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For the sake of R does it matter what the WW’s opinion of her AP is? Can they still be viewed as a “good guy”.

No. If they don’t view the AP as the weapon they stabbed you with - then there’s issues there (unless maybe the AP was completely unaware the WS was married and did the right thing and ended the affair when they found out.)

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:20 PM, December 21st (Friday)]

The OM was one of my best friends at the time. But it’s not something that I can tell her she has to do, how she feels is how she feels but is it a detriment to R?

[This message edited by Jondoe at 6:34 PM, December 21st (Friday)]

I just wanted my WH to see her as a real person. See her manipulations, her ego, her need for attention, etc. Not the fun, always happy, always so complimentary, sparkly unicorn she shows the world. It took a while, but he eventually saw it. As he ignored her, her digs at him got fiercer and she showed him who she really is. Not to mention the fact that not changing her boundaries and continuing to push his was completely disrespectful to both her husband and him. No “friend” ignores your wishes to stop contact. Now he finds her annoying when he has to hear from her (she’s still a cOW for the time being) but otherwise has no space for her in his head. The goal IMO is to not have any strong emotions for the AP. I’d rather he forgets he’s alive than harbor hatred.

I could not stand the thought of my WH feeling anything but disgust at the AP. Agree with TX above -- she was the instrument of so much pain for me and my son. Though my WH was also a party to the affair,of course, her manipulations over the course of years, including pretending to be my friend to get into the position of propositioning my WH, makes me sick. She was not the cool bohemian free spirit she works so hard to curate, not at all. And she was definitely not a "sister" to me, nor was she mother-of-the-year as she would like everyone to believe. I could not be reconciling of my WH didn't agree once I pointed all of this out to him. Nope.

how she feels is how she feels but is it a detriment to R

It's a detriment to R if, in your heart, it's a detriment to R. Most of us BS's would find it a detriment to R if our WW continued to harbor and express good thoughts and feelings about the asshole who fucked her knowing she was married. Doubly so if the asshole was our friend.

Maybe you're wired differently than most. Maybe you can live with the idea that your wife fucked a complete asshole and still thinks the asshole is a great guy.

I’m over two years out and I never heard my wife say a bad thing about her AP. You can’t change how someone feels. I never met him. What matters to me is how she feels about me. AP is no longer a part of our lives. I don’t give two seconds of thought to him. Hopefully you will reach that place in time.

Butforthegrace:

~You have a pm~

I don’t think I could have reconciled if my husband thought of OW as anything positive...unless maybe an organ donor.

ButFortheGrace

I don't think I am wired that terribly different than most. My wife knows how I feel about it but like I said for her to change her mind now would surely be an act, she feels how she feels. And I'm not sure how that will shake down with me.

They need to want the OM to die.

No one is a friend to you or your wife if they're having fun at the expense of your marriage -- breaking vows with a pal's wife isn't what GOOD guys do.

Our AP was a supposed family friend. And yeah, for a while she had positive feelings for him, and loved the validation of it all.

But she was pregnant at the time, already suffering from postpartum depression after our first sone was born. A good guy doesn't take advantage of that situation, potentially destroying TWO families.

When she finally retold the full story of the A, it didn't sound like a loving, caring relationship. It sounded sleazy. She saw the A for what it was and AP for who he was.

I have no idea or care if the AP found redemption or improved himself later in life. But it did help me when the light went on and she understood 'good guys' don't fool around with other people's wives.

The WS’s opinion of the AP most certainly matter when it comes to R. A WS that has ANY positive feelings/thinking of the AP IS NOT a good candidate for R.

Good guys don't fuck married women. End of story.

Yes it matters.

And I'll take it one step further...if she feels like he's still a good guy, then she is neither remorseful nor R material, and you are in false R.

Personally I think it's completely unacceptable for a WS to have any positive feelings of any kind toward their AP. If your WW doesn't think her AP is disgusting, and if she doesn't regret every single moment she ever spent on him, then she's not a candidate for R.

It sometimes takes them a while to see that the om/ow is not a good person. Good people don't get involved with someone else's spouse. That is the truth. It did take a month or so for my fwh to realize that. At first, he saw it as a reflection in him. That he chose a person with low morals.

Once he got to true remorse, the ow were people who made him ill to think about. Then he finds out that one of the ow financially screwed he xh and her own children. A real piece of work.

The bottom line for me is, she shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. He should no longer be part of her thoughts. Whether or not she ever learns to hate him or feel like he should die (someone else said that) is not the issue, imo. If you guys are still talking about him, how do you move forward?

My ap was my first girlfriend. I lost my virginity to her many, many years ago. My first love so to speak. I don’t hate her. I just have thoughts about her one way or another in a long time. Like she doesn’t exist. It doesn’t mean I want her to die.

The more and more you want her to hate her ap, the more and more he keeps getting brought up in conversations, the harder it is to forget he ever exists. Now, if she’s not into you and is still pinning for him, that’s a different story. If that’s the case, you should not R with her.

If the other man is in your marriage, life in any way you really don't have one.

Marriage is for two not three.

[This message edited by Marz at 8:10 PM, December 24th (Monday)]

If the WS truly wants to save their marriage then the WS must, and I mean must, see the AP as an enemy of their marriage and an enemy of their spouse. The must become indifferent toward the AP. But they can not see the as good. That is her way of not seeing herself as bad. She is still in fantasy. Still had fund memories of the affair, I suspect.

[This message edited by WilliamM at 1:05 PM, December 22nd (Saturday)]