SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So it seems like more than ever affairs are happening at work. It's shocking really given the threat of sexual harrassment and the HR nightmare.

If your spouse had an affair at work what was the outcome? Did they lose their job? Switch jobs? Or did the AP leave?

My WH's COW refuses to leave. She is a direct report. She has threatened to go to the board and report him. She threatened to go to the press make things public and file a wrongful termination suit if he made her quit. Lovely person isn't she?

My former spouse moved overseas, her soulmate ended up in jail for identity theft that was discovered while investigating their affair. They both were theater actors.

Southernmama5 - I can speak to a lot of your questions. My Wh had an affair with a COW. He was her boss. I actually discovered the affair the morning after the company Christmas party when she texted him that she was "too much in love with him" to see him at the party with me. I confronted him and he confessed all. I then called her from my WH's phone...she too confessed to the affair. My husband said he wanted to repair our marriage and that he did not want to be with the OW. He never wavered, told her in front of me on the phone that it was over, that she needed to answer what questions I had, there was virtually no TT...but they remained working together for 17 months after Dday. It was the absolutely hardest thing I have ever had to go through.

A lot happened in those beginning days regarding what I asked of the OW and my FWH in respects to what I expected out of them working together. I'd be happy to share those experiences with you as well...but in answer to your questions I can tell you this. 17 months after Dday the OW was fired for documented poor performance at her job. She had respected all that I had asked of her after Dday and had even sent me an apology letter for all she had done to my family...HOWEVER...4 months after she was fired she filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against my FWH company. In her complaint she detailed out the affair...how it started, when they had sex, etc. I had to read it all...it was torturous. There were pieces of her deposition that were out and out lies. I know this because they were lies about me stating that I had harassed her at home and at work after discovering the affair. She said I had called her and threatened her. That was not true.

My FWH had to confess the affair to the owners of the company. He had to give a deposition. I provided evidence of the apology letter she had handwritten to me as well as documentation phone calls and a time line of what I knew to be true after discovering the affair. Very hard to go through.

Coincidentally, my FWH did finally find another job right about the same time this lawsuit came about, but I do know that they were not going to fire him as a result of this affair. I actually do not know to this day if she got any money for the lawsuit or not. I do know that after collecting evidence from the OW, my FWH, another employee that knew about the affair and others who provided evidence of her poor job performance that the lawyers said they were prepared to fight the lawsuit to the end and make sure she got nothing...but like I said...I do not know the final outcome for her.

If I could say anything to the OW, the OW in your situation, or any affair partner who sues for a workplace affairs I would say this..." You willingly slept with my husband and now you want money for it. Where I come from that makes you a prostitute." I wonder where their sense of moral obligation was when they were willingly trying to destroy a family.

It's been 2 1/2 your since Dday. I won't lie. There are still painful moment and triggers, but I handle them so much better now. My husband and I both do. We are rising from the ashes, so to speak. Life is good again...it can be for you too. ((hugs))

My H worked with cOW for a few months after dday. He was a bartender and she was a waitress. They worked at a casino and while she was always at the same bar, it was his job to give all the bartenders their breaks so he was in her bar a few times a week for up to an hour.

I struggled greatly with their continued contact although he called me during breaks and claimed to avoid her as much as possible in her bar. Finally, MC said it couldn't continue. It was damaging me. So she told him to get his resume together because she wanted me to pick a date and if I wasn't comfortable with their continued professional contact - he would need to quit. That scared the crap out of him...it was a union job - full benefits, pension, good pay etc.

Well - within 2 days of that mc session - he came up with a plan to avoid her bar. He paid other bartenders to take that bar - he'd switch bars with them and had to pay them to do it. He had to explain to his supervisors why this was necessary. It cut into his tips but he successfully avoided her bar for another 8 months. Then she transferred to a different department. It was even a different shift. I felt much better. Safer.

It stayed that way for 3 years, then my husband was fired last year. Ongoing conflicts with a supervisor finally led to his termination but even though we've had to tighten our belts to survive this financially, I'm thrilled. I didn't realize how much the slight possibility they could run into each other was affecting me - plus that place was a hotbed for infidelity and poor boundaries.

Southernmama - I remember your story and even posted on your first thread. I don't know how you can do it - heal while they continue to work together. It would drive me crazy that she had that much control over my husband's company.

There was a news story a couple of years back. A dentist fired his office assistant to save his marriage. I think there was an affair or maybe the wife was uncomfortable with her flirting - I can't remember. But she sued for wrongful dismissal and lost. The judge felt the firing was reasonable to save his marriage.

Is there nothing your husband can do? My husband thought the same until he saw it would cost him either the marriage or his job - then he did in 2 days what he couldn't come up with in 3 months...

Things should be made public. She wants to do it for the wrong reasons but it's still the right thing to do. Things that get swept under the rug happen again.

Southern mama - this is the news story - it worked in Iowa - it could in your state too!

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/iowa-woman-fired-attractive-back-moves/story?id=19851803

(Link posted with mod approval)

Hey SassyLee!

I was excited when I initially saw the link you posted and thank you for your thoughts.

I see many differences though.

1- not a CC case

2-small dentistry practice where he is the sole owner. The rules are different for a large corp.

3- my WH has been demoted and the OW won't be fired.

4- The family and poor wife of this Dentist were dragged through the mud with national negative publicity. I can't imagine what woman in her right mind would go to him and even get a tooth pulled by that fool. much less be put under for a procedure!!!!!!

5. The case may actually be appealed as the verdict is seen a quite insane in many states.

6. No monetary gain for the BS, only negative publicity and public shame.

7. There are many attractive women out there, I can't imagine the BS even has any piece of mind.

[This message edited by Betrayednurse at 3:25 PM, April 30th (Sunday)]

It was appealed and she lost again.

My WH's COW refuses to leave. She is a direct report. She has threatened to go to the board and report him. She threatened to go to the press make things public and file a wrongful termination suit if he made her quit.

Since he was the one in a position of power, wouldn't it make more sense for him to be the one to quit? Since everyone at work likely knows about the situation, if he is committed to change, I'd think he'd want to be out of that situation and into a new one where people maybe don't know what he's done and he can get a new start.

I know in the offices I've worked, everyone knows who's having affairs and they still get brought up occasionally, even decades later. People don't forget.

To answer your questions, in my case, MOW was a coworker. My WXH was doing his fellowship at a hospital and was a few months away from finishing up and being able to practice as a physician on his own. His field is quite specialized, and even though he'd been promised a job at the hospital where his fellowship was, word got around about the cheating in our city (of over 1 million people) and he couldn't get a job in town (neglecting patients to sleep with coworker during work hours.) He had to move 3 hours away. Not sure where he is now or whether MOW followed him (she was a year behind him in the fellowship, so she would have been stuck in our city for another year.)

Workplace affairs are so toxic. I've worked in male-dominated fields for my entire career and have never even thought about sleeping with someone from work. I'm so sorry you're dealing with this on top of everything else. I hope you can get out of infidelity, find peace, and heal.

She has threatened to go to the board and report him. She threatened to go to the press make things public and file a wrongful termination suit if he made her quit.

What? Are you f-ing kidding me? Who is this woman?

What a nightmare... My WH and I are trying to avoid this type of situation. As an officer of the company he signed a contract with, get this.... ---> a MORALS clause!! Pretty sure having sex with someone below you on your team is violating that. I was ready to kill him when he told me. So we, well HE, it's his mess, has to keep her quiet. He said he wouldn't get fired though if he was exposed but who knows, he's still in this "what's the big deal" fog. I asked if anyone else in the company knows about her and him and he said no (thank God).

Now that I think about it, I recall a situation at work, long time ago. I worked at a medium sized advertising company and one day one of the directors was fired. I found out from a coworker that he made some comments to his subordinate, about how good she looked, something about how she doesn't need to eat salads for lunch bc she's so thin, but then again he hasn't seen her naked. Next day she went to his boss, who went to HR and the day after he was packing his stuff. The subordinate stayed. HR does NOT fuck around, they don't care how long you've been there and who you are, the supervisor is always at fault no matter what. It's abuse of power.

Now there are ways the company can keep the supervisee quiet and make them disappear but I would assume that would involve a large payout or something. It would not take the heat off the boss, as someone mentioned the rumor mill never stops.

Does anyone else know about this affair? Have they kept it quiet?

A potential silver lining...since she's threatening to expose him, could the affair be truly over? She wouldn't do that unless they really ended it right?

And regarding the Iowa case, it got dismissed because well, the woman was NOT that attractive.

No seriously, she lost because it would set a huge precedent for all women (and men) who were terminated. Well, I supposedly was let go because of my poor performance but it was really because my boss's spouse thought I was too attractive and it diminished their trust and I'm clearly more attractive then they are, blah blah.

If the law is at-will employment, anyone can be fired for anything other than the few protected classes. Now when the two parties have had consensual sex, and one is above the other, that's more complicated because firing could be perceived as retaliation which is a no-no.

Anyway, I'm rambling...I've spent way too much time researching this thanks to my dumb-ass WH and his wandering dick.

Bear Momma,

I'm so sorry that your WH is creating all of this work for you. This ALWAYS seems to be the case. It really does seem like you've carefully considered all of this and as others have said, I really think it makes more sense for those in power to step down or find other employment. I very much regret not taking this route. Instead my sense of injustice and desire for revenge really got the best of me. My WH is accountable to me, the OW is not. Although I think she's is a terrible person, I think I had the wrong person in my crosshairs. You really need to think about what gives you the most in a divorce settlement. Sounds like a AA CC case will not do that, ESPECiALLY with your WH MORALS clause. That made me sick when I read it.

You are in my thoughts.

[This message edited by Betrayednurse at 8:37 PM, April 30th (Sunday)]

My WW had a LTA with a COW. She supervised him. They travelled on company business all over the province with many overnights - some as much as a week long. Company expense accounts. When I finally found out about the adultery some 7 years after it supposedly ended (when my WW moved over 2 hours away from the HO and opened a field office) I told my WW I was going to approach the company to get more information. She suddenly realized she could be fired. She asked if I would hold off one day and she tendered her resignation and applied for her pension. I never even considered not providing that gesture.

If she hadn't retired she would have been fired. The head of HR let her know that but also said she would provide a good reference for my WW. WW has a valuable asset for the company and is still highly respected 3 and a half years later by those who don't know. Her COW POS AP still works there. I tried to get him fired for conflict of interest because of some financial dealings that I had with the company and he was involved in. He caused me grief on two different occasions before I knew about the adultery but he wasn't let go.

A Vice President and his Executive Assistant in a company that I worked for were both terminated because of their adultery. All staff signed annual code of conduct contracts. It didn't say anything about adultery or consorting. The company felt that their behavior, even though not public, cast a bad image of the company.

The office and COW are a major environment that seems to lend itself to adultery. Shirley Glass in Not Just Friends spends quite a bit of time on the subject. They are also very difficult to uncover. My WW's AP's wife left him because she caught him through cell phone records committing adultery with a different woman. SO my very smart WW told him to never phone her cell phone. All their contact was done through work channels that I had no access to.

I'm so sorry you're here, SouthernMama5. I don't come to JFO very often because I find it too painful. The title of your thread popped out at me so I checked in. Your WH's COW is probably safe. Your WH should have thought about the consequences before he decided to get involved. It isn't actually that tough to figure out. She's not a lovely person but neither is he.

Again, I'm sorry you're here but SI is the best place to be considering the circumstances.

My husband's cow threatened with SH but that didnt stop them from having/continuing affair. Turns out it was to appease her suspicious husband.

I am appalled by the number of affairs that happen at my husbands work. He is looking for another job. People actually have sex where he works before the place opens ( it is a bank). I am absolutely disgusted.

Oh btw the OW told me I could go to HR but nothing would happen bc they were both willing participates. I told her having sex on the clock has to be against the rules.

My wayward's AP was a COW as well. I don't think the company ever found out. The only reason I didn't expose them myself was the potential loss of his paycheck.

For a few months they both worked at the same company but allegedly only saw each other once and didn't speak. Made me sick every day. We ended up relocating thousands of miles away (for my job). He still works remotely for the same company. Through the grapevine I heard the COW got a shiny new job at another company. I think they're both just pretending it didn't happen and "moving on with life."

My WH's COW refuses to leave. She is a direct report. She has threatened to go to the board and report him. She threatened to go to the press make things public and file a wrongful termination suit if he made her quit.

^^So sorry about this, SouthernMama. What a hard thing to have to deal with on top of everything else. Strength to you-

My H still works with the OW. They never worked closely together, and they were peers. I wanted to blow up her world by reporting her to HR, but that would have meant taking him down, too, and I needed his paycheck, even if I didn't stay with him. I stayed silent. She was single.

H carried on the EA for a few weeks after DDay, thinking that he loved her, but it had already been fizzling out and they hadn't had sex in three months by that time. The A was dying a natural death. Dragging it out into the daylight was the final nail in the coffin.

H eventually committed strongly to R and NC, or I don't think I could have stood them continuing to work together. She broke NC quite a few times (which he told me about,) but dropped any thoughts of getting him back when we told her she needed to get tested for HSV2 about a year after DDay.

One should never shit where one eats. It's always, always, always a bad idea.

[This message edited by 13YearsR at 3:46 PM, June 5th (Monday)]

My mil had been trying for years to "get wh back" to her. We lived far away from her, but her husband died (they were in their late 50s, so young) suddenly, she leaned on my wh who had made some bad business moves, and he decided, without telling me, that we were moving to her so he could save the company, now hers. I was not happy, as I don't trust her.

She gave him her dead husband's direct report, she'd been so loyal to the company. Late 40s, mousy, plain, crass, rude. Wh told me she was inept. Maybe so, but she was clever enough to know who owned 1/3 of the company now. She was then his only direct report. Mil wanted them to have no distractions. Mil erased all boundaries between work/friend/famil, but successfully kept me out of all of it. Husband refused to acknowledge any of it, and my pointing it out pissed him off and he got closer to his mom and the mow. I was effectively out. Within 3 months of our move, he was sleeping with her, being praised by his mother for his dedication to family and the company (yes, the irony) and I was a pariah and trying to keep my food down and parent our kids. Alone. And confused.

Side note, this a therapy business. Not a multi million dollar white collar business. A lot of young women starting out careers with certificates. Minimal brain power, a lot of parties and self importance, and personal issues they cover up by becoming therapists in training. thanks to mil who thinks she's an entrepreneurial maternal Oprah. She is not. She hadn't slept with her husband in ages and when she did, he dropped dead, she was left everything in his will. She's actually a complete narc idiot.

Everything blows up. Wh spending company money on screwing the married cow, which is still viewed as work dedication by mil. She refuses to let cow be fired or change structure. I almost have nervous breakdown and am called a drama queen. Obs knows about affair and does nothing (he was om in her 1st marriage to his brother. So gross). Cow continues to proposition wh at work, texts, everything. She's finally forced to leave, is furious, obs is furious, she has a pile of kids and was the bread winner.

It was a disaster. The company became a punch line, my mil did not want us to reconcile, so he could move back in with her forever, lives were messed up. Once ow was finally gone, the phone started ringing from clients about her crassness, her lies, how no one respects her in the industry. My wh was a fool and got played by 2 women whose intellect he used to ridicule. And I got to watch it all from the sidelines. They blew sunshine up his ass and I called out his stupidity, and I paid.

And to anyone who thinks these things go under the radar - nope. The whole office knew instantly. I have since moved far away and have never heard from mil, or had her call and check on me or the kids. She never wanted us, just wh. He's pretty ashamed of all of it.

My WW was screwing a supervisor, albeit not hers at the phone company. The company, along with many others, I'm sure, is rampant with cheaters and adultery. Its damn near a competitive sport I think.

I did not contact HR, but only for the OBS's sake. They would have both been fired and lost their pensions and insurance.

I sure thought about it, but reality said it would not be in my or the OBS best interests in the long run.

[This message edited by twisted at 12:58 PM, June 6th (Tuesday)]