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I myself, am in favor of you guys telling the BH. We had a group of friends we hung out with. DH was banging our friend. Everyone knew but me. I found out last from OW. It was aweful, I don't talk to the friends now, and I am struggling with how I must have looked like a fool. I think somehow you guys need to tell him. It's an aweful feeling knowing that no one cared enough to tell me the truth.

This camping trip needs to be canceled before it turns into "Deliverence." Seriously someone could get harmed or killed including your husband. Especially if there is any booze or weapons.

Double post

[This message edited by purplejacket4 at 11:32 PM, October 8th (Tuesday)]

If you tell your husband you are going to tell your "friend's" BH, then you are not going behind his back.

But more importantly, I think you are putting your integrity below your H's pain. I'm a BW, and I feel for you. But I would understand if my H had to do the right thing, the ethical thing, even if it made me triggery or made me hurt.

Some years ago, well before my H's A, my best friend's H beat her up. Badly. She was lucky to live. The H was our friend too. I refused to talk to him, refused to allow him in our house. My H felt that this man needed support, and that in particular he owed him for the real friendship and support he'd shown us through some hardships we had. I saw it as value conflict between my and my H. But I could not say, cut this guy off -- because for my H, it was a matter of integrity. (Ironic...)

The situation is the same for you. You have to inform the BH. If not, I think you would not be acting with true integrity, you would not be true to your own strict policy of honesty.

I feel for your husband, truly, but I think he is wrong to ask you to ask you to act without integrity, to be dishonest.

Hugs to you and your husband -- so difficult!

So this has been bugging me all day and I've gone back and forth on whether or not to bring it up......and since I'm back, I've obviously decided to address it.

I think that saying that you are leaving the decision of whether or not to tell up to your husband.....is a cop-out. I just don't see this as an issue where your husband should be the *final* authority because of <whatever> marriage agreements you have made.

If the issue was between the 2 of you, then yes. Zip your lip if he tells you to. If his friend had confided in him about cheating on his wife, and your husband then relayed that information to you and asked you to "zip it", then yes....there's more *room* for this conundrum.

But neither of those is what is happening here. This is YOUR issue to deal with....and your husband should be your back-up. YOUR friend came to you with this information. I just don't understand how the decision about what to do is now all on your husband.

The situation has made your husband trigger. Ok. Well, that's an issue that is completely separate from your friends cheating.

Regardless of what you decide, your husband really should NOT go on that trip......

[This message edited by gonnabe2016 at 11:57 PM, October 8th (Tuesday)]

she was there for me when my A came out and my marriage and life fell apart.

She witnessed the pain and devastation of an A and thought nothing of engaging in one herself?

What would you do?

I try to align myself with individual that posses a high standard of ethical integrity. I therefore would not want this person as a friend and would end the friendship. Honestly, she would disgust me.

Being tossed into the world of infidelity has afforded me a greater understanding of its ugliness and destruction. BS deserve to know, and I would not be afraid to tell.

In a nutshell...I would dump her and tell him.

She came to me for advice

My H is also best friends with her H AND her OM! She cheated on her H with one of our closest friends.

I think these two things are really all that matter in the end. Just coming from my own take on this. This really hits home in my case.

She came for advice, the only good advice IMHO is to "break off your affair and tell your spouse and go to IC and if necessary MC or do the right thing and get a divorce, but stop the cheating and play fair with your spouse".

But, since you are all "friends" and you need to think of what it means to be friends to someone such as her BS, would a true friend not make sure he was told? By coming to you they have involved you in the secrecy of the affair. The secrets, the lying, the subterfuge, all are rather addictive and destructive.

My wife did not confess her short affair till 9 years later, during which time our marriage life was confused and distorted as I tried to fix what wasn't wrong, went to MC with her and tried to fix what wasn't wrong, and ended up walking into invisible walls and wondering what was wrong. At least one "friend" knew, probably at least two more suspected, but everyone kept the secret of the OM and WS from that summer. The MC didn't know, the IC she saw didn't know, her doctor didn't know, and all the visits were wasted as she kept lying about her life and her emotional issues, etc. It was only when the truth came out that we began to fix the problems, which had nothing to do with me, nothing at all. I was just a trigger for her issues. All that wasted time. I might have left her, I might have stayed, but as a person, I wouldn't have spent endless nights wondering what was wrong and trying to fix things that were not the issues.

Don't keep her secrets...she just drug you into her secrets but that doesn't mean that you have to participate.

Also echoing "myownmaster" on the friends who didn't tell....

Those people who knew in my case, whose kids played with my kids, who came to my house, who welcomed me into theirs, whose kids I drove to DQ and 7-11 for treats with my kids, who kept the secret or gossiped behind my back.

They were not my friends. They were never good friends. They used my friendship.

Yeah, they are dead to me...and they will stay that way.

If nobody comes back dead I will be fucking amazed.

oh my how funny literally laughing here. I'm trying to scream it from the rooftops

DO IT ANONYMOUSLY

Oh yes ofcourse if other people (not sure if they did) knew I would of LOVED to of known. Yes yes, we all know the reasons!!!!

From my experience though of being in a similar position except I was the betrayed and my WH ... was the wayward

it blew everything up and apart and it affected innocent people. The wayward in this case unleashed hell and fury, his betrayed girlfriend didn't believe me and my husband sat on our back stairs and got drunker and drunker as he lost one of his good friends and had his career prospects at risk.

We are surviving, that wayward who screamed at me until I cried. I still have to see him, the girlfriend ignores me and the co-workers who have no fucking clue what happened all took various sides. The wayward bitched about me to all of these people that knew him better... but I have to see constantly

I may be projecting but I don't think so. Replace co-worker with friend, and career with ____. It is VERY possible this could be you.

Do it anonymously

don't invite more drama

I think it's different when it's someone you don't know and you have to tell.

ETA: I don't understand why some people have advised you that your bestfriend is infact not your friend. She was there for you in a difficult time and in many various capacities I am sure. Sure she may be *insert names here* but that doesn't mean she hasn't fucked up. We can forgive our waywards as you know, so we can definitely forgive our best-friends when they did something indirectly to you.

[This message edited by lauren123 at 2:39 AM, October 9th (Wednesday)]

My FWH confided his A to one of our mutual "friends". She kept it secret from me.

When I discovered, I confided in her.

She went to my and asked that he not tell me of her prior knowledge. She wanted to "be there as a friend for me".

The degree to which she protected herself, prioritized her need to validate herself by "helping me" , shared a special secret with MY HUSBAND, pretty much classified her as "not a friend of the M"

The risks to your friendship have already been taken by your "friend". There isn't much you can do, because their reactions to this mess are beyond your control. No matter what actions you take, this may end with friendships broken apart.

What would you want in a friendship? Someone you can trust?

Regardless it would be wise to determine what kind of friendships you want to offer and what kind you will accept.

I think it all comes down to what kind of friend you want to be.

Good luck with all of this. What a crappy place to be.

There's going to be fall out.

Loyalty and honesty should be with the spouse first, best friend second. I would do what your spouse asks and encourage him to tell his best friend. Scrap the hiking trip. He needs to do this he want's a chance at saving his friendship with this man. The third man is no longer a friend.

What a terrible position for both you and your husband to put it. The turmoil you are facing must be painful for you both - I have been thinking how truly dreadful it would be to be in your position.

I would think unless the affair is outed your friendships are doomed. Friendships require honesty - if your friend's husband remains in ignorance of the affair it will poison your friendship because you will be forever aware you are lying to him. I can't see a way to preserve the friendship unless the affair in the open. And the truth is that he has a right to know what is going on in his marriage.

As for the OM, does he have a SO other he is betraying?

[This message edited by avicarswife at 6:30 AM, October 9th (Wednesday)]

This is a dreadful situation and one that rings bells for me too.

My WXW told my best friend before she told me. He told her finish it now and tell velveteer. She did one of those.

I didn't know at this time that my friend knew and it was to him that I turned for support. He told me immediately of his conversation with WXW and what he told her - he was expecting her to end the A and tell me. He was and still is furious with WXW and their friendship is fucked. Before that they were very close.

Point is that infidelity ripples out from those that are immediately involved - we all know that. It's horrible and it finishes marriages, relationships and friendships all over the place.

Your situation is that your H's friend (BH) is being deceived by his wife, his other friend and now you two if you do not act. He stands to lose it all here. If it were me and I found out later that you all knew, you would all be out of my life. Pronto.

Your friend (WW) is the cause of this. She is the one tearing it all down here, not you and not your H. You are caught in the crossfire and if you tell, then you will probably lose her as a friend. You will also lose the friendship of her OM. But you will be there for the BH and you will have done the right thing.

If you do not, you will lose the friendship of the BH when he does find out (and he will). Without a shadow of a doubt. And you will feel complicit in his deception.

I think you know what the right thing to do here is. The real question is how to do it.

the BH continuing in blissful ignorance is not only unlikely - its unfair.

And I agree with the others - no camping trip. This is the kind of thing that OM would have done with me - maybe not camping, but certainly socialising. I would have really struggled to keep my cool had I known the extent of his duplicity. Had my BFF been there and known about it too, he would have got it as well. I would probably be in jail.

Please do not allow your H to be put in this situation - it is dangerous for all concerned.

I'm sorry you are in this position, but you have got really good advice here. Good luck.

I am going to chime in again on this topic because I feel so strongly about it.

I had a BF once. We did everything together and I loved her very much. I even moved a few houses away from her just so we could be there for each other. I was married to XWH#1 at the time and she had a BF she lived with. One day shortly after moving in her BF came to my house to tell me a prospective employer had called and wanted me to wait and they would call back. I did not have the phone at my house installed yet, so I gave their number on my applications. I went to their house and waited for the call which never came. I finally gave up and told him I was leaving. He then got very flirty and wanted me to stay. I left and went to another friends house and called and informed my BF what he did. She was mad at him for a few days, but then accused me of making it up and ended our friendship at her BF request (imagine that ). I was heartbroken because all I was trying to do was save her from this sleazy BF. Anyway I saw her many years later in a store. She apoligized and said that she married the BF and then he cheated on her and she was so sorry that she never believed me. All I could say at that point was sorry to hear that your marriage went bad and walked off. I never regreted telling her what he did even though it broke up our friendship. It was the right thing to do and I respected her enough to tell her. She however did not respect me enough to believe me and I no longer cared to reestablish a friendship with her. Do the right thing and tell the BH. He has a right to know what kind of marriage he is living in. You and your husband need to do what is right and tell him. If it ends your frienship with this BF than so be it. You have to live with your decision on this. Good luck.

While I understand your husband's feelings vis-a-vis wishing he'd never learned of your affair, it's flawed thinking. The fact is that, whether he knew or not, your marriage was severely compromised while you were in your affair. He may not have known, but his life hung in the balance. Not knowing doesn't change that. And it doesn't change the need to address the problems. Take it from someone who was in the dark for a decade and a half--who could never quite pinpoint just what was so wrong with ME that our marriage did not work. (Really? There was nothing other than a wall constructed of secrets and lies erected by my WH.)

Your friends' marriage is already hemorrhaging, whether the BH is conscious of this or not.

So, telling the other BS is, IMO critical. You know---how could you keep it secret?

What good will confronting OM do? None--he's cheating with a married woman. He's not a friend. He's dangerous to both marriages.

And the other BS deserves to know this.

I know it's easy to say, "I wish I'd never found out." But really, what that means is, "I wish to God my spouse had never cheated on me."

You can't give that to them.

Nor is letting the cuckolded man---who's currently thinking of OM as a good friend!--know the reality of his friendship and marriage "destroying a marriage and a family."

Your "best friend" and your husband's "good friend" have already done that.

Whether the BS knows or not.

The difference you can make is to gently offer the BS the dignity of making his OWN choices about what is in his best interest, rather than participating in making the WRONG choice for him.

Keeping quiet? IMO, that makes you complicit. I don't always feel this way, but because you are "friends" with these cheaters, if you choose NOT to tell the BS, you are choosing to implicitly support the affair. Even if your husband gives the OM a (futile) talking-to.

Is your fear of hurting the BS? He's already hurt. That damage has been done. He deserves the chance to determine how to proceed.

Or, is your fear of hurting your friendships? Again, the two cheaters have done that already. Frankly, I would go NC with them. Knowing the devastation of infidelity, they have chosen to embroil you in their own---and that makes them friendship material about as much as dressing up like a clown made John Wayne Gacy a good companion for little boys.

(I would not be okay with my husband going on a hiking trip with the OM and his friend. Why? Because he's a BS, and secret-keeping will cause HIM harm. I would not want my healing BS exposed to a weekend-long trigger, feeling responsible for others' well-being. BSs spend FAR too much time in that shitty position already. It's time for some big decisions, FAST.)

[This message edited by solus sto at 7:34 AM, October 9th (Wednesday)]

I agree to tell, but maybe a different approach can be staged. First, you could tell your friend how disappointed you are and this is going to end badly so it's up to her if she has control of the situation when it comes out. Tell her the issue is escalating and more people know. It's only hours or days before the BS finds out. She can do it or wait for someone else to do it. As a BS who had to learn it on my own, our recovery will take longer as a result. My WW never did one think right in the affair. If she could have ended on her own and told me the truth at least I would know she can take care of something on her own. Tell her it's in the interest of the painful recovery that is about to start if she ends the affair before he finds out.

At the same time, your husband could approach the OM with a similar story. Start by saying he will not go on the hiking trip because he is a recovered BS and can't stand to be with another BS who doesn't know the third guy in the group is fucking his wife. Also, he can't predict what may happen and doesn't what to witness a crime. As a guy, they should be able to have a very candid conversation - "what you are doing is wrong. I suggest you end the affair now before more damage is done. Again, you (the OM) can tell your friend what you've done or he can find out. But it will happen anytime now. In the meantime, I will not be associating with you until this secret is out in the open."

See how the response goes and if that doesn't work go the anonymous route or the other more direct ideas discussed above.

ugly situation.

he needs to be told, but I won't break my H's trust to do it.

No trust needs to be broken.

Simply tell your husband.

Tell him, "We know this, and he deserves the right to make his own decisions. If we do not tell, we participate in their dishonesty. We've come too far to backslide so terribly."

Because you may think you're "keeping the peace" in your marriage--but really, the code of silence will very adversely affect your R. How? By demonstrating that you are, indeed, still capable of a terrible, deep dishonesty.

Show your husband you no longer are able to do that.

He's not making a rational choice now. Understandably, he's triggery. You have the ability to help keep your R on track, even though it's difficult---for both of you.

ETA: I strongly disagree with the advice to tell anonymously. Anonymous tips are easy to discard. (Take it from someone who did just that, only to find out a decade and a half later that that tip, though not completely accurate, held enough truth to spare me enormous pain, had it been bravely delivered by someone I knew had integrity, and had I therefore believed it.)

Further, anonymity allows you to skirt the issue, vis-a-vis these toxic "friendships."

If you tell anonymously, then what? The BH, on the camping trip, is either dismissive of this anonymous tip and joking about it two men who know it's true (one of whom is fucking his wife), or distraught---and confiding in two men who knew the truth.

Jesus. Can you imagine a worse scenario than this poor man finding out, later, that your husband knew, that he and OM sat there and listened to him talk about whether this affair was real or not (because, again, an anonymous tip leaves lots of room for doubt)---and said nothing?

Since your husband's well-being is your ostensible reason for not telling, how do you think this will REALLY affect him, in the long run? Because as a BS, if my WH were willing to hold this kind of secret, I'd conclude he could conceal just about anything--including another affair of his own.

[This message edited by solus sto at 7:56 AM, October 9th (Wednesday)]

I am usually all for telling the other BS but in this situation there is an added dimension of equal importance.

She was a WS. Her and her BH apparently have a different view on how to resolve the issue, so she is in a catch-22 where doing the right thing in either case results in doing the wrong thing on the other side. Either telling the other BH and destroying a lot of trust with her own husband, or taking a team position with her husband and leaving the other BH to be stuck longer in this situation.

I can respect that she wants to work as a team with her husband and would really recommend that she not anonymously tell the BH or anything; obviously the best road here is that they decide together to tell the other BH. Consequences come with either decision that she makes if her husband decides the BH is better off not knowing.

Still think that trip needs to not happen though.

While waiting to see what Mr. WAM has decided, I thought of something else.

He says he would prefer to have never known. Do either of you really think that an A could happen in the M and the cover-up could continue for the rest of your lives? That the M you have now could exist without the honesty and work you both put in?

I think great marriages can be born from troubled marriages without infidelity, so I don't and never will agree with claims that the A "had to happen" for the M to get stronger.

Once an A occurs though, the truth has to come out in order for the damage that particular bomb caused to be fixed.

If Mr. WAM never knew about the A, odds are your guilt wouldn't allow you to talk to him about this situation. He'd be blindly walking into a camping trip with an OM, a BH and himself a BH. If this all blew up, who knows, suddenly your secret might have come out after all these years and he'd feel the betrayal of years of lives that some of us have had to live between the end of the A and d-day.

As bad as he thinks the knowledge is, given the circumstances knowing has helped him out more than he could know.

Ok first I apologize for any typos, im on my phone.

So here is what happened to me. My husband had an affair with my bff. Her husband was also close friend. We had a 9 month old at the time affair started. So to say the least I can relate (and slightly triggering atm).

YOU HAVE TO TELL!!!! I thank god every day that the other BS made OW tell me. I would have NEVER found out on my own. It was either she tell or the other BS and other mutual friend would(other mutual friend just found out herself, so NO ONE was going hide anything).OBS was going to make sure that I knew. He said that I and our baby deserved to know. He was 1000% correct.

Our Fallout:

My H and I are r'd as that my H choose to do the hard work.

OW and OBS divorced because OW was an unremorseful bunny boiler(seriously, we filed harassment charges) who was still cheating with other men(my H was NOT the only one at that time ) They both have remarried.

Since we decided to r, all mutual friends while supportive, distanced themselves for a long time as that they were still friends with the BS.

We are now just getting back to where we were with our friends AND my H and OBS are on friendly terms. They actually sat next to each other at B-day and watched a nascar for hours

We are all now at events together.

So my advice TELL THE BS. HE DESERVES TO KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IN HIS M!!!! Then let the chips fall where they may. You need to realize you can only control you and your actions. Your BFF has already made her bed. Now she will have to live with the consequences.

Take Care, and hopefully some peace in time for all involved

[This message edited by Heartbroken1993 at 8:38 AM, October 9th (Wednesday)]