A Good Husband
Marriage Advice From A Man
Reader Question: Should You Remain Friends with Your Mistress?
Author: Cory H.4 Feb
Reader JF left a comment on Could You Forgive Your Spouse for Cheating?
My wife had an affair (mostly an emotional affair and some kissing, but no sex) and I feel that we are dealing with it well except for one thing. The man she had an affair with is one of her only friends and they have swapped childcare together (we both have 3 year olds). They did a lot of childcare together and have swapped kids to give the other a break. I truly believe my wife is over him ad would not do anything again (we’ve had a lot of stress in our lives leading to the affair), but she wants to remain friends with him; he’s her only childcare support; and while she understands that I don’t want my kids near him, and while she accepts that, I know she wants me to move past it.
My question for you, readers, is this: Is it okay to remain friends with the person that you cheated on your spouse with?
32 Responses for "Reader Question: Should You Remain Friends with Your Mistress?"
For me…hell no!
I think the answer to that question depends on your partner and some answers to questions such as:
- Why did she have an affair with him in the first place? She didn’t have sex with him, which says something. But why did she entertain the idea of an affair or feel the need to get physical with another?
If the questions as to why she did this are not resolved, then removing the individual from her life, won’t help. Eventually, she will just find someone else. If the reasons are resolved, then it won’t happen again so there is no reason to worry. Also, it shows dis-trust if you require her to not be friends or see him, something that would indicate you and your partner have not resolved all the issues yet.
I am not a therapist, but I find there are always at least ‘two’ sides to every story and often if you did even more. With affairs, I often find we blame the person who had the affair soley, yet in my experience it is never that simple.
Regardless, sounds like you are on the road to healing and fixing it which is great.
Thank you for your comment. Surprisingly, I think I might be OK for her to do things socially with him, but I have a hard time with him being with my kids. I think it has to do with both the feeling of intimacy –he’s taking care of my kid–plus the fact that I don;t really like him (I didn’t before the affair started either). And it wasn’t his first affair either.
You were asking about fixing your Analytics - but you don’t seem to have a “Contact” page for me to reach you on.
Absolutely not. If the husband is uncomfortable with it, the wife should be willing to end it.
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No. End of discussion. Next!
Short answer: no.
Long answer: HECK no.
As being a newly betrayed wife- never would I ok this.
No.
That’s like leaving a steak out overnight when you are camping hoping that the bears don’t come and eat it. You are only inviting disaster. If she is truly serious (which I sure hope she is) then she will cease all ties to this person for the sake of keeping the relationship. If it happened once, what’s there to stop it from happening again?
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Absolutely not. The wife has harmed the marriage and destroyed trust. If she is sincere in her remorse and wants to repair the damage, she would not maintain any contact. She forfeited that support network by abusing it. Just asking to continue the relationship points to her not taking her marriage seriously.
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It is not ok to remain friends with the person that she was involved with. All ties need to be cut and no further contact of any kind should take place. If contact is maintained this simply leaves the temptation there for the person that did the cheating and leaves the wound open for the individual that was cheated on. Regardless if both parties “think” that they are over the feelings they had during the affair, if they allow themselves to see each other as “just friends” the opportunity to rekindle those feelings is left there and the other person will end up being hurt again more than likely.
I’m inclined to go with Michael’s very thoughtful and critically thinking answer. But WeaselMomma makes a good point too when she says that she forfeited that right when she abused the bounds of the relationship with the other guy.
But really, I do think the situation Michael described is possible. It would take some time to repair the problem that caused the affair in the first place.
If the husband doesn’t trust his wife and if she doesn’t trust herself, then that’s a problem that needs correcting.
If it’s the case that this other man just has more qualities that she admires, more insight into her, then yes, perhaps she’ll need to say goodbye.
I appreciate everyone’s thoughtful comments. Michael, you provide needed insight - it’s important to know why the affair happened.
I must say that it is my opinion that this friendship needs to be severed. The most sacred of boundaries has been broken and in order for real healing to happen, that relationship needs to be put far, far away from the marriage.
I do hope you get things back to the way they were with your wife.
-mike
There is only one answer to this question if you want your marriage to survive. A HUGE, RESOUNDING ABSOLUTELYNOT!
I’m sure you can find childcare elsewhere, and if you can’t, well…too bad.
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Sorry to chime in again. But I am really bothered by the “Absolutely Not”, “No way”, “Never”.
Maybe I am mis-understanding, but if you have a relationship that relationship needs to be based on some sort of trust. If you do not fix the trust issue to a point where you can ‘fully and completely’ trust your partner again then I think you need to question that in detail and resolve it.
If an individual has an affair, then they obviously are getting things from that affair (emotional, physical, guidance …) from the person they are having an affair with that they are not able to get from their relationship. I am not condoning an affair, but if my wife had an affair, I’d be asking myself the question “what am I doing or not doing that is causing her to feel the need to look elsewhere.”
Part of my really pushing this is that I’ve dealt with this via friends and colleagues many times. If you do not remove the emotion and deal with the issues as to what caused the affair and fix those issues then the relationship is doomed. Eventually there will be another affair, distrust, fighting, and possibly a breakup. Many times I find that long after the affair the partner of the person that had the affair still does not trust their partner. Sure they say they do if you ask them, but if you watch their reactions to questions and scenarios, deep down they do not, and they are just fooling themselves and their partner and that is not good for the relationship. Responding and reacting based on emotions just clouds the issues. Yes it is a natural reaction, but if you honestly want your relationship to succeed, you have to let this go. Asking someone to leave a friend for the betterment of a marriage is fine if it works towards making the marriage better, showing that one still wants the marriage to work. If the reason is to help the person that was cheated on fix an emotional response they are having to that individual, that might be okay as well. My question to either of those scenarios would be if your spouse makes a new friend of the opposite sex in the future, are you going to have an emotional response again? If the answer is ‘yes’, then why would you get rid of a friend? The end result is you loose a friend and gain no trust from your partner. The problem is trust, your partner still does not trust you as they once did. The person that had the affair has to decide if they can accept the actions of distrust of their partner even though they say they do trust them again. If they can not, best to move on for everyone.
Come on! Wake up!
Should your arm break, would carry a bucket full of water?
Ok, a half filled one?
The only thing that bothers me about the “absolutely not” comments is that they are not followed with a critical reasoning response.
I agree with your response, Michael but I think it would take some very special people to be able to achieve this. If sex had been involved it would probably be impossible unless years had passed. And it would require deep self-awareness from the people involved so that they could know as soon as the signs showed if the feelings from the past were rekindled and THEN it would require honesty and self-discipline to say, “No, this friendship is not going to work out.”
All in all, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.
But that’s not the same thing as a knee-jerk “No! Never!” response. People tend to rebel against such responses. Best to appeal to reason and emotion if you want the best results (and yes, that may include God).
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In this situation there are certainly issues that need to be addressed. Trust, issues about the way the couple treats each other, etc absolutely need to be restored. However, the feelings, flirting and physical romantic touch (however small it may have been) will still be there between those people. Regardless of whether the offending spouse is ‘over’ their affair, there will be residual emotional affects for a long time to come. Placing your spouse in that temptation again, no matter how much you trust them, is absolutely absurd.
Trust is not the issue here, it’s abstaining from the source of the sin in the first place. Would you tell an alcoholic to go ahead and drink because they’re ‘over’ their addiction? How about enticing someone that has had issues with pornography? Would you put your child under the care of a reformed predator?
There is very little difference between those situations and your spouse continuing a relationship that was a source of infidelity in your marriage.
What’s more important here, saving the marriage and moving on or ‘trusting’ that the temptation won’t overcome either party again??
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@MamaJos
I do understand your analogies with Child Pornography, Alcoholic addiction etc. and I do agree with you to a point. I can’t say for sure how I would handle this situation. As far as I know I have not had it happen to myself. Although I am pretty sure I would be able to get through it, albeit with extremely difficultly and emotion.
Where we differ is the “…continuing a relationship that was a source of infidelity..” To me the act of infidelity is not the ’source’, it is the ‘result’ of a ’source’. In my experience typically if one digs deep that ’source’ is typically found in the marriage or relationship with the partner.
‘If an individual has an affair, then they obviously are getting things from that affair (emotional, physical, guidance …) from the person they are having an affair with that they are not able to get from their relationship. I am not condoning an affair, but if my wife had an affair, I’d be asking myself the question “what am I doing or not doing that is causing her to feel the need to look elsewhere.”’
Michael, why would one not ask their wife “Why didn’t you come to me to see if I can fix/do/etc., what you need/want/etc. before you needed to look elsewhere?” Why is the responsiblity of her actions on his shoulders? Why should he be asking himself what he did wrong when his wife didn’t come to him in the first place?
One cannot maintain a friendship with the person that they’ve had an affair of any kind with because if they are that concerned about holding onto that friendship, then they are not that dedicated to repairing the damage to their marriage if the friendship ranks just as important as the marriage. The marriage ultimately has to be the priority, not the friendship because of a supposed need of that support. The support is the family unit, not the extramarital fling. And an inability to let go, shows lack of dedication to righting the main relationship which is with her husband. This goes to prove that theory once again that men and women can’t just be friends and I do not see the value in keeping a friendship that has already once jepordized a marriage for the sake of keeping a “friend” that wasn’t a friend in the first place if they didn’t help you respect the boundaries of your marriage regardless of whatever issues you may have been having with your spouse.
‘if your spouse makes a new friend of the opposite sex in the future, are you going to have an emotional response again? If the answer is ‘yes’, then why would you get rid of a friend? The end result is you loose a friend and gain no trust from your partner. The problem is trust, your partner still does not trust you as they once did.’
Yes, it is a trust issue and continuing to engage in the very behaviour that broke the trust in the first place is not healthy to a marriage. And if she did continue to seek out opposite sex friendships, who is to say that this wouldn’t happen again because precidence has already been set and not dealt with (by the refusal to let go of the friend that she’s crossed the line with). You need to remove the friend to regain the trust not be so worried about keeping the friend you had an affair with around incase your marriage doesn’t work out because your husband no longer trusts you because you haven’t done anything to help the situation. I think if she wants to keep the friend so bad then maybe she should end her marriage because it really, to me, shows a great lack of respect to her husband his feelings.
In my opinion you’ve blamed her husband for the whole affair rather than having her accept any responsibity for her actions. Bottom line, the friend needs to go for the sake of her marriage.
@Kristen.
I am not blaming him for her having an affair. I do not condone anyone having an affair. However, I think it is naive to think that the partner has no responsibility at all — that is my experience with this. Sure maybe not in all cases but in most breakups / affairs it is never one sided.
“This goes to prove that theory once again that men and women can’t just be friends” is very untrue, generalized and stereotyping. Do you think that all Indians are drunks, and all Muslims are terrorists too? Unfortunately I don’t see life or relationships as that simple.
Almost all of my friends are female. It has been this way my entire life. And no I am not gay, and no I don’t try to have affairs with my friends. I get along better with women then men in general always have. You can ask anyone in my family or anyone that has known me, it is just the way it is. I have a few guy friends, but not like my female friends. I can share more with them, they understand me better. Fortunately for me I have a wife that understands this. Sorry, but it really upsets me when people say this. It drives me nuts when I see people looking at me thinking to themselves “He is not really friends, he secretly wants to get her into bed.” Other people don’t say it but I can see it in their eyes and behaviour — fortunately I don’t care what they think.
Relationships are complex. And an affair, a fight, sharing, love are all complex. Taking an affair and saying “it’s all this person’s fault” is simplistic thinking as simplistic as “men can’t be friends with women”.
I can say that the only way to move forward for the person who had the emotional affair is to stop all contact. If the person is serious about moving forward in his/her marriage, then the relationship with the “friend” must be totally severed. Yes, the problems that set the temptation into action need to be addressed. But to think that someone can just turn off the sparks and ignore the past is foolish. It takes years to get past the intense feelings of an emotional affair. The embers burn for a long time. If something were to fan those embers, the flame can flash back up and people can make choices from a place of weakness that wouldn’t have been made if the two “friends” had no contact. Some temptations we are suppose to run from. It is difficult and painful to do but worth it in the years to come.
Besides, out of respect for your spouse, you need to lose all contact with the person you have dishonored your vows with. Some choices don’t seem fair to have to make but hey, what is more important, your “friend” or your spouse? No brainer to me.
JF. What happened to you was wrong. Period. Your wife was wrong. Period. Don’t make excuses for her and don’t listen to the women in this blog who make excuses for her. If the situation were reversed and your wife were the aggrieved party, the females would mercilessly attack you and tell your wife to dump you on the spot. That’s the double standard of feminism. If a woman fools around, it’s because she seeks love and, obviously, the husband must be doing something wrong so he must be understanding of her betrayal. Conversely, if a man cheats, he does it solely to play hide the salami with another woman and should have his member immediately cut off. . . . The truth is women are just as bad as men, sometimes worse. In your case, your wife betrayed you. She betrayed the marriage and she betrayed your child. Ultimately, it’s all about her. I think you would be better off without this woman. I think it is unfortunate that you two have a child together because that keeps you linked to her in some ways no matter what happens. However, if you really feel the need to try to save your marriage, then the answer is clear here. Your wife needs to sever all ties with this other man pronto. She can’t have both you and him. Screw the crap about childcare and him being her only friend. You’re her husband. You come first. Period. If she really loved you–which I don’t think she does–and valued the marriage, then there wouldn’t even be any debate here. She would, as a sign of her regret, freely sever the ties with this other man. She would want to. . . . The fact that she isn’t saying that is a very ominous sign, in my view. How is she showing you how sorry she is if she still wants this man in her life? How is that not entirely selfish on her part? Not just an act of selfishness against you, but also your child? Why are you accepting this? The fact that she would have an emotional affair even though she is a mother, does not speak highly of her moral character or integrity. I had something very similar happen to a friend of mine. My friend tried to her forgive her and save the marriage. The woman, it turns out, was never truly sorry, kept the other man in her life, and destroyed the marriage, My friend was and is a good man. He was loyal, devoted, and loving. I don’t accept the crap that he was at fault, too. This woman was just another example of the narcissistic, hedonistic feminists that our society is churning out who are destroying fatherhood and families, and acting as poorly, if not worse, that the male archtypes that they criticize. She just couldn’t keep her legs together. JF, rediscover your kahonas. I feel much compassion for you, and I feel bad that your child is caught up in this. But do not sacrifice your dignity or self respect or delude yourself for the sake of staying with someone who betrayed you. Your child needs a strong dad for its development and to help it learn how to relate to and interact with both sexes. You have a crucual role to play in your child’s life. You will do more damage to your child if you let yourself be emasculated and have no self esteem in order to keep the marriage going than if you leave your wife and raise your child as a thriving male on an equal status with an ex-wife. I think marriage is sacred. And I hate to see a union dissolve. But I really don’t think this woman deserves you. By the way, my friend met a wonderful woman about five years after his divorce. They are married now and she is everything that he deserved. And you know what. They just had a new baby girl on Jan. 29. He is tremendously happy. He wouldn’t have this if he had stayed with the skank. Good luck.
Kristin makes some good points.
I have to say that I think the premise of When Harry Met Sally IS true for most people but like Michael, my husband has had some female friends without wanting or trying to get them into bed and vice versa. But, then again, most of the time, they wanted more.
I think that definitely a friendship cannot be maintained until the romantic feelings are TOTALLY gone.
And yes, while this guy’s wife was responsible for her decisions, she was also pushed along by his decisions. Unless she has some serious neurosis that have nothing to do with him, then he did SOMETHING to contribute to this. Generally, when a married person has a fling of any sort with another married person, it takes four people to create that scenario. Usually they do express unhappiness before committing the affair. If you are having fights in your marriage, particularly about communication and expectations and affection, TAKE THAT AS A SIGN! You’re being told. And if you don’t take action to fix things, then you’ve committed a sin of omission.
So often we focus on the sins that are easy to recognize instantly, like this adultery stuff, but we don’t look at all the things we DON’T do that we should as also having great weight.
When we die and the Lord asks us how we treated our spouses, and all we can say is that we didn’t cheat on them, that’s not going to bode so well for us. If we don’t love our spouses’ brains out, so to speak, then we’re not doing our job.
Everyone should feel adored by their spouse. Worshiped, even. If you don’t make your spouse feel that way, you may be putting your relationship in danger.
My tired non-connective blathering is done.
Natashas last blog post..Oh ya, AND…
It’s all about boundaries - or hedges. The “friendship” existed without the common involvement of the spouse which led to the problem in the first place. If those same situations persist, there is nothing to stop the same behavior from happening again in the future when resolve wanes.
The only effective way to avoid this from happening again is to avoid the private, tempting situations.
No way at all - there’s too much history, too much temptation, too much to remind the injured spouse.
Flee! Run away! Find some other child care!
I don’t speak from experience and I’m trying to remove emotion from my answer.
The platinum I learned in my international business class- “do onto others what they would do onto themselves.”
While if I ever had an affair with someone else (luckily I will work to make sure temptation never exists) I wouldn’t want to stay friends with the person. That is me though, me, me, me, and boring is me, me, me, me. I’m not going to force my values on a person who for whatever reason did whatever they did.
After reading many items about marriage and growth, I learned marriage is about growing as people, and trust is very important. It would be best to work on it with one another and see what the other person truly wants and solutions for whatever problems, prevention to future occurrences, all this after listening, listening, listening.
I want to thank everyone for their comments. This is where I am right now in my feelings. Hopefully I was reflective enough to be able to be able to write and make sense.
It’s obviously complicated and while there is a simple answer, sometimes that simple answer isn’t the right one for both people involved. There are a lot of reasons that people cheat on their spouses. Some do it because they want to and don’t care about the feelings of their spouse, others may do it when they are under a great deal of stress and their marriage is not supplying the support they need. While I don’t think there is any good reason to cheat, why someone ultimately cheated is important for the other spouse in deciding how to move forward. Related to what Michael said, oftentimes there is something problematic in the relationship that leads or at least nudges someone to cross the line. That said, there are better ways to let your spouse know things aren’t working out and it is cheating. In a stressful situation, which my wife and I were under, only one of us decided to cheat.
Once I decided I wanted to forgive her, I needed to build our relationship up from ground zero again. It was a lot of soul searching to find out how I (the non-cheating spouse) may have contributed to the circumstances that contributed to her cheating. And because the I didn’t really do anything wrong, it was extremely difficult to look into myself, figure out what I do or don’t do that makes wife happy, and try to be a better partner when it was my spouse who has made the mistake. [This isn’t to say that my wife doesn’t have her own soul-searching to do or that she has more behaviors that she needs to change. She does. But this note is about me…]
Most things I’ve read and people I’ve talked to have stated that the other person should be cut off. I also believe that to be the case. It is much easier to rebuild your relationship if that person is removed from the equation. The cheating, and the worry that there was cheating, and the finding out about the cheating, and the talking about the cheating, and then the talking about your relationship left me so raw and fragile and exhausted, and the other person was like salt on an open wound and hearing his name would make me take two steps back in our progress.
But…
What if your spouse would willingly give that person up for you even though it would cause her great pain? She is showing that she would do anything for your relationship. Is it possible to step up and let that happen, even with the additonal pain it would cause you, because your job is to support your spouse in good times and in bad? For better and for worse? So, it is something that I am trying, but I don’t know if I can do it. Even if I can’t do it, it’s worth the effort. My spouse knows that I am doing something really hard and she respects me for it, and knows that I am doing it for our relationship, even if ultimately I can’t do it anymore and ask that their relationship be ended. Micahel is right that is there is not anything there—if that’s not a worry—then why shouldn’t they continue their friendship (of course, under certain agreed upon conditions between my spouse and myself). I think what Michael doesn’t understand, or at least I don’t remember his saying, is that this isn’t a rational experience, it’s an emotional one. And regardless of whether I think anything would happen again or not, it’s still very painful to hear his voice or know that my wife is with him, even at a party with lots of other people around and maybe not even talking to him. I know that some people can do this (his wife is one of them); I’m not sure that I am one of them but I think that I need to try. My relationship with my wife will be stronger for it. From where I am now I wish we had a moratorium on contact so that I/we would to have been so exhausted through the work on our marriage, because of the consistent open wound that his involvement kept raising.
Of course, it’d probably be easier if I liked the guy in the first place, but I don’t.
Here is my 2 cents on this topic -
Get the guy out of the picture!!!!
I can speak from experience on this one. My husband cheated on me with one of the women he worked with. My story is a very long one - but I will try to make it short. He works in construction and he never really has do deal with women on job sites. On this particular house he was framing, the owner let his personal assistant (a woman) deal directly with all the subs, make decisions about the materials, order things etc…
He had been having the affair with her for 2 months before I caught them. In the short span of two months, they had gone to Las Vegas together, she had met my son on 2 separate occasions, and they were in the process of planning a trip to go white-water rafting. when all this blew up and he confessed, I was willing to work it out with him (I assumed that the work and communication between the two would stop) BOY WAS I WRONG! He swore that he wanted to be with me, it was all a big mistake, and he loved me and did not want anything to do with her anymore. Well, two months AFTER I found out, they were still working together and still sleeping together! He basically refused to do anything to distance himself from her. He refused to stop working on the job, change his cell number etc… Needless to say, it is over between us. If your wife still wants to “be his friend” THAT SPEAKS VOLUMES!
You know, I am in this exact situation that you are in now. I am asking myself the same questions and seeking the same answers.
When I told my wife that she had to make a choice, her new “friend” or me, she said she would not be controlled in that way and was not willing to give up the “friend”. So how does one handle that? I know that as long as she has this friend, trust will take a lot longer to be regained, if ever at all.
I will admit I had done similar acts in the past, but was able to sever all ties with the people I engaged with because my marriage was more important.
Looking for answers and solutions. I hope your situation has been resolved.
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