I Know He’s Cheating But She Doesn’t

[MandoGirl]

Long story insanely short, my husband of 10 years and I started as an affair. We were caught almost immediately, he left his wife and I left my husband and we got married. My ex is long out of the picture, but his ex is very much in the picture because they share kids. As late as last year she was making moves to get him back and said that she still loves him and misses him. We ignore it.

 

Last year she got pregnant with a guy she was dating for about 2-3 months and, frankly, he’s a bad person. We think he’s mentally and emotionally abusive to her, at his encouragement she’s cut the kids off to a point where her family has intervened to care for them, and his behavior is really alarming. Once the baby was born we thought he’d settle down but it has been the opposite... He has made no secret that he’s threatened by my husband because of his girlfriend/my husband’s ex’s blind devotion to my husband

 

He’s highly confrontational and as a result, our relationship with him is non-existent though he emails us constantly these weird, rambling emails where he threatens my husband over the weirdest things (we’ve never actually spoken face to face with him), and because she’s not allowed to talk to us, she has cut us off and is equally as confrontational (though we think it’s him texting/emailing for her... In person she’s fine). Both largely ignore me, which is fine, though I have a random bunch of trolls that pop up on social media that are probably her or him, saying insane things like her baby was conceived when I left my husband home when I went out of town, etc etc etc.

 

Well, a month or two I quite accidentally caught her boyfriend with another woman and he knows I caught him. Since then, I’ve caught him one more time he knows about and another time I’m not sure he does. I haven’t told my husband’s ex, hell, I haven’t even told my husband. But if it were anybody else, I’d say something about what I saw. In this situation, I’m not sure.

 

If I tell, clearly he will say I’m a liar and I’m sure she will believe him, and the repercussions will be swift and severe for both us and the kids. But she finds out I know and didn’t tell, the repercussions for that will be big too. I know all that had to happen is him getting irrefutably caught and he will tell her that I knew and didn’t say anything. I’ve thought about saying something anonymously, but he will know who did it even if she doesn’t. So I’m kind of stuck.

 

In this situation, as the former ow, do you tell the former bs who’s still trying to ignite a relationship with your husband that her seemingly abusive now-boyfriend is cheating on her or do you just lay low?

Edited October 13, 2017 by MandoGirl

[understand50]

Leave it alone. Nothing good will happen if you get into this. Think of your step children. What harm will be done, as well as to the new baby.

 

I wish you luck, and understanding.

[pheonixrisen]

Tell your h...and then let it be .

 

I believe in telling in these situation but it's a guarantee coming from you would not be welcomed you helped breaking her family once this will be looked at as a second time .truth will not be welcomed from you .may be from her ex h if even that ..but not from you

[wmacbride]

Long story insanely short, my husband of 10 years and I started as an affair. We were caught almost immediately, he left his wife and I left my husband and we got married. My ex is long out of the picture, but his ex is very much in the picture because they share kids. As late as last year she was making moves to get him back and said that she still loves him and misses him. We ignore it.

 

Last year she got pregnant with a guy she was dating for about 2-3 months and, frankly, he’s a bad person. We think he’s mentally and emotionally abusive to her, at his encouragement she’s cut the kids off to a point where her family has intervened to care for them, and his behavior is really alarming. Once the baby was born we thought he’d settle down but it has been the opposite... He has made no secret that he’s threatened by my husband because of his girlfriend/my husband’s ex’s blind devotion to my husband

 

He’s highly confrontational and as a result, our relationship with him is non-existent though he emails us constantly these weird, rambling emails where he threatens my husband over the weirdest things (we’ve never actually spoken face to face with him), and because she’s not allowed to talk to us, she has cut us off and is equally as confrontational (though we think it’s him texting/emailing for her... In person she’s fine). Both largely ignore me, which is fine, though I have a random bunch of trolls that pop up on social media that are probably her or him, saying insane things like her baby was conceived when I left my husband home when I went out of town, etc etc etc.

 

Well, a month or two I quite accidentally caught her boyfriend with another woman and he knows I caught him. Since then, I’ve caught him one more time he knows about and another time I’m not sure he does. I haven’t told my husband’s ex, hell, I haven’t even told my husband. But if it were anybody else, I’d say something about what I saw. In this situation, I’m not sure.

 

If I tell, clearly he will say I’m a liar and I’m sure she will believe him, and the repercussions will be swift and severe for both us and the kids. But she finds out I know and didn’t tell, the repercussions for that will be big too. I know all that had to happen is him getting irrefutably caught and he will tell her that I knew and didn’t say anything. I’ve thought about saying something anonymously, but he will know who did it even if she doesn’t. So I’m kind of stuck.

 

In this situation, as the former ow, do you tell the former bs who’s still trying to ignite a relationship with your husband that her seemingly abusive now-boyfriend is cheating on her or do you just lay low?

 

Why on earth would she ever believe anything you had to say to her?

 

rightly or wrongly, she likely sees you and someone can can never, ever trust to have her best intentions at heart, and may well see your behavior as patronizing. The guy could be an absolute schumck, but she needs to hear that from someone else and not you.

 

Really, if she found out your husband was cheating and and told you about it, would you believe her? If not, then why would you expect her to listen to you?

[d0nnivain]

Does any of this effect any of the children -- your husband's kids or the new baby? If not, stay clear. If it does effect the kids, tell child protective services.

[MandoGirl]

Before the boyfriend we actually were cordial bordering on friendly. She’d drop by with supplies for my work, I’d send extra things I baked or canned with the kids, we’d meet so the kids could play, meet for dinner with the kids, joint birthday parties, information relays between the households were open. Not sure how much of it was authentic or not but I felt it was. Despite the lapses where she’d do something weird, I felt like we got on fine. Her a before this boyfriend, if I told her something like that, would have believed me or at least listened. We weren’t best buds, but we were on good terms.

 

I think a lot of it is that this boyfriend is bad news. I firmly believe he’s abusing her mentally and emotionally. So does her family. As she’s given up the kids and me and her parents have stepped in to fill the gap, she has become resentful of us. That’s where our relationship really fell apart. Even so, 90% of the scorn from that household is to my husband. The 10% I get is almost an afterthought and always triggered by something meaningless. For example, she said it was too much effort to drive to our town to see the kids on one of their birthdays (she has an infant so I get it to a degree), so I offered to drive them to her so she could see them or take them to dinner. That triggered a “you’re not as good as people think you are, everybody hates you, the kids hate you, stop the Miss Perfect Mom act, you’re fake, you’re phony” email from her which I think was actually the boyfriend. Either way, before him that wouldn’t have been a big deal, though she wouldn’t have not seen them for a family event before him either.

 

I’m ok with keeping quiet, I’m just leery of how I know when it does come out, I’m still going to get chucked under the bus. He will certainly say I knew and use it against me to manipulate her.

Edited October 13, 2017 by MandoGirl

[d0nnivain]

Given that you were cordial before, I suppose sending an e-mail wouldn't hurt. It won't do any good but try something like this:

 

 

I know we are not on the best of the terms right now, but on [date] I saw [

bF

] cheating on you with another woman. I was at [place] when I saw him. I'

m

sure he will deny everything but I thought you should know. Do what you want with the info; I'

m

not going to mention it again.

 

She's going to ignore you but your conscious should be clear. Do make sure your husband in on board with this before you send the e-mail.

[OatsAndHall]

I would just leave it be as there isn't a logical reason to tell anyone about it. It simply won't serve a reasonable purpose and it just invites more drama into your life. Yes, his girlfriend should know about it, just not from you or your husband. If you found out, she will find out, trust me.

[anika99]

I don't think her boyfriend will say anything about you if he gets caught. He'll be too busy trying to lie and trickle truth his way out of trouble. Say he gets caught six months from now. Do you really think he'd be so stupid to say something like "oh MandoGirl knew I was cheating 7 months ago". That would be absurd because not only would that force him to admit cheating it would reveal that he's been cheating for at least 7 months. The mantra of most cheaters is deny deny deny. He's not going to tell his gf you already knew because he's not going to admit to cheating on her, especially not for months on end.

[harrybrown]

Tell your H.

 

He can tell her parents.

 

then it will be up to her parents.

 

hope all goes well.

[MandoGirl]

I don't think her boyfriend will say anything about you if he gets caught. He'll be too busy trying to lie and trickle truth his way out of trouble. Say he gets caught six months from now. Do you really think he'd be so stupid to say something like "oh MandoGirl knew I was cheating 7 months ago". That would be absurd because not only would that force him to admit cheating it would reveal that he's been cheating for at least 7 months. The mantra of most cheaters is deny deny deny. He's not going to tell his gf you already knew because he's not going to admit to cheating on her, especially not for months on end.

 

I think he would if he were irrefutably caught and it looked like she would leave. “Oh, you think they’re your friends? MandoGirl and her husband have known for months and didn’t say anything.” Or even while covering his butt, “MandoGirl saw us and didn’t say anything to you so it wasn’t cheating.”

 

The thing is this guy, when provoked, says anything if he thinks it’ll land a hurt. I think this is something he’d use to land a hurt on her. He has said equally irrational things devoid of proper context to us in the heat of anger (the Kids said they don’t love us and our own shared child hates us), so it’s not out of the realm of possibility. And without knowing if he would pick the OW over her, I wouldn’t rule out him throwing her “accidental pregnancy” in her face, saying we knew and didn’t care enough to tell her, then going out the door with OW.

[MandoGirl]

I’d thought about telling her Parents, but the issue there is they care for the kids during her time. It has made custody changes easier and the environment for the kids much better. I’m also not ungrateful that they’ve done so to keep lines between the house open and kept us from going to court. I’m worried if I tell them and they tell her, he will cut them off too, meaning the kids are stuck unless we go to court.

 

As it stands now, he hates the kids but is happy to have them take the kids during their time, but would force her to cut them off if they threatened him like we do. If they were cut off and we asked for more custody, out of spite he’d disagree. If he had his way, they’d have full custody, nuke us for child support, then hand the kids off to her family. This line we are walking now with her family very clearly serves to protect the kids without raising suspicion for him.

 

And yes, CPS is already involced and I believe her family is working to extricate her from the relationship, but I’m unclear on how willing to go she is. She has thrown out hints that she wants my husband to rescue her from the situation, but leaving apart from him taking her out of it seems unlikely at best.

Edited October 13, 2017 by MandoGirl

[Just a Guy]

Hi Mandogirl, what does one advise you to do in a situation like this? You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I would think that you should immediately confide in your husband since this affects him, probably more than it does you. The other thing I wanted to suggest is that if your husband has mutual friends from when he was married to his ex, he can let slip in confidence to them that this is what is happening. It would get back to her via the grapevine and you could be safely out of the picture. I cannot think of making any other suggestion as the most obvious one's have been made already by you yourself and others and have been discarded.

 

On another note I have to say that karma is bitter sweet isn't it? If you thought you two could live out your lives in blissful utopia with nary a thought as to what your actions were triggering in the whole wide universe, then that dream got punctured pretty fast. As they say " There is no fury greater than that of a woman scorned". By leaving his ex in the lurch your husband ignited that fury and you both are now the recipients of it's heat. I do not know your situation or how the two of you came to divorce your exs' for each other but if it had to happen it should have been done in an honourable way. Divorce first and marry later once the dust had settled down. Having an affair was sure to trigger unwanted consequences. In any case you will have to put on your thinking hat and come up with more ingenious solutions which do not compromise your position any more than it already is. I wish you well.

[MandoGirl]

Hi Mandogirl, what does one advise you to do in a situation like this? You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. I would think that you should immediately confide in your husband since this affects him, probably more than it does you. The other thing I wanted to suggest is that if your husband has mutual friends from when he was married to his ex, he can let slip in confidence to them that this is what is happening. It would get back to her via the grapevine and you could be safely out of the picture. I cannot think of making any other suggestion as the most obvious one's have been made already by you yourself and others and have been discarded.

 

I didn’t tell him because, at the time, my husband was in an email back-and-forth with this guy about something the boyfriend exposed the kids to. The boyfriend was saying some really nasty things that was pushing my husband’s buttons despite me saying to ignore it and him trying to let it go. I was concerned that if I told him then, he’d let that zinger fly during their email exchange in a moment of not thinking.

 

Letting her know or not, I knew that absolutely wasn’t the best way to go about it. And I did tell him about it last night. He knows why I didn’t tell him at the time and agreed that it was best he didn’t know then.

 

The mutual friends thing would be tricky since she has been totally cut off from her friends everywhere but on Facebook. When she got pregnant the first thing she did was quit her job at his request and since then she’s been very isolated. That was a warning sign to me about this guy being a controller or abuser, but the process happened so gradual that it wasn’t really seen as that until much later.

 

On another note I have to say that karma is bitter sweet isn't it? If you thought you two could live out your lives in blissful utopia with nary a thought as to what your actions were triggering in the whole wide universe, then that dream got punctured pretty fast. As they say " There is no fury greater than that of a woman scorned". By leaving his ex in the lurch your husband ignited that fury and you both are now the recipients of it's heat. I do not know your situation or how the two of you came to divorce your exs' for each other but if it had to happen it should have been done in an honourable way. Divorce first and marry later once the dust had settled down. Having an affair was sure to trigger unwanted consequences. In any case you will have to put on your thinking hat and come up with more ingenious solutions which do not compromise your position any more than it already is. I wish you well.

 

Not sure what this has to do with anything, but I’m not a believer in the Western idea of karma, we had no thoughts of a “blissful Utopia,” and not am I sure what dreams of ours have been punctured in all of this. We have been together happily 10 years now and this is the first major incident since leaving our spouses. I’m well aware of what we should have done, but it’s about 10 years too late for that speech. Our coparenting has been good up until this guy and our house-to-house relationship was good too. Even with the tantrums and the emails from the boyfriend, we’ve learned to just ignore them and go about our day. It doesn’t impact us in any real way. Honestly, if we didn’t care, we’d block him, continue on with custody of the kids most of the time, and all of this would be a non-issue.

 

But, I do care. My only concerns are the kids safety (and they are, though I worry a lot about the baby, but there’s nothing more to be done there), and knowing what I know, if it’s better to say something or to just keep quiet. However we are or aren’t, she and I did have a cordial relationship and I don’t want to ruin the possibility of returning to that, and honestly I hate this guy has something on me that he can use in his bag of tricks to further abuse her. I know it seems like it’s me having something on him, but the reality is it feels very different. I hate that somebody like that has information he could use on his continuing campaign to abuse.

 

Having worked with abusers before, I know there’s no rescuing her until she wants to be rescued. I just want to neutralize something he has on us to tell her, and I’m not seeing how to do that from here. I tend to agree with the above where, if I know, she will find out too. I just am trying to think out how to handle my accidental role in it all.