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I Just Found Out My Friend Had an Affair With My Ex
My first marriage ended 20 years ago. I knew my husband was sleeping with someone else, but I never found out who. “Helen,” my friend and neighbor, made me coffee and held my hand when I broke down. She even helped me while she was pregnant, and I often referred to her sons as my “other nephews.” Recently I learned her younger son did an ancestry test and learned that Helen’s husband wasn’t his father and that he was first cousins with people still living in my former town. That’s the name of my former in-laws: My ex-husband was the father. My “nephew” ended up calling me to ask for the truth since Helen was stonewalling him and his father refused to deal with it. I told him I knew my ex had had an affair but not with whom, gave him my former mother-in-law’s contact information, and wished him well.
I only had one conversation with Helen. She tried to apologize, and I asked her if she got off more from sleeping with my husband or gloating over my stupidity and misery. She said that wasn’t “fair,” and I asked her if they ever slept together in my bed and whether any of this was “fair” for me or her son. Then I hung up. My new husband thinks it would be easier to let this go and forgive since it’s been so long, but can anyone forgive a betrayal like this? I feel sick. I miss Helen, I hate Helen, and I wish none of this had ever happened. I feel like such a stupid, naïve fool—a betrayed wife crying to her husband’s mistress, what a farce. I don’t know what to do.
—The End, Again
Although the end of your first marriage was technically a long time ago, this is brand-new information for you, and it’s premature for your husband to counsel forgiveness and letting it go. This revelation changes everything about how you experienced comfort and solace during an absolutely devastating time in your life from someone you considered a close friend. You’re not a fool for having trusted a friend who offered you comfort—you couldn’t possibly have known or guessed that Helen was having your ex’s child—and you shouldn’t rush to get over this just because it happened 20 years ago. And it makes sense that you feel a thousand conflicting emotions about Helen because this information changes every interaction the two of you have had over the past two decades. You treated her son respectfully and with the appropriate amount of distance, and you were brutally honest with Helen, but I don’t think you crossed the line from anger to cruelty, so you have no reason to regret your own conduct.
Allow yourself a lot of time to be hurt, angry, bewildered, and upset. Give yourself permission to discuss this with other close friends, to write about it, to see a counselor. Find ways to name and address and heal the specific wounds you’ve had to carry over the loss of these relationships. “Letting it go” doesn’t mean pretending you weren’t hurt or acting like you no longer care. At its best, it means that you will not use your own pain to justify harming or lashing out against others and that someday this will not feel like the most crucial, central emotional fact of your life.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/11/dear-prudence-friend-affair-ex.html
I only had one conversation with Helen. She tried to apologize, and I asked her if she got off more from sleeping with my husband or gloating over my stupidity and misery. She said that wasn’t “fair,” and I asked her if they ever slept together in my bed and whether any of this was “fair” for me or her son. Then I hung up. My new husband thinks it would be easier to let this go and forgive since it’s been so long, but can anyone forgive a betrayal like this? I feel sick. I miss Helen, I hate Helen, and I wish none of this had ever happened. I feel like such a stupid, naïve fool—a betrayed wife crying to her husband’s mistress, what a farce. I don’t know what to do.
—The End, Again
Although the end of your first marriage was technically a long time ago, this is brand-new information for you, and it’s premature for your husband to counsel forgiveness and letting it go. This revelation changes everything about how you experienced comfort and solace during an absolutely devastating time in your life from someone you considered a close friend. You’re not a fool for having trusted a friend who offered you comfort—you couldn’t possibly have known or guessed that Helen was having your ex’s child—and you shouldn’t rush to get over this just because it happened 20 years ago. And it makes sense that you feel a thousand conflicting emotions about Helen because this information changes every interaction the two of you have had over the past two decades. You treated her son respectfully and with the appropriate amount of distance, and you were brutally honest with Helen, but I don’t think you crossed the line from anger to cruelty, so you have no reason to regret your own conduct.
Allow yourself a lot of time to be hurt, angry, bewildered, and upset. Give yourself permission to discuss this with other close friends, to write about it, to see a counselor. Find ways to name and address and heal the specific wounds you’ve had to carry over the loss of these relationships. “Letting it go” doesn’t mean pretending you weren’t hurt or acting like you no longer care. At its best, it means that you will not use your own pain to justify harming or lashing out against others and that someday this will not feel like the most crucial, central emotional fact of your life.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/11/dear-prudence-friend-affair-ex.html
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Although I would add to "let yourself be hurt, angry, bewildered, and upset" also "let yourself be kind to yourself where you can." If you want to rebuild your relationships with these people later - you're allowed to. And you don't have to beat yourself up over not knowing what you didn't know, either, or imagining that everyone was laughing at you behind your back when probably either they didn't know either, or they were too busy feeling shitty about their bad choices to gloat at you.
You probably will need to beat yourself up about these things for awhile - but you don't have to, and the worst-case scenarios your mind is digging up for you don't have to be given any extra space in your brain.
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I'd also add that the "nephew" probably still needs to know he has her love if she can let him know he has it. I'm not sure giving the nephew the ex-MIL's info was a good thing or not. Is he the one who should be telling the MIL that he's her grandson, or is that likely to hurt the 2 of them more for him to witness her shock and dismay before she comes around to wanting to get to know her "new" grandson, which might turn out to be a happy relationship--I dunno, maybe it is.
And LW's new husband needs to give LW room to grieve and support her in her grief and coming to terms with the revelation and what that means to her ongoing relationship with Helen or they are going to have their own problems to deal with from his lack of empathy.
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Maybe not, but I think LW is excused from having to do any of the emotional labour in this situation. I can well understand that she'd want to just hand over whatever information she had so that she could be uninvolved for however long she chooses, and managing other peoples' hurt is not her responsibility right now, even if she loves (some of) them.
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