playing the poor me thing really
says she loves both of them
new she was a flirt but this ???

Mal - quite. What exactly is she in bits about - that she's been found out and can't have her cake and eat it?

AND !!! WE had them all round for dinner recently!!

I'd wonder if she was shagging mine as well.

she's in bits cos she doesn't know what to do?

I do sometimes wonder if anyone in any of the couples I know are up to something like this... statistically it's probably quite likely. Perhaps it often happens and you never find out.

...and HerBeatitude says what we're all secretly thinking....

It would affect how I felt about my friend, yes.

You can never really be sure what is going on in a marriage, if she was very unhappy or had her reasons for looking elsewhere then I would try to understand those reasons.

But I would struggle.

How can she claim to love her friend when she has been having an affair with her DH.

Sorry, but if it were my friend I'd have no sympathy.

And in answer to your op, I'd feel very different about them.

Ooh ggirl sounds like you could write a chick lit novel about it all! (though that perhaps not the most loyal-friend-type response...)

you think after 5 years she'd have worked out whether she wants to stay married, be with OM or on he own...

5 years! Blimey.

Yes, for sure. I'd find it very hard to distribute the tea and sympathy.

she doesn't love the other wife , I meant she loved both men

will write chick flick

No.

Because either I'd know already - my best and closest friends know they can tell me anything so we share all the filth like that.

And if she wasn't a close friend it wouldn't be my business anyway.

Both my best friend and I have come close to cheating in our lives, and we have told each other immediately, with no judgement on either side. That's what friends are for.

As for 'is he shagging my husband' that's just silly. Why would she be? Are women who have affairs still considered to be 'whores' who are willing to sleep with anybody's husband? Isn't it more the case that they're infatuated with one (extra) person, rather then they have some sort of personality disorder that makes them want to shag other people's husbands.

I don't know how I would feel. Deeply shocked, probably. That's a horrible situation.

Yes I am encouraging her to stay with her dh.

Othe man is trying to talk to me privately which I have so far avoided..obv trying to get me to bat for him

Yrs and yrs ago she asked me to cover for her when she was going to see an old flame...said nothing was going to happen but still needed an alibi as her dh wouldn't like it. I refused .
Probably why she's never said anything to me.

One of my closest friends revealed to me some years ago that she had been having an affair. I went home and cried like a baby! Of all my friends, they would have been the last people I would think had this going on in their lives!
I have known her husband for years and years and hated knowing this secret that he didn't know and it was a mixture of not enjoying that, knowing she was betraying him and feeling angry at her for embarking on an affair with someone else who was also married with children, knowing she was desperately unhappy in her marriage, worrying about what it meant for her children and also feeling like I didn't know her as she had been conducting the affair for several months before she told her 2 closest friends!
Totally understand how you feel, it's almost like a feeling of grief for the friend you thought you knew and the situation you believed to be the status quo.

I'm sorry that your friend has already suffered the fallout after being found out. I was able, along with another friend, to convince our friend that she couldn't go on that way and had to make a decision about what she was going to do - either end the marriage or end the affair but not carry on as she had been.

Yes, I'd feel differently.

It would make me question whether I ever 'knew' my friend at all and I certainly wouldn't be able to trust her again.

How on earth would I ever know if she was telling the truth about anything?

Apart from that I have ishoo's regarding people who have affairs, so would find being her friend after this sort of revelation nigh on impossible.

I imagine the poor cheated upon wife is in considerably more "bits, along with the (ignorant, though probably not for much longer) husband of said friend?

Two families potentially destroyed, nice.

Do people who have affairs generally lie about other things too, though? Really?

I've never thought that particularly. There's the deception of the affair of course but why would you think they are liars on other subjects?

I would really try not to judge, but I think would find it hardest that she had come to dinner in my house with her DH and bit on the side and his wife/her mate and acted normally. I couldn't get my head round that.

My friends and I are very open and I have known of affairs etc, but I couldn't have stomached that she'd been playacting for 5 years really. I would wonder whether i knew her at all.

No, I don't think that having an affair means that that person is a liar in general. Granted it's a pretty big deception but I don't think it means anything they say can be considered potentially untruthful.
I am still friends with my friend although until she ended the affair and sorted things out a bit more, I had to keep away as I couldn't look myself in the eye going to stay and chatting to her dh knowing that his wife was sleeping with someone else behind his back and I made her promise never EVER to let on to him that I had known about it as he would never forgive me not telling him.
Horribly messy - don't know why people bother having affairs, Sounds like a load of hard work to me all this hotel booking, secret liasons, keeping secrets and having to maintain a facade of decency

I think I'd wonder about my friends truthfulness regards everything as in this case it seems to be such a big deception, all very close to home it would seem.

As for the deception levels regards most affairs...I can't answer that one...I've never been there to know how far the deception would be likely to go.