I was in a similar situation a few years back. Karl was married to Cathy and Janet was married to David. All were friends of long standing. Karl left Cathy and Janet left David and her children. Everyone rallied around David and Cathy. Cathy was particularly hurt. She took time off work and started therapy.
Janet and Karl gave everyone the old “the heart wants what the heart wants” which makes me think “And so does a three year old throwing a temper tantrum in the cookie aisle.” Janet approached me shortly after and said “So now we can’t be friends anymore?” And it came to me. “You say you can’t help being in love with Karl, but you expect everyone to be fine with the fact that you’ve changed how you feel about your spouses. That’s not exactly fair or rational, is it?. The way you felt about David changed? The way I feel about you has changed. I’m not sure how that’s all going to shake out in the future, but for now? No, I don’t want to be around you.”
There’s a fine line between getting up in someone’s marriage woes and letting them know their actions have affected you. Yeah, I’ve got opinions on how one friend treats another friend. Sometimes I can just live with it. Sometimes I find myself unable to even look at that person.
(FWIW, ten years later, Karl and Janet are still together and socialize with David. Cathy wants nothing to do with any of them. I still think K & J are jerks, but I play nice and keep my nose out.)
I do have one question, however. (OK, two.) How much younger is she, and is/was she partnered before all this happened, with or without children? If she’s 40, that’s a LOT different than if she’s 19.
<snipped with respect> You are SO not wrong! I apologize for that; I probably should have typed it all out in Word and then pared it down after letting it sit for a while. This is all very new and my emotions are strong and close to the surface. Getting it all out in black and white is one way I’m trying to wrap my mind around it.
Sorry for the confusion! It was Matt who invited the younger woman to his party, not Rose.
This belongs to the Not My Business part of this, but the order of events was that Matt met the other lady about three years ago and told Rose about her, saying that he had talked with her about something that bothers him about himself and that she shares that trait, so it was helpful to him in working through it, and assured Rose that there wasn’t anything dangerous to their marriage about his friendship with her. Those reassurances were repeated over the next two-ish years, until he confessed that he had fallen in love with her. That confession, by the way, came before the party.
And I would really like to thank everyone for their input. I know that infidelity isn’t this esoteric brand new thing under the sun, but this situation is new to me. I like to think of myself as fairly laid back in most areas of my life, but this has me reeling and I’m trying to get to the heart of why that is. There are a number of people in my life with whom I am friendly but not particularly close, and a small group of people with whom I am very close; Matt and Rose are both on that short list.
If the talk we had had with them two weeks ago had been to share the news that they were separating, I’d have been shocked and saddened for them both and offered my emotional support to them both. How could I judge them for their marriage dying? It happens, and when it can happen with both people behaving like adults with kindness and mutual respect, well, that shows their inner strength and true integrity.
I try to live my life by a moral code. You don’t steal; you don’t abuse people with less power than you; if you make a mess, you clean it up; you stay true to the one that you promised to stay true to. If you use up the roll of toilet paper, you replace the roll before you leave the bathroom. I certainly don’t expect the rest of the world to follow any rules I set out for myself, but I guess I do apply those standards to my friends, because part of friendship for me is respect. How can I be friends with someone I don’t respect?
Up to two weeks ago, I would have described Matt as kind, funny, charismatic, and fun to be around. We’ve talked about everything possible over many years. We’ve enjoyed delightful food and drinks together, we’ve shared our fears about our kids (their three kids range from 15-20, by the way), we’ve celebrated good news together, and we’ve supported one another through difficult times. We’ve got a common group of friends. We’ve spent a lot of time together.
And now I know that he’s not the person I thought he was. But most people still don’t know about what’s going on, including their kids, and they’re certainly not going to hear about it from me, so I’m left wondering how on earth to process all of this internally but also how to act around Matt – I don’t want to give him any sense that I condone his actions (thanks for making that clear to me, Manda Jo) but I don’t want anyone to pick up on any uncharacteristic coldness from me towards him and start to wonder why that might be, not so much for Matt’s sake as for Rose’s and the kids’. And that leaves me even more pissed off with Matt for putting me in this position. I’m an honest person. Okay, mostly that’s because I have such a lousy memory that I have trouble remembering the way things really happened let alone a different version of events, but still. I’m in the position of possibly behaving in a deceptive manner around people that I care about, and I’m not okay with being dragged into someone else’s crap.
I dunno. I’m still processing it all. And I’m truly grateful for the feedback. (after previewing) And I’m truly sorry for what became yet another wall ‘o’ text. Yeesh!
Hey, something I can respond to briefly! His girlfriend is 30 to his 50. As far as I know, she wasn’t with anyone when she met Matt and I haven’t heard about her having any kids. Honestly, I haven’t given her much thought; she lives far away, and while I apparently met her at Matt’s birthday party, I have no memory of her.
I admire your loyalty to a friend and can understand you feeling the way you feel. Cheating is something I have no use for but I see it all the time. It bothers me even more when the cheater falls in love and decides to break up the marriage.
I agree with most of the above posts about leaving it alone but I think you should feel free to feel outraged and loose some level of respect that he may or may not earn back at some point in the future.
shantih, you were asking how you can be friends with Matt, whom you apparently have lost respect for, but I quoted that with the next part because if I were in your shoes, the thoughts would be related in this way: Why, why, why did Matt’s wife allow someone in their home at all, much less at a birthday party for Matt, whom Matt has already told her he’s fallen in love with?! I’m sure your friend (Matt’s wife) has been through a lot, but knowing that Matt had already told her he’d fallen in love with this other woman and yet the woman was permitted inside their family home really makes me give a long side-eye to the wife. Not only did she allow the woman her husband said he’s in love with into their home, according to what you said earlier she also absented herself to “clean up” while the two of them sat together elsewhere, talking and talking. Sorry, but this really makes me wonder about the wife.
So while you’ve been in turmoil over whether to say anything to Matt on the basis that you’re not sure you can be friends with someone you don’t respect (meaning him), I’d wonder if maybe you should be asking yourself whether you can respect someone who seems to have no respect for herself. Does the wife enjoy the role of martyr? Does she enjoy the drama of it all? I’m not being facetious, such people exist. Have you asked her why in the world she allowed this woman into her home and* then deliberately left her husband alone with the woman*, considering she’d been told by then that Matt had fallen in love? If she herself didn’t care enough to stop at least that, I’m having trouble understanding why you should care more about her relationship than she apparently does.
And if the idea is “Well it’s not like she could stop him from inviting the other woman,” I would just say your friend is not very imaginative. :rolleyes: But even if that were literally the case, at minimum she could’ve kept right next to her husband the entire night and possibly even made the younger woman so uncomfortable she’d be sorry she showed up. I dunno, just seems like you’re putting up more of a fight on her behalf than she did - though I realize there are surely lots of other details.
This statement seems to be the key to everything, but I’m not quite clear on what exactly you’re saying.
Are you saying this?
They had trouble in their marriage.
They decided to end the marriage as a marriage (but didn’t actually divorce/separate for whatever reason).
At some point during this (potentially after step 2), Matt and Rose’s relationship got serious/physical.
Matt reveals to his wife that he’s in a new, serious relationship to his wife. She is blindsided, not really expecting him to have moved on to another woman, despite step 2.
Your husband reveals this to you.
Or this?
Matt reveals to his wife that he’s in a serious relationship with Rose, to his wife. She flips out.
Your husband tells you that Matt and his wife had been having a rocky marriage and now Matt has moved on to a new relationship.
You find out that step 2 is possibly not true. The wife thought everything was fine, was blindsided by the infidelity, and the rocky marriage story - if true at all - was only in Matt’s mind.
Sorry for the unclarity. My husband told me that they had reached a point in their relationship where they had mutually decided to end things. That was, however, not borne out by what they both told us. Matt was clear that he had fallen in love with someone else and so wanted to end things, though he didn’t actually see why his life with Rose couldn’t outwardly continue as it had been for the indefinite future. Rose told us on that evening and later me when we met up one-on-one that she had been under the impression that things between her and Matt were basically fine; they weren’t fighting and while she knew that Matt had a connection to this lady, he had assured her that it was just an important friendship and not a threat to their marriage.
I knew that they had seen a couples counsellor for a while a few years back and it seemed to have done them a lot of good. That’s what I meant when I said that they had had problems before and that I knew about it.
And shoot, it’s possible that I muddled up the timing. By the time of his 50th birthday party, Matt had perhaps not yet confessed to Rose that he had fallen in love with the other lady, but the alarm bells were already ringing for her. I’d double-check with my husband, except that I don’t really care about the exact order of events. That belongs in the box of something that I would offer Rose support for but not something that is actually my business. You know?
It’s your decision who you still want to be friends with. It’s your business, to some extent, what you tell your friends but you probably never will know all the details. I’ve felt very saddened when friends of mine cheated on their spouses, especially when I knew and liked their spouse. But such behaviour is not exactly uncommon or always unforgivable… I agree with LeafFan and respect RickJay’s view which is somewhat more black and white than what I have actually done when faced with these melodramas. Let me wish you luck and love and support, perhaps time will help clarify things.
First, in my previous marriage, I was the one who wanted to have it all, have someone on the side (exciting! fun! new! refreshing!) while staying together because I didn’t have the guts to end it. I want to take a time machine and go back and slap my selfish, 35-year-old self.
Nothing beats an affair for making you unlock new places in your heart!
Anyway, if Rose isn’t happy, why not go through the divorce and be done with it? She owes no special consideration for Matt, he’s the one who wants to have his cake and eat it, too.
Here’s the thing—breaking up is hard on people. It hurts people. It is tough to get through. It takes time to heal from it. And that’s all just the emotional stuff.
But here’s the other thing—breaking up happens all the time. It’s a basic fact of human existence. Love does fade. People do and will fall for other people. I
Well, yeah. You acknowledge it right here. It is an essential reality of human life, especially any long life.
Aha, now here’s the part that’s not the emotional part, that’s not an unavoidable part of being human. Breaking up has all these emotional consequences. Why should it also destroy entire worlds?
It’s because of the way our society is structured. We put too many obstacles in front of a clean break up, particularly economic ones. The fear of those consequences make people stay together much longer than they should.
Society has been changing. It is easier than it was. But it’s still too hard.
As others have said, it’s up to you to decide who your friends are. But remember that what you’re holding against him is basically the most common human failing. It’s inevitable that there are going to be many people in your social and family circles who have and will do pretty much exactly this thing.
People say this a lot, but just look at the facts of human life. People for the most part don’t do this. Having met someone else is exactly what acts as the final trigger for a breakup. It’s what provides the final motivation.
That’s just the way it is. A lot of people are just going to stick where they have some degree of comfort until someone comes along and rocks his or her world.
You can hold this against someone when it hurts someone you care about, but it’s because someone you care has been hurt. But I think you’re setting yourself up for disappointment in people if you try to establish this standard—a standard that just has not held up in human society—that there’s a good way and a bad way to break up.
Friendship is a very important relationship, I believe. And the idea of trust and confidentiality in a friendship extends even to significant others. I am obliged to keep my friend’s confidence, even from my spouse.
Maybe you shouldn’t face him. Maybe you can’t be his friend right now, or ever. That’s for you to decide.
No, you should not. Unless … he’s being a real asshole to you about the whole situation. That would be different. Then you very well might be justified in giving him a piece of your mind.