Need a bit of advice here. We’ve (me: 56M, my wife, 57F), been together for almost 25years, married for over 22years, we have two children, 20 and 14. We live in the UK, my wife is from another European country, we met working in Europe 26years ago.
Early on, we spoke about previous relationships. My wife had two, one of which was with XX, a friend who was engaged to another girl. Although they carried on for years, they only apparently slept together once,… after he was married. His wife never knew. But all that was ok, we all have a history, and have made good and bad decisions.
Fast forward a year into our relationship and we were visiting her home city when suddenly she says we’re going for dinner with some of her friends, oh, and remember that man I told you I had the affair with, he’ll be there with his wife. She was nervous about it because apparently he could be really rude when meeting new people and she didn’t want that to happen to me. She didn’t feel ready to introduce me, and we didn’t go to the dinner.
After that evening, we had more of a talk as I hadn’t quite appreciated she was still friends with this guy. She told me a lot more things about their relationship, many I wished she hadn’t as it did cause a degree of hurt between us for a while. She also conveyed a complete dislike for his wife, not surprising really. I made my feelings clear that if she wanted to be friends with him, fine, but that would be a problem for me. She reassured me that it was history. Obviously, she couldn’t avoid the possibility we might bump into him whenever we visit, but she wasn’t going to arrange to see him.
Since then, we’ve been back there many times and never bumped into him. We’ve had lots of dinners with various friends, and although his name’s occasionally been mentioned, it’s not been an issue between us.
Fast forward 25years to yesterday. My wife is visiting her home city with our youngest. She’s spent the week meeting up with various groups of friends. Yesterday afternoon she phones me after returning from lunchtime drinks saying “I met up with a group of friends and by coincidence XX and his wife were sitting at the next table, it was really nice to see them and we all chatted like it was last week, not 25years ago. They’re visiting our home city next month and I’ve invited them to come to our house for dinner”.
I was stunned.
An hour or so later, she posted pictures on her Facebook page of her standing behind him.
Am I odd for thinking it’s a bit weird to invite someone you had an affair with, that you haven’t seen in over 25years into our home? To do that without even discussing it with me beforehand to make sure I was ok with it?
But more than that, I found it really insensitive on her part the way she casually mentioned it, a real lack of awareness given the hurt it caused early in our relationship. With the photos on Facebook, I just felt disrespected.
Am I over reacting?
So when she returns home tomorrow evening, we’ll no doubt have to discuss this upcoming November visit. For my part, I don’t ever want to meet this guy, and I’d far prefer my wife never to meet him again either. I just don’t know how to get that across to her without it sounding whiney.
I’d welcome any advice on this and suggestions for how to get across my feelings in a sensible and reasonable manner.
3 comments
Absolutely bizarre and completely inappropriate, in my marriage anyway.
You guys need to sit down and calmly and clearly define what your boundaries are. The conversation really shouldn’t be around trust or jealous, but what do you guys consider to be disrespectful to the marriage?
You are likely going to get comments on here about how she didn’t fuck the guy while dating you, it’s okay to have friends of the opposite sex, you should trust your wife, etc etc etc A lot of people would be okay with this sort of thing in their marriage. It’s a personal decision between the two of you.
You’re wife is a shifty person.
A bit of an update. Having felt beside myself with stress and lack of sleep (this really affects me), eventually we went out for a drink Wednesday evening and I asked about this impending visit.
I asked what the plan was when they visit. She said probably to meet in the city for dinner – me and her, the guy and his wife and the wife’s brother and girlfriend, so 6 of us. So at least, not coming to our home.
I then conveyed how hurt I felt on Sunday with her happy call and then posting photos on Facebook. She knows he’s someone I’m really uncomfortable about, but showed no sensitivity and previously (years ago) had promised me she would never make arrangements to see him, beyond bumping into him in the street, and yet here we are. She’s not willing to remove the photo from Facebook.
Worse (for me), she’s given him her mobile number and they messaged between them on Sunday, exchanging the photos they’d taken – she took her phone out to show me as she said she has nothing to hide and whenever I ask her, she’ll always show me. Her message to him was:-
‘*I loved seeing you after so many years, next time in* [*our city*]:)’
(the 🙂 emoji was a blushing face)
I said I felt really uncomfortable with him having her phone number and that it was crossing a boundary for me. For all of our relationship (25years), they’ve had zero contact, and now she bumps into him, is thrilled to see him, gives him her mobile and has arranged to meet up in our home city. She showed no willingness to block / delete his number, or understanding from my perspective.
The best I got her to agree to is that if he starts messaging her with small-talk, she will agree to block / delete his number as she has no interest in him in that way. To her, he is a good friend, nothing more.
And regarding the dinner. There’s no way I can go through with that, so it would be a case of her going alone. She said that if the dinner happens, she’ll ask me and if I really don’t want her to go, she’ll make an excuse and not go – if she has to choose between him and me, it will be me every time. Whilst nice, that does leave me feeling a little bit sh*t. If I say ‘yes’ to her going, I’ll be left feeling utterly awful, I won’t be able to cope. If I say ‘no’, I’ll still be left feeling utterly awful, I’ll be the bad person. But what really upsets me is that if she’d stuck to what she promised all those years ago, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. If she had any awareness, any sense of boundaries, any consideration, she wouldn’t be asking me to decide at all. How much nicer would it be if she said “I’ve thought about it, and I’m not going to go”.
I’m just ranting now, still very upset that she appears to have no empathy towards me on this.
I totally get that for some people, they can remain good friends with ex’s, and their new partners have no issues with that. That is just not me. I did say to her that I wish I didn’t feel this way, I wish there was something I can do about it, but I can’t.
Not really sure what to do now, I just feel miserable and she’s making zero effort to lighten my mood.