TL;DR: Is there any way to salvage a group relationship/help a friend who's hurt after his wife insisted on non-monogamy as their marriage deteriorated, and she is seeing another member of our friend group? Is it wrong to cut the guilty parties off totally?
Sorry in advance, this is heavily detailed and has a confusing timeline, and is super long:
So my best friends and I form a tight group of six, four of us went to high school together (A-D, all 28 all M, all been friends for 14 years), and have one wife (E) and one fiancee (F). A and E have been together since they were 17, married at 24/23. A is, frankly, pretty emotionally unstable and can be needy, and E has always supported him and been his rock throughout his life. She (E) is also fairly OCD and controlling, but has always seemed put-together. Over the course of their marriage, they've made allusions to the possibility of being non-monogamous and once were 2/3 of a threesome before their marriage (which they both admitted to feeling gross after), but never explicitly said anything about being non-monogamous since getting married.
Mid-last summer, after about 3.5 years of marriage, they confided in me (B) that they were going to explore polyamory in their marriage, which I mostly advised against. Apparently it was E's idea, but she suggested that it would work for them because A is bisexual and hasn't had many positive experiences with men. A has said after the fact in recent months that he felt she was basically saying "I need this, if you don't let me do this, we're getting a divorce." She may not corroborate this if you asked, but I still think his feelings are valid. When they became poly, E started romantically seeing an old friend, and A met someone casually. At this point, C, D and F were unaware of them being poly.
During this time, friend D was fairly estranged from myself, C, and F, because of some issues with his possessive (now ex) girlfriend. A and E were still friends with D during this time. (It's not SUPER relevant, but D has also casually been seeing his married co-worker this year who is herself, estranged from her husband).
In October, D came back in with the full group, and E became pregnant. A, with his emotional problems, had been confiding in me for some time (since at least August) that their marriage had been struggling, and his depression became progressively worse as a result, and at least once said it was because of the non-monogamy, but later denied that.
In the late winter, they formally separated, and continued living together, with A moving out last month. She lost the baby in January. The rest of us have been trying to emotionally comfort A and keep him from doing something he'd regret, while encouraging him to cut the cord. Only around March of this year did they confide in C and F about their non-monogamy (which also forced me to keep this huge secret from them up until then).
However, after their split, both A and E insist on staying friends. When they separated, E even insisted that they didn't want us to take sides, and that our whole gang shouldn't change a dynamic at all (which we quickly learned A couldn't handle whatsoever; rightfully so). E played the separation as her being unable to constantly deal with A's emotional issues anymore and being a crutch for him, which I honestly believe, and A did as well, so he blames himself for the WHOLE marriage dissolving. She continues to talk to him, and insists to us that she's basically talking him off the ledge every night, and he still lets her see their dog like once a week.
BUT THEN, yesterday, it just came out that sometime in October, A, D and E entered into a throuple, with A leaving the tripod around New Year's because he was uncomfortable with the situation. D and E continued without him, and they've been sleeping together since then, even though they both allege it's just a hookup. C, F and myself are furious and disgusted, and we want to cut off all ties with D and especially E, because of the constant lying about the details of their split, all she's done to hurt our best friend in the last year, and the perceived continued manipulation of his emotions after the split (when he should be recovering), but also, the fact that she still thinks we should all be a tight friend group, and nothing has changed, even when she knows A is struggling being around her more often. She even guilt-tripped him today for telling me about she and D dating, and he's mentally spiraling again as a result.
We feel like she's continued to make this seem like no big deal while keeping these really heavy secrets from us, in which D is complicit, while continuing to hurt our friend and then play the victim, and also stunting A's recovery by making him keep these secrets from the other three of us. Are we in the wrong for wanting to cut off E and D? Is there a way to honestly and constructively resolve this, or get E to leave our friend alone so he can heal?
Submitted May 23, 2021 at 06:49PM by CaptainGiraffehand https://ift.tt/3uhewFL
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