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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Should I write a letter to OW's husband about her affair with my H?

102 replies

mumof4sons · 06/03/2010 08:49

My H of almost 20 years left me a little over 2 weeks ago for a married woman. Says he is in love with her.

I am feeling quite vindictive and really want to do something to hurt this woman. My H also told me that if her husband found out he would probably be beaten to a pulp. That sounds good to me now.

So should I write the letter or not?

OP posts:
animula · 06/03/2010 19:00

Mumof4 - you've probably signed off this thread now, and aren't coming back but, just on the of-chance you do, I am sorry, I think I was doing my own over-interpretation of how you are feeling right now.

I don't know if any of this will help, or whether it's over-indulgence on my part, but anyway ...

I've seen a lot of my friends reeling from the breakdown of long-term marriages and relationships. One of the stages they seem to go through is a bewilderment and depression, linked to a feeling of absolute betrayal of trust.

It will pass, but the feeling is deep, and its effects seem to destabilise them in many areas of life. I have wondered if it is linked to what we do when we love someone. For what it's worth, I think a great deal of what we know is learned through others. We come to know the world largely through others. This, I suspect, is even more the case when we truly let someone into our lives and our hearts.

I see it as two people sitting in the grass, together, swapping their stories; about themselves, about the way they see the world. Their story weaves its way into you, you hold it inside, listen your way around it; catch a glimpse of another view on the world, different from your own, unique. And that gives you a sense of yourself, your own uniqueness, your own sense of the world. And, between the two, you gather a sense of the world as a whole. With you, and this other person, in it.

And so you build a life together, woven each through each.

When this other person suddenly leaves, still worse, reveals that there was, in fact, a vast gap between what you thought you knew and what was "real" (or at least it seems that way) it is devastating.

That feeling is real. It will take time to heal. For some time, you may feel very wary about trusting your capacity to know and trust, and to go through that important act of interweaving with others again.

But it will pass. Usually, it doesn't mean you were wrong to trust in the first place, it doesn't mean your judgment was off, it doesn't mean that everything you thought you knew was wrong. But you will go through a process of re-learning.

I'm sure this is where the overwhelming emotional responses come from. They have a validity. But you are still you, your life holds many surprises, not all of them bad. And I'm sure it holds a lot of love for you still.

Good luck.

elastamum · 07/03/2010 00:25

Hi Mumof4. I feel for you, you may feel really alone right now but there are other mums out there who have been here and share your pain. You will get through this, it is really hard but it does get better, just be kind to yourself and take it one day at a time (and get a good solicitor). Good luck and be strong

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