SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

BraveSirRobin,

I am wondering why the OM is not blocked on your FB account?

From my understanding if you have blocked a person on FB, you are not going to be seeing any of their activity. That includes in the friend list of a mutual friend.

So when you looked to see if the OM was a friend of this person, you should have not been able to see him listed if he was blocked. But since it appears that he is not, that would explain why you were worried about overlapping circles.

Also, if the OM is not blocked, he also can put your name in the FB search bar and find you, just like you did him.

It's because staying friends with this person on FB has strong potential to bring me back up on OM's radar. I'm likely to pop up on his "Friends You Have In Common With X" suggested list.

Again, neither one of these could happen if the OM was blocked on your FB account.

BSR,

The very fact that you are aware of what you did, and analysed it, shows that you have your head screwed on right.

Yes, you acted impulsively, which probably also triggered yourself in some ways, but you have changed in that you thought about consequences.

Well done on catching yourself. You did well, Grasshopper.

I am wondering why the OM is not blocked on your FB account?

That was a deliberate choice in consultation with BH.

For the first 20 years after the A, social media didn't exist, and when I joined Facebook, we were deep in the rugsweeping phase. The idea of blocking OM never arose because we had not interacted in decades. Later, after BH started asking new questions that led to D-Day 2, I asked if I should block him. BH had the same reaction that I did, that he felt better with OM believing he was ancient history, not on my mind in any way. If he's stalking me in secret, and I suddenly block him out of nowhere, he'll surmise that he still has relevance, and neither of us wants that. If he isn't checking up on me, then it doesn't matter anyway.

I realize that this isn't the way most people on SI have chosen to handle blocking of APs, but it's what works best for us. If BH changes his mind, or if OM ever reaches out in any way, we will instantaneously block him.

ETA: It's a good point, though, that I can ensure invisibility on friends' pages if I block him now. It hasn't really been an issue up until this point, because I keep my FB list fairly lean by choice, but if I'm going to be expanding my social connections, there's always a chance I'll run across a mutual friend without realizing they are linked to each other. I'm definitely not doing the panicked search thing again.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 12:50 AM, April 22nd (Wednesday)]

I think SI can, and often does, morph into this sort of echo chamber of virtue signaling, a place in which waywards must 'out-remorse' themselves and each other to prove their worth.

Personally, I don't have a problem with you being 'Facebook friends,' or real life friends, or imaginary friends, whatever, with a cherished old friend who is simply nothing more than a mutual friend with OM.

Does your cherished old friend even know about you and OM? Did he know about the affair while it was happening? If he does/did know about it, did he approve of it? Facilitate it? You didn't say anything like that. For all we know, hell, for all you know, IF your friend *did* know about the OM, he was off to one side shaking his head in bewilderment and concern: "Wow, BSR is sure screwing up here, hope she straightens up and cleans this mess up..."

If this old cherished friend facilitated the affair, that's a totally different thing. He's compromised and forever will be. He helped put a knife in your husband's back. He's no friend of your marriage. Don't reconnect with him.

If he's guilty of nothing more than knowing the OM, I don't see why that's an issue. Who's on his friends list is honestly none of your business or your husband's business.

Hell, for all you know, Old Friend and OM aren't even that close anymore.

Some of my childhood friends have several hundred or even thousands of 'friends' on FB.

Are you going to run some sort of Google Maps algorithm to make sure you never run across anyone on earth that OM might know or once knew?

I would hope that both you and your husband are healthy enough adults that you can reconnect with a cherished old friend who is apparently nothing more than someone who happened to know OM back in the day, but who is guilty of absolutely nothing.

IMHO, there's a limit to which a reformed wayward has to isolate themselves, unperson themselves, to right their wrong and to prove themselves trustworthy, remorseful and safe. You have an intrinsic right to exist and to have friends and to have a personal history and story besides the affair.

JMHO, if your cherished old friend had nothing to do with the affair, tell your husband up front what you are going to do, re-friend your cherished old friend, block OM, keep your nose clean, stay within the lines, get on with your life.

Most likely OM won't even come up or show up. If he does, simply ignore it/him, stay blocked, stay away. You don't have to respond to or about OM. Other than your husband, it's nobody else's damned business.

Neurotic levels of never ending guilt don't make you a superlative reformed wayward, nor does it make you any 'safer.'

A+ for transparency with your husband, though. <3

JMHO, if your cherished old friend had nothing to do with the affair, tell your husband up front what you are going to do, re-friend your cherished old friend, block OM, keep your nose clean, stay within the lines, get on with your life.

I think "cherished" is an overstatement, TBH. We were active in a shared interest and kept in touch for several years, then life intervened. I would enjoy catching up, but honestly, if he mattered that much to me, I would be even less inclined to reconnect with him. That's where the "Not Just Friends" alarm bell would sound off.

The problem is that social media creates an ongoing ability to blindside you with a sudden appearance, and that fear of the other shoe dropping is exactly what traumatized BH after D-Day 1. I refused to go NC, and while I stayed within what would otherwise have qualified as "friend" boundaries, BH was terrified that one day, he'd be told that I had changed my mind and was leaving him for OM. I also gaslighted BH for decades about the depth of the EA.

We're still only 18 months out from D-Day 2, where I finally admitted everything, so it's mighty early to ding him for not having a mature or healthy response to trauma. Honestly, though, I'm pretty confident that after all that transpired, OM is a permanent trigger. If he and I end up in the same space, virtual or otherwise, I need to clear out immediately.

I don't want to create the impression that BH is walling me off from my friends, even from that era. I was on a Zoom with four of them the other night. BH popped in to say hi, but only because I waved him over. This is about me wanting to take care of BH's needs and protect him from more harm, not him policing me.

The more I write about this, the more I think that the advantages of blocking OM outweigh the hypothetical disadvantage of him noticing that I did it. Although I'm not reaching the same conclusions as you, talking out the reasons why has been very helpful, thank you.

I actually don't think one is worse than the other. I think both are crappy choices to make. And in my opinion both breaks NC.

I think it's one thing, this friend request and accepting it was done with little thought, but the time it took you to weed through thousands of names searching for AP, it's just alarming.

I get you would have felt better and that you were hoping he wasn't to be found, that under these circumstances, coronavirus and social isolation you have "unprecedented amount of free time and simultaneous availability to virtually congregate" so why not start adding more and more friends. That a few months ago this never would have lead to this and ultimately to seeking out AP. That you panicked.

Idk, I'm not trying to pick on you here, but seems like a lot of excuses to me.

You literally didn't have to make the choice to go looking for him. You had plenty of time to respond, and catch yourself, no matter the reasons, justifications, or rationalizations you are telling yourself.

Hey, maybe this kind of breach of NC is acceptable to some. Maybe because you didn't actually click on his name there's no harm. Maybe I'm being too harsh here, and for that I apologize. Some people just think and feel differently and that's okay.

This is about me wanting to take care of BH's needs and protect him from more harm

BSR, from your posts, I get the impression that it's also about protecting yourself from moving onto a slope you recognize as slippery for you (ie not bc your BH has an issue). You seem to recognize that friending this person from your past (whether it was a cherished friend or not) has the potential to put you on a path that is not congruent with your authentic self, your commitment to yourself, your desire to keep NC and not be in your AP's orbit. Not necessarily bc it's triggering to your BH... but bc it's triggering to YOU (and to a former you that present you recognizes as unhealthy).

Maybe I'm off base here, but my impression is you see the person from the past, friend them, then something inside you says "wait a minute, that may not have been such a good move". Maybe protecting your BH prompted that feeling, but the physical reaction strikes me as the friending being something that is inconsistent with the person you are / want to be today- which may be different from the "FWW" you are/ want to be today. This strikes me as healthy and consistent with the old "a WS betrays themselves before they betray their BS" line or reasoning.

Just an observation.

[This message edited by gmc94 at 10:29 AM, April 22nd, 2020 (Wednesday)]

Ok, a few thoughts here.

First, I don't think the initial acceptance of the friend request was a big deal. Unless you and TS have some sort of agreement around showing each other requests from the opposite sex or something like that, but it doesn't seem like you do.

Second, I don't get the impression that TS cares to play marriage police. He would rather be notified when something happens than be monitoring you. Which is why it's all the more important that you brought this to his attention before he had to discover it in some innocuous way. You did, good job!

Third, I have to agree with WOES and foreverlabeled, the scrolling to look for OMs name is of far more concern to me than anything else, because of this:

Maybe this friend was as out of touch with OM as he had been with me. It would calm me down considerably if OM wasn't on his friend list. Scroll through a thousand names, wincing every time I see someone we knew in common. Of course, there he is.

You say that it would calm you down if OM wasn't on his friend's list (emphasizing the you here because it's not focusing on how BH would feel, but you). Why? My guess is that this might tie into the conflict avoidance we've discussed in the past. Maybe some small part of you thought that if you didn't see OM's name on the list, that you wouldn't need to bring it up at all and all would be well? The wincing at friends in common seems to support that, as each of those winces indicate that you were hoping the inevitable wasn't true. Why hope that his name wasn't there if that didn't have some sort of more favorable outcome than the alternative? Again, not exactly sure what that more favorable outcome would be, just that there must be one. If his name being on the list was inconsequential, there would have been no wincing at all.

Truly, I was looking to make sure he wasn't there, I was practically praying that he wasn't, but the need to know is in itself disturbing to me. It gave him an extra level of attention and relevance when I should have just turned and fled.

Seems like you're understanding the potential this has to be problematic, which is good.

He doesn't get angry that I clicked accept without thinking, he's glad I unfriended my way back out of the situation, he's really glad that the idea of hiding anything from him was unendurable.

I don't see anything in this list about his reaction towards your searching of OM's name, so I have a possibly uncomfortable question to ask - did you tell TS that in between your accepting and unaccepting, there was a period of time when you scrolled to look for OMs name? Or did you just paint it as "I accepted this friend request, but then I realized that it could potentially put me in contact, even peripherally, with OM, so I unfriended him, and I just had to come and tell you!" I'm pretty sure you did tell him because you know he'll just read it here, but I had to ask.

Look, nobody's perfect, and you handled it pretty well considering the circumstances, at least in terms of disclosing it to your H. In a perfect world, I would have left the page up without doing the unfriending, woken H up, let him know what had happened, then let him decide how to go about it. Because I would want him to be able to verify that there were no untoward messages exchanged between this old friend and I before I had unfriended. That's just me though, it sounds like he was happy that you had already taken care of it, and you know him better than anyone.

The more I write about this, the more I think that the advantages of blocking OM outweigh the hypothetical disadvantage of him noticing that I did it.

THIS! re: blocking, I think it might be helpful for you and TS to revisit this. I get that back when you guys first discussed this, he didn't want OM to see the blocking as you giving him some sort of attention. But a lot of time has passed, and I think you are far enough out where you could take another level-headed look at this.

Blocking literally makes it look like the other person doesn't exist. You would not show up to him, and he would not show up to you. I had to do this with an ex boyfriend who was stalking me, as well as the "friend" he cheated on me with. Given that blocking was new to me, I ran several different tests with various friends to see how far reaching the block was and discovered it is literally as if you do not have a Facebook at all. If they search for your name, your profile will not show up, not even as a little thumbnail, nothing. If you had OM blocked and you were to comment on this mutual friend's page, the OM would not even be able to see your comment at all, nor would you be able to see any of OM's comments. Now this was back when Facebook was still in its early days (think, only college students) but I believe that is still how their privacy function works.

It might actually give TS, and you, peace of mind knowing that it wouldn't even be possible for him to pop up at all. No possibility of him "sliding into your DMs" or any of those other accidental pop-ups that you fear might trigger TS.

It's good to know that my internal compass reacted violently to anything that felt like deception.

I think it's awesome to see how how bodies can keep the score in a good way - by letting us know that doing something that works against our own authenticity or self interests (even if we "want" it to be OK) will prompt a physical reaction.

Yes, this is good! Just remember, as I know you already know, that many a person has started down the wayward path of deception due to a desire to push away that very same pit in their stomach. Two paths diverged in a wood... keep taking the one less traveled by.

Maybe some small part of you thought that if you didn't see OM's name on the list, that you wouldn't need to bring it up at all and all would be well? The wincing at friends in common seems to support that, as each of those winces indicate that you were hoping the inevitable wasn't true. Why hope that his name wasn't there if that didn't have some sort of more favorable outcome than the alternative? Again, not exactly sure what that more favorable outcome would be, just that there must be one.

Oh, no. No, there's a lot about what I did that concerns me, but I can at least say with relief that hiding it was absolutely off the table. I was, for sure, hoping that he wouldn't be there, because I didn't want there to be a "friends in common" factor. I have no idea if Facebook records and pushes "People You May Know" even after that connection is dissolved -- in other words, just because I unfriended this new connection, would that prevent Facebook from bumping a recommendation to OM. If there was no link between them, that wouldn't be a factor, and that was the favorable outcome I sought. I'm self-examining it as a minimizing tactic ("I did this, but look, here's the good news! Let's focus on the good news!" Ugh). But it absolutely would not have influenced me to hide anything from BH.

I talked to BH again about blocking OM, and advocated for it, but he wants time to think it over. He feels more threatened by OM being invisible, even if the price of keeping him visible is that I remain visible to OM. He'd rather be able to assess the enemy on the open field, so to speak. I've made my case, and I'm leaving that decision in his hands.

Edited to clarify: Yes, I told BH about the scrolling, about the mental gymnastics of choosing scrolling vs the search bar, all of it, and immediately in my initial account. He actually has a fuller picture than I posted here, not because I'm hiding any key points, but because you can cover more ground by talking than in posts -- even long winded posts like mine.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 11:54 AM, April 22nd (Wednesday)]

Totally get it! I figured you had told him all of that, I don’t know you to be the type to leave things like that out. And you’ve mentioned that BH reads all of your posts, so it’s not like this would be a great “hiding spot” for any secrets like that. But yes, it can be hard to get everything across in a post without generating a novel #LongPostersUnite

Yeah I totally get what he means by wanting the ability to look him up if he gets an inkling to. Though if his profile is public, you could do that with a quick google search too, I believe. Obviously, do what works for you guys, if it’s better to leave it open, great!

I think you handled the situation great. The important thing is how you corrected the error, not the error itself. In light of the individual facts and circumstances in your situation, the error was far from gross negligence. So there is no need to be critical of the mistake or dwell on the act of making it.

Clearly, your husband is healing based on his response. Ostensibly, his healing is due to the work you have done on the relationship and providing a safe environment for him to work on his role in healing himself. Continue to be mindful but do not dwell nor lose sight of the progress you have made. Realize your power and concern, especially as a WS, is in the future and not in the past.

[This message edited by KingRat at 1:29 PM, April 22nd (Wednesday)]

BraveSirRobin,

IMHO, this thread should be recommended reading for anyone, BS or WS, who ask "when will everything go back to the way it was."

I think you can testify that life may never go back to the way it was before the A.

WOEz and foreverlabeled picked on one aspect as most worrisome, and I bow to their wisdom.

A the same time, I note something similar to what gmc did.

I believe my W betrayed herself before she betrayed me. My protection, then, comes from my W protecting herself from any sort of betraying.

Naturally, I then project and conclude that you (BSR) have to protect yourself first, before you protect your H.

Maybe more focus on protecting yourself would have prevented friending your old friend. After all, it looks like you experienced more pain over this than your H did.

That's just musing. I'm not sure it's how peoples' brains actually work, but I wanted to put it out there for consideration.

As for friending the guy, I, too, see it as a mistake that you recognized quickly and corrected quickly, perhaps not with absolute perfection, but very well. You could have done so much worse.

I think the test will be the next time you have an opportunity to make these mistakes. If you automatically think before accepting friend requests, if you automatically stop yourself from letting om into your head, then these were mistakes that you make because of your normal human imperfection, and you learned from them.

If you find yourself doing more wayward thinking because you got away with it this time, then you have more work to do than you thought.

Either way, it's not so much the mistakes that count. Rather, it's more a question of not repeating or compounding mistakes.

*****

BTW, my W's ow is not blocked. To block her, someone would have to search on her name and wade through the dozen or so (I searched many years ago - and feel a momentary, temporary urge to search again!) people with her name to find the right one to block ... but that's way too much thinking about her.

W has no Fb account. If ow gets to me, then I can block her.

[This message edited by sisoon at 3:52 PM, April 22nd (Wednesday)]

Sorry for the thread jack

I think SI can, and often does, morph into this sort of echo chamber of virtue signaling, a place in which waywards must 'out-remorse' themselves and each other to prove their worth

I’m not sure I understand where this comment is coming from. Who better to help waywards see wayward behavior than other waywards? If waywards aren’t able to voice different perspectives and caution others to analyze their behavior, why even have this forum?

Most WS’s aren’t trying to ‘out-remorse’ others here, they are either trying to work through this and heal or have stuck around in order to pay it forward to newer members.

End t/j