SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thanks for coming here and sharing your story. Even anonymously it couldn't have been easy.

I think, or hope, that the subtext of your posts is that you're intending to end the affair and quit being the other woman (OW). Clearly even if this guy leaves his wife, he's not someone you'd want a relationship with. If he cheated on her, he'll cheat on you, and in fact may have another gal on the side already.

I agree with those who say, provide whatever proof you have. A betrayed wife wants to believe her husband is faithful, and will often believe his lies at first. Like Alyssa I speak from a little experience on this. One of my APs went from "I love you, you're the most amazing person ever," to "I vow to destroy you and your family" when I outed him to his wife.

So my advice to you is

1) End it. End it hard, once and for all, and never, ever communicate with him again.

2) Inform the wife, with proof. Send an email if you can, call if you must. Do not go in person. Keep it short, apologize, tell her you didn't know he was married and you will never contact him again.

3) Consider seeing a shrink, if you can afford it. In order to be a safe partner in the future, you might wanna figure out why, when you discovered your boyfriend was married, you didn't slap him in the face and walk out immediately. (Not that I condone violence.)

Good luck. Please keep us informed. You have an opportunity, here, to choose the morally correct path. I think you will.

ETA (edited to add): Nothing came of the threats, by the way, as is pretty typical in those situations.

[This message edited by 20WrongsVs1 at 9:09 PM, August 10th, 2014 (Sunday)]

Don't tell her unless you really are ending it and its over. If you choose to tell her as revenge and a way to make him pay while still being with him that is cruel. Cruel enough you've played a part in her heartbreak even worse to have to sit there while this OW who is still with your husband is telling you his dastardly deeds. I wonder why you chose now and you mention him getting his consequences, did something happen to you that you feel were consequences for your actions? If so is this truly for her benefit or mostly for yours?

I would like to say:

Please DO NOT send her an email. Seriously?! There is no guarantee she will ever see it. Many people have NO email go to the Inbox that isn't from a contact; Junk Box city! Also, the WS could very easily convince her that it is from a 'wacko' or even a crazy 'spam' or 'phishing scam.' WSs are very good at lying, manipulating and pulling the wool over the eyes of their spouse.

I think the certified letter is the best contact. Any time I have ever received a certified letter I automatically 'knew' it was most likely something of 'grave' importance. Opening an email isn't anywhere near the same level of 'knowing' if it may be important or not.

I would DEFINITELY send every shred of proof you can ... without details, without story, without excuse ... just like facts from a detective. You would need to offer her irrefutable proof so that she can believe it is true AND so that when she confronts him there is NO WAY he could convince her of some crazy lie. Liars who want to continue their cheating ... well, they just lie some more.

If it is possible - I would write on the outside of the envelope 'Open in Private' or 'Open in Complete Privacy' or something like that so she is warned not to open it in front of him or at work. (I doubt that would keep her from doing it ... but you could hope so.)

You could even go so far as to have a 'courier' (i.e. a friend of yours) deliver the letter to her at home when you know she is there and he isn't. I couldn't handle it and if I had found out in public or at work ... I would have been literally falling apart without any privacy.

I am not sure if this will be helpful to you or not but I think your motive in this outing can cause less or more pain to the wife. These three scenarios are just sucked out of my thumb but maybe you can see they cause different and deeper damage. (btw, I would want someone to tell me regardless)

For the wife: The least painful would be to know you are no longer involved and will maintain strict NC with her husband. You will be available to her for questions and to provide proof. You will not justify or become defensive. You are doing this because it is the right thing.

For the husband: You are telling his wife because you want him to feel some pain. You are hurt and he has not done right by you so you are going to "do the right thing" so he can feel a little bit of what you feel. The wife in your eyes is just another of his victims like you.

For you: You struggle. You feel an attachment to him even though he is not good for you. You think if he wasn't married maybe things would be different. You are going to put him in a position to choose by telling his wife. If they separate maybe he will be what you want.

Send a letter with evidence of when and where you and the WS were together. Nothing more.

Stick to the facts. No emotion. No explanations. No discussion of the marriage.

This ^^^^^ that is how to handle it.

End your A.

Find your "why" You probably do not even realize right now, how much you have damaged your own soul.

thank you everyone, again. I read every line and absorbed every comment, even if I don't reference names…

A theme I'm seeing and having trouble with is the idea of proof… evidence. I have photographs but I don't want to take what were happy moments to me and burn them into her brain as the worst thing that ever happened to her.

I think she will believe me that this happened… early on in the relationship she discovered his phone bills, which had hours of calls to me. She called my number and left a message asking what was going on. I LIED for him. On a voicemail.

And to everyone who is questioning my motives, yes, I am hurt, I am angry, I feel disposable. I didn't expect to get so attached. I didn't expect him to leave his marriage. I thought I could handle it. But now I am attached.

Telling his wife is the only power I have left. As one poster said, I have been damaged and don't fully appreciate it yet. He is unscathed, and will probably remain so. Am I doing his wife a favour by being silent? I don't think so.

I think I am going to go with the band-aid recommendation… let her know enough facts for her to know that he has done this thing, I don't really need to know the outcome, though I will be curious. I'm not going to get anything good out of this for myself, but maybe no one will get hurt in the future. I can hope.

And I will wait a couple of days. I just pretty much forced a breakup over the phone. Need to cool off.

I have photographs but I don't want to take what were happy moments to me and burn them into her brain as the worst thing that ever happened to her.

Down the road a bit, you're likely to not want to see these and you also probably won't think of them as happy moments.

He is unscathed, and will probably remain so.

I think it's normal to feel that way, but I don't think anyone comes out of stuff like this unscathed.

I just pretty much forced a breakup over the phone.

Good for you! Be prepared for him to try to draw you back in, though!

First, be very sure why you are doing this. If there is even a piece of you thinking this will force him into a decision or maybe even make him all yours, you are wrong. That won't happen. Telling her will (not maybe) end your affair. This man will hate you and might tell lies about you. Be careful about that if he is inside your social and professional circles. I would end it in any case. This is not a good situation for any of you.

Send an anonymous certified letter

If you tell, do this^^^^^^^^^ Certified so it can't be intercepted by anyone else. Anonymous because I've read too many stories on SI of the BW looking up the other woman on Facebook for years, comparing themselves to her, etc. IMO the more she knows about you the harder the recovery. As nameless and faceless as you can be would be the kindest thing to do.

Then - find a better person to share your body and soul with. This man is telling you with his actions that you are not the person he cannot live without. An older, wiser othermountain would tell you that you deserve better, and that life will only improve once you kick this guy to the curb. Good luck!

I bumped this post for you:

http://survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=137622

BS here - In my humble opinion your lover (aka AP), needs to tell his wife. That is the most honorable thing to do.

However if you do know that he has already stated that he will not, you have to realize that you will not be the last person this man will cheat with and you will actually increase the chances that he will do it again becasue he got away with cheating with you.

As a noble human being, you owe it to this woman to make sure she knows. If your AP will not tell his wife then YES you must do it. Try to imagine if you were the wife, wouldn't you want/need to know?

If this man keep cheating on his wife he could easily and eventually give her a life threatening sexually transmitted disease. Do you want to be party to that?

Give her a chance to weight her options, give her the chance to know who she really married, no he is no knight in shinning armor, and she needs to know this.

You can help, you can give her back a little despite if you knew or did not know the man was married. If you did know, well you know that was wrong, if you didn't know, its not your fault but you can rise up and in a spirit of good "sisterhood" help her. She will not hate you if you didn't know. If you did know then let her hate you, you'd deserve it.

Do the right thing now! Good luck and thank you for letting us on SI help you make the right decision.

I sure hope you didn't clue him into the fact that you may be telling her. If he knows, he will pull out full damage control before you contact her (she is a stalker, crazy, etc) and it will make getting your message across that much harder.

Regardless of your motives, you are doing the right thing NOW and that is to be commended.

I'm going to approach this from my own perspective.

My D day happened when I received a call from OW. She was actually a nasty stripper and she did not intend to do me ANY favors. She was mad at my now ex and she wanted to rat him out to get even with him. I didn't believe her at first, until she mentioned he took her on a trip and had specific dates and the destination. Then I knew it was true.

It was beyond awful. That said, he had hid this from me SO well, I never would have known he was cheating if she hadn't told me.

His wife probably has no idea that he has been cheating on her. There may be other affairs, too, that she does not know about. My thoughts are that she needs to know so she can decide what she wants to do.

I think a phone call in which you apologize for your part in it but tell her it is over and give her some sort of proof, i.e. dates, times, etc. of the affair. Expect for her to scream at you, hate you forever, etc. She most likely will, but there is nothing worse than living a lie and right now, this poor woman's life could be a total lie and she doesn't even know it.

This is the surmounting evidence I got:

Pictures with dates

Screenshots (with his # attached)

Boarding passes from their trip to Vegas

Very detailed things that only him and I would know

Things that jogged my memory of when I had some suspicions.

THOUSANDS of text messages between them.

I had NO DOUBT of what my H was doing for ten years. Just to give you some ideas. It was completely hurtful, but made me for once be able to have some control in my farce of a marriage.

No stop sign, so...

Yes. Tell her. Do it now. For your safety, get tested.

If he is cheating on her with you, there are likely others.

Listing all the ways you 'protected her' by not going to her house, etc... those are rationalizations.

Bottom line is you willingly participated in the destruction of her relationship after you knew the truth.

You have a lot of work ahead of you and you've come to the right place.

Good luck going forward.

I think this was great advice -

1) End it. End it hard, once and for all, and never, ever communicate with him again.

2) Inform the wife, with proof. Send an email if you can, call if you must. Do not go in person. Keep it short, apologize, tell her you didn't know he was married and you will never contact him again.

3) Consider seeing a shrink, if you can afford it. In order to be a safe partner in the future, you might wanna figure out why, when you discovered your boyfriend was married, you didn't slap him in the face and walk out immediately. (Not that I condone violence.)

You must end it and never contact him again. His wife needs to know. Then you need to get help for you.

BS

DDay 12/2012 Still hurting

Othermountain,

How did her take it when you ended it? Do you think he will maintain NC? I am curious about your story, do you mind sharing when and how you met the AP?

I haven't read the responses to your post just felt compelled to tell you my experience as a BS that was told of the affair by the OW. She initially tried to tell me by acting like a 3rd party that knew my husband was cheating, even texted him as a 3rd party ( claimed to have seen them together')with threats of telling me so he would confess. She did this through anonymous v- texts that I couldn't respond too. Finally I received an envelope at my office that contained an email that my husband wrote to her. That did it. I was completely devastated. Long story short, the OW and I arranged to meet at a pub and share some wine. The most startling thing I heard her say and believe me, I heard a lot of startling things that night, was that she believed that out of the 3 of us, she was hurt the most. This brings me to the point of my reply. I know that you are suffering in this and that you are trying to gather or hold on to your power in a powerless situation. Your real power is creating the type of person within yourself that you want to attract. Tell her with the intention of giving her the truth of her life and then move on in creating the person that will not hurt this way again. That's all. Just wanted to share that with you. I wish you peace.

"Othermountain,

How did her take it when you ended it? Do you think he will maintain NC? I am curious about your story, do you mind sharing when and how you met the AP?"

I broke it off on Monday. He whined that I was forcing him to to the "dirty work." That is, admit that if we were going to carry on, it was a bum deal for me.

I never breathed a word that I might tell his wife. I wonder whether he has gone into any kind of damage control in case I do.

I joked before, "what if I burn your house down?" He said, "you're too rational for that." And I am.

All Monday night I got texts from him about how wonderful I am, and how he loves and respects me.

I was with my ex-husband and daughter, because it was my birthday the next day. They know all about this. Yup, because I am a very honest and open person normally. They knew I was hurting, they took good care of me, and I drank a little too much wine perhaps. Texted some angry things to AP. So spent my birthday, Tuesday, apologizing to AP about HIS hurt feelings.

I write that to remind myself how selfish and self-absorbed he is.

The idea of crashing her world down makes me sick to my stomach. But there are times where I picture her saying, "I KNOW he's an a..hole... I've been with him for 20 years." I am the stupid one here.

And they have a big trip planned next month. I shouldn't know that, and I shouldn't be worried about it. One time during the affair I told him, if your wife ever finds out, tell her I knew very little about her. My thought was that she would feel less violated if she thought I didn't know much about her. His response was, oh, so I can look like an even bigger liar?

So yes he will blame me as much as he can.

How did I meet him? Yes, that is the part I imagine having difficulty explaining. It was online, and initially he had a couple of different stories. Roommate. Open relationship. When I learned the truth, why didn't I slap him and walk away, as someone suggested? I actually tried. According to him, this is the sixth time I've broken up with him. What can I say? He was charming, good looking, I was lonely. He gave me a lot of attention.

We practically spent the entire month of July together because of various scheduling situations and holidays, etc. We both knew it would be a crash back to reality when the relationship had to go back to a sneaked hour once a week kind of thing. Which I said I would never do.

I'm not really a victim type of person. I have been involved with men before who had complicated relationships... I am 51 years old now, and technically almost everyone I know is married!

Does that help explain it a bit? It does to me. My two best guy friends are married, on paper. I am still married to my ex, "on paper." One got cheated on. We have six marriages between us, six children. If I throw my girlfriends into the number count, I have one whose husband cheated for eight years; two little daughters. The rest of my GFs/sisters never married or never had kids.

We can all, literally, sit around with a drink and be friends with our children and our exes. Except the one who just kicked her husband out, they have a few years to go.

Sometimes marriages are just over, I get that, and new relationships form.

BTW, I had nothing to do with the end of any of the above marriages except my own.

I'm in a post-marriage stage of life. Kids are independent, relationships are complicated. No one gets to 51 without "baggage."

Hi. I am a BW who found out about the A from the Ow. She was an acquaintance. In my case, she was trying to punish my H and hoping to run me off. Her motives were all wrong, but I am so glad she told me. I don't care about her motives. In the big scheme of things, it was the right thing to do.

I know it must have been a terrifying call for her to make. I applaud her courage for calling in spite of the fear. If it was spite that gave her courage. Fine by me.

It was such an odd call. I answered my work phone. She said, "hi, this is XYZ." I had to think a moment about who she was and finally said, "oh wow--XYZ-- it has been years! How are you?!" (God, I was oblivious!). She clearly wasn't expecting that, and hesitated, before saying, "well. Um. Not good." She then launched in to what was going on. I had to loudly interrupt to tell her that I had to shut my office door. She was prepared that I might not believe her and that my h my deny it. So she started forwarding me emails.

I spoke to her one more time after dday. It was 3 days later. She wanted to speak to H one more time. I agreed, with the condition that I be present. She was very angry with him because of they lies he told her. I didn't see any harm in her venting at him. Being pissed at h was the one thing we had in common.

At the end of there call, I went outside, out of h's earshot. I told her that I would forgive her, not that day, but someday. I wished her well, and told her that I hoped she found true happiness someday. At the time, my motive for saying that was not good. I just thought that was my best shot to get her to go away. But, now it is true. I don't wish her any ill will.

I urge you to do the right thing. His wife needs to know. The sooner the better. There is never going to be a good time.

[This message edited by ShellShockedSid at 5:39 PM, August 13th (Wednesday)]

Thank you shellshockedSid. You make me feel OK that there is some anger and spite in here. But it sounds like your situation was a competition and you won. I don't want this guy; as others pointed out, I could never trust him. I want his wife to put him on a really short leash so he can't hurt anyone else... but that is no way for anyone to live. No winners here