My Husband’s Affair Partner (The Other Woman) Is Getting Divorced And This Worries Me
Sometimes, you intuitively know that if you are trying to recover from an affair, you really need to worry about your own marriage (and yourself) more than anything else. However, this can be easier said than done. This is especially true if the other person in the affair ends their marriage. This leaves the wife wondering if the other woman is going to now try to resume the affair since she is now single.
A wife might say: “I have to admit that I had been feeling the slightest bit hopeful about my marriage. I felt like my husband and I were making progress. But then yesterday he told me that the other woman had texted him and announced that she and her husband were getting a divorce. He claims that they have not been in contact until yesterday. He also claims that he told her that although he’s sorry to hear that she is getting a divorce, it doesn’t change anything. He supposedly stressed to her that the affair is still over and that he still wants to work on our marriage. He swears that this is all true and that he told her not to contact him again. This all makes me very uneasy. I feel like she basically called my husband with this announcement because she is hoping that she can get him back. This makes me feel pressured. I DO feel like we have made progress, but now I feel like we need to make a lot more progress before I can feel confident that he’s not going to go back to her. I mean, if both of them end up single, what is to keep them from being together?”
I do understand your concern. In your circumstances, I would also give pause. I was lucky in that the other woman just went away. In this case, I think you have to focus on a couple of things. 1) Your husband really didn’t have to tell you about the call or about the fact that the other woman was getting a divorce. Frankly, he had to have known that this was going to upset you, but he came clean about it anyway. These facts would appear to show some good faith on his part. Also, 2) when the other woman did try to reach out to your husband, it appears that he rejected her. Instead of going behind your back and picking up where their affair relationship left off, he instead assured you that he wanted to continue on with trying to salvage your marriage. One could argue that he didn’t have to do this.
Of course, there are certainly cases where a reconciliation attempt with a spouse fails and the cheating spouse ends up picking the affair back up. This certainly isn’t unheard of. But I don’t think that it is to your benefit to just assume that this is what is going to happen. I think that your best play is to not panic and to keep right on doing what you have been. Because as you have said, you are making progress. There is no reason to halt or sidetrack this plan when it has been working. Of course, it makes sense to continue to watch your husband to make sure that he’s not acting any differently. You might also casually ask him in a week or two if he has heard any more from her.
Don’t allow this to get you off track of the success (and hope) that you were already having. This may well be her goal. Don’t let her win. Who cares what she and her husband have decided? That is THEIR marriage. Them not being successful at saving their marriage does not need to have any bearing on you saving yours if that is what you want. Really, you don’t have all of the details. Perhaps her husband did not want to work it out. Perhaps the affair was just a deal breaker for him. We really don’t know and I don’t think that you should spend your precious time worrying about someone else’s marriage and divorce when there’s your own marriage to worry about. Your husband has shown good faith and you are making progress. There is no reason not to be optimistic if you continue on in this way and try to ignore distractions like worrying about what the other woman is doing. I know that it’s difficult and that you can feel very vulnerable after an affair. I have been there, too. But I learned that the best thing that I could do to regain confidence in myself and in my marriage was to focus on fixing what was broken and to restore a sense of intimacy and team work. This just took time. (There’s more about that here: http://surviving-the-affair.com)
Filed under: Uncategorized by admin
