The Person I Had An Affair With Is Texting My Spouse
By: Katie Lersch: The aftermath of the affair is hard enough when the other person bows out gracefully and fully accepts that the affair is over. Unfortunately, this isn’t always what happens. Sometimes, not only does the other person not accept that it’s over, they want to hurt the unfaithful person or their spouse in order to get some revenge.
A husband might say: “I made the huge mistake of cheating with a coworker. The sad thing is, I knew that this woman was slightly eccentric when I started the relationship. That was part of the appeal. She seemed very possessive of me and I kind of liked that at the time. But eventually, I decided that risking my marriage wasn’t worth it so I tried to cut it off. Not only did the other woman not take it well, she’s now started texting my wife. She texts photos of us. She asks my wife is she wants to compare notes. She tells my wife things that I’ve supposedly said that aren’t even true. And every time she texts, my wife gets furious at me and this makes things worse in our marriage. I’m afraid that one day my wife is going to agree to a meeting with this woman and she’s going to proceed to tell my wife things that are going to hurt her very much. What can I do about this?”
Why This Situation Is Very Damaging On Many Levels: As a wife who has been cheated on myself, I have to admit that part of me felt like the husband was afraid of the wife hearing from the other woman because he had things that he wanted to hide. Still, hearing from the other woman does the wife no good in terms of healing. Because the other woman doesn’t care about the wife or her progress. She is often only looking for revenge. She only wants to make herself feel better. So she will say hurtful things in order to induce the maximum amount of pain. And it’s possible that she will stretch the truth and even lie if it means that she will hurt the wife or damage the marriage.
So I believe that it’s in the best interest of everyone for the texts to stop immediately. The husband and his wife had both demanded that the texts stop, but this hadn’t done any good at all. So the next stop for me would be to arrange for my cell phone carrier to block the texts from her number. You may have to add numbers as she tries calling or texting from different phones once it becomes obvious what you are doing. But, it only should take one time before she can’t text from that number again.
The husband was afraid that when the texts were blocked, she was going to confront him at work. Admittedly, having to see her every day could be a problem. Asking for a transfer in order to avoid contact with her is one possibility. And, the husband needed to address his fear that by talking to the other woman, the wife was going to find out more about the truth. Frankly, it is always best for your spouse to hear the truth from you, no matter how painful, then to have to hear it from the other person. So if there was something that he still needed to say or disclose about the affair or the other woman, then I suggested he do so right away.
Successfully Rebuilding Your Marriage Can Diminish The Damage Of This: I’d like to make one final point. The more successful you are in rebuilding your marriage and in restoring the trust, the less likely it is that your spouse will have any interest in listening to what the other person has to say. If your spouse is most invested in you and in repairing your relationship, then they will be more willing to reject any contact or information from a third party.
Unfortunately, the husband had allowed this woman into their lives. It was his responsibility to make it clear that all contact must stop. OF course, there are restraining orders and law enforcement remedies, but sometimes making it clear that all contact is off limits (and no longer easy) will be enough to deter her from continuing on with this behavior. Just like you, she needs to move on. Her lashing out is an indication that she is in turmoil and she’s trying to project her pain or frustration onto someone else. It’s not healthy for her to continue on with something that is over. So hopefully, making your stance clear will help her to begin to move forward as well. Unfortunately, you will often have to be very direct in order to make yourself very clear. You don’t want to give her any room to misunderstand you or to get her hopes up. But it’s important to remember that everyone is hurting here, so being calm but matter-of-fact is the best approach.
I recommend dealing with this as soon as possible because your primary concern should be you, your spouse, and your marriage. The sooner that you can get the other person to move on with their own lives, the better it is for everyone. And it’s very hard to begin the healing when the other person is still in the picture. I know that things may seem very difficult right now, but with time, things often get better. If you had told me years ago that my marriage would actually be better today than before the affair, I would not have believed this. But that has been the case. If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com
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