Reply to S/O I was the OW and I told the wife

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I've also been the unsuspecting OW, OP.  It sucks and I get it. Ignore the haters on the thread.

I think you should send a polite but formal and clear-boundaries email in reply. express compassion for what she's going through, but say that it was an awful period for you, you've worked hard to put it behind you, and you don't wish to relive it by talking to her. Maybe add that if she wants to talk because she is seeking a divorce then her lawyer can contact you from now on, but she should already have more than enough information from your last email.

She is asking you to be a friend and that is just a bad idea. She's now where you were, remember--that nasty email years ago was her in denial and lashing out. Now she is actually grappling with it, a betrayal a lot worse than yours. You can have compassion for her all you want but you do not need to take on her pain and reopen your own wounds by being her friend. He hurt you both but your shared pain is no basis for a relationship.

I never did contact the wife and always wondered if I should have. The Ashley Madison hack brought it all back for me because when I looked at the records on Fairfax Underground my lying married ex-BF was on that site like white on rice.  In the end it gave me more, not less, peace because the information being so accessible meant I no longer had even a tiny theoretical obligation to inform her. Likewise, your obligation towards her is long over. Keep on with the recovery and good luck finding real love. Decent men are out there. [/quote]

Op here. Thank you for your advice and your compassion, PP. Do you struggle with trust issues now? I have found myself going through my now boyfriend's cell phone and covertly checking up on him. I am a much more paranoid person now and I hate that. [/quote]

Not really. There were long-term effects though. My emotional landscape was different; for one, I was more like 30, I had had a few years of therapy in my 20s around father issues and trusting men which actually put me on a great footing to not see falling for this guy as a personal flaw. Also, it was not a year.  That is a long damn time even if you weren't seeing each other that much. My issue was more how could anyone lie like this to so many people.

The experience did teach me how to smell cheaters. There's no single surefire sign. Smug PP on previous page with her "no holidays"--well, mine did give me holidays. His wife would go to her family and he'd make some work excuse to stay in town with me. They also say "another sign is always being at your place," well as you learned that's no silver bullet either. The skills I learned were more subtle. A good liar will let you fill in the blanks for yourself for why his behavior is weird. So I learned to "let silence sit" and not do that for people when I asked them to talk about themselves. I also learned to trust my gut because things were off from the beginning but it was all so romantic and dramatic that I wanted to believe. That feeling is like a drug and just as dangerous. I no longer trust it, and I was much better afterwards at falling for traits I could actually observe, not traits a guy was telling me about or trying to show me he possessed.

I was also brutally honest with people I dated about what had happened to me and how it made me view cheating. Then I tell them there are two effects: they can trust me never to cheat, and me finding out that they are cheating would be an instant dealbreaker.  Then I let it go. I don't snoop on phones (my guy had a separate one). I trust my gut to alert me to weird things. It has worked so far. Married a guy who had also been through some shit and appreciated my desire to avoid the abyss of bad behavior. [/quote]

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