Life with AP after divorce

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We aren't married yet. I left my spouse, and then he left his wife. It's better than I imagined it would be. Some days we do nothing at all. He sits on the couch working, and I'm curled up next to him reading.
I like that he comes home to me, and I have dinner ready. I like that he does my laundry. I like that we spend time with friends together and go on road trips without his phone blowing up. My blood pressure is much better. I enjoy pillow talk. I like constantly hearing "we". I'm happy to have finally met his family. The best thing is he doesn't go back to her at night.

THIS is what we all want. Well, OK, this is what I want.

But wasn't this how it was at first with your ex? That's what I don't get. Relationships are always great at the beginning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We aren't married yet. I left my spouse, and then he left his wife. It's better than I imagined it would be. Some days we do nothing at all. He sits on the couch working, and I'm curled up next to him reading.
I like that he comes home to me, and I have dinner ready. I like that he does my laundry. I like that we spend time with friends together and go on road trips without his phone blowing up. My blood pressure is much better. I enjoy pillow talk. I like constantly hearing "we". I'm happy to have finally met his family. The best thing is he doesn't go back to her at night.

THIS is what we all want. Well, OK, this is what I want.

Ugh. How long has it been? Sounds like no kids.

Maybe the kids have left

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From what I have seen: couples who affair pre-kids and the marriage ends - sometimes the APs make it work for the long haul.

Couples with kids who break up the family for their AP. It never lasts. OK, I am sure there are exception, but I haven't seen one yet.

This is your "exception", although I think there are many more. Sometimes you get married to one person, and then your soulmate comes along. The heart wants what the heart wants. The couple here did things right. They built a friendship founded in their devotion to their kids, and then it turned into something more. They couldn't deny their feelings any longer, so they confessed their love to each other. Each announced to his/her respective spouse that they'd be leaving for the other person. THEN they consummated their relationship. Not one moment before.

Child of divorce here, and this one quote made me want to vomit:

“My kids are going to look at me and know that I am flawed and not perfect, but also deeply in love,” she said. “We’re going to have a big, noisy, rich life, with more love and more people in it.”

Ok, seriously get over yourself. Kids of divorce can totally handle the fact that mom and dad weren't meant to be together, for whatever reason. We can handle that we sometimes forget our ball glove at mom's house and can't play baseball with friends because I am at dad's. We can handle that holidays become more of a PITA because I am running around like a chicken without our heads trying to see two families (and then when we have kids seeing four families since my wife's parents are also divorced).

Leave aside whether my parents are more happy with their current partner's than with each other - its none of my business. But please spare me the bullshit that you are bringing more love to the family. You aren't. You are bringing headache and pain on your kids, who will be fine accepting it as long as you aren't trying to spin it as a benefit to them.

And as long as the soon to be ex isn't constantly poisoning the situation with their side of the story.

Right, and that is something you have no control over. So forget about whether you and your AP can make it work. All it takes is one crazy jilted person to ruin it for everyone. In my world, my dad and his AP are still together, 25 years later. They seem miserable, but then again dad is kind of a miserable guy (his AP is a raging bitch too). My mom has never gotten over the bitch who ruined her marriage.

Here's the thing - I am 40s, married with kids. My marriage is like all others, sometimes good, sometimes tough. I get it. I get marriages fail. I get that people, even good people cheat. My dad is neither good or bad for fucking around. He is human, I love him regardless.

But (there is always a but), the massive drama between him, his AP (still girlfriend, they never married) and my mom is so damn toxic I don't speak to any of them except when I have to. And truthfully, its more because my mom is crazy and never got over it, but AP is also a raging bitch about it (did I mention she is a raging bitch).

The moral of the story - once you have kids, there is no such thing as a clean no-fault divorce. Even if you do everything right, your ex can ruin it for you. Even if your kids think your ex is the problem, they are still likely to walk away from all of you than to take sides.

And trust me, you will have NO control over that ex partner/wife/husband. And you will always be wrong and the kids will always choose that person, mostly because that person makes them feel guilty if they spend any happy quality time with the other party. Unless the person you are leaving to pursue the AP is mental stable, financially stable and wants this as much as you, you will always be on the wrong side in your kids eyes. Graduations, baby showers, wedding, etc., you name it, the wronged ex will put their stamp on the occasion to constantly remind you that you are an ASS. Just the way it will be, if you can live with that, go ahead, but remember the AP is/will be the target of most of these situations and you and AP will also have a strained relationship because there will be lots of times that you will not be able to help yourselves and will take it out on each other. Picture this, we are on a ski trip in Aspen with step children, many years after divorce, and ex in in Europe with long time live in beau, we are having an amazing time and the children are laughing, engaging and genuinely enjoying the skiing and family time. Mom calls, after realizing kids are having fun, uses every phone call to bring them down until the trip is just ruined. This is just one of many times until we gave up and stopped taking the kids with us, contrary to what other pps are saying, the kids wanted to go and had fun with us, but the ex never stopped, and I mean, NEVER. If you are prepared for this drama, which I don't think anyone is, well, good luck.

Poor AP. Another woman ruining your family life. That must suck.

+1.

Oh, poor, jilted divorced bitter women. I feel so sad for you that you still carry that anger around. This is probably why your DH left you in the first place Let it go, let it go. The last thing I would do is carry around that anger ruining my health, just let it go. BE HAPPY!

All we're doing is pointing out the irony. Chip on your shoulder much?

You're too good to carry around anger but not too good to lie and cheat. cool. we're so jealous.

Own your shit.

Own your own shit, I, again, am so sorry you carry this bitterness around. Let it go.

That's sweet. Thank you for your integrity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sure there's love (and lust) but definitely some real love in affairs. But, if you're the type of person who's willing to swear undying love to another, then bail on them (whatever cool reason you want to use) to meet another, how can the new person ever trust you? To me, it's not a matter of love and working out, it's a matter of character. If you're willing to lie, sneak, and hide, then, I don't want to be your friend, let alone in love with you. I am more than sure some affairs results in a long life of love. But, just because it's a pile of roses today, doesn't mean the foundation wasn't already a pile of shit. You know? The person lied. And they hurt someone else who loved them, even if it is to be with you. Everything else is an excuse. My 2 cents.

#truth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From what I have seen: couples who affair pre-kids and the marriage ends - sometimes the APs make it work for the long haul.

Couples with kids who break up the family for their AP. It never lasts. OK, I am sure there are exception, but I haven't seen one yet.

This is your "exception", although I think there are many more. Sometimes you get married to one person, and then your soulmate comes along. The heart wants what the heart wants. The couple here did things right. They built a friendship founded in their devotion to their kids, and then it turned into something more. They couldn't deny their feelings any longer, so they confessed their love to each other. Each announced to his/her respective spouse that they'd be leaving for the other person. THEN they consummated their relationship. Not one moment before.

Child of divorce here, and this one quote made me want to vomit:

“My kids are going to look at me and know that I am flawed and not perfect, but also deeply in love,” she said. “We’re going to have a big, noisy, rich life, with more love and more people in it.”

Ok, seriously get over yourself. Kids of divorce can totally handle the fact that mom and dad weren't meant to be together, for whatever reason. We can handle that we sometimes forget our ball glove at mom's house and can't play baseball with friends because I am at dad's. We can handle that holidays become more of a PITA because I am running around like a chicken without our heads trying to see two families (and then when we have kids seeing four families since my wife's parents are also divorced).

Leave aside whether my parents are more happy with their current partner's than with each other - its none of my business. But please spare me the bullshit that you are bringing more love to the family. You aren't. You are bringing headache and pain on your kids, who will be fine accepting it as long as you aren't trying to spin it as a benefit to them.

And as long as the soon to be ex isn't constantly poisoning the situation with their side of the story.

Right, and that is something you have no control over. So forget about whether you and your AP can make it work. All it takes is one crazy jilted person to ruin it for everyone. In my world, my dad and his AP are still together, 25 years later. They seem miserable, but then again dad is kind of a miserable guy (his AP is a raging bitch too). My mom has never gotten over the bitch who ruined her marriage.

Here's the thing - I am 40s, married with kids. My marriage is like all others, sometimes good, sometimes tough. I get it. I get marriages fail. I get that people, even good people cheat. My dad is neither good or bad for fucking around. He is human, I love him regardless.

But (there is always a but), the massive drama between him, his AP (still girlfriend, they never married) and my mom is so damn toxic I don't speak to any of them except when I have to. And truthfully, its more because my mom is crazy and never got over it, but AP is also a raging bitch about it (did I mention she is a raging bitch).

The moral of the story - once you have kids, there is no such thing as a clean no-fault divorce. Even if you do everything right, your ex can ruin it for you. Even if your kids think your ex is the problem, they are still likely to walk away from all of you than to take sides.

And trust me, you will have NO control over that ex partner/wife/husband. And you will always be wrong and the kids will always choose that person, mostly because that person makes them feel guilty if they spend any happy quality time with the other party. Unless the person you are leaving to pursue the AP is mental stable, financially stable and wants this as much as you, you will always be on the wrong side in your kids eyes. Graduations, baby showers, wedding, etc., you name it, the wronged ex will put their stamp on the occasion to constantly remind you that you are an ASS. Just the way it will be, if you can live with that, go ahead, but remember the AP is/will be the target of most of these situations and you and AP will also have a strained relationship because there will be lots of times that you will not be able to help yourselves and will take it out on each other. Picture this, we are on a ski trip in Aspen with step children, many years after divorce, and ex in in Europe with long time live in beau, we are having an amazing time and the children are laughing, engaging and genuinely enjoying the skiing and family time. Mom calls, after realizing kids are having fun, uses every phone call to bring them down until the trip is just ruined. This is just one of many times until we gave up and stopped taking the kids with us, contrary to what other pps are saying, the kids wanted to go and had fun with us, but the ex never stopped, and I mean, NEVER. If you are prepared for this drama, which I don't think anyone is, well, good luck.

Poor AP. Another woman ruining your family life. That must suck.

+1000

[Anonymous]

I would guess many of you know quite a few couples who, if not APs, were at least uncomfortably close to it and are now totally happy couples with nice families. I mean, it's not like people are going to go around talking about it or laying it all out there. Not even necessarily out of shame but just because the genesis of a decade+ long relationship with children is really not relevant to anything going on right now. So, you can believe that all of these relationships crash and burn horribly with terrible outcomes for all involved, but especially the ones who chose to leave their spouses for each other, but I would bet there's a rather sizable but quiet population of well-functioning couples who were in this situation.

[Anonymous]

I haven't posted on this thread because there's no there there.

I left my husband for another man when my daughter was 2. If I am being totally honest, I should never have married my ex. I should really never have gotten pregnant. It was what he wanted, not what I wanted, and while I love DD more than anything in the entire world, the honest truth is that our marriage was broken almost before it began and having a baby made everything that was bad worse.

As several other PPs have mentioned, it wasn't the affair. It wasn't any one thing. It was a 9-year pattern of disregard and emotional unavailability coupled with his belief that he could make up for that unavailability by spending money on our house or going on fancy vacations (during which he was also more or less unavailable due to "just wanting to relax").

All of that got worse when DD was born. There was a fundamental disconnect between what my ex was actually doing with her, with us as a family unit, with me as a couple, and what he believed he was doing. I could have been more assertive. I could have been nicer. I could have been a lot of things. But so could he. We could both have been better partners to each other, and maybe that would've made up for the fundamental differences that made us not great as a couple. Maybe not.

I became emotionally involved with someone who we were both friends with. He was also married, though separated for reasons I was not even really aware of until fairly recently. How did the emotional affair start? Gradually. It's a pattern of gradually investing more emotional energy in a different person. For me, that investment was partially in response to my husband's emotional neglect and partially in response to my friend himself. I like to think that if we met 15 years earlier, we would probably have ended up exactly where we ended up, but there is no way to know what would have happened.

We saw each other for lunch pretty regularly, and when I realized that I was falling in love with him, I talked to him about it. To my delight and horror, he was feeling the same way about me. We talked about what to do. He made it very clear that if it was what I wanted, he would step back and be a supportive platonic friend of my marriage. He also made it clear that if it was what I wanted, he would marry me and love me for the rest of my life. We kissed a bit, but that was as far as it went.

It took me about a month to figure out how to talk to my ex about it. I wish that conversation had happened earlier, but when it finally happened, it was actually a pretty good conversation. My ex was sad. He was angry. But he didn't go crazy. He didn't make threats. He continued being exactly the person he was before - methodical and cold. We came up with a plan about how to tell DD and who would go where. I moved into an apartment nearby and took DD to get new furniture for her "new room."

My former AP/now DH and I got married a little over 2 years after my first husband and I separated. We took it slow and gradual. Many of the things that the dream-filled former AP posted above about the first days of love were true for us. Neither of us was naive enough to believe that those things were just how our relationship would be, but we have been married for 5 years now, and things are still dreamy like that a lot of the time.

My ex and I share custody. He is remarried and has a baby. We have a cordial but distant relationship. His wife doesn't like me (I assume because he told her "She left me for him"), and I respect their relationship and keep my distance. She loves my DD, and that has always been the most important thing. We work out schedules for holidays, which frankly are not terribly different than the schedules my ex and I had to work out about his parents vs. my parents. She and I went to a few of DD's school events last year. Both of our husbands were traveling and not able to make it. We laughed about some of the Things That Dads Worry About with their young daughters. We took silly pictures and sent them to the dudes. That happens maybe once a year and doesn't lead to hair-braiding BFF utopia, but we are adults and manage to act like adults.

The reason I am posting this is that this situation is 1000% the exception to the rule. I am literally the only person I know who has built a relationship out of an affair - emotional or otherwise. That just isn't usually what happens. People who are caught up in affairs are not thinking rationally - about their marriages, about their relationships with their APs, about how their kids will handle it, etc. Then you get caught up in the horror of divorce, which makes monsters out of good people no matter what's going on to cause it.

If you think your life will be a cake walk after you divorce, and that is something that you need to believe to sustain the hard work that is doing the right thing and leaving someone instead of cheating on them for years, then do so recognizing that the cake walk is hard work too. And is basically a unicorn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would guess many of you know quite a few couples who, if not APs, were at least uncomfortably close to it and are now totally happy couples with nice families. I mean, it's not like people are going to go around talking about it or laying it all out there. Not even necessarily out of shame but just because the genesis of a decade+ long relationship with children is really not relevant to anything going on right now. So, you can believe that all of these relationships crash and burn horribly with terrible outcomes for all involved, but especially the ones who chose to leave their spouses for each other, but I would bet there's a rather sizable but quiet population of well-functioning couples who were in this situation.

Well if one of them has children from before the current marriage, it becomes obvious whether there was infidelity or not by the way they talk about things. You may not know for sure but you know if it's a possibility. So overall I disagree with what you're saying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would guess many of you know quite a few couples who, if not APs, were at least uncomfortably close to it and are now totally happy couples with nice families. I mean, it's not like people are going to go around talking about it or laying it all out there. Not even necessarily out of shame but just because the genesis of a decade+ long relationship with children is really not relevant to anything going on right now. So, you can believe that all of these relationships crash and burn horribly with terrible outcomes for all involved, but especially the ones who chose to leave their spouses for each other, but I would bet there's a rather sizable but quiet population of well-functioning couples who were in this situation.

Well if one of them has children from before the current marriage, it becomes obvious whether there was infidelity or not by the way they talk about things. You may not know for sure but you know if it's a possibility. So overall I disagree with what you're saying.

I'm not sure what you mean. I know people with stepkids and could tell you zero about when or where or how their relationship started.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would guess many of you know quite a few couples who, if not APs, were at least uncomfortably close to it and are now totally happy couples with nice families. I mean, it's not like people are going to go around talking about it or laying it all out there. Not even necessarily out of shame but just because the genesis of a decade+ long relationship with children is really not relevant to anything going on right now. So, you can believe that all of these relationships crash and burn horribly with terrible outcomes for all involved, but especially the ones who chose to leave their spouses for each other, but I would bet there's a rather sizable but quiet population of well-functioning couples who were in this situation.

Well if one of them has children from before the current marriage, it becomes obvious whether there was infidelity or not by the way they talk about things. You may not know for sure but you know if it's a possibility. So overall I disagree with what you're saying.

Some are able to keep it a secret, or the kids go along with the secret because they are embarrassed for others to know the truth. But especially with older kids, there may eventually be a price to pay when all the lies are uncovered. Teenagers hate hypocrisy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would guess many of you know quite a few couples who, if not APs, were at least uncomfortably close to it and are now totally happy couples with nice families. I mean, it's not like people are going to go around talking about it or laying it all out there. Not even necessarily out of shame but just because the genesis of a decade+ long relationship with children is really not relevant to anything going on right now. So, you can believe that all of these relationships crash and burn horribly with terrible outcomes for all involved, but especially the ones who chose to leave their spouses for each other, but I would bet there's a rather sizable but quiet population of well-functioning couples who were in this situation.

Well if one of them has children from before the current marriage, it becomes obvious whether there was infidelity or not by the way they talk about things. You may not know for sure but you know if it's a possibility. So overall I disagree with what you're saying.

I'm not sure what you mean. I know people with stepkids and could tell you zero about when or where or how their relationship started.

There are also a lot of badly functioning couples that seem ok to others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't posted on this thread because there's no there there.

I left my husband for another man when my daughter was 2. If I am being totally honest, I should never have married my ex. I should really never have gotten pregnant. It was what he wanted, not what I wanted, and while I love DD more than anything in the entire world, the honest truth is that our marriage was broken almost before it began and having a baby made everything that was bad worse.

As several other PPs have mentioned, it wasn't the affair. It wasn't any one thing. It was a 9-year pattern of disregard and emotional unavailability coupled with his belief that he could make up for that unavailability by spending money on our house or going on fancy vacations (during which he was also more or less unavailable due to "just wanting to relax").

All of that got worse when DD was born. There was a fundamental disconnect between what my ex was actually doing with her, with us as a family unit, with me as a couple, and what he believed he was doing. I could have been more assertive. I could have been nicer. I could have been a lot of things. But so could he. We could both have been better partners to each other, and maybe that would've made up for the fundamental differences that made us not great as a couple. Maybe not.

I became emotionally involved with someone who we were both friends with. He was also married, though separated for reasons I was not even really aware of until fairly recently. How did the emotional affair start? Gradually. It's a pattern of gradually investing more emotional energy in a different person. For me, that investment was partially in response to my husband's emotional neglect and partially in response to my friend himself. I like to think that if we met 15 years earlier, we would probably have ended up exactly where we ended up, but there is no way to know what would have happened.

We saw each other for lunch pretty regularly, and when I realized that I was falling in love with him, I talked to him about it. To my delight and horror, he was feeling the same way about me. We talked about what to do. He made it very clear that if it was what I wanted, he would step back and be a supportive platonic friend of my marriage. He also made it clear that if it was what I wanted, he would marry me and love me for the rest of my life. We kissed a bit, but that was as far as it went.

It took me about a month to figure out how to talk to my ex about it. I wish that conversation had happened earlier, but when it finally happened, it was actually a pretty good conversation. My ex was sad. He was angry. But he didn't go crazy. He didn't make threats. He continued being exactly the person he was before - methodical and cold. We came up with a plan about how to tell DD and who would go where. I moved into an apartment nearby and took DD to get new furniture for her "new room."

My former AP/now DH and I got married a little over 2 years after my first husband and I separated. We took it slow and gradual. Many of the things that the dream-filled former AP posted above about the first days of love were true for us. Neither of us was naive enough to believe that those things were just how our relationship would be, but we have been married for 5 years now, and things are still dreamy like that a lot of the time.

My ex and I share custody. He is remarried and has a baby. We have a cordial but distant relationship. His wife doesn't like me (I assume because he told her "She left me for him"), and I respect their relationship and keep my distance. She loves my DD, and that has always been the most important thing. We work out schedules for holidays, which frankly are not terribly different than the schedules my ex and I had to work out about his parents vs. my parents. She and I went to a few of DD's school events last year. Both of our husbands were traveling and not able to make it. We laughed about some of the Things That Dads Worry About with their young daughters. We took silly pictures and sent them to the dudes. That happens maybe once a year and doesn't lead to hair-braiding BFF utopia, but we are adults and manage to act like adults.

The reason I am posting this is that this situation is 1000% the exception to the rule. I am literally the only person I know who has built a relationship out of an affair - emotional or otherwise. That just isn't usually what happens. People who are caught up in affairs are not thinking rationally - about their marriages, about their relationships with their APs, about how their kids will handle it, etc. Then you get caught up in the horror of divorce, which makes monsters out of good people no matter what's going on to cause it.

If you think your life will be a cake walk after you divorce, and that is something that you need to believe to sustain the hard work that is doing the right thing and leaving someone instead of cheating on them for years, then do so recognizing that the cake walk is hard work too. And is basically a unicorn.

Wow. Your post is so well-written. Your first marriage sounds a lot like mine. Except mine ended in my ex cheating and leaving, not after he left a trail of destruction behind. I have no idea if he and AP are together or not. I run into her on occasion and choose to look the other way.

But, anyway, you sound mature and like such a lovely person (non-sarcastically). I'm glad you found a good and happy ending and that things are well for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From what I have seen: couples who affair pre-kids and the marriage ends - sometimes the APs make it work for the long haul.

Couples with kids who break up the family for their AP. It never lasts. OK, I am sure there are exception, but I haven't seen one yet.

This is your "exception", although I think there are many more. Sometimes you get married to one person, and then your soulmate comes along. The heart wants what the heart wants. The couple here did things right. They built a friendship founded in their devotion to their kids, and then it turned into something more. They couldn't deny their feelings any longer, so they confessed their love to each other. Each announced to his/her respective spouse that they'd be leaving for the other person. THEN they consummated their relationship. Not one moment before.

They are vile.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/800838

"By Tuesday, Riddell’s ex-husband Bob Ennis had weighed in to Forbes with the view that the piece was a “choreographed, self-serving piece of revisionist history”, adding that while “people lie and cheat and steal all the time...rarely does a national news organization give them an unverified megaphone to whitewash it.”"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would guess many of you know quite a few couples who, if not APs, were at least uncomfortably close to it and are now totally happy couples with nice families. I mean, it's not like people are going to go around talking about it or laying it all out there. Not even necessarily out of shame but just because the genesis of a decade+ long relationship with children is really not relevant to anything going on right now. So, you can believe that all of these relationships crash and burn horribly with terrible outcomes for all involved, but especially the ones who chose to leave their spouses for each other, but I would bet there's a rather sizable but quiet population of well-functioning couples who were in this situation.

Well if one of them has children from before the current marriage, it becomes obvious whether there was infidelity or not by the way they talk about things. You may not know for sure but you know if it's a possibility. So overall I disagree with what you're saying.

I'm not sure what you mean. I know people with stepkids and could tell you zero about when or where or how their relationship started.

If two people are in a second marriage, that means it's possible one or both of them were an AP. If you know them socially, like at all, you have an idea of how strong that possibility is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would guess many of you know quite a few couples who, if not APs, were at least uncomfortably close to it and are now totally happy couples with nice families. I mean, it's not like people are going to go around talking about it or laying it all out there. Not even necessarily out of shame but just because the genesis of a decade+ long relationship with children is really not relevant to anything going on right now. So, you can believe that all of these relationships crash and burn horribly with terrible outcomes for all involved, but especially the ones who chose to leave their spouses for each other, but I would bet there's a rather sizable but quiet population of well-functioning couples who were in this situation.

Well if one of them has children from before the current marriage, it becomes obvious whether there was infidelity or not by the way they talk about things. You may not know for sure but you know if it's a possibility. So overall I disagree with what you're saying.

I'm not sure what you mean. I know people with stepkids and could tell you zero about when or where or how their relationship started.

If two people are in a second marriage, that means it's possible one or both of them were an AP. If you know them socially, like at all, you have an idea of how strong that possibility is.

Well gee what an amazing idea - you DON'T know much about other people's relationships. But please by all means, feel free to judge.