SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I don’t spend a lot of energy on my husband’s AP anymore, but when I consider the question, yes, I feel anger at her, and I think she’s a self absorbed, unstable hypocrite.

This feels like a very separate issue from my much more intense, important, and long lasting bundle of feelings toward my husband and his actions. I can feel justified anger toward his AP and it not be me just deflecting and not wanting to hold him responsible. He’s definitely responsible.

But yes, I have negative feelings towards his AP as well, and I think it’s natural and not something to soft pedal or try to escape. I accept it and move on.

I’m mainly angry because she’s such a hypocrite. She’s a person whose whole identity is wrapped up in being a stalwart supporter of women and justice and truth and the oppressed, but she was perfectly happy to throw me under the infidelity bus. When I first suspected something was afoot and confronted my husband, she was the driving force behind lying/gaslighting me (I’m much more angry at him for making the choices he did, but she’s also culpable). I later found communications between the two of them where my husband was trying to back out of the lies and come clean, and she was pulling out all the stops to lie to me and gaslight me. She went over the top trying to weave an elaborate web of lies, and after actual dday I was still naive and talked to her in an honest, straightforward way, only to find out it was another exercise in deception. Sure it’s on me for being gullible, but I’m within my rights to call her out for being a manipulative hypocrite whose values evaporate as soon as they collide with what she selfishly wanted for herself.

She’s also just never let up. To this day she still tries to engage with my husband about all of this. It’s tapered off, but not gone away. And we’re 4+ years out.

We are 3 years out. An old college friend of my WH, visited us right before Covid . Back to her country , she told another college friend about my WH.
They concocted an idea of creating the old college whatsapp group . This married friend became the administrator and the first thing she did was contacted my WH and told him her life story after college. By the way, she was only a casual college friend.
She would always be present at the group chat, always flirty and starting privately chat with my WH.
She told him all her life miseries , how her husband cheated on her and my WH started to feel compassionate towards her . The online affair started with her wishing my WH to be close enough physically, so he could give her a much needed hug !
The affair lasted 5 months and it could lasted longer if I didn’t find out about her text.
They had FaceTime sex , told my WH how he was the only man she loved and started giving hints how she is ready to divorce her husband if my WH would leave me ..
She kept on begging my WH to go back , to be with her and leave me behind . Her excuse ? Our marriage was already broken anyway.
They were still in contact for 4 months after Dday , no more FaceTime sex according to my WH , but more of an EA with her begging at least to be a friend . Eventually my WH got his sanity back and sent her an NC letter in front of me , just before we both went on IC, at the end of the 4 months.
She kept on trying to contact my WH through third party but he blocked all her social media, her phone number and eventually deleted her phone number as well.
Yes, it was my WH fault to destroy our marriage but she was the aggresive and manipulative co-conspirator !
I would say it was a 50/50 deal and I still hate her for seducing my husband .
He is remorseful and we are working to reconcile .

I don't hate the AP. She was a dirt bag and a morally bereft individual. That said I have no idea if she has made any changes in herself post-A and post-divorce (she and the OBS divorced in 2021 - the A ended in 2019). And, when push comes to shove, I really don't care what happens to her (bad, good, whatever) and aide from this website, I never have any cause to think about her.

I really don't care what happens to her (bad, good, whatever) and aide from this website, I never have any cause to think about her.

I feel the same exact way and I wonder if it's just time or if being away from the WS helps this. I am divorced and I noticed I thought about the AP's more when I was still with my xWS.

I have been thanking about this ongoing debate since my post several days ago, as I have tried to untangle the web of hostile emotions I still feel towards my WW's AP. On the face of it the fact that he is even remotely present in my consciousness is ludicrous given that he has been dead for now nearly 2 decades and has not been a threat to my marriage for at least four decades. So why do I still experience such an intense contempt and raw animosity towards him?
I think.part of this comes from the realization that the AP knew me, although in a very peripheral way. He had been invited to our house as a guest to several parties my wife and I hosted for ER personnel. So he was fully aware that the woman he was successfully pursuing was married. There are numerous social mores that hold the fabric of society and civilization together, their importance has been codified in statute and the legal and moral injunctions of just about every religion. Sure, they are often disregarded, nevertheless, we all agree on certain limits of behavior, whether that is the about the inadvisability of assaulting, robbing or killing another human being.
Enshrined in our society's precepts is the value we place on monogamy, in fact we have institutionalized monogamy and when one partner decides to abrogate the contract of a monogamous relationship, the unaware spouse or partner is de facto a victim of two people acting in concert, a conspiracy to harm the betrayed spouse.
This is the root of the slow burning hatred I feel for the AP.
In my first IC session, I was encouraged. by my therapist to review my actions that might have contributed to the affair, and accept my role in my WW s decision to betray me. Initially, I was too distressed to challenge such errant nonesense, but it didn't sit right, and I subsequently fired that particular IC therapist. My current one doesn't subscribe to that philosophy thank goodness.
It just seemed bizarre to me that I was being asked to shoulder a burden that wasn't of my making while the AP had no such imposition place on him and was deemed to be of only a.passing relevance in the affair, despite the fact that the AP groomed my WW over several.months of flattery, kindness, and attention, all the while pimping tenderness.
This what chaps my butt..
The AP has at least 50% responsibility in causing the affair and creating the existential threat to the marriage along with the cheating WW..

Early on, I hated HATED the AP. My xwh and I were both 37 and she was barely 18 (had turned 18 less than two months before the A started). I felt rage I didn't know was possible. At him. At her. At shows that used infidelity like a plot device. At love songs. At everything. Truly for a while there I was either sleeping (badly) or enraged or crying. That was it.

I never thought I would reach a day where I could honestly say I don't hate her, but that day came in the last year or so. I don't really hate her anymore. Now with the benefit of emotional distance, I can see that she was truly a fucked up child and my xwh was an emotionally stunted sleazebag. She instigated it, but HE should have been able to say no, you know, like a normal grown up would. It does not mean that I forgive her cus I don't think I ever will - she still made shitty choices that caused me lasting harm. But it does mean that I can say that I hope she has the life she deserves. And if that life happens to be that she gets explosive diarrhea while stuck in a bumper to bumper traffic jam, on a hot day, in a car with a broken AC, welllll that would not make me sad.

I dunno if I have forgiven xwh yet. Maybe I can't with him. But I don't think about him nearly as often these days and the rage at him has also subsided quite a bit. Mostly now I just think of him and wonder wtf I was doing with him and how I settled for that. He is now and always has been a dysfunctional man-baby, I am just eternally grateful that he is screwing up someone else's life now.

I never prescribed to the whole 'your spouse said vows the ap didn't' line of thinking. I think the ap deserves whatever ill-feeling the BS feels towards them. Vows or no, they still made choices that caused others harm and that is not okay.

Some BS really need to stop lecturing other BS.

It's NORMAL to be angry with the person who fucked your spouse.

Being angry with that kind of trash doesn't take an OUNCE of anger away from the ws. There's enough anger to go around.

Being angry with the AP doesn't mean we don't hold our ws 100% accountable for their actions. It simply means we hold the AP 100% accountable for their shitty actions. Even if they don't know us. It's called being a decent human being.

The first time I met him I was a college freshman. He was a sophomore at an ivy. He was dating this beautiful girl (who later married me) and I was envious. We were at a dorm party at my state supported university. I approached him and he quickly let me know that I wasn’t smart enough to socialize with. Arrogance oozed from every pore. In short, I disliked the jerk at age 17.

The next time he entered my orbit was when he sent a letter to my wife at our very first military posting. We were married about 60 days. She seemed nonplussed and I was incredulous. What kind of guy writes to a newly married ex? How did he get our address? Why was my wife so unconcerned? She asked if the letter bothered me. I asked if she’d be bothered if my ex wrote me. Oh, she claimed not to know how he got our new address and added, "Maybe my mother gave it to him." I am ashamed to say that I held that against my very dear MIL for years until WW proved to me that she was an expert at deception, including the fine art of ambiguity. So, his stock had not risen with me by age 22. I didn’t know that he had been waiting in the wings and would continue all these years until DDay.

Right after DDay in 1996 I projected all my anger and hatred onto him. I knew intellectually that it was not him who betrayed me, but I had been so much in love with WW that I wanted beyond anything to go back to the fairy tale I had cast myself in, and that would not be possible if I blew up at her. I am fortunate that we lived a couple of thousand miles away. I would have hurt him. After 10 years or so, I no longer wanted to attack him. But even today, my bucket list includes having him challenge me to fight. I work out 5 nights a week. Mostly aerobic stuff and a few weights. On my way to the weights I pass a heavy bag. It has a letter on it which happens to be his last initial. I hit that bag with 5 hard left jabs and on my way back, I hit it with 7 or 8 hard right jabs. Hard enough that people stop and ask me who I am mad at. Yes, he did not betray me, but he was an active knowing conspirator to undermining our marriage and our children’s best interests. He is an arrogant self centered weasel, just like he was in 1969.

I really don't care what happens to her (bad, good, whatever) and aide from this website, I never have any cause to think about her.

I feel the same exact way and I wonder if it's just time or if being away from the WS helps this. I am divorced and I noticed I thought about the AP's more when I was still with my xWS.

For me I think it is time, and my having really mentally had it with worrying and wondering about the A at all, nevertheless her. So I think it's that and my WH's changed behavior (and yes definitely leaving geographically although we still date from time to time so he's not really gone from my life). WH and AP (and former OBS) all still work together, now going on 8 years since the beginning of the A. While AP was out with some medical issue for a year and is now being transferred out permanently to another department due to that medical issue, they are all still in the same building. But I never, and I mean, never think about her aside from this site and when WH brings her up, in his new-found real efforts at transparency (he told me when she was out due to illness and when she came back in a limited capacity and her permanent transfer to a new department, and even, because the gossip mill at his workplace - the department anyway - is like a real housewives of where ever episode, that she is marrying someone else (also at the same workplace, but a different department - WH doesn't know who it is)). And when he does tell me (until I was writing this answer I had really forgotten that he did relatively recently even), I don't care. I'm not upset that he knows (as noted at his department at work it would be impossible for him not to know those basic things), and aside from wondering aloud if her new soon to be spouse knows about the A and the whole fucking mess, I really just don't care.

It's awesome - if you can find a way to get them out of your head, do it!

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 8:19 PM, Wednesday, October 2nd]