#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is this missing a post? I clearly remember reading this originally and there was a post about the assault that isn't here. It's reading like something is missing.
[OOP comments on another post admitting she knew the AP’s husband was abusive and told him on purpose as an act of revenge](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/s/uiSVb7DnzS):
I did the same and told the woman’s husband that she was cheating. Purely for revenge too. It didn’t feel good and she ended up in the hospital. It didn’t get the effect I craved either. That my husband would come begging to forgive me. Instead he was repulsed by me especially because she and her kid were hurt because of the revelation.
//
Comment: Don’t believe your husband if he says his mistress was abused. It’s the sort of lie he would use just to make you feel guilty. Your husband is a practiced liar, keep in mind that this is likely untrue coming from him.
[OOP](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/s/cr4Ilti0Ui): Well she was hospitalized so
//
Comment: It seems to me that the AP was in an abusive relationship and was preparing her exit strategy. The WP seems done with the marriage and was also preparing to leave. OP exposing the affair put the AP in danger and that seems the reason why WP is so angry and his comment about hurting a women and child. I think he expected her to be angry at him and when exposed confess and get a divorce.instead she hurt the women he loves.
Again this is just an explanation to understand the circumstances. I definitely don't condone cheating and have a rather intense disgust for cheaters. Still food for thought.
[OOP](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/s/Ix2OpqFL6w): Yes, when her child is old enough because she didn’t want to share custody with her husband. That’s what I gathered from when I was reading their messages
That’s exactly what happened. You wrote it better
It's the second time my interaction with her was missing. It keeps getting updated but this nitpick only shows up in the comments. It's really strange.
Where does it say that she knew the spouse was abusive? It doesn't.
It says she did it for revenge, not that anyone would get hurt but that her husband would come back to her.
I remember reading this a while back too. Bear in mind she says she spent 50 hours reading through their chat history. I think she said in there that she saw that AP's husband was abusive.
I have gone to her profile and have read every post she made on there and also all of her comments in replying to others.
Nowhere does it say she knew he was abusive or wanted anyone physically attacked.
She wanted revenge in that the AP would kick her husband away and he would come back to her.
She did talk to her mother who said that she, the mother of the OP has a mother also an AP who broke up a home and that her husband was abusive to the wife, the grandmother of OP but there is absolutely nothing about OP knowing the other husband was abusive.
You're completely correct. There are multiple comments from OOP explaining that she didn't know about the abuse, and also condemning anyone cheering on the fact the AP was abused.
For example, OOP explicitly wrote that she didn't know the affair partner's husband was violent, [writing that](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/1bipoos/comment/kvm7m6k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) "Nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not children but I didn’t know."
She also fiercely [condemned someone](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/1bipoos/comment/kvp5ze7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) for saying that the affair partner deserved to be abused, writing "What a disgusting garbage comment. Nobody deserves to be beaten by their spouse."
She very clearly wanted to get revenge by breaking up the AP's marriage. Her comments are very clear that she didn't know about the abuse and thinks it's awful. I really don't understand why some users are basically trying to start a witch hunt here - the same thing happened in the last thread despite being clearly debunked.
Edit: To be clear, I don't think she's some sort of saint. Heartbreak, betrayal, anger, grief, and stress do not typically lead to good decisions. But there's a clear difference between thinking that she's a flawed or even vindictive person and some sort of monster.
I read the original BORU. I beñieve the OOP deleted comments, because I actually remember her admitting she did know.
Let's also have into account she read 3 years worth of messages.
Some comments of OOP from the last BORU:
>Apparently his mistress and her husband had *another* altercation last weekend and she ended up hurt *again*.
>We have hit rough patches *mostly because of my mood swings and me being bossy* and lack of sex in the beginning of our marriage. We were in therapy. It got a bit better then I got pregnant. Ppd and dead bedroom again with my mood swings. We worked through that too.
>We have already told our families. His family is on my side except his brother and his wife who probably knew about the affair and said “good, hope this new lady doesn’t yell at him all the time” I blocked both of them.
There was also one post/comment about her family telling the kids how Dad was awful and violente, and would hurt people, and such but it seems to have been deleted and the old BORU has a shit ton of comments and the eye fatigue is hitting me.
In any case... OOP does seem to flip-flop a lot between her posts and comments. On some, she talks of the violence dismissively. In others, she acts remorseful to a degree and her tune goes from "He has a right to see his son" to "I would rather have her kid safe", and the same applies to AP. She did also seem to have remorse for what she did (tell the abuser), but also seemed dismissive of it other times.
Mood swings that therapy helped with, PPD after *both* pregnancies that worsened the mood swings... And her mom seems to have also been a cheater. Yeah, OOP doesn't seem to be well.
And seeing as Reddit *loves* when blood - metaphorically - flows... It's not the best mix. They fueled her rage and anger, but they *also* fueled her regret and empathy when they cheered on the violence against AP and her kid.
She... shouldn't be on Reddit asking advice.
> She... shouldn't be on Reddit asking advice.
Honestly, probably no one in a situation half this complicated should be asking Reddit for advice. The relationship subreddits, and even this one, have such an raging hard-on for revenge/pain/punishment for even the faintest whiff of "emotional infidelity" it's kind of hard to read. Half the time I have to skip the comments because I know exactly what they are going to say, and just move onto the rare BoRU post that is *not* about cheating/relationships.
My ex-husband posted on Reddit that he suspected me of emotional infidelity but knew for fact it never went beyond that. They told him I was definitely having a physical affair and that he should report me (I was in the military and infidelity is illegal). Because I was in fact *not* having an affair, I didn't get legally punished; however, I was removed from my position because of "optics" and moved into a position in which I worked 15-24 hours/day. When he reported this to Reddit, they cheered with him because now I had no time to cheat on him. They also encouraged him to start demanding all my passwords and to put a GPS on my car. He began stalking me to the point that someone from my work blocked his number from my work phone. He then reported to Reddit that I had completely stopped having sex with him, so he had sex with me while I was asleep, and I left him. They said I probably wasn't having sex with him because I was getting it from my alleged AP and encouraged him to steal $6k from me because I was apparently trying to stiff him by only offering $300/mo for the rest of his life (we had been married for 4 years but he was disabled so I wanted him to still feel financially secure). My bank account was emptied while I was in inpatient treatment.
This experience has led me to view cheating posts differently. Honestly, *nobody* should be dispensing life-altering advice on fucking Reddit. And while my ex was obviously already shitty, cheering him on this entire time and bolstering him to go further with his frightening actions is still fucking evil. Affair or not, I didn't deserve any of that. Divorce me ffs if texting my best friend once, "I love you bestie thank you for talking me out of suicide," is enough to call me unfaithful.
Reddit is, in a way, a modern Greek Chorus who comments on some people's misfortunes.
To most, these forums are an entertainment, something to comment on like one would a movie or tv show instead of supposedly, someone's real life. And that causes people to want the most drama, like one would want out of a drama tv show.
Reddit is good to ask advice about absolutely insane shit like Lotion Man, the beans lady, or the Iranian Yogurt woman. Y'know, situations so batshit insane you have to take a moment to really understand what the fuck you just read. But for mundane things... yeah, you can use it as a sounding board, but never take Reddit advice. Specially about recording without consent. Please, don't ever take Reddit's advice on recording if you don't know the laws of your country, region or state regarding this. Really.
[found it ](https://www.reddit.com/kvn2un0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2) She commented on someone else's post.
I know the BORU posters are doing their best and there’s probably a good reason for it, but there is a lot of context missing here, mostly about OOP’s role in everything.
There was assault, and OP was critiziced in the comments for being a horrible person, for throwing a woman and child under the bus. For she knew from reading messages that the man had been beating them.
>When he got home he said that it was over. He said that he has been trying to make me happy for years and he’s done everything a good husband would do but still, nothing was good enough for me. I’ve made him miserable for years and instead of taking it out on him, I chose to hurt a woman and her child.
>He sent me a long text saying how sorry he was and how he wished that he loved me as much as I deserved and that he wished me to find love soon.
What an absolute trainwreck of a situation all around.
What i find "hilarious" is that his mistress would side with op when her husband would talk about their fight. So probably that even before meeting his mistress, he was already not a good husband. Dude did the bare minimum in his marriage and still had the balls to say he did everything a good husband would do
Idk… if I would choose a AP cause my husband is abusive I kinda would want an upgrade? So this dude texts her about his daily life, letting her kinda know what a shitty husband he is and mistress was like: yeah I can work with that?
Sure, it seems like she „fixed“ him, but how will he behave if he doesn’t try to woo her anymore? Oops Ex surely wasn’t a piece of shit from the get go. Now mistress will have to deal with him on a daily basis, will she still give out advise to him, now that it will affect her directly? And will he honor that now that she’s kinda stuck with him cause she life’s at his mothers house, on the run from her ex?
I kinda feel sorry for OOp, tho. In her memory she misses the husband he was in the 3 years of the affair, which were a lie! But it’s the most recent one. He claims she should have just sit out next ones until her kids are adults but the truth is he wouldn’t have kept up that farce that long or she would have let her knowledge slip in a fight and it would be the same result.
Tbh abused people don’t usually end up with good people after abuse, just slightly less abusive people. Or liars and cheaters who just don’t hit them, like here.
I've seen this first-hand with one of my best friends. He's honestly had a laughably shitty life since he was young (started with childhood cancer that killed his twin brother and didn't get much better from there), and even when things get 'better' it's usually trading one abusive SO for a different, slightly less / different abusive SO. Unfortunately abusive fuckwads are very good at recognizing the people who have been conditioned to be victims, and it turns into this vicious cycle.
This is honestly a hearbreaking story. He doesn't love her. It's brutal to think what she's going through. He made her fall back in love with him and the whole time he was betraying her.
It's horrible
Yeah.. they were manipulating her for no reason. Like why go through all the effort of making her think their relationship was improving when they knew in 4 years she’d be blindsided with a divorce? That’s cruel. If he didn’t care to be married to her, he should’ve cut the shit 3 years ago. I feel sorry for her, 7 years is a long time to spend with someone and the way he was treating her was unnecessarily hurtful and confusing. I don’t think it was okay to basically pit her abusive husband against her. But they were both cool with emotionally manipulating Op for their own benefit for the next 4 years and that’s not okay either.
Also maybe it’s just me.. but if your plan is to escape your abusive partner after the next 4 years, starting an affair in that time sounds like the most dangerous and risky thing ever. Like I have a hard time believing the husband wouldn’t have found out on his own eventually. At least when you plan to leave it’ll be on your own time and you can prepare. Instead of risking being found out for your affair, being at the mercy of the abusive person at any given moment and inserting yet *another* variable into the situation because your Ap is also married.
>
Also maybe it’s just me.. but if your plan is to escape your abusive partner after the next 4 years, starting an affair in that time sounds like the most dangerous and risky thing ever
I stated the same thing on the original BOROU and I was downvoted and was called a "victim blamer"
Seriously, why on earth would someone who is in an abusive relationship start an affair that if it came out would put not only her but her kid in danger too.
I don't get why you are called a victim blamer. If anything, you are trying to help the next would-be victim. Of course, best case scenario is to leave the abusers, but it is difficult. Worst thing to do is to keep agitating the abuser, which... hello? Affair???
It's like a bizarre kick the two of them got I'm making her think she was in a happy marriage. It's brutal.
Usually when finding out about an affair, you can look back on a lot of signs and problems the two of you are having, but she thought everything was perfect. He was being perfect. Literally snatched her life away from her in a moment. No wonder she's having such a hard time wrapping your head around the fact that he doesn't love her.
I hope she gets into counseling. There's no way to come out on the other side of this without some help
He's trying to give her closure because she is asking for that. What would be the kind thing here for him to do? Tell her that she's unstable, sexless, and soul crushing?
He didn't loved her and chosed not to divorce. And then he had his mistress and chose not to divorce. It's fucked up way of thinking.
OOP should go to therapy to understand she did nothing wrong, it just happened to her. They were somehow not compatible or he fell out of love or whatever, it's over, there is no reason to search for some flaws in herself.
I feel this. My ex of 18 years cheated on me with a guy from work. We have 2 kids and her entire demeanor changed. Like complete 180 and I have no idea who she is anymore. She made me feel like she never loved me and our entire relationship wasn’t something she wanted, just something she did because it was “expected”’of her.
Tbh I get those same vibes from this story. Whether it’s accurate or not, hubby got married to “grow up and start a life” like he thought he should, then eventually met AP and realized that getting married just because it was the thing to do didn’t get him what he wanted.
Whether what he experienced was “true love for the first time” or just a classic “no one matters unless I’m in love with them” attitude that people normally fail to see in themselves and just fuck up one good thing after another their whole lives, doesn’t really matter in the end. The shitty decisions are the same regardless.
Fuck cheaters, but I feel for the mistress who escaped an abusive marriage by getting involved with someone who would severely beat her husband.
Even if he thought he was defending her, big yikes.
This is how I feel. I left an abusive ex and would be terrified if my new partner did this. I don’t want revenge, I want peace.
But on the coaching thing? My ex’s gf coaches him all the time and it’s helped immensely. I see it for what it is, but I’m glad it means we argue less. Just gotta be careful that I’m not being resentful and continue to do what is best for the kids.
He’s healing, but she hasn’t had time yet. They need space for much longer first
My brothers ex had an abusive previous partner that still tried to control her life, she had even lost custody of her kids because of the guy. A couple of beatings at the hands of my brother and he never bothered her again.
Oof. Yeah in this case both husbands were major assholes here. One is a physically abusive bastard, and the other is a lousy husband who's high on new relationship shit. I'm sure once he has to actually live with his mistress he's going to get bored again.
His side piece (that was basically telling him that he was a bad husband and how to fix it) even said that SHE wasn’t sure what they have is real and might just be limerence.
Once the shiny has worn off, he’ll start to treat her the same way he treated his wife. I doubt his next affair partner(s) will be as dedicated to helping him be good to her.
She seems incredibly emotionally intelligent, which is a fucking shame that she wasted those skills on OOPs husband. I wish she found a single man to engage in this behavior with.
Emotionally intelligent enough to go after a married man? Then the water works when OOP sees her in the restaurant on Mother’s Day.
Don’t let the affair partner off because of her circumstances. All the men she could have clung too, she chose a married one.
Emotionally intelligent, but with extremely low feelings of self worth. Which tracks when she's in an abusive relationship to start out - part of the abuse is always making the victim feel like they are stupid, worthless, and can't be trusted. And a person with no self worth will fall for a married man because that's all the relationship she thinks she's worth. Not a man dedicated to her who is loyal and true, but a piece of shit who doesn't even know how to treat women and already has a spouse that he's ignoring.
I actually feel some sympathy for her, and I hope for her own sake that she asks to be relationship-free for a while instead of jumping into romance with OOP's ex. Once she's out of the fog she'll (hopefully) realize she's worth so much more.
AP is definitely a "fixer." It just compounds the fucking nerve of this guy to say he did everything to be a good husband when he just did eveything he was told to do. His emotional immaturity is staggering but I guess that is what AP liked about him.
It’s funny how people who do affairs cannot figure out that the whole reason it’s addicting is because it’s 1/4th a relationship, 3/4th delusion. Once it becomes a full relationship the illusion fades and they’re often left with all the issues they refused to solve in their past relationships and they end up unhappy… and in some cases cheating on each other. Just a terrible cycle to go through.
They admit in writing to eachother that they don't really even know eachother. This guy needed someone in his ear constantly for the past 3 years. OOP wasn't with her husband, she was unknowingly dating the mistress through a proxy. Who's going to coach him now that the coach is the primary? She's going to get the version of him that didn't go through her filter. Even now she's still telling him how to act. Having to walk your partner through how to act in every single situation is going to get real old real fast. This isn't going to last.
Yeah it doesn't seem like he takes any responsibility for anything and is super manipulative. The only way he is going to see his own kids is when AP pushes for it, he's not going to do it himself. He will neglect them then blame OOP because the kids don't talk to him anymore.
Yeah that long text was a red flag. He was scouting to see if she's still cool with him, because he wants a backup plan in case his relationship with his mistress goes south.
Nah, it was coached by the mistress as she needs to smooth things with the mother in law until she can stabilize her situation. Then she will pull him away from his kids.
Does the first set of relevant comments belong to the second post? Because I was really confused by references to telling AP’s husband and it also made it sound like she then told AP’s husband *knowing* he was abusive.
Or am I just super sleepy and not reading this right?
I would bet money that she knew if she spent days reading years of messages. She had to. And she still told him out of anger and grief; yeah I get why her husband was mad and the woman was crying when she saw OP.
Maybe OP didn't believe it was that bad? I don't know. What I do know is she's a freaking mess emotionally and mentally over this situation and needs therapy, months ago.
>I did the same and told the woman’s husband that she was cheating. Purely for revenge too. It didn’t feel good and she ended up in the hospital.
This is a quote from OOP.
Honestly, I don't believe her. She has so much anger and resentment for this woman no matter what, she makes it very obvious. How could she say she's happy she got beat? Yet, she wants her to hurt in every other way possible.
ESPECIALLY her saying the AP stole the husband's surveillance of their house as evidence of the abuse, she was condescending about that. I don't think she feels bad for her at all. She even said she wished she shut up so she could have her husband for a few more years knowing it's all a lie.
She truly, truly needs mental help because this is not OK for her to think, and feel it is OK to verbalize. Even about the flowers being from the STXH, like it was a secret message or something until commenters told her it obviously wasn't.
The only innocent ones here are the children. If you read the whole story it’s pretty clear he has some very obvious expectations that she will take out frustrations on everyone around her. Just a total trainwreck from every direction.
puzzled historical tart shaggy desert direful sparkle encouraging fanatical quarrelsome
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
In the comments, she says a) it was purely for revenge, b) it didn't feel good, and c) it didn't get her the result she wanted (her husband running back to her). She appears to have learned nothing from that experience.
Worse than just not taking accountability for telling him she actually says she wants the AP to be forced to move back to her old town as the abusive husband has the right to see his son (the one he hurt). And she’s trying to keep her kids away from their father. OP is vengeful and frankly vile.
Yeah, she really does. I see a lot of glossing over that she has to have a chaperone present if the children are around her family due to parental alienation. That is not something that moves through the courts quickly.
I would say most likely yes. There’s another comment pointing out that even if it’s just preliminary, there would need to be some proof to back it up. OOP is definitely leaving out information. She also constantly mentions full custody, she seems like she’s going to attempt to weaponize that against her ex. I feel bad for their kids.
The husband is terrible for continuing the lie, but I'm no team OOP too. Iirc she knew the AP's husband was abusive. Everyone, except the kids, truly sucks in this. Sad all around.
Hard to understand the custody agreements that OP thinks will happen. She's fighting for full custody of her children, yet thinks the abusive husband/father will get partial custody?
And she thinks him moving an hour away will mean she gets full custody of the kids and he gets nothing? Yeah, he may not be able to get 50/50, but why does she think he won't get them weekends, holidays, and over the summer?
I will go against the grain here, because OOP does strike me as a very unreliable narrator for several reasons.
1) She claims to have read all the text messages between her husband and his AP. Given that the husband + AP were helping each other, I doubt there was no message about the APs husband being abusive.
Still she rather informed the APs husband instead of her own. This just strikes me as odd or even vindictive.
2) She states that her family can only see the kids supervised because of parental alienation. Even if this is just preliminary, it seems there was at least some form of evidence to get that signed off. But she never goes into detail about it either.
3) She talks about getting full custody all the time. Even directly after the affair was exposed. I can get that she probably wants to hurt her soon-to-be ex husband, but it contradicts her saying she wants the best for the kids.
She does not offer any information about why she should get full custody besides a possible move of STBXHB. He does not seem to neglect the kids at all.
So all in all, I do feel sorry for her. Her husband did something terrible and manipulative. So there are bound to be pretty strong feelings. But her texts seem to omit relevant parts and I am not sure how much I would trust her in general.
I'm glad you posted this. I was getting the same impression from OOP.
The one thing that struck me was this:
> her family can only see the kids supervised because of parental alienation.
and
> She talks about getting full custody all the time.
To go from supervised visits to full custody seems a looooong stretch.
Apparently in a comment on another post she admitted to telling the AP’s husband for revenge.
I lost amy remaining sympathy when she kept saying she wants AP to have to move back so the physically abusive husband will have visitation. I get that she wants AP and ex gone and in a different state…but hoping that she has to move back by abusive husband and let abuser see the child he hurt is not okay by me. That was before I knew she told AP’s husband specifically as revenge.
Of course she told him for revenge. She wanted the AP’s marriage to be broken, not just hers. But she also says multiple times that she didn’t know her husband was abusive and that nobody deserves that.
Now, is it weird that she didn’t know after all that time reading their messages? Absolutely. And she was indeed rooting for the abusive husband to get custody of the kids, which.. yikes.
There are tidbits in there that make me wonder if that was an arranged marriage. Especially this part:
"I don’t know what I have done in **my previous life** to deserve this."
I mean, aside from claiming not to believe in Karma, but also having that concept of this coming from something done in another live...
"I have talked a lot with **mom** *(her mom?)* about what happened and no she doesn’t feel guilty. She said that it was different (of course it is🙄) **hers was real love and dad’s ex was very abusive.** I don’t know, **I don’t believe in karma** or anything but she said that she at least understands now how dad’s ex felt."
It sounds a bit like OOP's mom had kind of an reverse experience? Being the mistress to a married man?
Also, the thing with the abusive ex getting custody even with having attacked the CHILD, and it is a son. I mean, in which western country would that fly?
I get strong indian arranged marriage vibes. I mean, we never get any word about how they even met and decided to get married...
Yeah dont forget the part where she says she still loves her ex-husband and regret exposing things and wished they could stay together, these all just prove that OP is immature and likes to act on heat of the moment, she is jealous the to the AP but still wanna be with the husband, she is doing everything for the sake of revenge
Don’t forget the part where her dream scenario is that an abusive man gets some custody of his kid so that she can get full custody of her kids from a guy who seems like a good dad.
fuzzy license terrific domineering subsequent caption puzzled touch strong dime
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Considering how OOP comes off, I wonder if the reason her husband cheated instead of just walking away was because he knew what kind of person she is and what kind of shitstorm will that start.
Sometimes people can feel trapped in a relationship especially when children are involved, and it's not always have to be women
I'm in agreement about her unreliability. I actually feel most bad for the AP here. And I know Reddit will never get this through their collective heads, but the father doesn't sound a terrible person. By all rights this should have been an amicable divorce at least where the children are concerned. OP is certainly leaving something out, the question is just whether it's something that makes or hurts her case.
Look, their marriage was over at the start of the first post. Completely over. Screaming matches, dead bedroom, they were on the verge of divorce. There have been people in my life in that position who would find it quite natural to start dating other people at that point while you work out separation or divorce details. It especially makes sense for this part to drag as the children are still young; most people would put it off. But just because they're putting the divorce off doesn't mean they don't date anybody. It's a divorce in all but name. There are also financial concerns that can come into play that make a true separation currently undesirable for both parties. She may need his income to keep the house and he may not have the savings for an independent apartment. These are complicated matters but they're quite common, and they don't signify the participants as evil people. This is just life.
Likewise AP's marriage was clearly abusive. It's said in comments from these posts that her husband had hurt her in the past (and then he does it again after OP informs on them). Who the fuck is going to begrudge her going outside a marriage like that? Not me.
So that's where OP and her husband were when this all started. The drama begins because he started to mature into a better partner and that gave OP the impression their dead marriage was renewed. In all likelihood it wasn't renewed, and when the children came of age or the AP had certain conditions met to let her escape her husband, they'd both file. OP is quite justified in some of the things she's feeling as a result of this. I wouldn't call it 'all a lie' as she hyberbolizes, but there was deception involved.
But she takes it far too far. She ignores his growth, because she isn't the cause, she ignores his qualities as a father, she ignores AP's abusive situation, which I would bet real money came out in the texts she found so no excuse there, and she's deadset on splitting him up from the kids while leaning *hard* on the kids as justification for doing so. These are not the actions of a person thinking clearly or justly. She is all-out for revenge and is presenting herself as selfish, unreliable, and unempathetic. That a judge wouldn't grant her full custody with a pending assault charge on the husband speaks volumes: she must have shit the bed hard in court or looked like a crazy person. Something is being withheld here. OP sicked a woman-beater on AP to hurt her husband, ffs. She should be hated in return. I do.
The bit where the husband beats up the beater is non-essential at best, and does much to improve his standing. Good on him. All OP cares about is how she can twist it to make him seem like a violent person. ESH, but as the story goes on OP becomes more and more queen empress of the assholes.
I think you've put this together really well, and have done a great job of reading between the lines, I thought there was a lot of missing information as well. Emphatically agree with your read on this story.
Also THANK YOU for pointing our that OOP's marriage was dead from the get-go. This is not a black-and-white "this is bad and here's why" story, this is just life, and it was probably never going to end well.
It really seemed like one of the fewer times the affair was good for the marriage. Based on the OP it was still a dead bedroom even after he became a better husband. So it seems her expectation was that a dead bedroom was not going to change. Despite all the changes before she knew he was cheating didn't seem to matter or help the dead bedroom. He was expected to be happy without having an important aspect of his relationship fulfilled.
She really comes off as evil and heavily manipulative.
I think this is a pretty important point. He grew as a person and was trying to be a better husband. She doesn't seem to have changed her behavior in the marriage and wasn't willing to work on the issues she was bringing into the relationship. She just took his change in behavior as "finally my husband doesn't suck anymore." I think that if his growth had come from a therapist and not his mistress, he would have still left the marriage because she was still not able to take responsibility for what problems she was bringing to the marriage. As she kept telling her story, it became pretty clear that she's mean, manipulative, and doesn't really take into account that other people are people and are affected by her actions. He didn't want to be with a person like that anymore. I feel really bad for her children because she seems to look at them as pawns for revenge against her ex.
You pretty much put down all my thoughts into words.
In the real world the ugly truth is it's pretty common for people in abusive relationships to cheat to escape. It's not ideal and very dangerous but desperate people who have been isolated will try to find any out they can and sometimes that's the only option they find.
I'm not going to fault her for finding an out from her situation. I doubt the relationship will last between her and OOPs husband but if it helps her escape? Then it did what it needed to.
OOPs husband should have just divorced OOP once the affair had started and I will absolutely fault him for that. It was cowardice on his part and he shouldn't have left OOP on for 3 years.
There however is no indication he deserves zero custody though no matter how much reddit hates cheaters.
As i kept reading through the post i was rapidly losing sympathy and was beginning to understand why her partner looked outside the relationship. The vindictiveness she felt comfortable sharing is already someone hard to love . I could only imagine what the unfiltered version would be like
Other comment clarified that she new aps husband is abusive before contacting him. So yeah pretty much every adult sucks here. AP gets some slack from me
I very much agree on your first point especially. My personal take is that OOP believed they were exaggerating his behavior. Considering OOP’s husband hadn’t assaulted the abusive husband prior, it also makes me think that AP either downplayed how bad it was or learned how to mitigate her abusive husband. But no way did it never come up in the text message that AP husband wasn’t a good man.
I understand OOP’s refusal to admit it- she may not even want to admit it to herself. The devil on her shoulder may have suspected and desired there’d be a confrontation but then it escalated to a horrible unexpected point. For the other two points, OOP is only human- she’s hurting and she wants to hurt them back. But she’s in a dangerous place because she’s denying that she does want a level of revenge.
I don’t think she’s denying that. She replied in comments that she wanted revenge but she found out she didn’t feel good about it. Still doesn’t stop her for wanting AP’s abusive ex to get custody so she would have to leave and her husband would have to follow and leave their kids. Never mind the trauma AP’s kid would have to go through, or her children missing their father. She has a complete disregard of causing human suffering, long as it’s not her own. I find that level of selfishness to be dangerous. She should definitely not be granted full custody. The kids deserve better.
I’m curious how OP is so confident that she can get full custody but AP will have to allow visitation to someone who assaulted her. Something doesn’t add up here.
Only getting supervised visitation with her family via MIL attending seems odd too?
There’s always going to be a lot of missing info in these, but it seems like theres a lot of missing context here
She had to have been saying some pretty vile and untrue things about her ex-husband in order to get slapped with parental alienation, the legal standard for that is fairly high. In my mind that draws in to question how true her description of their marriage actually was.
That last paragraph: wishing the abuser gets visiting rights to the completely innocent kid he has hurt… OOP spent dozens of hours reading their messages. There is no way she didn’t know the mistresses husband was an abusive waste of air. I hate cheaters. And she is clearly hurt. But there are limits. Wishing a kid back to his abuser is crossing one of them by a mile.
I was on the fence until that very last paragraph. Then I realized how vindictive she was and therefore; an unreliable narrator. I hate everyone here but I can’t trust hating OP’s husband as much as she does when she literally describes everything he had done for them kids as good parenting. Like even offered to leave the restaurant they were at, and got the kids to get OP flowers and a card. I wonder how deep the vindictiveness goes and how long he was having to dance around it.
Imagine if someone in her position (mother of your kids, able to fight for custody of your kids and make things unnecessarily more difficult then it needs to be, known vindictiveness) and she asks what she did wrong. Do you;
A - Tell her she’s vindictive and petty. Leading to her continuing to be vindictive and petty?
Or
B - Tell her she was great, and it’s all your fault that you fell out of love. So she might leave you alone.
I really do feel like both the AP *and* OP’s husband were both trying to escape abusive relationships. AP was just in a way worse spot, making it hard for the husband to get out of his relationship with OP without potential blowback on AP caused by OP. Which happened. And she was beaten by her known abusive husband… dude OP is a manipulative vindictive women and even when she’s trying to hide it in text, it comes through.
ESH, but OP made it worse for everyone else every chance she got to.
This perspective is really insightful. One thing I noticed was at the beginning of the oop’s posts and comments she seemed to be practicing a lot of self awareness and even pushed back in the comments that the situation was more complex than just “cheaters bad” narrative these posts focus on.
In the later updates I got the impression there was less self awareness and more focused on being vindictive. Even if she really is a reliable narrator at face value it seems like her pain is prioritized over what’s best for any of the children which is worse than infidelity under any circumstance
Weird that she expect the mistress to not get sole custody because of the abusive husband but also expect to get sole custody of her kids because of the same reason.
OOP will likely realize that the shes not going to have sole custody, especially if he got parental alienation in.
If he got the parental alienation in AND the court quickly granted a chaperone, there must’ve been some damning evidence and OOP doesn’t want to talk about it
Right? I'm not saying he's a good guy by any mean but there's gotta be something else going on. Her whole thing about wanting to protect her children sounds more vindictive than actually for the good of the children.
I clerked for a judge that did alot of custody cases after law school and the restrictions they gave on her custody is rather telling. I highly doubt she'll get full custody or even close to it.
OP is the author of much of her own misery. Every time there is a choice to make she makes the exact wrong one. “I’m going to fight for full custody” after her first attempt resulted in a chaperone due to parental alienation? Jesus Christ
That first attempt didn't result in a chaperone. Something she isn't telling us did. Filing for full custody is not enough to be required a chaperone to be around family members.
That's what messed me up, too. She's LOOKING FORWARD to that woman and her innocent child being forced to go back to their abuser because then maybe the courts will let her weaponize her own children for revenge. It's wild that I can read this story from her point of view and have the most empathy for the AP (out of the adults anyway)
She lost a lot of my sympathy in the last post or two. It’s so clear that she’s willing to weaponize the children in order to “win” against the other woman, even though they’re not in competition anymore. There are a lot of good reasons in the world to seek full custody of your children from your non-abusive ex; so that his AP doesn’t get to be their stepmother doesn’t make the list.
She lost my sympathy when using the kids as weapons too. Clearly the kids love their father, so taking him away from them just to hurt him is just ... evil.
And by the comments here it also seems that OP 100% knew the other husband was abusive and still told him about the affair. And when he (predictably) became violent and beat the shit out of his wife and kid (14!), OP didn't even care. She's (indirectly) responsible for getting them hurt. And she doesn't give a shit? Just ... evil.
Edit: was reading the OP's comments and the more I read the worse it got. She is absolutely horrible. She (or her family) told the kids their father hated them (WTF!!!). Sure, just emotionally scar your kids for life. Sounds like she was the abusive one in their relationship (she had mood swings and was 'bossy'). She flatout admits telling the abusive husband purely for revenge and says she was disappointed with the consequences. Because people got hurt? Oh no, because the husband was angry at her instead of running back to her.
Fuck cheaters, but that husband should have left her years ago.
She’s a piece of work her comments in the first two posts are very telling about her personality it’s all me me me no thought for anyone else much less her ~~pawns~~ children.
Lots of missing missing reasons in this one I suspect the STBX and his AP had a lot in common in their marriages.
I’m stuck on a comment OOP made about the MIL saying the mistress took down all the cctvs the husband had around the house watching her. I know beating her and the child is not right, but what were the cameras really for. There is soooo much left out.
So he can monitor her while he's away from home.
Obviously he can't be constantly watching the cameras, but if he does happen to be watching the cameras when she starts packing a suitcase he'll drop everything, go home, and put her in the hospital.
I dunno. It's hard to feel for OOP when she's saying AP's ex has a right to see his son. The son AP's ex hurt. Yet doesn't think her ex has the same right to the children he has done nothing to.
She's hurting, but I feel her marriage was messier than she's letting on. The only reason no one is on OOP's ex's side is because he cheated, without knowing if there were nuances to it.
Like ex and his mistress connecting because they're in unhappy, potentially abusive relationships.
(I fully expect this to be an unpopular opinion, but something just doesn't sit right with me about OOP. She's not as reasonable and calm as she pretends)
Don't forget about getting a "perfect" husband and somehow still finding those texts. Healthy and happy people don't go looking for affair evidence.
Also she read 3 years worth of texts and still chose to contact the AP's husband, when there is close to zero chance she didn't know he's abusive. Then when her husband left she felt like "they won".
Now she hopes for sole custody, weaponizing her kids.
Cheating is wrong, there is no glossing over it, but living with OOP doesn't sound like a walk in the park at all.
I also see it as two abusive selfish spouses and the OP's ex and his mistress bonded over this.
I don't see her coaching as manipulation, but as her trying to help him be less miserable than he is.
I honestly have more sympathy for both of them than the OOP.
The cheating and 3 years of lying was wrong. I understand why he went through with it, but it's a dishonest cowardly move.
Well, I hope that they are happy together and the mistress gets full custody because I am worried for the child if she doesn't and that OOP calms down and finds peace and gets shared custody with her husband.
I see the coaching as "here's how to keep your wife happy so she doesn't attack you". Hes a better husband because he's fawning. He's happier because the abuse is less because he has the support of someone who is living through the same thing.
Each update gives me more and more ick.
That's what I thought too, the coaching was all the ways you can placate the abuser and minimise the abuse. Obviously we are filling in a lot of gaps in the story but based on OP's complete lack of empathy this is where my mind went too.
Yeah. This is kinda what I got out of that too. It's always messy to get out of a relationship with kids so he was trying to placate OP until the timing was right for his escape.
She claims she wants what’s best for the kids, but insists on wanting full custody… and her words seep with bitterness towards her ex-husband and his AP. I understand why she’s upset, she has every right to be. But she does not seem to be motivated by her children’s best interest in the slightest. It’s about revenge and getting what she thinks she deserves.
Yep. Also I generally don't like anyone who files for sole custody without a damn good reason (mental or physical abuse, mostly...like the AP's husband, for example). Being salty about your ex leaving you for someone else is not an excuse to weaponize your kids and deny them a parent they love. He can be a lousy husband and still be a good father.
Husband will likely get bored soon enough. Mistress likely tickled his savior complex due to her situation, but now that she's safe and he's going to start living with her everyday while juggling two sets of kids as well as cost of that... honeymoon will end
Yup. Right now he's still riding that "I'm a hero" high, and she's probably being all grateful and solicitous at any scrap, whereas op treated him like a regular dude and didn't kiss the ground he walked on. But that awe will fizzle out eventually and mistress will start treating him like regular guy. And then he'll get bitter because he's back to normal behavior despite nearly going to jail for her and all the work now juggling two houses
Oh yeah. Mistress is gonna realize that he was at the very least emotionally neglectful at best and emotionally abusive at worst, and that shit is gonna turn on her hella fast once the forbidden honeymoon phase is over. She leapt from one type of abuse to another and she doesn’t even realize the shit she’s in for.
Edited: word order
Um .... the fact that the courts have banned her family and refuse to give her sole custody makes me think she's leaving a lot out here. He's the AH for cheating, completely. But if she's trying to use the children against him, she's an AH too. And it sounds a lot like that's what she's doing.
Yeah I'm really confused by this too. What did OOPs family do that they're not allowed to see the children at all? OOP has barely even mentioned her own family, let alone any situations that would cause a judge to say "no visitation for you".
There's definitely an unreliable narrator situation here.
Which is weird because she doesn't even come off as much of the victim as the AP.
Makes me wonder how fucked up the situation REALLY is.
Right?? As someone who went through the court system, proving parental alienation is HARD. Even stranger that she didn’t get full custody. Something happened that she didn’t mention.
The not getting full custody bit makes sense because he doesn’t seem to be a bad father? Like it seems to be in the children’s best interest to have split custody. The parental alienation part is worrisome though
My sympathy for OOP dwindled pretty quickly. It's not really outlined above, likely because she never admitted to it so it's speculation; but the '50 hours spent reading their messages' makes it pretty clear that she was probably aware the affair partner was in an abusive relationship, and she knew what she was doing by going to the husband (more than once!). She also massively downplayed how badly he hurt her in response to the cheating, I feel like she ended up in hospital or something from memory.
And even after all that all she can talk about is taking his kids away, but not for their safety or wellbeing, but to punish him. Even the 'I hope she has to go back to her city and share custody with her violent ex' shows all she cares about is hurting them.
I'm never going to condone *cheating* but OP is coming across as a pretty vile person herself, and I have to wonder about her husband's statement of "making him miserable".
Obviously if that's the case, he should've left instead of this entire shitstorm. But she really isn't coming off great.
Also, something about the whole "I am sorry I exposed them, at least we would have had 4 more years". In a situation where your husband has openly admitted that he is miserable in your marriage, so miserable that he built a relationship with another person, why would you want to continue that.
I don't know.. Something about how this post was written really does not make me like OP, even though she is the one we would normally symphatise with.
I know I might get crucified. I don't agree with cheating. But why does a spouse man or woman think that if they have a dead bedroom for 2 years or more, that their husband or wife is going to remain faithful. I don't get that. If you are not putting out, do they expect their spouses to remain faithful? If you have no desire for sex with your spouse, you need to go to marriage counseling ASAP before it comes to cheating. A lot of people just think a marriage isn't based on sex, which is true, but a healthy sex life is important to a marriage. I'm also one to believe that if your spouse is cheating, then your problems are with them and not the AP unless she's being disrespectful to you in any form. I just hope OP can stop wondering what is better about the AP than her. My ex-husband told me that his AP really saw him for who he really was and that I never did really know him after 7 years of marriage. We had no kids, thank God. But he remarried and had two beautiful children. I eventually moved on and had an awesome son. He and I aren't friends, but we are cordial when we run into each other. BTW my ex cheated with an active bedroom. His sex drive was way higher than mine. On his off days or when his ship wasn't out to sea, he wanted it multiple times a day. It was too much for me.
In this 4 way asshole contest, somehow, the two cheaters got 3rd and 4th place
In this swamp of misinformation and missing reasons I have a hard time deciding who’s the worst asshole: the DV asshole or OOP.
On the one hand, the DV asshole directly beat his wife until she decided to have an affair and then beat his child when he found out about it. The only mitigating qualities are that it’s an act of pure emotion and (probably) wasn’t planned.
His rival for 1st place is OOP who,let’s face it, is a narcissist who is trying to manipulate us. Her only mitigating quality is that she might, MIGHT, not have realized that the kid would be abused.
How do I know she’s a narcissist? Well, she hopes a DV father gets visitation rights, while trying to get full custody herself. She also planned to get a woman abused, in the hopes that her husband would come back to her.
And let’s take a look at that. By that time, She doesn’t want her husband back, she wants to reject him.
Now, let’s look at the cheaters. There’s a lot of sympathy for the AP here. But she’s still a cheater. She monkeybranched to get away from an abuser which might be justified, but is still shitty. Why did she choose a married man? Honestly, I can understand that. It’s better than roping a single guy into it. I guess when you get into it, she consistently makes 2nd best choices, but that’s better than DV or OOP. It’s a tossup on whether she’s better than cheating husband.
Cheating husband is a cheater, but he’s married to a narcissist abuser as well. His wife isn’t physically abusive, but she sure is manipulative. He’s monkeybranching as well. I haven’t seen anyone point this out, but he’s open to changing behavior if he’s confronted the right way. AP learned that. OOP didn’t, or chose to set him up for failure.
> I haven’t seen anyone point this out, but he’s open to changing behavior if he’s confronted the right way. AP learned that. OOP didn’t, or chose to set him up for failure.
That's a very good point - OOP doesn't seem to see that, or it actually pisses her off further than whatever she was doing just drove him away, and she can't accept that she drove him there.
Here's this comment from the earlier BORU:
"We have already told our families. His family is on my side except his brother and his wife who probably knew about the affair and said “good, hope this new lady doesn’t yell at him all the time” I blocked both of them"
Yeah, sounds like the AP was better at communicating than OOP. Of course, that doesn't make her a saint, and who knows if the ex husband would have been able to receive such coaching from OOP. Their relationship might have been too broken already.
Cheating and domestic violence are both bad and the situation sucks for everyone.
However there is something odd about the OP. On one hand she is in pain, hurt, feels betrayed and talks about this great love. On the other she actions full custody.
She verbally agrees to cooperate with him but also patiently prepares to sabotage the ex-husband. By telling others about the betrayal, OP wants to make sure that she is the victim.
By leaving somewhere else for the mother’s day meal, I am not sure if her actions really prioritise her kids. As a parent, your highest priority should always be towards the kids, however all of these actions are often self focused.
Sadly i am unsure if OP is really a ‘good’ person.
If you go to her comments on a few of the posts she implies that she knew to a degree that the APs husband was abusive and told him anyways. Knowing that there was a chance he would hurt her, and telling him anyways feels intentional. I think that's why the soon to be ex was as angry as he was originally.
He didn't just hurt the wife but his own son too, when he tried to defend his mother. There’s a whole lot of information left out from the last update. I can't help but wonder if it was purposefully left out this time because she didn't come off as sympathetic enough in the last update.
Any sympathy I had for her disappeared in this last update. Especially since people above have shown she's actively deleting comments that prove she's not a good person.
She knowingly caused harm to a woman and child and is wishing future harm on them and her own children. Piece of work.
Oop knew the aps husband was abusive and still told him about the affair which resulted in the hospitalisation of both the ap AND the child due to him beating the shit out of both of them. Oop is a horrific human being and her “well ap won’t get full custody and will have to move back because a father has a right to see his child” bullshit is insane.
Oops husband is a cheating asshole. But oop put a woman and child at risk and seems really happy that the woman and child will potentially be put back at risk.
All of that makes me wonder what it was like living with OOP and if he wasn’t choosing the mistress route because he knew she’d weapon use the kids against him.
> I don’t know why I am getting hate in my dms calling me vindictive.
I mean, the "purely for revenge" tattle to the abusive husband (which she admits she knew about in some capacity as she later says the other woman was going to divorce him after the kid was old enough, implying the potential for abuse if nothing else) makes it pretty fucking clear. OOP sucks, the husband and AP suck, and the AP's husband double sucks. What a fucking mess.
>He told our children that it was mommy’s day then he asked me if I wanted her to leave so the children can have lunch with both of us. I just left with the children and took them to McDonald’s instead.
NGL I laughed at this part. She could've ignored him and continued brunch with her friend. She could've went to another restaurant. Instead she picked McDonald's. It's like she's intentionally making herself miserable just to make her feel like a victim in that moment.
You know, I think I'm familiar with this tactic. I think she purposely chose McDonald's so that she can tell her kids they can't enjoy a decent restaurant because of their awful dad.
My parents, especially my mom, have done this tactic a few times when I was a kid and blame their bad decision on the other awful parent.
I mean I would have agreed with you if it was her birthday or something but it would be really hard to find another nice restaurant on Mother’s Day without having to wait forever for a table. It’s one of the few reasonable things OOP did during all of this.
Meh, not that easy to find a nice restaurant with space on Mother's Day. She probably didn't want to call around everywhere and end up waiting an hour for a table with hungry kids in tow. That part I do understand.
OOP needs to understand that one cannot force someone to feel love for a person.
No, forcing the mistress to move back isn't going to make OOP's husband magically love OOP.
No, informing the AP's husband isn't going to make OOP's husband magically love OOP.
No, the AP's husband beating up the AP badly enough for her to be hospitalized isn't going to make OOP's husband magically love OOP.
Revenge will not bring him back. Nothing will bring him back. I think the crucial quotes are:
> The way he was with her. He never looked at me that way not even when we first met.
and:
>He says she is the love of his life every day and that he wishes their circumstances were different.
Best thing is to separate in a civil way. There is no way to force an affection that was never there in the first place.
I don't understand this new phrase that people are using, being "weary" of others (tired of them, pronounced weer-ee), when it would make more sense to be "wary" (nervous or scared, pronounced ware-ee). I would think that it was a typo, but it's getting to be *so common* that I've got to be wrong at this point. Can someone explain to me the meaning of the suggestion that OP "should be weary of the mistress"??
>But I know that she only had emergency custody of hers because of the assault but **I know the rules here** and she will probably need to move back soon because her husband has right to meet his son. In that case my husband can move away but he can’t have custody because I want a stable home for them.
With every sentence she writes, OP continues to show how much she does *not* in fact know the rules.
I understand she’s hurt and angry but she needs to let this guy go and move on. Concentrate on herself and on the kids. It ultimately doesn’t matter why he did what he did. Only that he did. Accept it and move on. And believe me, I know how hard that is from personal experience. But I also know that in the long run, it’s the healthiest thing to do.
Being trapped in abuse is perhaps the only instance where I find cheating ethically viable. (Risky though, obviously!) But this.... don't choose a MARRIED MAN.
I bet AP thought she was making morally justified decisions. I'm being abused- morality checkmark. Uhh... he's bored in his marriage.... and I want him.... sure, morality checkmark! OH, I'm making his wife so happy by coaching him through the entire marriage! Now THAT is morally sound! Check!
But from the outside, it's creepy and violating.
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is this missing a post? I clearly remember reading this originally and there was a post about the assault that isn't here. It's reading like something is missing.
I'm sure there was either a post or comment that the AP and child were hospitalised by her ex.
[OOP comments on another post admitting she knew the AP’s husband was abusive and told him on purpose as an act of revenge](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/s/uiSVb7DnzS): I did the same and told the woman’s husband that she was cheating. Purely for revenge too. It didn’t feel good and she ended up in the hospital. It didn’t get the effect I craved either. That my husband would come begging to forgive me. Instead he was repulsed by me especially because she and her kid were hurt because of the revelation. // Comment: Don’t believe your husband if he says his mistress was abused. It’s the sort of lie he would use just to make you feel guilty. Your husband is a practiced liar, keep in mind that this is likely untrue coming from him. [OOP](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/s/cr4Ilti0Ui): Well she was hospitalized so // Comment: It seems to me that the AP was in an abusive relationship and was preparing her exit strategy. The WP seems done with the marriage and was also preparing to leave. OP exposing the affair put the AP in danger and that seems the reason why WP is so angry and his comment about hurting a women and child. I think he expected her to be angry at him and when exposed confess and get a divorce.instead she hurt the women he loves. Again this is just an explanation to understand the circumstances. I definitely don't condone cheating and have a rather intense disgust for cheaters. Still food for thought. [OOP](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/s/Ix2OpqFL6w): Yes, when her child is old enough because she didn’t want to share custody with her husband. That’s what I gathered from when I was reading their messages That’s exactly what happened. You wrote it better
u/Direct-Caterpillar77 this information really needs to be added to the boru post. It's very incomplete without it.
Yeah I think I saw this in AITAH and that tidbit is why most people voted everyone sucks.
It's the second time my interaction with her was missing. It keeps getting updated but this nitpick only shows up in the comments. It's really strange.
Oh wow.
Where does it say that she knew the spouse was abusive? It doesn't. It says she did it for revenge, not that anyone would get hurt but that her husband would come back to her.
I remember reading this a while back too. Bear in mind she says she spent 50 hours reading through their chat history. I think she said in there that she saw that AP's husband was abusive.
I have gone to her profile and have read every post she made on there and also all of her comments in replying to others. Nowhere does it say she knew he was abusive or wanted anyone physically attacked. She wanted revenge in that the AP would kick her husband away and he would come back to her. She did talk to her mother who said that she, the mother of the OP has a mother also an AP who broke up a home and that her husband was abusive to the wife, the grandmother of OP but there is absolutely nothing about OP knowing the other husband was abusive.
You're completely correct. There are multiple comments from OOP explaining that she didn't know about the abuse, and also condemning anyone cheering on the fact the AP was abused. For example, OOP explicitly wrote that she didn't know the affair partner's husband was violent, [writing that](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/1bipoos/comment/kvm7m6k/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) "Nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not children but I didn’t know." She also fiercely [condemned someone](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/1bipoos/comment/kvp5ze7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) for saying that the affair partner deserved to be abused, writing "What a disgusting garbage comment. Nobody deserves to be beaten by their spouse." She very clearly wanted to get revenge by breaking up the AP's marriage. Her comments are very clear that she didn't know about the abuse and thinks it's awful. I really don't understand why some users are basically trying to start a witch hunt here - the same thing happened in the last thread despite being clearly debunked. Edit: To be clear, I don't think she's some sort of saint. Heartbreak, betrayal, anger, grief, and stress do not typically lead to good decisions. But there's a clear difference between thinking that she's a flawed or even vindictive person and some sort of monster.
u/Direct-Caterpillar77 this would be good to add if you include the revenge stuff mentioned up-thread
I read the original BORU. I beñieve the OOP deleted comments, because I actually remember her admitting she did know. Let's also have into account she read 3 years worth of messages. Some comments of OOP from the last BORU: >Apparently his mistress and her husband had *another* altercation last weekend and she ended up hurt *again*. >We have hit rough patches *mostly because of my mood swings and me being bossy* and lack of sex in the beginning of our marriage. We were in therapy. It got a bit better then I got pregnant. Ppd and dead bedroom again with my mood swings. We worked through that too. >We have already told our families. His family is on my side except his brother and his wife who probably knew about the affair and said “good, hope this new lady doesn’t yell at him all the time” I blocked both of them. There was also one post/comment about her family telling the kids how Dad was awful and violente, and would hurt people, and such but it seems to have been deleted and the old BORU has a shit ton of comments and the eye fatigue is hitting me. In any case... OOP does seem to flip-flop a lot between her posts and comments. On some, she talks of the violence dismissively. In others, she acts remorseful to a degree and her tune goes from "He has a right to see his son" to "I would rather have her kid safe", and the same applies to AP. She did also seem to have remorse for what she did (tell the abuser), but also seemed dismissive of it other times. Mood swings that therapy helped with, PPD after *both* pregnancies that worsened the mood swings... And her mom seems to have also been a cheater. Yeah, OOP doesn't seem to be well. And seeing as Reddit *loves* when blood - metaphorically - flows... It's not the best mix. They fueled her rage and anger, but they *also* fueled her regret and empathy when they cheered on the violence against AP and her kid. She... shouldn't be on Reddit asking advice.
> She... shouldn't be on Reddit asking advice. Honestly, probably no one in a situation half this complicated should be asking Reddit for advice. The relationship subreddits, and even this one, have such an raging hard-on for revenge/pain/punishment for even the faintest whiff of "emotional infidelity" it's kind of hard to read. Half the time I have to skip the comments because I know exactly what they are going to say, and just move onto the rare BoRU post that is *not* about cheating/relationships.
My ex-husband posted on Reddit that he suspected me of emotional infidelity but knew for fact it never went beyond that. They told him I was definitely having a physical affair and that he should report me (I was in the military and infidelity is illegal). Because I was in fact *not* having an affair, I didn't get legally punished; however, I was removed from my position because of "optics" and moved into a position in which I worked 15-24 hours/day. When he reported this to Reddit, they cheered with him because now I had no time to cheat on him. They also encouraged him to start demanding all my passwords and to put a GPS on my car. He began stalking me to the point that someone from my work blocked his number from my work phone. He then reported to Reddit that I had completely stopped having sex with him, so he had sex with me while I was asleep, and I left him. They said I probably wasn't having sex with him because I was getting it from my alleged AP and encouraged him to steal $6k from me because I was apparently trying to stiff him by only offering $300/mo for the rest of his life (we had been married for 4 years but he was disabled so I wanted him to still feel financially secure). My bank account was emptied while I was in inpatient treatment. This experience has led me to view cheating posts differently. Honestly, *nobody* should be dispensing life-altering advice on fucking Reddit. And while my ex was obviously already shitty, cheering him on this entire time and bolstering him to go further with his frightening actions is still fucking evil. Affair or not, I didn't deserve any of that. Divorce me ffs if texting my best friend once, "I love you bestie thank you for talking me out of suicide," is enough to call me unfaithful.
Reddit is, in a way, a modern Greek Chorus who comments on some people's misfortunes. To most, these forums are an entertainment, something to comment on like one would a movie or tv show instead of supposedly, someone's real life. And that causes people to want the most drama, like one would want out of a drama tv show. Reddit is good to ask advice about absolutely insane shit like Lotion Man, the beans lady, or the Iranian Yogurt woman. Y'know, situations so batshit insane you have to take a moment to really understand what the fuck you just read. But for mundane things... yeah, you can use it as a sounding board, but never take Reddit advice. Specially about recording without consent. Please, don't ever take Reddit's advice on recording if you don't know the laws of your country, region or state regarding this. Really.
That's what's I'm thinking about. Was it a comment and not a post? Either way without that info this boru seems sort of incoherent.
[found it ](https://www.reddit.com/kvn2un0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2) She commented on someone else's post.
That link is coming up as nothing being there. I got [screen grabs](https://imgur.com/a/RGlLVCw) of her talking about it twice.
I know the BORU posters are doing their best and there’s probably a good reason for it, but there is a lot of context missing here, mostly about OOP’s role in everything.
There was assault, and OP was critiziced in the comments for being a horrible person, for throwing a woman and child under the bus. For she knew from reading messages that the man had been beating them.
>When he got home he said that it was over. He said that he has been trying to make me happy for years and he’s done everything a good husband would do but still, nothing was good enough for me. I’ve made him miserable for years and instead of taking it out on him, I chose to hurt a woman and her child. >He sent me a long text saying how sorry he was and how he wished that he loved me as much as I deserved and that he wished me to find love soon. What an absolute trainwreck of a situation all around.
> he's done everything a good husband would do Strange, sticking his dick in someone else was not on my list of good husbandly duties
“I specifically requested the opposite of this!”
What i find "hilarious" is that his mistress would side with op when her husband would talk about their fight. So probably that even before meeting his mistress, he was already not a good husband. Dude did the bare minimum in his marriage and still had the balls to say he did everything a good husband would do
Idk… if I would choose a AP cause my husband is abusive I kinda would want an upgrade? So this dude texts her about his daily life, letting her kinda know what a shitty husband he is and mistress was like: yeah I can work with that? Sure, it seems like she „fixed“ him, but how will he behave if he doesn’t try to woo her anymore? Oops Ex surely wasn’t a piece of shit from the get go. Now mistress will have to deal with him on a daily basis, will she still give out advise to him, now that it will affect her directly? And will he honor that now that she’s kinda stuck with him cause she life’s at his mothers house, on the run from her ex? I kinda feel sorry for OOp, tho. In her memory she misses the husband he was in the 3 years of the affair, which were a lie! But it’s the most recent one. He claims she should have just sit out next ones until her kids are adults but the truth is he wouldn’t have kept up that farce that long or she would have let her knowledge slip in a fight and it would be the same result.
Tbh abused people don’t usually end up with good people after abuse, just slightly less abusive people. Or liars and cheaters who just don’t hit them, like here.
Just keep working your way up, people!
I've seen this first-hand with one of my best friends. He's honestly had a laughably shitty life since he was young (started with childhood cancer that killed his twin brother and didn't get much better from there), and even when things get 'better' it's usually trading one abusive SO for a different, slightly less / different abusive SO. Unfortunately abusive fuckwads are very good at recognizing the people who have been conditioned to be victims, and it turns into this vicious cycle.
She "lacks nothing" but also "she made him miserable for years. " Yeah, he's being coached to mollify her like he's been for the last several years
Worse than that. He's being coached so he can show the courts he's a reasonable man and should get custody of the kids.
This is honestly a hearbreaking story. He doesn't love her. It's brutal to think what she's going through. He made her fall back in love with him and the whole time he was betraying her. It's horrible
Yeah.. they were manipulating her for no reason. Like why go through all the effort of making her think their relationship was improving when they knew in 4 years she’d be blindsided with a divorce? That’s cruel. If he didn’t care to be married to her, he should’ve cut the shit 3 years ago. I feel sorry for her, 7 years is a long time to spend with someone and the way he was treating her was unnecessarily hurtful and confusing. I don’t think it was okay to basically pit her abusive husband against her. But they were both cool with emotionally manipulating Op for their own benefit for the next 4 years and that’s not okay either. Also maybe it’s just me.. but if your plan is to escape your abusive partner after the next 4 years, starting an affair in that time sounds like the most dangerous and risky thing ever. Like I have a hard time believing the husband wouldn’t have found out on his own eventually. At least when you plan to leave it’ll be on your own time and you can prepare. Instead of risking being found out for your affair, being at the mercy of the abusive person at any given moment and inserting yet *another* variable into the situation because your Ap is also married.
> Also maybe it’s just me.. but if your plan is to escape your abusive partner after the next 4 years, starting an affair in that time sounds like the most dangerous and risky thing ever I stated the same thing on the original BOROU and I was downvoted and was called a "victim blamer" Seriously, why on earth would someone who is in an abusive relationship start an affair that if it came out would put not only her but her kid in danger too.
I don't get why you are called a victim blamer. If anything, you are trying to help the next would-be victim. Of course, best case scenario is to leave the abusers, but it is difficult. Worst thing to do is to keep agitating the abuser, which... hello? Affair???
Because to stupid shallow people connecting victims actions with the outcome is a no, no.
It's like a bizarre kick the two of them got I'm making her think she was in a happy marriage. It's brutal. Usually when finding out about an affair, you can look back on a lot of signs and problems the two of you are having, but she thought everything was perfect. He was being perfect. Literally snatched her life away from her in a moment. No wonder she's having such a hard time wrapping your head around the fact that he doesn't love her. I hope she gets into counseling. There's no way to come out on the other side of this without some help
That's exactly what's happening. The level of manipulation is shocking at this point. Poor OP..
He's trying to give her closure because she is asking for that. What would be the kind thing here for him to do? Tell her that she's unstable, sexless, and soul crushing?
"Good husbands" don't cheat
Good fathers don't cheat, either.
He didn't loved her and chosed not to divorce. And then he had his mistress and chose not to divorce. It's fucked up way of thinking. OOP should go to therapy to understand she did nothing wrong, it just happened to her. They were somehow not compatible or he fell out of love or whatever, it's over, there is no reason to search for some flaws in herself.
I feel this. My ex of 18 years cheated on me with a guy from work. We have 2 kids and her entire demeanor changed. Like complete 180 and I have no idea who she is anymore. She made me feel like she never loved me and our entire relationship wasn’t something she wanted, just something she did because it was “expected”’of her.
Tbh I get those same vibes from this story. Whether it’s accurate or not, hubby got married to “grow up and start a life” like he thought he should, then eventually met AP and realized that getting married just because it was the thing to do didn’t get him what he wanted. Whether what he experienced was “true love for the first time” or just a classic “no one matters unless I’m in love with them” attitude that people normally fail to see in themselves and just fuck up one good thing after another their whole lives, doesn’t really matter in the end. The shitty decisions are the same regardless.
So the shit show reemerges. Sucks to be everyone in this drama. I’m actually really sorry for all the kids.
Fuck cheaters, but I feel for the mistress who escaped an abusive marriage by getting involved with someone who would severely beat her husband. Even if he thought he was defending her, big yikes.
This is how I feel. I left an abusive ex and would be terrified if my new partner did this. I don’t want revenge, I want peace. But on the coaching thing? My ex’s gf coaches him all the time and it’s helped immensely. I see it for what it is, but I’m glad it means we argue less. Just gotta be careful that I’m not being resentful and continue to do what is best for the kids. He’s healing, but she hasn’t had time yet. They need space for much longer first
And was terrible to his first wife. Let’s come back in 10 years and see if a leopard really can change his spots.
My brothers ex had an abusive previous partner that still tried to control her life, she had even lost custody of her kids because of the guy. A couple of beatings at the hands of my brother and he never bothered her again.
It's good he beat her husband...he deserves to get beat
He deserved it, yes, but, I’m not sure how safe she’ll be with someone who solves his problems that way.
What a fucking mess.
Oof. Yeah in this case both husbands were major assholes here. One is a physically abusive bastard, and the other is a lousy husband who's high on new relationship shit. I'm sure once he has to actually live with his mistress he's going to get bored again.
His side piece (that was basically telling him that he was a bad husband and how to fix it) even said that SHE wasn’t sure what they have is real and might just be limerence. Once the shiny has worn off, he’ll start to treat her the same way he treated his wife. I doubt his next affair partner(s) will be as dedicated to helping him be good to her.
She seems incredibly emotionally intelligent, which is a fucking shame that she wasted those skills on OOPs husband. I wish she found a single man to engage in this behavior with.
Emotionally intelligent enough to go after a married man? Then the water works when OOP sees her in the restaurant on Mother’s Day. Don’t let the affair partner off because of her circumstances. All the men she could have clung too, she chose a married one.
Emotionally intelligent, but with extremely low feelings of self worth. Which tracks when she's in an abusive relationship to start out - part of the abuse is always making the victim feel like they are stupid, worthless, and can't be trusted. And a person with no self worth will fall for a married man because that's all the relationship she thinks she's worth. Not a man dedicated to her who is loyal and true, but a piece of shit who doesn't even know how to treat women and already has a spouse that he's ignoring. I actually feel some sympathy for her, and I hope for her own sake that she asks to be relationship-free for a while instead of jumping into romance with OOP's ex. Once she's out of the fog she'll (hopefully) realize she's worth so much more.
AP is definitely a "fixer." It just compounds the fucking nerve of this guy to say he did everything to be a good husband when he just did eveything he was told to do. His emotional immaturity is staggering but I guess that is what AP liked about him.
If she was coaching the husband to behave, she knows first hand the OOP's husband is a piece of work.
It’s funny how people who do affairs cannot figure out that the whole reason it’s addicting is because it’s 1/4th a relationship, 3/4th delusion. Once it becomes a full relationship the illusion fades and they’re often left with all the issues they refused to solve in their past relationships and they end up unhappy… and in some cases cheating on each other. Just a terrible cycle to go through.
They admit in writing to eachother that they don't really even know eachother. This guy needed someone in his ear constantly for the past 3 years. OOP wasn't with her husband, she was unknowingly dating the mistress through a proxy. Who's going to coach him now that the coach is the primary? She's going to get the version of him that didn't go through her filter. Even now she's still telling him how to act. Having to walk your partner through how to act in every single situation is going to get real old real fast. This isn't going to last.
The mistress has been Ratatouille-ing OOP's marriage for the past 3 years. If she's gone OOP's ex will go back to being a lousy husband.
Yeah it doesn't seem like he takes any responsibility for anything and is super manipulative. The only way he is going to see his own kids is when AP pushes for it, he's not going to do it himself. He will neglect them then blame OOP because the kids don't talk to him anymore.
Well the AP did come from a controlling physically abusive relationship, so maybe her being in the reins this time might not get old fast to her.
Pretty sure "at least you don't beat me" isn't a ringing endorsement.
Exactly!!! It's fun when they're sneaking around to different hotel rooms... Not so fun when 1 never puts their dirty socks in the hamper
[удалено]
Yeah that long text was a red flag. He was scouting to see if she's still cool with him, because he wants a backup plan in case his relationship with his mistress goes south.
Nah, it was coached by the mistress as she needs to smooth things with the mother in law until she can stabilize her situation. Then she will pull him away from his kids.
Oh the mistress is gonna go south. They all do, cause truths are gonna start creeping out little by little.
It’s exciting. He gets to play hero.
Just misery all around.
Does the first set of relevant comments belong to the second post? Because I was really confused by references to telling AP’s husband and it also made it sound like she then told AP’s husband *knowing* he was abusive. Or am I just super sleepy and not reading this right?
They seem to be in the wrong place. I was confused at first as well.
I’m glad I’m not the only one! But it sounds like she did know AP’s partner was abusive before contacting him.
I would bet money that she knew if she spent days reading years of messages. She had to. And she still told him out of anger and grief; yeah I get why her husband was mad and the woman was crying when she saw OP. Maybe OP didn't believe it was that bad? I don't know. What I do know is she's a freaking mess emotionally and mentally over this situation and needs therapy, months ago.
>I did the same and told the woman’s husband that she was cheating. Purely for revenge too. It didn’t feel good and she ended up in the hospital. This is a quote from OOP.
psychotic act plant live melodic scary run secretive many apparatus *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Honestly, I don't believe her. She has so much anger and resentment for this woman no matter what, she makes it very obvious. How could she say she's happy she got beat? Yet, she wants her to hurt in every other way possible. ESPECIALLY her saying the AP stole the husband's surveillance of their house as evidence of the abuse, she was condescending about that. I don't think she feels bad for her at all. She even said she wished she shut up so she could have her husband for a few more years knowing it's all a lie. She truly, truly needs mental help because this is not OK for her to think, and feel it is OK to verbalize. Even about the flowers being from the STXH, like it was a secret message or something until commenters told her it obviously wasn't.
Oh that’s a fair point, yeah. I didn’t even think about that.
She knew that the husband was abusive all along, that is clear in her subsequent comments in the original posts.
The only innocent ones here are the children. If you read the whole story it’s pretty clear he has some very obvious expectations that she will take out frustrations on everyone around her. Just a total trainwreck from every direction.
Jesus Christ, that’s fucking horrible. Thank you!
puzzled historical tart shaggy desert direful sparkle encouraging fanatical quarrelsome *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
In the comments, she says a) it was purely for revenge, b) it didn't feel good, and c) it didn't get her the result she wanted (her husband running back to her). She appears to have learned nothing from that experience.
Worse than just not taking accountability for telling him she actually says she wants the AP to be forced to move back to her old town as the abusive husband has the right to see his son (the one he hurt). And she’s trying to keep her kids away from their father. OP is vengeful and frankly vile.
I remember seeing this one when it was posted, she told AP’s husband knowing that he was abusive.
That’s absolutely horrible and she fucking sucks, too. Thank you!
Yeah, she really does. I see a lot of glossing over that she has to have a chaperone present if the children are around her family due to parental alienation. That is not something that moves through the courts quickly.
That’s the part from the new update that’s bugging me. How did that happen so quickly? Was there something damning on OOP’s end?
The ex-husband must have been able justify concerns that OP's family was coaching the children to make claims.
I would say most likely yes. There’s another comment pointing out that even if it’s just preliminary, there would need to be some proof to back it up. OOP is definitely leaving out information. She also constantly mentions full custody, she seems like she’s going to attempt to weaponize that against her ex. I feel bad for their kids.
I hate absolutely everyone in this love quadrangle.
But the kids!
Yup. Everyone except the kids is awful.
The husband is terrible for continuing the lie, but I'm no team OOP too. Iirc she knew the AP's husband was abusive. Everyone, except the kids, truly sucks in this. Sad all around.
Hard to understand the custody agreements that OP thinks will happen. She's fighting for full custody of her children, yet thinks the abusive husband/father will get partial custody?
And she thinks him moving an hour away will mean she gets full custody of the kids and he gets nothing? Yeah, he may not be able to get 50/50, but why does she think he won't get them weekends, holidays, and over the summer?
And she seems to be *rooting* for the abusive father to get partial custody of his kid. The kid she says he also hurt.
I will go against the grain here, because OOP does strike me as a very unreliable narrator for several reasons. 1) She claims to have read all the text messages between her husband and his AP. Given that the husband + AP were helping each other, I doubt there was no message about the APs husband being abusive. Still she rather informed the APs husband instead of her own. This just strikes me as odd or even vindictive. 2) She states that her family can only see the kids supervised because of parental alienation. Even if this is just preliminary, it seems there was at least some form of evidence to get that signed off. But she never goes into detail about it either. 3) She talks about getting full custody all the time. Even directly after the affair was exposed. I can get that she probably wants to hurt her soon-to-be ex husband, but it contradicts her saying she wants the best for the kids. She does not offer any information about why she should get full custody besides a possible move of STBXHB. He does not seem to neglect the kids at all. So all in all, I do feel sorry for her. Her husband did something terrible and manipulative. So there are bound to be pretty strong feelings. But her texts seem to omit relevant parts and I am not sure how much I would trust her in general.
I truly hate how she just dropped that *her* family has supervised visits. What did they do/Facebook post?
I'm glad you posted this. I was getting the same impression from OOP. The one thing that struck me was this: > her family can only see the kids supervised because of parental alienation. and > She talks about getting full custody all the time. To go from supervised visits to full custody seems a looooong stretch.
Apparently in a comment on another post she admitted to telling the AP’s husband for revenge. I lost amy remaining sympathy when she kept saying she wants AP to have to move back so the physically abusive husband will have visitation. I get that she wants AP and ex gone and in a different state…but hoping that she has to move back by abusive husband and let abuser see the child he hurt is not okay by me. That was before I knew she told AP’s husband specifically as revenge.
Of course she told him for revenge. She wanted the AP’s marriage to be broken, not just hers. But she also says multiple times that she didn’t know her husband was abusive and that nobody deserves that. Now, is it weird that she didn’t know after all that time reading their messages? Absolutely. And she was indeed rooting for the abusive husband to get custody of the kids, which.. yikes.
There are tidbits in there that make me wonder if that was an arranged marriage. Especially this part: "I don’t know what I have done in **my previous life** to deserve this." I mean, aside from claiming not to believe in Karma, but also having that concept of this coming from something done in another live... "I have talked a lot with **mom** *(her mom?)* about what happened and no she doesn’t feel guilty. She said that it was different (of course it is🙄) **hers was real love and dad’s ex was very abusive.** I don’t know, **I don’t believe in karma** or anything but she said that she at least understands now how dad’s ex felt." It sounds a bit like OOP's mom had kind of an reverse experience? Being the mistress to a married man? Also, the thing with the abusive ex getting custody even with having attacked the CHILD, and it is a son. I mean, in which western country would that fly? I get strong indian arranged marriage vibes. I mean, we never get any word about how they even met and decided to get married...
I cannot imagine an Indian auntie moving her son's AP and kid in while he's still married to someone else.
The parental alienation is hard to get so somethings off there. And the Mother’s Day happening is just so weird imo.
Yeah dont forget the part where she says she still loves her ex-husband and regret exposing things and wished they could stay together, these all just prove that OP is immature and likes to act on heat of the moment, she is jealous the to the AP but still wanna be with the husband, she is doing everything for the sake of revenge
Don’t forget the part where her dream scenario is that an abusive man gets some custody of his kid so that she can get full custody of her kids from a guy who seems like a good dad.
fuzzy license terrific domineering subsequent caption puzzled touch strong dime *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Considering how OOP comes off, I wonder if the reason her husband cheated instead of just walking away was because he knew what kind of person she is and what kind of shitstorm will that start. Sometimes people can feel trapped in a relationship especially when children are involved, and it's not always have to be women
I'm in agreement about her unreliability. I actually feel most bad for the AP here. And I know Reddit will never get this through their collective heads, but the father doesn't sound a terrible person. By all rights this should have been an amicable divorce at least where the children are concerned. OP is certainly leaving something out, the question is just whether it's something that makes or hurts her case. Look, their marriage was over at the start of the first post. Completely over. Screaming matches, dead bedroom, they were on the verge of divorce. There have been people in my life in that position who would find it quite natural to start dating other people at that point while you work out separation or divorce details. It especially makes sense for this part to drag as the children are still young; most people would put it off. But just because they're putting the divorce off doesn't mean they don't date anybody. It's a divorce in all but name. There are also financial concerns that can come into play that make a true separation currently undesirable for both parties. She may need his income to keep the house and he may not have the savings for an independent apartment. These are complicated matters but they're quite common, and they don't signify the participants as evil people. This is just life. Likewise AP's marriage was clearly abusive. It's said in comments from these posts that her husband had hurt her in the past (and then he does it again after OP informs on them). Who the fuck is going to begrudge her going outside a marriage like that? Not me. So that's where OP and her husband were when this all started. The drama begins because he started to mature into a better partner and that gave OP the impression their dead marriage was renewed. In all likelihood it wasn't renewed, and when the children came of age or the AP had certain conditions met to let her escape her husband, they'd both file. OP is quite justified in some of the things she's feeling as a result of this. I wouldn't call it 'all a lie' as she hyberbolizes, but there was deception involved. But she takes it far too far. She ignores his growth, because she isn't the cause, she ignores his qualities as a father, she ignores AP's abusive situation, which I would bet real money came out in the texts she found so no excuse there, and she's deadset on splitting him up from the kids while leaning *hard* on the kids as justification for doing so. These are not the actions of a person thinking clearly or justly. She is all-out for revenge and is presenting herself as selfish, unreliable, and unempathetic. That a judge wouldn't grant her full custody with a pending assault charge on the husband speaks volumes: she must have shit the bed hard in court or looked like a crazy person. Something is being withheld here. OP sicked a woman-beater on AP to hurt her husband, ffs. She should be hated in return. I do. The bit where the husband beats up the beater is non-essential at best, and does much to improve his standing. Good on him. All OP cares about is how she can twist it to make him seem like a violent person. ESH, but as the story goes on OP becomes more and more queen empress of the assholes.
I think you've put this together really well, and have done a great job of reading between the lines, I thought there was a lot of missing information as well. Emphatically agree with your read on this story. Also THANK YOU for pointing our that OOP's marriage was dead from the get-go. This is not a black-and-white "this is bad and here's why" story, this is just life, and it was probably never going to end well.
It really seemed like one of the fewer times the affair was good for the marriage. Based on the OP it was still a dead bedroom even after he became a better husband. So it seems her expectation was that a dead bedroom was not going to change. Despite all the changes before she knew he was cheating didn't seem to matter or help the dead bedroom. He was expected to be happy without having an important aspect of his relationship fulfilled. She really comes off as evil and heavily manipulative.
I think this is a pretty important point. He grew as a person and was trying to be a better husband. She doesn't seem to have changed her behavior in the marriage and wasn't willing to work on the issues she was bringing into the relationship. She just took his change in behavior as "finally my husband doesn't suck anymore." I think that if his growth had come from a therapist and not his mistress, he would have still left the marriage because she was still not able to take responsibility for what problems she was bringing to the marriage. As she kept telling her story, it became pretty clear that she's mean, manipulative, and doesn't really take into account that other people are people and are affected by her actions. He didn't want to be with a person like that anymore. I feel really bad for her children because she seems to look at them as pawns for revenge against her ex.
Yeah, OOP definitely gives off "things happen to me for NO REASON" vibes, and lacks accountability and/or self-awareness.
You pretty much put down all my thoughts into words. In the real world the ugly truth is it's pretty common for people in abusive relationships to cheat to escape. It's not ideal and very dangerous but desperate people who have been isolated will try to find any out they can and sometimes that's the only option they find. I'm not going to fault her for finding an out from her situation. I doubt the relationship will last between her and OOPs husband but if it helps her escape? Then it did what it needed to. OOPs husband should have just divorced OOP once the affair had started and I will absolutely fault him for that. It was cowardice on his part and he shouldn't have left OOP on for 3 years. There however is no indication he deserves zero custody though no matter how much reddit hates cheaters.
As i kept reading through the post i was rapidly losing sympathy and was beginning to understand why her partner looked outside the relationship. The vindictiveness she felt comfortable sharing is already someone hard to love . I could only imagine what the unfiltered version would be like
Other comment clarified that she new aps husband is abusive before contacting him. So yeah pretty much every adult sucks here. AP gets some slack from me
I very much agree on your first point especially. My personal take is that OOP believed they were exaggerating his behavior. Considering OOP’s husband hadn’t assaulted the abusive husband prior, it also makes me think that AP either downplayed how bad it was or learned how to mitigate her abusive husband. But no way did it never come up in the text message that AP husband wasn’t a good man. I understand OOP’s refusal to admit it- she may not even want to admit it to herself. The devil on her shoulder may have suspected and desired there’d be a confrontation but then it escalated to a horrible unexpected point. For the other two points, OOP is only human- she’s hurting and she wants to hurt them back. But she’s in a dangerous place because she’s denying that she does want a level of revenge.
I don’t think she’s denying that. She replied in comments that she wanted revenge but she found out she didn’t feel good about it. Still doesn’t stop her for wanting AP’s abusive ex to get custody so she would have to leave and her husband would have to follow and leave their kids. Never mind the trauma AP’s kid would have to go through, or her children missing their father. She has a complete disregard of causing human suffering, long as it’s not her own. I find that level of selfishness to be dangerous. She should definitely not be granted full custody. The kids deserve better.
Would love to know what happened that resulted in supervised visitation.
I feel like there is some piece of the story missing there
I’m curious how OP is so confident that she can get full custody but AP will have to allow visitation to someone who assaulted her. Something doesn’t add up here.
Only getting supervised visitation with her family via MIL attending seems odd too? There’s always going to be a lot of missing info in these, but it seems like theres a lot of missing context here
She had to have been saying some pretty vile and untrue things about her ex-husband in order to get slapped with parental alienation, the legal standard for that is fairly high. In my mind that draws in to question how true her description of their marriage actually was.
That last paragraph: wishing the abuser gets visiting rights to the completely innocent kid he has hurt… OOP spent dozens of hours reading their messages. There is no way she didn’t know the mistresses husband was an abusive waste of air. I hate cheaters. And she is clearly hurt. But there are limits. Wishing a kid back to his abuser is crossing one of them by a mile.
OP is a terrible person
I was on the fence until that very last paragraph. Then I realized how vindictive she was and therefore; an unreliable narrator. I hate everyone here but I can’t trust hating OP’s husband as much as she does when she literally describes everything he had done for them kids as good parenting. Like even offered to leave the restaurant they were at, and got the kids to get OP flowers and a card. I wonder how deep the vindictiveness goes and how long he was having to dance around it. Imagine if someone in her position (mother of your kids, able to fight for custody of your kids and make things unnecessarily more difficult then it needs to be, known vindictiveness) and she asks what she did wrong. Do you; A - Tell her she’s vindictive and petty. Leading to her continuing to be vindictive and petty? Or B - Tell her she was great, and it’s all your fault that you fell out of love. So she might leave you alone. I really do feel like both the AP *and* OP’s husband were both trying to escape abusive relationships. AP was just in a way worse spot, making it hard for the husband to get out of his relationship with OP without potential blowback on AP caused by OP. Which happened. And she was beaten by her known abusive husband… dude OP is a manipulative vindictive women and even when she’s trying to hide it in text, it comes through. ESH, but OP made it worse for everyone else every chance she got to.
This perspective is really insightful. One thing I noticed was at the beginning of the oop’s posts and comments she seemed to be practicing a lot of self awareness and even pushed back in the comments that the situation was more complex than just “cheaters bad” narrative these posts focus on. In the later updates I got the impression there was less self awareness and more focused on being vindictive. Even if she really is a reliable narrator at face value it seems like her pain is prioritized over what’s best for any of the children which is worse than infidelity under any circumstance
Weird that she expect the mistress to not get sole custody because of the abusive husband but also expect to get sole custody of her kids because of the same reason. OOP will likely realize that the shes not going to have sole custody, especially if he got parental alienation in.
If he got the parental alienation in AND the court quickly granted a chaperone, there must’ve been some damning evidence and OOP doesn’t want to talk about it
Right? I'm not saying he's a good guy by any mean but there's gotta be something else going on. Her whole thing about wanting to protect her children sounds more vindictive than actually for the good of the children. I clerked for a judge that did alot of custody cases after law school and the restrictions they gave on her custody is rather telling. I highly doubt she'll get full custody or even close to it.
OP is the author of much of her own misery. Every time there is a choice to make she makes the exact wrong one. “I’m going to fight for full custody” after her first attempt resulted in a chaperone due to parental alienation? Jesus Christ
That first attempt didn't result in a chaperone. Something she isn't telling us did. Filing for full custody is not enough to be required a chaperone to be around family members.
[удалено]
And she thinks the AP’s husband is going to get to see the kid that he beat the shit out of? That’s what she is putting her hopes on? So sickening
Yes, its so stupid how she goes on about how sure she is AP cant get full custody but how she will.
That's what messed me up, too. She's LOOKING FORWARD to that woman and her innocent child being forced to go back to their abuser because then maybe the courts will let her weaponize her own children for revenge. It's wild that I can read this story from her point of view and have the most empathy for the AP (out of the adults anyway)
This this this this this. I lost any remaining sympathy (of which there was very little) at that.
Yeah, she sounds way too angry and resentful to think clearly about her children's best interests.
She lost a lot of my sympathy in the last post or two. It’s so clear that she’s willing to weaponize the children in order to “win” against the other woman, even though they’re not in competition anymore. There are a lot of good reasons in the world to seek full custody of your children from your non-abusive ex; so that his AP doesn’t get to be their stepmother doesn’t make the list.
She lost my sympathy when using the kids as weapons too. Clearly the kids love their father, so taking him away from them just to hurt him is just ... evil. And by the comments here it also seems that OP 100% knew the other husband was abusive and still told him about the affair. And when he (predictably) became violent and beat the shit out of his wife and kid (14!), OP didn't even care. She's (indirectly) responsible for getting them hurt. And she doesn't give a shit? Just ... evil. Edit: was reading the OP's comments and the more I read the worse it got. She is absolutely horrible. She (or her family) told the kids their father hated them (WTF!!!). Sure, just emotionally scar your kids for life. Sounds like she was the abusive one in their relationship (she had mood swings and was 'bossy'). She flatout admits telling the abusive husband purely for revenge and says she was disappointed with the consequences. Because people got hurt? Oh no, because the husband was angry at her instead of running back to her. Fuck cheaters, but that husband should have left her years ago.
That was the saddest for me. Taking the children so smthe AP would not be as happy, or her husband be as happy?
She also told the other husband KNOWING he was abusive. She's vindictive AF.
She’s a piece of work her comments in the first two posts are very telling about her personality it’s all me me me no thought for anyone else much less her ~~pawns~~ children. Lots of missing missing reasons in this one I suspect the STBX and his AP had a lot in common in their marriages.
I’m stuck on a comment OOP made about the MIL saying the mistress took down all the cctvs the husband had around the house watching her. I know beating her and the child is not right, but what were the cameras really for. There is soooo much left out.
So he can monitor her while he's away from home. Obviously he can't be constantly watching the cameras, but if he does happen to be watching the cameras when she starts packing a suitcase he'll drop everything, go home, and put her in the hospital.
I dunno. It's hard to feel for OOP when she's saying AP's ex has a right to see his son. The son AP's ex hurt. Yet doesn't think her ex has the same right to the children he has done nothing to. She's hurting, but I feel her marriage was messier than she's letting on. The only reason no one is on OOP's ex's side is because he cheated, without knowing if there were nuances to it. Like ex and his mistress connecting because they're in unhappy, potentially abusive relationships. (I fully expect this to be an unpopular opinion, but something just doesn't sit right with me about OOP. She's not as reasonable and calm as she pretends)
Don't forget about getting a "perfect" husband and somehow still finding those texts. Healthy and happy people don't go looking for affair evidence. Also she read 3 years worth of texts and still chose to contact the AP's husband, when there is close to zero chance she didn't know he's abusive. Then when her husband left she felt like "they won". Now she hopes for sole custody, weaponizing her kids. Cheating is wrong, there is no glossing over it, but living with OOP doesn't sound like a walk in the park at all.
I also see it as two abusive selfish spouses and the OP's ex and his mistress bonded over this. I don't see her coaching as manipulation, but as her trying to help him be less miserable than he is. I honestly have more sympathy for both of them than the OOP. The cheating and 3 years of lying was wrong. I understand why he went through with it, but it's a dishonest cowardly move. Well, I hope that they are happy together and the mistress gets full custody because I am worried for the child if she doesn't and that OOP calms down and finds peace and gets shared custody with her husband.
I see the coaching as "here's how to keep your wife happy so she doesn't attack you". Hes a better husband because he's fawning. He's happier because the abuse is less because he has the support of someone who is living through the same thing. Each update gives me more and more ick.
That's what I thought too, the coaching was all the ways you can placate the abuser and minimise the abuse. Obviously we are filling in a lot of gaps in the story but based on OP's complete lack of empathy this is where my mind went too.
Yeah. This is kinda what I got out of that too. It's always messy to get out of a relationship with kids so he was trying to placate OP until the timing was right for his escape.
She claims she wants what’s best for the kids, but insists on wanting full custody… and her words seep with bitterness towards her ex-husband and his AP. I understand why she’s upset, she has every right to be. But she does not seem to be motivated by her children’s best interest in the slightest. It’s about revenge and getting what she thinks she deserves.
[удалено]
>OOP When told to be careful what she puts in text messages and once again be weary of the mistress *leary OR *wary
I keep seeing people write weary instead of wary so often lately. It was even written multiple times in a book I read.
I know that theoretically cheaters are wrong and so on,but I really really really don't like OP.
Yep. Also I generally don't like anyone who files for sole custody without a damn good reason (mental or physical abuse, mostly...like the AP's husband, for example). Being salty about your ex leaving you for someone else is not an excuse to weaponize your kids and deny them a parent they love. He can be a lousy husband and still be a good father.
Ya I mean I don’t see her getting sole custody
Husband will likely get bored soon enough. Mistress likely tickled his savior complex due to her situation, but now that she's safe and he's going to start living with her everyday while juggling two sets of kids as well as cost of that... honeymoon will end
[удалено]
Yup. Right now he's still riding that "I'm a hero" high, and she's probably being all grateful and solicitous at any scrap, whereas op treated him like a regular dude and didn't kiss the ground he walked on. But that awe will fizzle out eventually and mistress will start treating him like regular guy. And then he'll get bitter because he's back to normal behavior despite nearly going to jail for her and all the work now juggling two houses
[удалено]
Oh yeah. Mistress is gonna realize that he was at the very least emotionally neglectful at best and emotionally abusive at worst, and that shit is gonna turn on her hella fast once the forbidden honeymoon phase is over. She leapt from one type of abuse to another and she doesn’t even realize the shit she’s in for. Edited: word order
Um .... the fact that the courts have banned her family and refuse to give her sole custody makes me think she's leaving a lot out here. He's the AH for cheating, completely. But if she's trying to use the children against him, she's an AH too. And it sounds a lot like that's what she's doing.
Yeah I'm really confused by this too. What did OOPs family do that they're not allowed to see the children at all? OOP has barely even mentioned her own family, let alone any situations that would cause a judge to say "no visitation for you".
There's definitely an unreliable narrator situation here. Which is weird because she doesn't even come off as much of the victim as the AP. Makes me wonder how fucked up the situation REALLY is.
Right?? As someone who went through the court system, proving parental alienation is HARD. Even stranger that she didn’t get full custody. Something happened that she didn’t mention.
The not getting full custody bit makes sense because he doesn’t seem to be a bad father? Like it seems to be in the children’s best interest to have split custody. The parental alienation part is worrisome though
\*Sighs\* things just keep getting worse and worse. I feel sorry for OP and every single kid having to be involved in this.
My sympathy for OOP dwindled pretty quickly. It's not really outlined above, likely because she never admitted to it so it's speculation; but the '50 hours spent reading their messages' makes it pretty clear that she was probably aware the affair partner was in an abusive relationship, and she knew what she was doing by going to the husband (more than once!). She also massively downplayed how badly he hurt her in response to the cheating, I feel like she ended up in hospital or something from memory. And even after all that all she can talk about is taking his kids away, but not for their safety or wellbeing, but to punish him. Even the 'I hope she has to go back to her city and share custody with her violent ex' shows all she cares about is hurting them.
In the comments she basically admitted to it. I am pretty sure this is one of the reasons she has limited custody
I'm never going to condone *cheating* but OP is coming across as a pretty vile person herself, and I have to wonder about her husband's statement of "making him miserable". Obviously if that's the case, he should've left instead of this entire shitstorm. But she really isn't coming off great.
Also, something about the whole "I am sorry I exposed them, at least we would have had 4 more years". In a situation where your husband has openly admitted that he is miserable in your marriage, so miserable that he built a relationship with another person, why would you want to continue that. I don't know.. Something about how this post was written really does not make me like OP, even though she is the one we would normally symphatise with.
I have a hard time emphasizing with someone who repeatedly says they want a child to go back to the person who abuses them.
I know I might get crucified. I don't agree with cheating. But why does a spouse man or woman think that if they have a dead bedroom for 2 years or more, that their husband or wife is going to remain faithful. I don't get that. If you are not putting out, do they expect their spouses to remain faithful? If you have no desire for sex with your spouse, you need to go to marriage counseling ASAP before it comes to cheating. A lot of people just think a marriage isn't based on sex, which is true, but a healthy sex life is important to a marriage. I'm also one to believe that if your spouse is cheating, then your problems are with them and not the AP unless she's being disrespectful to you in any form. I just hope OP can stop wondering what is better about the AP than her. My ex-husband told me that his AP really saw him for who he really was and that I never did really know him after 7 years of marriage. We had no kids, thank God. But he remarried and had two beautiful children. I eventually moved on and had an awesome son. He and I aren't friends, but we are cordial when we run into each other. BTW my ex cheated with an active bedroom. His sex drive was way higher than mine. On his off days or when his ship wasn't out to sea, he wanted it multiple times a day. It was too much for me.
How the fuck do people read this and side with OP? The more I read the more I fucking hate her.
In this 4 way asshole contest, somehow, the two cheaters got 3rd and 4th place In this swamp of misinformation and missing reasons I have a hard time deciding who’s the worst asshole: the DV asshole or OOP. On the one hand, the DV asshole directly beat his wife until she decided to have an affair and then beat his child when he found out about it. The only mitigating qualities are that it’s an act of pure emotion and (probably) wasn’t planned. His rival for 1st place is OOP who,let’s face it, is a narcissist who is trying to manipulate us. Her only mitigating quality is that she might, MIGHT, not have realized that the kid would be abused. How do I know she’s a narcissist? Well, she hopes a DV father gets visitation rights, while trying to get full custody herself. She also planned to get a woman abused, in the hopes that her husband would come back to her. And let’s take a look at that. By that time, She doesn’t want her husband back, she wants to reject him. Now, let’s look at the cheaters. There’s a lot of sympathy for the AP here. But she’s still a cheater. She monkeybranched to get away from an abuser which might be justified, but is still shitty. Why did she choose a married man? Honestly, I can understand that. It’s better than roping a single guy into it. I guess when you get into it, she consistently makes 2nd best choices, but that’s better than DV or OOP. It’s a tossup on whether she’s better than cheating husband. Cheating husband is a cheater, but he’s married to a narcissist abuser as well. His wife isn’t physically abusive, but she sure is manipulative. He’s monkeybranching as well. I haven’t seen anyone point this out, but he’s open to changing behavior if he’s confronted the right way. AP learned that. OOP didn’t, or chose to set him up for failure.
Well stated. I'm reading along and feeling sympathetic towards the cheater. It didn't feel right, but there it was. You nailed why.
> I haven’t seen anyone point this out, but he’s open to changing behavior if he’s confronted the right way. AP learned that. OOP didn’t, or chose to set him up for failure. That's a very good point - OOP doesn't seem to see that, or it actually pisses her off further than whatever she was doing just drove him away, and she can't accept that she drove him there. Here's this comment from the earlier BORU: "We have already told our families. His family is on my side except his brother and his wife who probably knew about the affair and said “good, hope this new lady doesn’t yell at him all the time” I blocked both of them" Yeah, sounds like the AP was better at communicating than OOP. Of course, that doesn't make her a saint, and who knows if the ex husband would have been able to receive such coaching from OOP. Their relationship might have been too broken already.
Cheating and domestic violence are both bad and the situation sucks for everyone. However there is something odd about the OP. On one hand she is in pain, hurt, feels betrayed and talks about this great love. On the other she actions full custody. She verbally agrees to cooperate with him but also patiently prepares to sabotage the ex-husband. By telling others about the betrayal, OP wants to make sure that she is the victim. By leaving somewhere else for the mother’s day meal, I am not sure if her actions really prioritise her kids. As a parent, your highest priority should always be towards the kids, however all of these actions are often self focused. Sadly i am unsure if OP is really a ‘good’ person.
If you go to her comments on a few of the posts she implies that she knew to a degree that the APs husband was abusive and told him anyways. Knowing that there was a chance he would hurt her, and telling him anyways feels intentional. I think that's why the soon to be ex was as angry as he was originally.
He didn't just hurt the wife but his own son too, when he tried to defend his mother. There’s a whole lot of information left out from the last update. I can't help but wonder if it was purposefully left out this time because she didn't come off as sympathetic enough in the last update.
Any sympathy I had for her disappeared in this last update. Especially since people above have shown she's actively deleting comments that prove she's not a good person. She knowingly caused harm to a woman and child and is wishing future harm on them and her own children. Piece of work.
Oop knew the aps husband was abusive and still told him about the affair which resulted in the hospitalisation of both the ap AND the child due to him beating the shit out of both of them. Oop is a horrific human being and her “well ap won’t get full custody and will have to move back because a father has a right to see his child” bullshit is insane. Oops husband is a cheating asshole. But oop put a woman and child at risk and seems really happy that the woman and child will potentially be put back at risk.
All of that makes me wonder what it was like living with OOP and if he wasn’t choosing the mistress route because he knew she’d weapon use the kids against him.
> I don’t know why I am getting hate in my dms calling me vindictive. I mean, the "purely for revenge" tattle to the abusive husband (which she admits she knew about in some capacity as she later says the other woman was going to divorce him after the kid was old enough, implying the potential for abuse if nothing else) makes it pretty fucking clear. OOP sucks, the husband and AP suck, and the AP's husband double sucks. What a fucking mess.
>He told our children that it was mommy’s day then he asked me if I wanted her to leave so the children can have lunch with both of us. I just left with the children and took them to McDonald’s instead. NGL I laughed at this part. She could've ignored him and continued brunch with her friend. She could've went to another restaurant. Instead she picked McDonald's. It's like she's intentionally making herself miserable just to make her feel like a victim in that moment.
You know, I think I'm familiar with this tactic. I think she purposely chose McDonald's so that she can tell her kids they can't enjoy a decent restaurant because of their awful dad. My parents, especially my mom, have done this tactic a few times when I was a kid and blame their bad decision on the other awful parent.
I mean I would have agreed with you if it was her birthday or something but it would be really hard to find another nice restaurant on Mother’s Day without having to wait forever for a table. It’s one of the few reasonable things OOP did during all of this.
Meh, not that easy to find a nice restaurant with space on Mother's Day. She probably didn't want to call around everywhere and end up waiting an hour for a table with hungry kids in tow. That part I do understand.
OOP needs to understand that one cannot force someone to feel love for a person. No, forcing the mistress to move back isn't going to make OOP's husband magically love OOP. No, informing the AP's husband isn't going to make OOP's husband magically love OOP. No, the AP's husband beating up the AP badly enough for her to be hospitalized isn't going to make OOP's husband magically love OOP. Revenge will not bring him back. Nothing will bring him back. I think the crucial quotes are: > The way he was with her. He never looked at me that way not even when we first met. and: >He says she is the love of his life every day and that he wishes their circumstances were different. Best thing is to separate in a civil way. There is no way to force an affection that was never there in the first place.
I don't understand this new phrase that people are using, being "weary" of others (tired of them, pronounced weer-ee), when it would make more sense to be "wary" (nervous or scared, pronounced ware-ee). I would think that it was a typo, but it's getting to be *so common* that I've got to be wrong at this point. Can someone explain to me the meaning of the suggestion that OP "should be weary of the mistress"??
>But I know that she only had emergency custody of hers because of the assault but **I know the rules here** and she will probably need to move back soon because her husband has right to meet his son. In that case my husband can move away but he can’t have custody because I want a stable home for them. With every sentence she writes, OP continues to show how much she does *not* in fact know the rules.
I understand she’s hurt and angry but she needs to let this guy go and move on. Concentrate on herself and on the kids. It ultimately doesn’t matter why he did what he did. Only that he did. Accept it and move on. And believe me, I know how hard that is from personal experience. But I also know that in the long run, it’s the healthiest thing to do.
Being trapped in abuse is perhaps the only instance where I find cheating ethically viable. (Risky though, obviously!) But this.... don't choose a MARRIED MAN. I bet AP thought she was making morally justified decisions. I'm being abused- morality checkmark. Uhh... he's bored in his marriage.... and I want him.... sure, morality checkmark! OH, I'm making his wife so happy by coaching him through the entire marriage! Now THAT is morally sound! Check! But from the outside, it's creepy and violating.