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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm so sorry OP.

First, just put on your oxygen mask. Make sure you are eating, sleeping, and staying hydrated. Foist childcare onto your DH or a babysitter. Take care of you.

Yeah, you don't want to tell EVERYONE, but as a betrayed wife myself, let me just say that it's BS that we're supposed to keep this a secret. Tell your best friend; tell your sister. You will need them. They will love and forgive your DH if you decide to. IF.

[b]If OW has a husband, tell him.[/b] But I'm guessing she doesn't if she thinks this Hail Mary will score her your cheating husband. Maybe she left hers at the beginning of the affair? And now she's got a cost sunk thing going on? IDK, just guesses. We need more info to give better advice.

As for your DH, a lot depends on how he is acting now. Is he remorseful? Did he end it with her and now she's gone bunny boiler? Or is he blame-y and whiney and trying to shut down your questions and pain? Or have you not confronted him yet?

You don't need to make any decisions right now. You can separate, or not. You can ask him to stay with his mom or a friend, or not. See a lawyer. Get an STI panel. Take care of yourself (I signed myself up for monthly massages right after DDay, and I still go today, 7 years later . . . take care of you). Prioritize individual counseling for you both before marital counseling . . . too often you get a therapist trying to make everything 50/50 rather than treating an affair like the abusive trauma that it is.

You WILL get through this. You will be happy again. Deep breaths, and one step at a time. . . .[/quote]

This post has some good advice in it. The bold is NOT among the good advice. OP should not descend to the AP's low, low level. Plus: The effort OP would spend on finding out how to tell the AP's husband is effort OP should be spending on other things like talking to a lawyer and a therapist and doing the self-care the PP rightly advocates.

Also, OP, you do not owe this PP, or any of us here, any further details about the other woman or her marriage etc. At all. Nope.

I do agree strongly that you should get tested for STDs immediately. Your DH can be remorseful as hell but viruses don't care about his remorse. And some STDs have virtually no symptoms for years, so it's impossible to know if one has them based on how one feels. Sadly, you need STD testing, at a minimum to rule them out so you can move on with that concern off your plate.[/quote]

You're responding to me and it's definitely a nuanced ethical consideration. I don't know that it's "stooping" to do something when it's sharing vital information that is being purposely kept from someone. But it's certainly not a black/white issue when it comes to who should disclose. Ideally, OW would tell her husband on her own. EVEN MORE IDEALLY, there'd be no affair to tell about, amirite? It's not an ideal situation so we're trying to do the least harm. Maybe that would be having the DH tell the OW she needs to tell her husband. IDK. That might reduce ongoing harm to the other betrayed spouse at the expense of OP. Would that be worth saving OP from the "stooping"?

I'm not a cruel person and I felt oddly protective of the OW's privacy after discovery, so my advice was not coming from a place of pot stirring or meddling. It was simply that as a BS, I am very defensive of my right to know the important facts of my life as soon as humanly possible. I have always felt that natural consequences were the best revenge . . . play stupid games, win stupid prizes and all that. Having your spouse find out you've cheated on him after you went Bunny Boiler on your affair partner is a very natural consequence to your actual choices, just like your wife being blindsided by your crazy AP is a natural consequence of OP's husband cheating. They chose to enmesh their spouses with these other people, and that's on them. How those victimized spouses choose to deal with/end that enmeshment is something they don't have to answer to anyone for.

I might be swayed more to your POV if the OW hadn't sought out the OP here. It's hard to argue that the person who happily entered a love triangle with OP's husband and then told OP about it seeking revenge, or maybe a freed-up DH, has some sort of right to expect OP to keep that love triangle a secret. She pushed that boulder down a hill herself. IMO it would be a kindness to give OW's hypothetical partner a heads up to jump out of the way.[/quote]

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