Outside the Scope of This Report

[AntoniaB]

Wendy kudos to you on sticking to the issue of the boundary of "friendship" if you are divorced. I don't see this as a threat but as a reality that many of us have to create post-divorce, and he probably doesn't believe you entirely (they never do) but it needs to be said. I know that in some cases, people must stay connected to co-parent. But one can co-parent without being friends. More like business associates.

My XH was really advocating this friendship thing early on; when he first moved out before OW, during the first separation, he moved in with a bachelor friend a bit older than him who lived in a community of people in their 40s to 60s, all who were once working for the same district who bought homes near one another. There were MANY divorced people in this group, and essentially all the divorcees were remarried--the men to much younger women--and he used to talk with this glow about him about "how cool" it was that the exwives would come around with their new men and how everyone just got along so well.

The thing is that these marriages were ended more or less mutually...not with betrayals where one spouse just suddenly revealed "I'm leaving you for so and so" when they'd been painstakingly constructing that things were normal and loving with their spouse for some time.

And I told him, this will NOT be us. I will NOT hang out with you and OW or be your friend. It will never happen. How can you ask this of me?

Now, 19 months post-bomb, our legal matters are finalized and we are in complete NC. There is nothing that would make me contact him ever again. He hasn't contacted me in awhile but when he does it appears he is trying to re-engage me, and I'm polite but don't continue the conversation.

I have actually tried the friendship thing with him, as in friends from a distance, just via email. What happens is the minute we start getting comfortable and chatty, he turns on me and becomes angry or starts a fight where there was one. I suspect he does this to create distance because it confuses him when he sees us being close or talking openly about the past. He has said that he feels like talking openly means he betrays OW. So he then gets mean. This has happened enough times that I'm done and I'm not trying to have any link to him anymore because he will turn on me. Friends don't play these games.

The spouse who says he wants to remain friends with the LBS once he's in a rela. with an OP is the spouse who is essentially wanting to have a person in the wings as a backup plan. He hasn't really thought out what it means to ask the LBS to remain friends, the sacrifice to that person to be in this position. It's really arrogant--it's almost like saying, I want you and OW both, and you, LBS, should be happy to AT LEAST have me as a friend.

Our strength comes from getting to the point where we realize that no true friend would ever ask this of us, and to find our friends in people who are kind unconditionally. Once I said to XH, if we remain friends and only friends, and then OW becomes bothered by it, then what? And he said, well then I'd have to stop being friends with you OUT OF RESPECT FOR HER. I said so you'd betray me TWICE. Once as a husband, then as a friend? And he said "well yeah, I'd have no choice."

Really?

Create as much distance as you can, detach, detach, and yes, hold to the reality that you cannot respect yourself and be good to yourself if you allow someone to be friends with you who is essentially choosing to betray you in many different ways repeatedly. You are worth so much more.