Call her or not???

[energizedbunny]

Husband caught by best friend kissing woman at work. Says 3-4 weeks they basically had a kissing only affair. I have the other woman's phone number she is also married. Do I call her to try to get more info or not?

I will try marriage counseling as will he but he will NEVER admit to more than the kissing. I am 100% sure of this.

What would you do? I want the truth and I don't in my gut believe this kissing story. We are in our forties. Kissing is not a 40's type of an affair.

[LucreziaBorgia]

1. What would you do?

 

2. I want the truth and I don't in my gut believe this kissing story. We are in our forties. Kissing is not a 40's type of an affair.

 

1. Tell her husband, and expose them both at their place of work. Exposure is the best way to get the ball rolling in terms of squashing the affair. If the WS and OW have any opportunity whatsoever to continue, they will. Give them no opportunities. The more people that know about it, the greater the pressure to end it.

 

2. Prepare yourself. The first truth is never the whole truth. What you may get is something like this:

 

a. First WS will tell you that they are 'just friends'

b. Next it will be 'we only hugged'

c. Then it will be 'we held hands'

d. Next up... 'we kissed, but it was only once'

e. Then it will be 'we kissed often but never went any further'

f. Then it will be 'we had oral sex, but we didn't actually have sex'

g. Next it will be 'we had sex but only once, and neither of us enjoyed it'

h. Then it will be 'we had sex a few times'

i. Next it will be 'we had sex x number of times a week'

j. You'll hear 'it was a one night stand'

K. Then it will be 'it was only x number of weeks'

l. Then it will be 'it was x number of months'

m. Finally it will be 'it was x number of years'

n. Oh... let's not forget 'it was only for the sex'

o. Then it will be 'we had feelings for each other'

p. Then it will culminate in 'we loved each other'

 

Expect these layers of discovery to take months, if not years. It is not unusual for it to take a long time to reveal. Why? Because WS starts out wanting to protect his affair from you and will lie to spare your feelings, and will only tell you what he thinks he can get away with and still remain married to you. Full exposure all at once is brutal, and rarely happens. Never, ever accept the 'first truth'. If you do, you'll never truly repair the damage done. It would be like putting a bandaid on a cancer patient and calling him 'healed'.

[LucreziaBorgia]

Oh.. and no. Don't call the OW. She will only lie. Generally speaking, the only time you get the truth out of OW is when MM hurts her by dumping her under the bus, and she wants to hurt him back by 'telling the W everything'. When the affair is still active, and when MM and OW still want to be with each other and there is a chance to keep the affair going, they will lie to anyone and everyone to keep it going.

[energizedbunny]

I neglected to say that the kissing scene that was seen my my friend was was 1 year ago. I do not think that the affair is active and have no suspected anything since. He no longer works there. She is married to. Should I tell her husband? I just found out about this 2 months ago. He sticks with they just kissed no matter what I do/say/promise/ask!

[LucreziaBorgia]

I would tell him, yes. He needs to know just like you did. I doubt they stopped with kissing, and I would bet some hard cash that a lot more went on and for a lot longer than you realize. At the very least, telling her H will give him the same heads up that you have.

 

I guess if you really wanted to shake things up, you could say "either you take a lie detector test and answer my questions or we will divorce. Period." and watch his reaction you'll likely get your answer without even having to actually take a test. He will rage, accuse you of being a harridan and not trusting him, scream, yell... pretty much everything except take the test. The louder and harder he protests, the guiltier he probably is.

[gman0hsev]

I would call her, but most likely she will say the same thing your husband..... It may sound cruel and I'm not married so I don't know what the effects will be but maybe you should consider bluffing/threats. Confront the woman and threaten to tell her husband. I guess you could also check his cell phone..... But yeah a 3-4 week kissing affair doesn't sound like something a man in his 40's would do.....

[LakesideDream]

Kissing affair? Hurumph. Is that what they are calling it where you live these days?

 

My ex kept her main affair concealed for 23 years, I didn't suspect a thing for 22 years. She had a few other short ones over the years too.

 

I was way to busy working, being a husband and dad to notice. Pretty dumb huh?

 

LB is correct (and she knows). Bring it all into the light of day.

[soulsurf]

1. Tell her husband, and expose them both at their place of work. Exposure is the best way to get the ball rolling in terms of squashing the affair. If the WS and OW have any opportunity whatsoever to continue, they will. Give them no opportunities. The more people that know about it, the greater the pressure to end it.

 

If your really want to try and destroy as many lives as possible, then by all means follow this advice. Perhaps you will kill their careers, their futures, and lay a heap of mess on yourself when you expose them both at their place of work.

 

Sorry, but that is not something I think you should be doing. Deal with this in private, this is your personal business, and you don't need to air your dirty laundry in public like that.

 

That's like saying your kid wets his bed, so telling all his friends at school would help shame him into stopping.

[lavendera]

Wetting the bed and sleeping with another man's wife are hardly one in the same!

 

My husband had a couple of affairs. NONE of them STARTED with kissing... they coincided with kissing. I would have given anything if one of those husbands whose wife he was screwing had just given ME a head's up. I would have considered it a favor. I DID call one of the betrayed husbands myself and he thanked me. It was the end of it for me with her. He now knew what he was dealing with and I knew was I was dealing with.

 

I think it must be hard to imagine that you would want to know if you yourself have not been in that situation. I've yet to meet or hear of a BS saying they wished they never knew. Even as hard as it is, you take the continued humiliation factor out.

[LucreziaBorgia]

That's like saying your kid wets his bed, so telling all his friends at school would help shame him into stopping.

 

Actually, its nothing like that. A kid wets the bed because of physiological and/or emotional problems. There is not a deliberate choice to wet the bed, nor does the kid calculate in his head who will suffer as a result and do it anyway.

 

People have affairs because they are faced with an immoral and unethical choice, and make that choice regardless of who they will hurt in the process. An affair is a deliberate act - a decision that is completely under control of the people making it. Bedwetting is not.

 

As for choosing to deal with it in private. Sure, you can do that. It won't work in the same way that exposure does, though. If you bust a workplace affair in private, they will still go right to work and resume the affair. Why? Because they can.

[harleygirl92156]

I was in the exact same situation and I didn't call the other woman, I confronted her in person. I told her the conversation we were going to have could stay between us if she was honest and told me the truth, if she didn't tell me the truth my next conversation would be with her husband. I also acted like I knew more than I did. She wanted to know what I knew and I told her it was up to her to tell me the truth and I would decide by what I knew already if she was telling the truth and that would determine if I went to her husband. She sang like a caged bird. I also managed to tape the conversation with a digital recorder and let her know I had done so.

She will not even look at my husband at work let alone talk to him.

I am not a passive person and will fight for my family, my life, my husband and anyone I love. That's just me, you have to decide what is the best action for you, your marriage and your sanity.

[IamASelfishSOB]

You know, it is possible that he had a kissing only affair. My "affair" never really went much farther than that and I'm 40. In the overall scope of things though, does it really matter? The fact that his attention was drawn elsewhere is really the crux of the problem. The truth is the truth. The truth may be that he only kissed her. What you do from here is all that really matters.

[FrequentFlyer]

Clearly, I don't understand. If your spouse is/was having an affair (kissing or otherwise), why would you want to remain married to that person? Isn't he/she making a choice that you are no longer important, and he is looking for something else?

 

And Harley, I know "that's just you," but why fight for something (husband) if he's running around behind your back? He's worth keeping? Or is it to save face? I don't get it.

 

It just seems like (in both cases) the husband decided to actively participate and engage in an affair with someone else. If he's interested in someone else, why not just move on?

 

Maybe I'm naive. What am I missing?

[silktricks]

You're missing the fact that many marriages are worth saving even if one of the people in the marriage does something stupid.

 

For the OP:

 

Though the A could have gone beyond kissing, there is no reason to believe that it has. Many EA's do not actually lead to fullblown PA's. Though kissing is certainly skirting the edges.

 

I personally disagree with LB (this could be for the first time) about exposing the A at work. Although that can indeed stop something that's going on at work, it is IMO an exposure that has more downside to upside. Besides which, people at work probably already know and are simply doing their best to ignore it.

 

Ah, I see he doesn't work there anymore, so it's not an issue. Anyway, that in itself is a good sign. Do you know how long the A lasted? Was the kissing a one-time thing or the culmination of other things? Is your husband contrite about what happened or blustery?

[soulsurf]

If you have any hope of saving the marriage in question, why would you ever expose anything in public? So you can deal with all that cleanup too?

 

If you love your SO, then deal with it in private, where it belongs. By calling out everyone in public, you are going to push your SO even farther away then they already are.

 

I'm sure your SO will be even more understanding when you ruin their career and make everything public, but then you claim you still love them and will "fight for them."

 

Makes no sense, sorry.

[whichwayisup]

Forget the OW, just talk to her husband. This is how you completely stop their affair. Four eyes on them is better than two....

 

It is possible that it was only kissing, and some touching - With that being said, fact that they work together, they are 'friends' which means, they're emotionally attached aka emotional affair.

 

I hope your husband is sorry, regrets it big time and you two can work through this by going to marriage counselling.

[energizedbunny]

Just a follow up on this incident. Thank you for your advise.

We are seeking counseling to figure out what the issues are that made him need this.

He states that this was an excitment "the new feeling" thing and that he ended it before anything besides kissing happened. I called her on speaker phone with him listening and she stated that it began with lunch with a group of people and ended with them going to lunch alone several times.

The kissing transpired after lunch before returning from lunch. They never met outside of work for anything and it was "something that just happened' a few times 3-4 long kisses. I threatened that my friend had snapped a cell phone picture of the two if she came clean I would not tell or show her hubby. I started telling her to tell me the truth and nothing but the truth or else I would make my next call to him or just pop by. After she told me, she said she was going to come clean with her hubby just in case. She did apologize for the pain she has inflicted and wished me well in dealing with this. As I did her if she tells her husband. This did happen last year and she assured me there has been no contact. Although she knew who I was when I told her my name right off.

She was rather floored that this came up now so late afterwards. She no longer works there either. I did learn that she had apparently called him on his cell on day after work during this 3-4 week period because her car was stuck in a puddle drowned out by the water and he was at the mall with me and he asked her what he thought he could do for her, and told her to call AAA or her husband, she said that really pissed her off and she knew then what the other woman syndrome was about, there and then.

I had read so many boards online searching the question "Do I call the other woman" all suggested not to.

I am glad I did. I was going to try counseling anyway whether "sex" had been involved or not. We know there is an issue causing someone to look for the new experience. We have been married 23 years and I was 18 at the time he was 20. Not alot of past experiences, but he has always been all I needed and I expect to be that for him. Sex has never been bad. I am not one to hold out. The only thing he can even come up with that he has issues with me is the Showing of public affection. Of which we will bring up in counseling. I was never told before yesterday that this bothers him. Apparently I withdraw from him if he attempts to kiss me in public or be affectionate. i see myself doing that and I know why. Now to correct that, and whatever else may surface.

Again thank you for the advise. I hope if anyone every searches this thread looking as to whether to make the call , they weight it out and decide. It was a good thing for me, it turned out well, I was calm, cool and collect. As was she. I do feel better. now we have work to do to rebuild the trust and fix out problems. There is alot of love here so I think we will be okay.