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I would like an apology from the AP, but that is solely because she was a “friend”. If I wasn’t connected on some way, I would never want to hear anything.

As a former BS for many years I appreciate your repentant heart...not only to your BS but to the AP's wife. I think that's rare, so thank you.

Over the years I have often thought about what it would feel like to receive an apology from the OWomen (there were several). I am naturally a forgiving person (and a bit naive as well) so an apology would have been accepted and appreciated by me. My situation was a bit different because, unlike you, my WH was unrepentant...his apology would have meant the most to me but I never received it either. Have you asked your BS how an apology from the other guy would make him feel? Would it provide him closure or just rip the scab off the wound? Are you seeing a MC or IC? If so, have you discussed this issue with them? Forgiveness is complicated and we can't control whether a person chooses to forgive or not. The question is...do we offer our apologies regardless of how they respond? Tough question.

The question is...do we offer our apologies regardless of how they respond? Tough question.

This is so true. I have seen an IC and she asked me this, if I had apologized to those I hurt during my affair. I left her office and immediately called those I hurt in my life, by lying to them, even though they tried to help me, comfort me and console me, I lied to them about the affair. It felt really good to apologize, and they all said they didn't need it, but would accept it if I wanted to give it. I think apologizing under the right circumstances does wonders. But in this one, its a tough call.

For frame of reference his wife did confront me in person. She screamed and yelled in my face, took photos of me, etc. So I really don't think an apology would be welcome. My husband called her and apologized and apologized on my behalf. Her response was that she was accepting her husbands behavior and had no intentions of ever leaving him, she had decided she would live with his infidelities.

I would have liked an apology letter from my husband's AP. I think about her, still.......everyday. She was never anyone I knew but I knew relatives of hers and she was a betrayed spouse herself. Her 48 year old husband had left her for a 19 year old. Still, she knew the pain she was causing to another family since I'm sure she was in pain herself. If she ever were to send me an apology letter, I can't say I would accept her apology but it would help me to know that after some reflection she might have realized the pain she helped to inflict on another family. I'm sure I'll never get that apology but I do hope she realized the life long impact her actions have caused. I would not scream at her or call her names. I would probably just respond with a "thank you for your message" type response. I will NEVER forgive her, but it would still be nice to know she regrets her actions.

I think your intent is genuine. I am the BS. I do not need my XWS' AP to apologize. I am way past it, and it's not me she should be apologizing and making amends to. I am grateful she took my X POS off of my hands. She needs to be atoning to a higher power.

I was angry, and I did judge her, in the beginning. I couldn't care less at this point. If she apologized to me, I wouldn't even know what to do with it because I have already forgiven her...it took a hot minute, I'll admit.

With the legal ramifications, it's not advisable.

Maybe you can pay it forward, possibly prevent a friend from following in your footsteps.

When I was in the thick of it, a dear friend told me her story. She was the WS, but she really helped me understand the AP's mindset. She was deeply ashamed for her affair, and it was healing for me.

If you are a churchgoer, you can give testimony and influence someone not to have an affair by informing them how awful your consequences were and how not worth it all of it was.

Hard pass from this BW.

Yes. She knew he was married. Knew we had children. Yes. I would like her to apologize. I would like her to acknowledge me. She was very haughty on VAR.

Very coyly, “you can make your wife fall back in love with you. You know do those things you do”. Her tone of voice. My heart and my children were a game to her. It was a big game. My husband gave her so much power.

I highly doubt she has changed. However, considering she was teaching bible study to children while conducting her affair and putting bruises on my 300lb husband. Yes, she needs to apologize to me.

Me shouting that I want nothing to do with him, that I don't love him, I never did, and saying the wife has nothing to worry about

Gently, this is about you. Even for any BS who would want an apology, I can't imagine any of them would want the AP to tell them they have nothing to worry about. That phrase would just add insult to injury.

However, I found, although on the flip side of the equation from you, that my dreams were a way of me processing all the emotions. Most of the dreams I had with ex in them were me yelling at him all the things I didn't get a chance to say because he walked out on me. It took a while, but eventually I could see the progression of my healing in the dreams. So maybe that's what's going on with you, too.

Your title says offering the AP an apology. The Affair Partner which is the OM you had an affair with? No no no... why would you consider even opening that door.

Or did you mean sending an apology to the BW of the AP.

I am a BW... yes I would have liked an apology from her had she been remorseful. But my sow doesn’t think she ever did anything wrong. She felt it was true love and that means it cannot be wrong.

So she has no remorse and no it would mean nothing from her. I don’t respect her one bit and I would wonder why is she contacting me this late. She was a side piece nothing more

So it depends on you and your actions. If you were really sorry. You mentioned she’s a divorce lawyer. And she threatened to sue you for affection of alienation. I think I would leave it alone in this case. I feel you are doing it to make yourself feel better not because you really have concern for her.!!!

So a No...

AP interjected herself enough into my life already. I am estatic to be rid of her. If she sent me another apology now (she apologized at the time but words are meaningless) I would likely send her a spring loaded glitter bomb in return. No contact means no new hurts.

Your title says offering the AP an apology. The Affair Partner which is the OM you had an affair with? No no no... why would you consider even opening that door.

NO. Re read it. It says thoughts on AP(me) offering an apology. The door to my AP is firmly shut, locked, bolted and scorched.

I have an interesting experience with this now, pinkpiggy. My wife's AP sent me an apology two days after D-day. Said that it was eating him up that they were talking the 10 days prior, that he was allowing her to talk about things she should have been talking to me about, the whole 9 yards. Told me that he had to get the whole thing off his chest and clear his conscience.

And I bought it. I appreciated the apology. I believed what he said because the stories lined up very well with each one giving a minor detail or two that the other left out.

And then 15 months later, I find that both the AP and my wife lied to me. Lied about the extent. Lied about seeing one another outside the house. Lied, lied, lied, and conspired to do it.

I confronted him again and he lied about it still. "Nothing ever happened (don't get me started)." "There was nothing ever physical (they made out in his truck)." "We only met up twice (it was 5x)." "It was in broad daylight (2 of the 5 were at night)." "I kiss my friends like that all the time (you've got some pretty fucked up definition of 'friends'...and I thought it wasn't physical)."

He didn't apologize for any of the new info. And quite frankly, I don't care. His true character has been revealed and all he is has shown through. He is a snake and a liar and I hope I never see his face or hear his voice again. If I accidentally backed over him with my truck, I'm not sure I'd even believe him if he said he was in pain.

So, initially, when I thought he had a conscience...I appreciated his apology. Now? I couldn't care less. On his judgment day, he can offer all the apologies he wants. I'll let God deal with him.

Speaking candidly, and as a BH, male viewpoint, i originally thought I wanted an apology. But as captain Rogers illustrated, its often the case that they don’t really care about being humble or contrite, just about improving their optics, their situation, and appearance. Selfishness. My wife’s AP didn’t apologize. So you know what I wanted? I didn’t want him to apologize. I wanted him to beg for mercy from me. I wanted him to fear me, and for his own life. And despite everything wrong with how I acted, one of the upsides about my actions is that I did accomplish this. Cross the street when you see me buddy, and spend the rest of your days looking over your shoulder. Maybe in 5 years I’ll send him and his wife a post card asking how she is. Karmas a bitch and you fucked with the wrong guy you dipshit. Then again, maybe he will succumb to his new found opiate addiction way before then. I can only hope.

Well his wife already had words with me in person. On her dday she spoke to me. I am sorry for what I did. I am remorseful, but do I think that means anything to her, no? Do I think my BH would want to get an apology from the AP? No.

CaptainRogers-I have been following your story and following your update and one of your posts triggered me pretty badly. I am sorry your wife did not come totally clean about the EA/PA. Your comment about them holding hands sent me into a massive trigger when I read it. I'm thread jacking my own post here, but it sent me spiraling into thinking, trying to remember, did I hold his hand...when, how, why. I found myself having a hard time remembering details. Its like I have blocked out a lot, stuff I don't want to think about or recall.

[This message edited by pinkpggy at 8:57 AM, April 6th (Friday)]

Hi pinkpggy,

I am a BW and spoke to the OW 5 months after DDay. WH's OW was half our age and single and even though she said she was sorry, I could tell it wasn't authentic. I honestly didn't need it and still don't. In my mind, I have no respect for her and nothing but contempt. While I know you are self aware enough to feel deeply the pain you caused to the OM's wife, and are truly sorry, I think you would be fighting an uphill battle and opening you and your husband up to more pain. As the others have said, write it out and then put it away.

For what it's worth, I live in North Carolina too. My attorney told me I can file an alienation of affection suit up to 3 years after discovery. My WH's OW mentioned that she was afraid that I would do that as I had threatened her with it upon discovery and I felt good telling her I still had plenty of time to change my mind.

I also want to say thank you for posting. I have been reading your story and other WS and I at times do believe you all do have a tougher road to walk. It can't be easy knowing and living with your actions and the effects they had on the people you love and to the other innocent parties. While I am not at the stage to forgive my WH, I do tell him that at some point he will need to forgive himself in order to heal himself and be the man he professes he wants to be. Good luck pinkpggy on your journey and lets embrace that it is FINALLY Friday!

pinkpiggy, I think that there are some details that will be lost forever simply because of the guilt/shame and the desire to wipe one's own mind of the things that were done. For the WS that is remorseful, that sees their A as a shameful thing, I understand that the details would want to be lost.

I hope that your BH is appreciative that you are working to continue remembering the details. For me, I'm past the minor things now. It probably hurt more that they did the little, affectionate things (holding hands, looking into each other's eyes, having little "codes" that they used in texts so I wouldn't get suspicious of I saw one come in) than to know that they hormones kicked in at some point. I was a teen once...I remember hormones. But doing those small, affectionate things was a completely deliberate act of imprinting onto one another. That is what really hurts...today, anyway. Knowing I was being discarded. Knowing that she was out doing the exact thing I was talking with my oldest about not doing at that very moment, about how the bond between husband and wife is meant to be started in the dating world, that the one-on-one pre-material time is spent making emotional imprints and that he needs to be very cautious in spending time with girls (he was 15 at the time) because it will form an emotional bond that is difficult to remove.

My wife wouldn't be receptive to an apology from the other woman.

I've mulled this over all day.

First of all, I can never understand the position that an AP doesn't or didn't owe any thing to the BS. That only the WS owed the BS or the M anything... respect, dignity, common courtesy, or certainly not an apology. And that's BS (the bovine excrement kind), in my opinion. Marriage is recognized in our society as a legal contract as well as a social convention. Its also widely recognized as a spiritual convenant. So don't tell me an AP doesn't owe and apology because s/he didn't make vows to the BS.

I never promised my boss wouldn't shit on her desk. I never promised my neighbors I wouldn't host goat orgies on their lawns. I never promised my mom I wouldn't slip ground venison in her chili and tell her it was beef. But it's understood in society that all of those things are wrong. And I'd owe each of them some sort of amends.

I love the way aa amends work. The step goes "Made direct amends except when to do so would injure them or others." A huge part of getting ready to make amends is to truly know your motives and to recognize when your attempt at making amends would cause harm. In those cases you learn to make indirect amends or living amends.

Now, as a BS who ultimately received a true, non self-serving, humble apology from the OW, I will tell you how I feel about it.

I wanted it for a long time. I had multiple conversations with her and each time, she seemed arrogant and full of blameshifting. We finally achieved NC for about 2 years. Due to a Facebook fluke, I thought she had broken NC. I went nuclear. Rained down absolute hell on her. And I got back a humble response. And apology. She'd wanted to send it for a long time. But did not want to break NC. It all rang true to me. And I appreciated that she'd honored the NC even though she wanted to apologize.

So, my answer would be, respect NC. Bit if it's ever opened by someone else, be ready to send the apology.

It felt really good to apologize

This would scare me. I’d question why I was apologizing. To really make amends or because I needed to apologize. And if it was because it was something I wanted or needed, then I’m really just focused on what I want so I wouldn’t do it then.

So I really don't think an apology would be welcome.

Same here. I apologized, although to be totally honest it wasn’t a heartfelt one and my AP’s wife threw it back in my face and called me a whore. I guess the one small way I was able to make amends was I was deposed during her divorce proceedings and I did everything I could to be open about me and my AP. I felt like I owed it to her. That was the closest thing to an apology that I could give. It’s not nearly enough.

If you've ever known anyone who had to do a 12 step addiction recovery plan, you might know that step 9 involves making amends to those they have harmed, EXCEPT where doing so would cause more harm.

IMO, apologizing to fulfill some need in you seems to fit that description.

For the record, my H called and apologized to his AP's BH. It was crap, in hindsight. I think at the time H did it, he was simply trying to contain the explosion, minimize his own consequences. His AP then felt compelled to call me and apologize. I told her she was wasting my minutes (on my cell plan) and hung up on her. She continued to stalk him and us for about 3 years after that, so I'm pretty darn sure she was not so sorry.

Save it for your journal, or for IC. IMO it is best to keep Pandora's box closed.