4 Important Truths to my Husband’s Affair Partner after 5 years!
I was betrayed not only by my husband but also by my friend.
To have to work through two betrayals is the hardest thing I have ever been through.
You sat with me on my couch while lusting after my husband. When I left for work, you came over. You even slept in my bed when I was away. You were mad when my husband didn’t play with your hair while I sat between you. Mad when he still bought me gifts and made me dinners.
You looked into my eyes, laughed with me, and enjoyed dinner with me. Swung on swings with me while I told you about my anxieties. All while sleeping and falling in love with my husband.
I once cared deeply for you as my friend. I would even say that I loved you.
You were the last person I would think to do something like this. You were also just as deceitful as him. Both of you disregarded me as a person, a human being who this would so devastatingly demolish. It broke my soul. And I still have scars to this day.
It forever changed who I am and how I look at people and the world. However, it didn’t defeat me and helped me see brokenness in others and the truth that people do bad things sometimes. And they don’t think about the consequences. People are selfish and often think only of themselves.
I can’t change the past or what happened. And I can’t go back to what was, hoping for a different outcome. I can only go forward. Regardless, it has taken me longer to move past my friend’s betrayal because I never got to speak to you after finding out. In this post, I will write four things I WOULD say to you today.
1. You weren’t special to my husband
If it weren’t you, it would have been someone else. Someone also naive enough to believe his lies and pity him and how awful he had it in his marriage and just how mistreated he was by his wife.
Because of your own lack of morals, integrity, loyalty to your friend(ME), diminished self-worth, insecurities, and abandonment issues, you chose to dehumanize me. To disrespect your friend, someone who cared for you deeply at one point. The truth. I wasn’t the cold-hearted, mean wife MY husband(not yours) made me out to be. And he wasn’t this poor victim trapped in some abusive marriage.
Anything he could say to justify his need to have an affair. And that just helped you justify it, too. Regardless of my behavior(or how he made me look), the answer doesn’t lie in well, we both deserve this. And I can treat him better than she can. And when he chooses me over her, that means I AM BETTER.
It saddens me when people don’t have the strength or care to do the right thing and walk away from something that can be so damaging to another human being. You know nothing of loyalty or self-control. You were just there and willing. My husband had zero loyalties to you. How do these OWs even think that somehow a husband is cheating on them with their wives? It’s so distorted.
You knew he was married and yet chose to accept his advances. Your own father cheated on your mother and left her for another woman. Didn’t you see the harm that caused your mother and you and your family? For that OW to destroy a family unit, a marriage, and children’s lives, including your own.
You BECAME what you despised.
I see it now: the fear of abandonment. So you latched on to a man who wasn’t yours, who showered you with compliments and attention and LIES and hoped, probably even disgustingly prayed, for him to leave his wife for you. I feel sorry for you. There was nothing real about your relationship with my husband—only lies and pain.
2. I pray you learned from this.
And not just self-pity and victimhood. As if something had only happened to you in this.
You were a follower of Christ during this time. You understand the meaning of adultery. And the implications of sin. You were the Jezebel spirit in this story. And you were a part of swaying a man, all while deceiving and manipulating me to get what you wanted.
You seem so unrepentant of your actions. It has been 5 years, and I’ve never received and probably never will receive an apology from you. At one point, you intended to rip apart my marriage. A real woman doesn’t do that to another woman. She doesn’t steal from another woman.
You disrespected and hurt me deeply by your actions. I pray for you and that you have a spirit of repentance to God and understand (to what degree the OW can or even cares to) the amount of unbelievable pain that you caused another human, friend, and fellow sister in Christ. I don’t know if you still walk with Jesus, but I hope you know that your actions affect others.
At one point, you would have been okay destroying a friend’s life and marriage to make yourself “happy.” God would NEVER have blessed that.
3. There are times throughout MY affair recovery that I have felt empathy and compassion towards you.
I even possibly wanted to apologize for my husband’s behavior and what he did to you.
He caused you to sin. And He charmed you and deceived you. He said all the right things. Sweet compliments and made promises to you. He nurtured you and “cared” for you. Probably in ways you had never felt. Do you know how I know these things? Because that is what he did for me. Except I was his wife with years of history and life spent together.
I can even see how you would fall for him. He is charming, loving, and a provider. A good listener and a man who desires to please. He was also in shape and attractive and invested himself into your life.
The truth.
What he did to you was wrong. The lies he made you believe to make you feel certain things for him were wrong. And the lies that he actually wanted you and could see a life with you. The lies that he had never felt this way before. I do put most(but not all) of the blame on him. He should have known better. He was the one to manipulate the situation.
And you know what else? He was good at it. Most cheating husbands are. He was good at deceiving you, just as he was good at deceiving me. His WIFE. He led you to sin, and you followed.
You also had a choice. And you made it, yes. You chose to engage. I hold you accountable, too. But he should have stopped it. He should have been the one to walk away BEFORE it went down the path it did. You were just so quick to get on board, though. It’s just unfortunate and incredibly saddening your willingness to follow him.
4. I let you go. I release you. And I forgive you.
For years, I have held on to you. You have taken up space in my mind for so long now. Even to this day, you still pop up in my head. Thankfully, it is much fewer and far between. However, I would like you out of my head permanently.
Somedays, I think, “Should I write to her, ask to meet her for coffee to get some closure?” My heart tells me I couldn’t handle your inability to see my pain or my side on this. It’s better for my closure to hand you over to the Lord once and for all. To take off the handcuffs to you. Freeing myself from the pain you have caused me. And even forgiving you.
I am not tied to the outcome of your future, which I have wished some horrible things upon you.
I’ve envisioned punching you, choking you out, cutting off your hair. I’ve imagined your future husband betraying you with a dear friend so you can feel this pain, and yet, truthfully, I still don’t even wish this pain on my worst enemy.
That’s how unbearable it feels.
God says to pray for those who hurt you, including your enemies. Are you my enemy? At one point, yes. But now I release you as my enemy. You are someone in my past who harmed me greatly.
You know the saying hurt people hurt people.
I know you had a painful childhood and Father issues and trust issues. It’s still not an excuse to do what you did, but it does help as we are all only humans on this earth just trying to figure it out. I don’t think it was your plan to do what you did to me when we first met.
You saw my life and beautiful relationship with my spouse and wanted that for yourself. And an opportunity presented itself. I still remember you saying you had never seen another relationship like the one between my husband and me.
Honestly, I believe you could be a good person who did the wrong thing—and made a mistake. I would pray that you flee from tempting situations in the future, knowing what you know now. This was so not worth it.
Stay away from those who try to influence you to sin. Don’t be a follower. And don’t be the reason another man sins. And, Oh, another woman’s spouse is NOT YOURS TO HAVE.
Lastly, I forgive you for what you did to me. I release you and let you go. I let you go now.
What are some things that you, as the betrayed, would like to say to your spouse's affair partner? Please comment.