She Has Questions About Her Husband’s Affair Partner
A wife shares her struggle with trying to understand the choices and motivations of a woman who knowingly became involved with a married man—her husband. (Submitted by a site user.)
It’s been 22 months [since finding out about my husband’s affair], and I don’t know if I can say I hate [his affair partner], but I haven’t forgiven her. Part of me is angry, and another part feels sorry for her. I have a hard time thinking that someone in a truly happy, emotionally stable frame of mind would do something like this.
What I really struggle with is trying to understand her perspective. It’s actually something that I spend far, far too much time thinking about. I know it isn’t a good idea, but even now I get the desire to send her an email and just ask WHY? What did you realistically expect to get out of it?
A little background: My husband and I had to live separately for almost two years while he worked on a long-term project in another city. I tried to visit as often as I could, but because my parents were going through a difficult period that culminated in a cross-country move, and then my daughter experienced a very challenging time in her final year of college, I felt unable to move in with him. This was what he really wanted, and in all fairness, he had repeatedly told me that he was struggling with feeling lonely and isolated away from all his friends and family in a strange city.
He had lost his father not long before and hadn’t really recovered from the death. He had a hard time making friends outside of work, most of whom were married and couldn’t hang out on evenings/weekends. Unfortunately, quitting and coming home wasn’t an option either because we were heavily in debt due to a business bankruptcy, and I wasn’t working as I tried to help my parents/daughter.
During this time, a co-worker that he’d never paid much mind to before started paying him a lot of attention. They were having to work much more closely together, and she had only moved there a couple of years before with her boyfriend. He’d cheated on her, so they’d broken up and she was also pretty lonely.
The one time we met at an all-day work event was about 4 months before she started inviting my husband to hang out “as friends”. At the event, she told me that I was so lucky to have a husband who loved me so much and that he was constantly talking about me and our daughter at work. She spent the whole time hanging out and befriending ME, not my husband, and asking lots of questions about us, and our “story.”
I remember thinking it was kind of sweet how she seemed to look up to us as role models, and that we were an example of the kind of relationship she wanted to have. We are both older than her.
She clearly realized my husband loved me dearly. Not only did she tell me so, but he was his normal demonstrative self that day in front of her—holding my hand, hugging me, kissing me, proudly introducing me to all his work friends, etc. She commented on how adorable we were together.
We’d been together 26 years at that point. Actually, as I told her, we’d dated on and off since we were 14 and 15. We didn’t stay together the whole time because we went to different schools, and we’d lose touch the way kids often do. But fate seemed to keep bringing us back together over and over. Before he turned 20, we met again, and we’ve been together ever since.
She gushed and seemed to think the whole thing was amazing. So, when she realized my husband was getting sad and resentful over the fact that I was unable to break away from family obligations to be with him, and tired of always being alone, did she think she could just supplant me and become the new heroine in our love story? Did she think his love was so shallow that he could just turn it off? Or did she realize that this was a person who was angry, hurt, and lonely, who was vulnerable to making stupid decisions (as he so clearly did)?
And if so, why would she want someone who was likely to still carry a torch for me even if he did blow up his marriage? (He was sure I’d leave him if I found out.) Or maybe she thought he was so callous that even though he clearly loved me, it was no big deal to screw around? And if so, why would she want to be with someone like that?
Once the affair started, he began drinking really heavily to try and block out the guilt. They broke up several times because when she made noises about being uncomfortable about me coming to visit and how she was afraid she was going to end up being hurt when he left to go home, and got upset when he agreed and said, “I think you are right. We should stop.” He wasn’t happy and regretted starting something, but also felt guilty about hurting her.
Another thing I can’t figure out… she found out my daughter had a large online following and reached out to her telling her how beautiful she was. My daughter thought she was an anonymous fan, as she has many. Did she think she and my daughter were going to be great friends after her parents’ otherwise happy marriage suddenly and unexpectedly blew up? Or maybe she just wanted to feel what it was like to be on the other side of the equation—not cheated on, but instead the other woman?
She’d been cheated on by her long-term boyfriend. Did blowing up a loving but troubled marriage give her a sense of power?
From what my husband has told me, there was never any discussion of longevity. They were “hanging out” and enjoying each other in the short term, and he fully expected it to end any day. He finally encouraged her to see other people. The few emails and phone calls I saw/heard seem to confirm this. She didn’t appear to be angry with him or seem to think he was reneging on any promises he’d made, but she was upset and reached out several times, asking if they could still be friends.
He said no.
When I start ruminating (as I often do), I always circle back to that meeting, just four months before the friendly hanging out and only six months before they slept together. Why, after me being kind to her and told her our story, would she pursue him? Repeatedly!?
I know it is 100% his fault for falling for it, but that doesn’t absolve her for being willing to destroy another woman’s happiness and a happy family. I was nothing but kind to her. I liked her. Did she really think he’d suddenly fallen out of love with me? Or that once they had sex, he’d fall in love with her?
Anytime I could visit or he could visit home, he dropped her like a rock. That HAD to be obvious. Or did she just think it wasn’t a big deal to ease her loneliness and his, and then just got in deeper than she intended?
My husband has tried to explain how he got to that point, and while I don’t condone it, it at least gives me some perspective. I just wish I understood hers better. She didn’t seem like a bad person when I met her. Just a little lost and envious.
I know I need to let it go, but it’s one of the last remaining threads I have really struggled with. I have conversations with her in my head or compose letters to her way too often. The one thing I do hate is that my sweet fairytale marriage feels like it was taken from me, and I was given a reality TV version instead.
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