Hey all. I'm 33M, I was with my ex [34F] for 6 years, we've been separated 2. A year after we got married, I found out she'd started up an affair with a co-worker. Up until that point I thought our relationship was great - she would tell me I was wonderful, the best person she knew, wanted to grow old with me, etc. even as she was cheating. I never had a sense that things were bad & so I never saw it coming. After I found out she'd been cheating, I was immediately gaslit and made to believe that things were bad, I had blame to hold, she'd been unhappy for awhile, et cetera. Fortunately for my own sanity, I still had all the little cards and notes that she'd written me - including 1 from about a month before it all unravelled, telling me that marrying me was the best thing she ever did. The point of bringing all of that up is, i'm pretty certain that I was a decent partner & relatively blameless, which I think is relevant when we start talking about friends picking sides. Which is where this is going.
That was 2 years ago, I kicked her out, separated, filed for divorce, told her to F-- off when she came crawling back a year later (after it had ended with the co worker) telling me she'd never stopped loving me & asking for a 2nd chance, etc. There were a lot of things done that I found very hurtful. She more or less ruined my faith in marriage, and trashed my faith in people. How can I believe anything anymore when things seemed so good?
Honestly it's been a really hard time. It's the worst thing I've ever been through, and frankly, who gets which friends was the least of my worries for a long time. I've tried to be as mature and adult as possible about all of this. I've not attempted to make mutual friends pick a side because I haven't felt it was fair on them. Some of them simply drifted away from us both. Some of them very definitely picked her side (all women). Some of them drifted towards me but kept being friends with her. Only 2 (both guys) have declared that they've taken my side & fucking hate my ex, even though I've never asked for it.
Those who aggressively picked her side, I've simply cut out of my life. I mean, one of them started trying to tell other mutual friends not to meet with me, and to try and poison the well before we'd even met by insinuating that I held a lot of blame for what happened. But that is simple to deal with and fine - screw those people.
Where I really struggle is that there are a few mutual (all female) friends who have been there for me during all of this and we've grown really close. Not in any romantic sense. They know how much this thing destroyed me. They know how much pain I was put through. They know ins and outs not detailed here but that lift this whole story into even more painful places. I mean, i'll give you one little detail out of many, just to illustrate; My ex tried to engineer me going for a job interview in another country, me paying plane tickets and hotel rooms out of my own pocket, just so that i'd be out of the way on a particular day. Things just get worse from there. They know how manipulative she was. They know what the scale of the betrayal was.
Yet I've always said to these mutual friends, I could never ask you to stop being friends with my ex. And I meant it.
Now, I removed/blocked my ex on social media (and I don't go on FB often), but, from one of the feeds of one of those friends, I just saw pictures from a lunch that my ex hosted. These mutual friends all attended. It's really hard to see pictures of them all laughing and smiling together. I guess on an emotional level, I don't really understand how they can know how much she hurt me, what she did behind my back, and still be friends with her.
Seeing those pictures makes me want to cut ties with these people. I know it's a kneejerk emotional response. It's also not an easy thing - like I said, I've grown pretty close to these people. But by this point I feel like, if you know all that you know, and you're still cool hanging out with her, then I want nothing to do with you. There's definitely a childish aspect to me wishing they'd pick my side, but, like I said, I'd told these friends I'd never ask them to do that. Yet here I am, feeling upset I realise, because in effect they haven't picked a side. God, right now I just feel like people are shit and it's really getting me down, and I'm really confused what the right thing to do here is. I place great value on keeping my word. I think maybe I made a promise that I thought would work fine before I saw the reality of what it means. Maybe I was wrong to make that promise. Maybe I just need to handle my own emotions, be mature about it, and realise that this is what making that promise means. Or maybe i'm right to feel upset about this. Maybe I need better friends. About the only thing i'm pretty certain of is that if the roles had been reversed, I'd be persona non-grata and none of these women would be hanging out with me.
I really need the perspective of helpful internet strangers who aren't as invested as I am in this, to make sense of this.
Thanks for taking the time to read my bollox.
TL;DR: Split from cheating ex. Despite telling them it's OK, I feel uneasy seeing mutual friends still hanging out with ex, because they know that she hurt me in the worst possible ways & yet still like her. Do I keep these friends?
Submitted April 05, 2019 at 05:00AM by MountainLeader http://bit.ly/2Vo30rD
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