SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

...how uncomfortable my friends get when I bring up the A and how quick they are to sweep the convo under the rug. Just this past New Year's I was quickly hushed by the statement of "Oh, that's in the past" from a female FOTM (accompanied by a very uncomfortable/embarrassed look on her face). That was not the first time it happened (nor the only one of the friends it's happened with).

These are the same people who cut me out of their lives immediately on D-day. They are only friends with me now because XH wanted to R. Don't get me wrong (and if any of them are reading, don't misunderstand): to a certain extent I believe that they care about me for me...but to a larger extent, honestly, I know that if XH and I had never begun R they would never have spoken another word to me and would have been none the worse for it.

So if they all had such a (deservedly and understandably) strong reaction 4 years ago, how come now they just want to pretend it never existed?

Because they are over it. Respectfully your A has nothing to do with them. In the large scheme of things it doesn't really affect them. The A didn't happen to them it happened to people they know. Tbus they are over it. Many people, friends included get tired of it and start wanting to not have to talk about it. Because again...they're over it, I'm sorry to be so blunt.

The bluntness is no problem, and I would expect them to be over it...as you say, it didn't happen to them. The wild extreme swing in reaction was just what was odd to me.

People can be really good at being supportive but once your BH accepted you so did they. Once that was done they started accepting what you'd done to this point where they are over it. Perhaps they are embarassed they didn't support you as well as someone who needed support after confronting their horrible choices or maybe they just don't want to think about it who knows. All that matters is that they're reactions to your A shouldn't matter.

They may also not want to catch the disease. Its easier for people to say one person is weak but their marriage will never have that, than ask hard questions about their own relationships. Theres a saying that holds true, we tend to act in ways our social group accepts as normal. Its why addicts cant go back to their friends, they will slip. If these people accept infidelity they subconciously accept that behavior in their social group, and from thesounds of it, they are okay with you being there, but not your actions, for fear that accepting may result in further infidelity, perhaps by one of them.