Comments on: Reader Question: Should You Remain Friends with Your Mistress?

By: BurntOut

BurntOut — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:29:03 +0000

I think we have some great comments. Definately concur with #13. She is making excuses and if it were the other way around, a lot of women and men would jump on you. She is trying to have it both ways and needs to make some hard decisions. I think #25/Zeus has a great point if you decide to move on from her. You can rebuild and have a happy life. You also need to think of what example you want to set for your son. Can you honestly truly trust her? I know that we always want to see the best in people and give people the benefit of the doubt. But you need to consider the fact that you do not know everything about what happened. I learned the hard way because I did leave my guard down. A person will never admit everything to the other spouse, you’ll probably get 80-90% of the truth or of what happened. So stand up for yourself. Do things that make your life better and you’ll feel better. Don’t stay with her for the sake of your kid. If you do stay with her, do it on your terms, don’t compromise by allowing her to turn this on you.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 18:19:10 +0000

Cory,
You are making the right decision (#13). JF (#30) and Michael Dundas you guys are fooling yourself……your wife does not respect you and sees you as weak individual…most likey why she had an affair not respect for a weak partner so why not. Although, I do not totally agree with Zeus (#25) your must be assertive in dealing with her;albeit, you should not controll her she must know her disrespect and adultery, either emotional or physical will result in your delving out consequences.Look at the othe guy is he weak?

By: Hanna

Hanna — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 03:32:37 +0000

HELL NO! There is no such thing as being “just friends” with a mistress/lover.
You can get other child care providers and she can make another friend.
By the way, it doesn’t matter if there was stress leading up to the affair. There is absolutely NO excuse for cheating.
What you allow, you encourage. By allowing your wife to hang around with her lover, you are almost encouraging her to cheat on you again.
Non of this is your fault. Just be careful.

By: Nathalie

Nathalie — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 06:08:38 +0000

I would consider that “affair” as treason, even if “no sex”. Kisses says enough here.
And her wish “to stay” friends” with him – also

I could never trust her/him again.
Sorry, but I am honnest with my opinion

By: Jayy

Jayy — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:11:29 +0000

First off all, its not always the husband that has the affair, both sexes do it. I’m only pointing this out due to the fact that thats the norm. My wife had an affair a year ago, and I busted her after collecting some evidence etc. She lied, then finally confessed at the end of the week when I had the hard evidence in hand. However, she left out some pieces of details that I later uncovered from her emails, basically supporting my suspsisions that she didn’t tell the whole truth etc. She did stop contact with him, but in the case of many of the posters here, has a working, even though distant relationship. Ending the professional work would’ve raised rumors and effectively ended her career and everything we worked for. They do not work together on a daily basis, but do collaborate on work. They see each other at a conference that hundreds attend twice a year. We built up some trust for the 7 months after I busted her and worked on both of ourselves. She agreed to do a lot and I worked on trusting her. However, I always had that suspision in my mind and decided to act on it. A year ago she sent him a birthday gift, overnight, which was almost at the end of the affair b/c I caught them. A week ago, I found a receipt in which she sent him a fed ex package for 3lbs priority overnight. The shipping probably costed more than what was inside, probably brownies or something. Anyways, I feel as if the trust has now been blown. I agree, you need to let enough time pass or the feelings stay there.

By: Belinda

Belinda — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:52:44 +0000

Just went throught that with my husband, I had his phone bill printed out and found out he were messing with his sister friend and he continued to lie, i’ve been feeling it were her for the past year in a half and he continued to lie, but the truth came out, so all of the sudden she’s had her numbers changed and he stated he can’t contact her to let her know not call are try to see him anymore. I really feel a man should separate themselve from a woman if it’s hurting the wife. I feel if he loves you as much as he say he does he will find something different. We as woman we love so hard, we give all of ourselves and after giving all of ourselves to our husband and children, when have no strenght to help ourselves. Just keep your head up and pray, because prayer changes things, I realized, i’ve been a great wife and mother and yes i’ve gave so much of myself i couldn’t help myself, but i realized, i didn’t put GOD in what I were doing, trying so hard to impress my family and left out GOD, remember him in everything you do and you will see a different, fast and pray, he will make away.

By: Another Hurting Soul

Another Hurting Soul — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:25:22 +0000

I had the same experience my partner was sleeping with his boss (lady). I found out 2 months after the affair, his lifestyle had changed and he was not showing any interest in our relationship; after I confronted him, he never confessed, However, I remained in the relationship. Since then, things changed, he is more loving, caring and back to being the man I fell in love with, but they still contact each other, and he says its impossible not to have a relationship with her since she is his boss. I’ve seen the changes he made for our relationship, however just seeing her or hearing her brings back all the feelings of hate I felt when I discovered something was going on. It is hard to accept them being friends outside of the office, I am gradually trying to build my trust in him again, we do discuss the situation, but again he never admitted to it. I honestly feel that they had an affair and he break it off after he saw how much it hurt me. I feel that if he admits it to me, it will make it easier for me to move on. I’m not asking for details, just a confession, but I think he’s really afraid that it will drive me away if he admits truth.

By: Laurence

Laurence — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:57:26 +0000

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.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:23:07 +0000

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!

By: JF

JF — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:58:39 +0000

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.