SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My wh has always had peculiar boundaries, but this one took the cake. Somewhere he got this idea that if we split he could still have our friendship, as if we just "didn't work" as a couple but could enjoy each other's friendship alone. He had alluded to this, and so I said (during one of our conversations while being separated) that I couldn't do that, which was a big deal to him.

So he said..you mean it's all or nothing? I started to feel that mental confusion I can get around him and said yes that was it. I can't be friends because he broke my heart, destroyed our marriage, and caused me so much suffering...it's not a matter of the romantic part not working because despite everything I still find him attractive etc. and he knows it.

Oh well...at least perhaps it made him sense the magnitude of what we're talking about.

Anyone else experience this?

Yup.

After false R, I was in our garage while he was moving things out of there. I asked him to go up into the attic and grab two boxes for me - the only two left up there after he took all his crap. He refused, saying it was too hot at that point.

"And besides, PR, I'm not abandoning you! I'll come over whenever you need me to and help you! We are still going to be friends!"

I just about vomited.

Then I told him he was a lunatic, delusional, and that I had true friends in my life who didn't lie, cheat, and stomp on the pieces of my heart they had broken. Don't want or need a friend like him thankyouverymuch.

And for the record, he never did come back and help me get those boxes out of my attic, and the house sold and has a new family living there now so I'll never get my stuff back. What a great friend he turned out to be, yeah?

I'm only a month out from D-Day and we are still in limbo, but we have discussed R, S, and D.

My wife: "Even if we do get divorced, I still see us being friends. We'll always have that."

Really? Let's think about the things friends do together and then see if we will do them post-divorce.

Are we going to go to the movies together?

Are we going to go to dinner together?

Drinks after work?

Football games and BBQs?

Discuss our dating lives?

Vacation together?

Spend the holidays with each other?

No, post-divorce the best we can hope for is that we have an amicable relationship where we put the kids first. Best case scenario we can sit next to each other for an hour during a kid's soccer game without vomiting or screaming.

Yep. Shortly after I moved out and told him I needed the separation agreement signed so that I didn't have to talk to him again till it was time to file D. He looked at me in all seriousness and proclaimed that I was his best friend, and of course we will still talk regularly. I couldn't help it, I burst out laughing (I also laugh at horror movies...). It took a few minutes for me to calm down enough to explain that I was not willing to accept that demotion, that wife does not turn into friend just because some barley legal peice of a$$ comes along. And given that he had replaced me in all other aspects of his life, he should really invest that "best friend" role in her as well.

Yes, stbxwh said this to me also.

In the elevator at court, after having gone before the judge for temporary orders before d is final.

"someday we are going to be friends, you'll see"

I couldn't speak, just gave him the look, the are you completely our of your f'ing mind look.

Why would I ever choose him for a friend? He abused me for years and then the icing on the cake was infidelity, abandonment, false R and repeat.

With friends like that...

My XWH wanted to be "friends" too.

But since he has a tendency to sleep with his "friends", I wanted no parts of him (for that and many other reasons).

Even though you titled this Wayward Ex you posted it in Reconciliation, so I'll answer as someone who is working through reconciliation.

My husband and I were living in the same house and I didn't know he was having an affair. We talked about splitting, but he wouldn't discuss anything in solid terms. A cake-eater. I began to divide, pack up and donate items we'd accumulated over 20 years together. I was getting the ball moving out of the limbo state he seemed to want to stay in. Getting rid of things that had been symbols of our holiday traditions together etc. He stood there and watched me, like a kid whose toys were being tossed out in the trash. That was hit #1.

He assumed we would stay friends. Why not? He was a good guy. Why wouldn't I want to be friends with him? AP thought he was awesome, and I should to, right? Uh, no. Because there were no kids, it would not be necessary to stay in touch at all once things were settled. He didn't understand or see why that would be the case.

My husband pictured himself as my handy-man and coming over and hanging out with me if we split, like the X's do on sitcoms. When he realized I wasn't going to go along with that, that I didn't need him as a buddy or a handy-man, things suddenly got real. The future looked bleak. He ended his affair and confessed. It still took him a while to realize he'd lost the Good Guy image he was so desperate to hang on to. He'd been a bad husband as well as a bad friend, a long time before that.