I’ve been listening to your show and reading your advice for seven years now and while I’ve heard various takes on “So-And-So came on to me, should I tell his/her significant other?,” I’ve never heard you address the tired media trope of the mistress banging on the wife’s door.
Here are the specifics: About a year and a half ago I met a guy on Ashley Madison. I was in an open marriage. He had a DADT arrangement with his wife of 15 years. I was hesitant to get involved with him. He claimed that his wife hadn’t had sex with him in six years—since their youngest child was conceived, but that she had given him permission to have an affair provided he didn’t tell her. He said he was staying for the kids. So yes, I’m a moron, but you do kind of endorse cheating in the situation—provided that was the actual situation.
Over the last year, the married guy and I fell in love. He asked me to be monogamous with him and to get divorced (in that order). I did. At every step of the way he told me exactly what I needed to hear to get me to stay with him—including offering to have a baby with me (after originally telling me that part of his life was over). Unbeknownst to him I had a miscarriage in September—right around the time he told his wife he wanted a divorce. I didn’t want to add more stress to his life. I expected their separation to be rough. He’s told me she’s verbally abusive. That he’s afraid she’ll turn the kids against him. I felt like he had enough to deal with.
The rest of the question—and my response—after the jump…
His wife’s initial reaction when he asked for the divorce was, “Good, I hate you. Let’s get divorced.” Then she met with a divorce attorney, realized she wasn’t going to come out flush, then she decided they should meet with a therapist to “work on things.” For the record, this is their second go-round in couples counseling. The first time they went together and the therapist told them to get divorced—that she couldn’t help.
So after six months, after planning to divorce, all of a sudden his wife makes nice and so he tells me he can’t leave right now. That he doesn’t know what he wants. That he wants to go back to some “middle ground,” where we are kind of together but less serious—in other words, he just wants to fuck me. It is the best sex I’ve had in my life (and I’ve had some sex), so it is semi-tempting except for the fact that this narcissistic asshole destroyed my marriage, knocked me up, lied to me, led me on, and… wait for it… somehow got genital warts while we were being monogamous with each other. (Or I was, anyhow.) So I’m kind of over it. (I’ve had the HPV vaccine, BTW.)
Now I’m a little bitter. And I’m more than a little complicit. I know that. But I really want to hurt him. Like a lot. And I want to hurt his wife too—obviously not in a physical sense—because she’s not innocent in all this. Not even a little. So I had the 600+ pages of text messages and most of the pervy pics he’s sent me over the last year bound as a book with his Ashley Madison profile and photos (including a very classy one with one of their kids blurred out) printed as the cover. The discussion of the immaculate contraction of genital warts is included in the texts (I really feel like his wife should know that part before she has sex with him again (if she hasn’t already), though I guess she’ll find out eventually.
So I know I’m way down the bitches-be-crazy ladder. It’s a first for me. Seriously. Always been a nice sane lady up until now. That’s 35 years of sanity. So how bad would it be to knock on the door of this asshole’s million-dollar house and hand his wife the documentation of our relationship for Christmas? (Obviously when the kids are at school—I haven’t forgotten about the kids.) I know it is not the nice thing to do but I also don’t think it is completely unethical. She should know who she’s staying with. And it would make me feel really good—it would provide a certain kind of closure. And I kind of feel like after the havoc these two have caused in my life (and really it was both of them) that I deserve to feel a bit better than I do right now. And they deserve to feel a lot worse. Sign me…
An Almost-Home-Wrecking Whore
I can’t recall where I read it first—on a t-shirt in Boulder, CO; just above the ass crack of a one night stand with a particularly pretentious tramp stamp—but this old saying popped into my head as I was reading your letter: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 BC) said that—or the Internet says he said it and that’s good enough for me.
Anyway, AAHWW, let’s say you boil that bunny—excuse me, let’s say you drop off that book. (And let’s say I retire that sexist 27-year-old pop culture reference.) Your ex’s wife knows he’s been cheating (with or without her okay), she knows there was someone else (and that he intended to marry that someone else at one time), and she knows her husband isn’t trustworthy (just as you know he isn’t). All she’s going to find in that book are the specifics. If she’s superhuman she’ll toss the book without reading it. But if she’s regular human, AAHWW, she’ll read every word. She’ll read things she can’t unread, she’ll know things she can’t unknow, and in the end it may be impossible for her to stay in this marriage. She’ll be miserable, your ex will be miserable, and the kids—let’s not forget about the kids—the kids will be miserable too.
And you, AAHWW? You’ll have your revenge “closure,” e.g. the satisfaction of pushing your ex’s marriage into that first grave you dug and shoveling earth over it.
But while you’re shoveling, AAHWW, your ex will be plotting his revenge—and that’s where the second grave you dug comes in. I assume your ex has text messages and pervy pics that you sent him. What are the odds that he’ll compile them into one big file that he can send to your parents, your friends, your employer, your coworkers, and your neighbors. Most likely high. And if you retaliate against your ex like this, AAHWW, he’s likely to retaliate against you in kind.
Even if the odds are slim, AAHWW, is it a risk you want to run? Is it something you want to have to worry about for months or years?
I have a better idea, AAHWW. Instead of showing up at your ex’s home and handing his wife that awful book how about contenting yourself with this thought: two shitty people—your ex and his wife—got what they deserve. They got each other. You’ve recognized your own complicity in all of this shitty shittiness, which is to your credit, and you probably resolved to be a less shitty person going forward. Great. Now prove to yourself that you meant that when you said it—demonstrate that you’re less shitty than your ex—by burning that stupid book.*
* But maybe send the wife a note to let her know about the warts if she doesn’t know already. She has a right to know about that.
