When the Other Woman Won't Leave You Alone

When my husband ended his affair, one thing that really ticked me off was the stream of email and Facebook messages form his now ex other woman. All I wanted was to be left alone, but she wasn’t having any of that!

When I’d told my husband I’d had enough and that he should be with her  if that is where he wanted to be, I sent her a message telling her the same. I was so sick of the whole thing!

Turns out, after I told him that I was at the end of my rope, but I was giving him one last chance, he decided he wanted to stay. To this day, I’m not sure what changed his mind.

We had our appointment with our counsellor that evening, and when we got home, he emailed her a “goodbye” message. She’d sent me something that said the affair wasn’t her fault, that it was mine, that if I'd been a better wife, he wouldn't have needed to turn to her, and that she thought I must hate her.

I sent her a very short message saying that I didn’t hate her, I just wanted her to leave us alone. I also told her that I hoped she’s learned from the affair and that she’d find a single guy and have a happy life.

Then I got another message from her that said I was wonderful, she would pray for us (?) and that she wanted to be my friend and that I should email her if I ever had any problems and wanted to talk.
To this day, i still don’t know what the heck that was all about!In what possible version of reality would I have wanted to do that?

After that, the barrage started. Lots of messages and emails, calls, etc. She said she hated me, said she thought I was great, said that she was so hurt and it was all my fault said she wanted to harm herself and it was all because of me.At first, I thought she was serious and I felt bad for her, but the harm she said she was going to cause to herself never came, She kept sending these messages.

When that didn't work, she started sending my husband anonymous messages trying to convince him that I was cheating on him. He was away on deployment to the middle east at the time. He didn't believe her, but it still upset him that she was not letting things go ( he knew they were from her, as she sent them from a work computer, and it showed who's account they came from).

What a load of bunk! I think she was just mad that I stood up to her and she didn’t reduce me to begging her to leave us alone. I think she would have liked that!

what the @%^& what she thinking?

Since she and my husband worked together, and since we live in a small town, I heard lots about her from different people, most of whom don't know anything about the affair. Turns out, she has been in many affairs since, has lost her job and is now pregnant and unmarried by a married guy.

I had hoped she’d learn and not continue to go through life like some sort of human wrecking ball.
boy was I wrong ! She just kept right on going, blaming everyone else for her actions as she went.

Funny thing is that when I'd hear these stories, I'd just listen and pretend to be shocked at how someone could act like that, when , on the inside, I knew all along what she was capable of.

Get Legal Advice ASAP.

I’m a firm believer that getting legal help and advice is one of the most important things you can do if you find out your spouse has cheated.

This doesn’t mean you’re headed for divorce, but rather that you are gathering all the facts that you need to make an informed decision. This is so important, especially if you have children.
The more information that you have, the more confident you’ll be in the choices you make. This is really important, especially if you are a betrayed husband. Some betrayed husband’s choose to stay because they feel they have no other choice. If they leave, they may worry about finances, what will happen to their children and any number of other things. Seeing a lawyer can help put your mind at ease.

If you decide to stay, it should  be because you want to, not because you are too scared to leave.

Legal help can make all the difference in the world.

If your spouse is “waffling” don’t be afraid to stand up for yourself and tell them that you saw a lawyer about divorce. That can often show them just how serious the whole situation is. For some wayward spouses, their heads are so high up in the clouds ( or so high up somewhere else) that they don't see the situation for what it is. Seeing a lawyer is not a manipulative tactic, rather, it's a way of protecting yourself and letting them know you are not afraid to do so.

It’s not a game, it’s reality…

It's Been Five Years...

September is here, which makes it five years since  my husband ended his affair…

While things may not always be roses and sunshine, in many ways, they are so much better, even better than they were before his affair. We’ve both worked on ourselves and have grown so much…I guess that’s the lemonade I made when life handed me a huge pile of lemons…

Of course I still think about the affair sometimes, but now it’s as something in the past, sometimes we even joke about it. For example, his ex other woman is kind of , well, a nut bar, and I was teasing him the other day about how he dodged a bullet by not staying with her…

Being able to kid each other about it is a sure sign we’ve really moved on…

Someone once asked me if I forgave him for the affair…I have. Forgiving is not the same as forgetting. I forgave him, but don’t forget and that makes me value what we have so much more. I know how fragile relationships can become, so it’s very important to “tend and water” them carefully.
Some have told me I need to forgive his ex other woman in order to “heal”…that is something I have never really understood at all. Some people feel a need to do so, and that’s fine for them. If it works, don’t knock it. For me, it is irrelevant. I’m not raging at her, I’m not even a little bit angry…the truth is that I don’t care enough to forgive her. She is irrelevant to my life.

It feels really great to say that. She was an other woman who couldn’t handle his rejection, and she lashed out at me and my children. She did so much to try and make us miserable, but through it all, I never gave her the satisfaction of knowing she got to me.

She is a serial other woman, and is likely with another married man now, which is sad. Of course, she has convinced herself that somehow she is better than any man’s wife, but really, all she is is an easy “roll in he hay”…I pity her for that, as no woman should feel the need to reduce herself to that low point in her life. She could do so much better, but she doesn’t want to. Makes me think of a pig in muck…content, maybe because she doesn’t know any better.

Ah well, as long as my husband and I are happy, in the long run, it doesn’t matter 

Looking for Your Input

Up until now,  I've been talking about my life, experiences and opinions, but I'd like to hear from you.

Here's some questions for you:

online poll by Opinion Stage

online poll by Opinion Stage




 

online poll by Opinion Stage

Your answers will be anonymous, but I will share the results.Feel free to include any thing you'd like to share about your answers in the "comments' section for this post.

 

 

Affair Boosters?

During the affair, did your spouse have a small group of friends who thought that everything they were doing was just fine?

Did he or she make new ones, and stop spending time with those people who would not be supportive of their affair relationship?

Mine sure did.

During the time he was cheating, he began to distance himself from his friends and even his family who he knew would not support the affair. It’s understandable. After all, knowing how they felt, how could he look them in the face while he was cheating on his wife?

He made new friends, and one thing that really struck me at the time was that these people really were jerks! I couldn’t understand what he saw in them. They cheated on their wives regularly, and bragged abut it to one another. I think that, in them, he saw two people who he thought would understand him and not look down on him. He felt guilty enough himself without having it rubbed in his face by those he felt were “judging” him.

These two would give him advice on how to keep the affair a secret from me,  how to spend time with her without me being suspicious, and even on how to make me feel guilty for asking questions ( this is called “gas lighting’” which will be the topic of another post)…

The more they encouraged him, the less he saw that what he was doing was wrong.

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

"I love You, but I am not ' In Love' With You"

After my husband dropped the “I love you but I am not ' in love with you’ ” bomb…I was totally thrown for a loop.  I didn’t know what to do.

In desperation, I ended up looking online for support. I joined a couple of forums, but I got a lot of conflicting advice. Some said to kick him out, some said to try my best to be what he said he wanted. I joined one that allows both betrayed spouses and other men/women ( and even wayward spouses ) to join. I have to say that forum wasn’t really useful to me until after the affair was over.

At first I tried the advice that said to make the changes that he said he wanted. I quickly realized that wasn’t going to make any difference. The “reasons’ he was giving me for cheating weren’t really relevant, as he was really  just looking for any and every excuse he could think of to justify his actions. The more he could blame it on me, the less he had to examine the way he was acting.
One day I’d finally had enough. He’s been going back and forth between our place and hers ( he’d made up a room for himself in the basement) and his waffling was wearing me out. I was sick, not eating, exhausted and just couldn’t take it anymore.

I asked him if he was still seeing her ( of course I knew his  answer was going to be “yes”) but hearing it  just  made something inside me break. I told him that I’d had enough, I was willing to give our marriage one last chance, and after that I was going to see a lawyer about divorce ( I’d already talked to one, but he didn’t know that). It wasn’t an idle threat, ultimatum or manipulation tactic. I was just finished. The lawyer I’d spoken to had told me that I had good grounds for divorce and that it likely wouldn’t be a problem. He recommended that I tell him I was willing to give things one more try, and if , after that, I still wanted to go ahead with divorce, he would be happy to help.
 
I still remember just how I felt when I told him. His answer that he was still seeing her made me so hurt and angry. It was so hot in the house, and hearing that made me gasp for breath. I felt like I was going to pass out, but I didn’t. I summoned up my last ounce of strength and told him that I was finished, but I would give things one last chance, if that is what he wanted.

He started to cry , and told me that it was, he was exhausted from everything, but he didn’t know how we could ever go back after everything that had happened. How could things ever be okay again?

We sat with each other for a while, not saying anything. I finally broke the silence and told him that they might never be the same, but they could be even better, if we both wanted it enough.
Lucky for us, we had our first appointment with our new counsellor that night, and she helped us out a lot. Her first question to us was ” do you want to keep your marriage “…our answer was “yes”.
More about counselings in another post. 

What's an Emotional Affair Anyway?

Has your spouse developed a very close friendship with a member of the opposite sex and it’s making you feel uncomfortable? Do they spend lots of time chatting online with someone and you find them hiding the screen, closing windows or using the private browsing option when they're on the computer? Do they get lots of texts for someone you don’t know and do they hide them from you? Do they spend a lot of extra time at or after work “just hanging out” with a “friend” of the opposite sex? Most importantly, do you just feel in your heart that something is wrong?

If so, your spouse may be having an emotional affair.

You may be asking yourself ” what is an emotional affair?”…

It’s quite simple yet it can be extremely confusing. It happens when someone who is married has a friendship that gets too close and crosses the line to where it is something more . Here is an example:
Jane  is a married woman who works in an office. Bob works there too, and from time to time they chat over a cup of coffee in the break room. They talk about their spouses, their kids, they joke around and then go back to their desks. It’s all very platonic and innocent.

One day, Jane has a  minor fight with her husband and comes to work upset. During their now daily “coffee chats”, she confides in Bob about the fight and asks his advice.  He gives some, and she thanks him. they chat a bit and go back to work. In the back of his mind Bob is thinking about what a jerk Jane’s husband must be to have gotten her upset, she deserves someone better. He puts that thought out of his mind and finishes the day.

The next day he’s eager to get to work to see Jane and find out how her evening was. He’s kind of short with his wife, but doesn’t think much about it, as his mind is on Jane and her problems ( which, in reality, aren’t that bad. her husband is a nice guy who is really quite good to her and loves her and their kids a lot).

Meanwhile, Jane has taken Bob’s advice and she and her husband have made up.  She’s happy, but in the back of her mind she’s wishing he could be a bit more like Bob. The next day, she’s just as eager to get to work so she can see Bob and tell him about how his advice worked.

Bob gets to work, sees her at her desk with a happy look on her face and he smiles too. At break, he can’t wait to talk to her, and she can’t wait to talk to him. They enjoy a pleasant conversation, she tells him about taking his advice, and he’s happy that he helped her and made her happy.

The next day, their get a bit of a surprise when their boss assigns them to work on a project together. It’s a big one that will take a lot of work, but they are both secretly happy to be working together.
They both go home and tell their spouses about the new project, but for some reason, they don’t feel right telling their spouses who they will be working with.  It’s strange, as before they wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but for some reason, things seem different now.

They next day, they start their new assignment, and work closely together all day. Bob jokes around and Jane giggles…it’s actually kind of fun. During break, they exchange cell phone numbers and home email addresses in case they need to reach each other quickly to talk about the project details. .They also add each other as “Facebook friends”.

That evening, Jane logs in to her Facebook account and sees a friend request from Bob, which she accepts. She goes about answering some emails, etc., when all of a sudden she gets a chat message form Bob. She responds, and soon they are chatting away. The next morning, they meet each other at work, joke aorund a bit about their conversation and get to work.

The next day sees a repeat. Jane chats with Bob, he lets it slip that his wife is upset that he’s spending such long hours at the office and bringing his work home with him.  Jane sympathizes, as her husband has the same issues. They keep chatting about their spouses and how bossy or controlling they are, and soon they are running their spouses down to one another.

The next evening, it’s more of the same, but now when their spouses comes into the room, they hide their chat windows and pretend to be doing something else…Jane’s husband asks her why she’s spending so much time on the computer lately, and she snaps at him that it’s for work and he should leave her alone. He does, and as soon as he’s gone, she’s right back chatting with Bob about her husband and how awful he is. This makes Bob angry, as how could someone treat someone as special as Jane that way?

So it goes, they chat online, sometimes for hours, and after getting so much grief for asking about it , their spouses leave them alone. Both spouses know something is up, but not what it is. They each ask what is wrong, but are met with a  surly ” nothing..what’s wrong with you?”. Deep down, though, both Bob and Jane  know something isn’t right about what they are doing.

Jane and Bob want to be in even closer contact, so they are soon texting one another. Just as with their online chatting, they actively hide this from their respective spouses.They are spend hours chatting, texting etc., and spending less and less time with their husband/wife, children and doing other activities they used to enjoy.

Meanwhile, their spouses are becoming more and more unhappy about the state of things,  they get fed up and say something about it. Both Bob and Jane become angry at the accusations and insinuations, and they lash out with ” you don’t trust me” and ” I don’t have a problem, you have a problem”( a great example of "gaslighting"). There is a real air of tension and anger in their homes which draws them even closer together.

Neither of them really realize just how close they’ve gotten until one evening after work Jane suggests they go out for a drink to unwind after all the hours they put in on the project. They have their drink, and Bob suggests that he drive her home rather than her having to take the train. She agrees, and when they get into his car, his hand brushes hers and before they really realize it, they are hugging and kissing one another…

I’m sure you know the rest of the story…

What exactly happened here? Neither Bob nor Jane was looking for an affair, both of them have a marriage that was good ( up until that point), and there had never been anything physical between them.

The problem is that they had been engaging in an emotional affair. They were bonding together, hiding things from their spouses, running their spouses down to each other and telling each other things that they wouldn’t want their spouses to know about. They were also becoming angry and short tempered with them and neglecting the marriages. Part of this may have been out of guilt, part of it may have been because they saw their spouse as taking time away form chatting with one another and part of it may have been that their spouse knew something was wrong and called them on it.

When you’re married, you can and should have lots of friends. same sex or other sex doesn’t matter, as long as you have good boundaries and know when a friendship is getting too close. The minute you feel that you need to hide something about the friendship from your spouse ( or a need to hide something that was said between the two of you) you know it’s time to take a step back and walk away. If you are hiding texts, closing chat windows, or lying about meeting with your friend, you know you have a problem.

Emotional affairs can hurt just as much, if not more, than an affair that’s just for sex. While they can sometimes lead to a physical affair, they don’t always do so ( especially if it’s a long distance online sort of thing) but they are every bit as hurtful to a betrayed spouse.

The minute you feel like there is a change in the relationship and it’s starting to feel like more than a friendship, walk away. In spite of what many will tell you, emotional affairs don’t “just happen”…on some level, one always knows something is up.

What about Bob and Jane? Their emotional affair became a physical one, which went on for a few weeks. One day, one of their co-workers overhead something”unprofessional” between the two of them, and the office rumor mill got going.Soon, everyone at the office knew, and word reached their boss who called them in and they were both taken off the project and disciplined.

As for their spouses,  Bob’s wife happened to stumble across an email between the two of them, and figured out what was going on. She looked a bit further and found more evidence. She confronted Bob, who lied, but she knew the truth. She found out Jane’s name and phone number and called her husband so that he would know what was going on…

What happened after that? You decide