As if this week isn't hard enough, the news headlines are full of an infidelity that parallels my own experience. WX was also a C-level executive (though not of a such a successful company!) who cheated with a married woman and a direct report (AP1), and a female coworker on a different team (AP2). Both were of a different ethnicity from his wife (me).
I don't think I've shared this story here, but WX told me that at one point, OBS (who caught the affair 2 years before I did) and his friend sent a drunken email to the CEO of the company accusing WX of improper behavior toward an employee. The CEO and another exec thought it was probably spam because of all the typos and bad grammar. They showed it to WX, who lied and said that it was fake. WX then went to AP because he had the audacity to be angry about all this (how dare the OBS jeopardize his job!) and told her to get OBS to stop. I don't remember if their affair was "on a break" at the time or not, but I was so appalled when WX told me all this.
Definitely seems like this behavior is a section from The Cheater's Handbook. Of course all these guys never think they'll be caught or have to face the consequences.
I felt like WX should've confessed and apologized to those two execs as part of R. He never did. Just another indication that he hadn't truly changed, I guess. He got laid off about a year later, which I was very happy about.
DDay1 Nov 2022: WX admitted to a 3yr LTA with AP1.
DDay4 Sep 2023: WX confessed an EA from 2014 with AP2.
Married 25 years on DDay1.
Tried R for 2.5 years. Divorced Aug 2026.