# Trying to forget hubby's "just a friend" from long ago



## Tabitha (Jun 17, 2014)

I just really need to vent or I think I’ll explode from too much thinking. This will be a novel because I’m a writer and I don’t know Reader’s Digest version of anything, so grab a cup of coffee and tell me I’m wrong about this old friend’s motives or if I read her correctly. I don’t discuss marital issues with friends, so I hesitate to drag this up in person with one of them. I’ve lurked here for awhile to see if others have had similar problems and finally decided to just plunge right in and ask you guys. I feel rather petty because nothing really happened, but…..

First off, hubby and I are both around 50, married 25 yrs, met in grad school, no kids. He’s a great guy, and I love him very much, but he started becoming a “jerk” about 8 yrs ago, but we didn’t realize that the originating cause was a powerful SSRI (anti-depressant) he was put on for anxiety (first parent's death and lots of work stress). We didn’t connect subsequent behavior changes with the med (until last year). It also caused alcohol cravings, and when we realized he was drinking too much, he put me in “charge” of the beer in the house/fridge so that kept him from drinking too much. The drug itself (generic is venlafaxine) is known to sometimes cause alcohol cravings or abuse in some. It can also “impair judgement” and “loss of the ability to inhibit oneself”—couple this with drinking, and you get the picture. Most of our arguments during these last years had that as its genesis. Even though he knew I was helping—and he wanted it because he knew he couldn’t trust himself all the time about it—I know he also resented it.

And so, that’s the setting…..

About the time he went on the med, an old female friend of his from junior college contacted him. He was friends with her for 1 year before they went to separate universities in different states. She liked him way more than he liked her (he said he never felt an attraction for her, and he had enough girls he WAS interested in). She’d asked him on several “dates” in hopes of something more. The last time was after they were in separate schools—she invited him to a ball game and hoped he’d stay the night (she planned to have sex with him), but he sensed something and headed back to his school after the game instead. That was the last time they saw each other, and their letters trickled to a stop within the next year as she finally started dating someone. I heard this story back when we were dating—during that time when you’re getting to learn about each other’s past, etc. (and heard about all his other real girl friends and “liaisons”), so I know he only considered her a friend, nothing more. Since I always had guy friends, I never thought anything about it.

Anyway, about the time he started the meds (8 yrs ago or so), he got a letter at the house from this friend (who lived about 500 miles away) who’d tracked him down via their alumni assoc. She’d just gotten a divorce. She wanted to “catch up” with him and wrote that she’d reconnected with a few of “the gang". I asked him if he was going to write her back, and he said “nope—don’t have time”. However, I suggested that any old friend deserved to have a reply—I know I enjoyed catching up with a few over the years, and I’d have been disappointed if someone didn’t at least acknowledge a letter. I figured that’s all it would be—it’s all I’ve ever done. He wrote out a short reply, and gave it to me to mail. She wrote back, giving her email address (because that’s easier than snail mail of the old days, she suggested), so this time I wrote her—to her email address—saying that he’s very busy and not one who keeps in touch much with anybody, even family (truth, from all my years of witnessing it being that way) so she wouldn’t be disappointed when he didn’t email her. She and I exchanged a couple of emails, and in one she said she could understand why I might not like it that an old female friend wanted to correspond with my husband. She called him “the best man I’ve ever known.” She proceeded to tell me that her own husband had been looked up by an old high school girlfriend, they emailed for awhile, later met for lunch, and it eventually developed into an affair. Oh really now!?! So, I put her on the Christmas card list and didn’t encourage any further emails. Done, right?

What I didn’t know is that I must've made her mad when I said hubby wasn’t the type to “keep in touch”, and she set out to prove me wrong. She knew the company he worked for, so she called his office and she got his business email. Now here’s where I wish hubby had said something to me, but in his defense, he knew I was aware of her contact, etc. And heck, he didn’t tell me things he was supposed to tell me (emails with his family, making plans, then them mad when we didn’t show up—because he didn’t tell me or fwd their emails). 

So, moving forward about 2 yrs, and we’ve moved halfway across the country for his job. Very stressful time—new, harder position, his mom died, we were building a house, his drinking barely under control. His med causing a new side-effect—severe nighttime “restless legs” (more like JERKY legs, all night)….combine that with sleep apnea and unrelenting snoring, and I finally took refuge—with his approval—in the guest room. It was a horrible summer. He gets home from work, eats, heads to his home office to continue “working" on computer. One evening I sit on his desk to catch up with him, and his email is open. I glance at it, nothing registering at first—the usual work names I’ve seen for years. Except for one—that friend. There’s 3 in his inbox. The one that caught my eye was on top and subject was “Read this first!!!” I asked him about it. He very casually said who it was from when I asked. I guess he wasn’t prepared for my next question, though, “can I read it please?” Uh oh. No was his answer, then he deleted them. 

Now, up until this time, I had no reason to really worry about my husband (except for the drinking and general sometimes “jerkiness”). I also knew that right then, he was under a ton of work pressure (which I guess is why there were several emails from her left in inbox because he hadn’t been able to get to them). He had a huge deadline to make the next few days in preparation for an overseas meeting. I knew I had to let him get through that before we talked more. I was pretty cool to him that evening and next day, then he left for his trip, and all was “back to usual.” A few days after he got back, I brought it up and reminded him of how her husband had gotten caught up with an old friend and ended in an affair and that he’d better think twice if he didn’t think she wanted something from him. His eyebrows went up—he didn’t remember that detail of her divorce. Anyway, 2 months later and it’s Christmas. I asked him if we were still sending her a Christmas card, and he gave me an adamant NO. I asked if he still emailed with her, and he said no—that she emailed too much and he usually deleted them anyway.

Over a year later, and he changes companies (and therefore email addresses). He gets up on LinkedIn with the job change. A few months after that, she sends him a LinkedIn request and very short “hope you’re well” message. I see it about 2 weeks later. I mentioned it, and he said he just ignored it (not technically—so I “ignored” it for him by clicking the ignore button). I then asked him if he’d given her his new contact info when he changed jobs, and he said no. I “bet” him he’d be getting an email from her soon—to his personal email that he had listed on LinkedIn, and sure enough she did another week later. It was totally innocent and short; I think the subject line was “not interested” and the rest was something like: “not interested in messing with your life, never was. Just hoping everything is going well in your career and your personal life.” I took that to mean that it had crossed her mind that the reason he dropped their correspondence was because he thought she was messing in his life. I figured maybe that meant he talked about our marriage and she was offering up “advice”. 

During the time of their apparent emailing, he’d made a comment that floored me and hurt my feelings—he told me that I didn’t love him anymore and that I’d already pulled away from the marriage….because I no longer slept in the same bed with him. Whaaat? I thought he knew why—he DID know why. Anyway, I stripped the guest room so it wouldn’t be convenient for me and went back to our bed, but it was impossible to sleep there with the thrashing about—I still ended up on the sofa. But, I had an idea and filmed him with my phone of his jerks, kicks, and SNORING and showed it to him. He couldn’t believe how bad it was (and realized why he never felt refreshed in the mornings). I always wondered where he’d come up with that—I now figured it had to be her!

The LinkedIn message and email sparked a bit more discussion about her, and he said that at first he hadn’t thought anything about it—she was just an old friend, and it was fun catching up and talking about old times, but that in the end, he realized she “might’ve" wanted more. He told me she’d told him that she’d planned on losing her virginity to him after that football game he attended at her school—she had it all planned that he’d stay in her room with her, absent roommate, but he drove back to his school instead. Why would this come up in conversation now?

I overreacted and was all upset—and he was mad that this was from so long ago, and that he “hadn’t done anything”, but my menopausal hormones were in full swing, and I guess I got a bit paranoid, so I wrote her and told her to stop trying to contact my husband—to take the hint that since he hadn’t given her his new contact info and hadn’t responded to her LinkedIn request, note, and later email that he didn’t want contact with her anymore. I “told her off”—that I knew exactly what she had hoped to gain by reconnecting with him. And a bit more. I worried she might be the type to keep trying with him. She wrote back, and instead of instantly saying something like she was soooo sorry and never in a million years would she have wanted to cause problems in his marriage and is horrified that I thought that of her (and thereby making ME feel bad). Instead, she jumped all over me, being “insulted” for both of them and on and on. One GOOD thing she said was “what I don’t get is, how you don’t know how committed he is to you and your marriage”. (Whew!). Hubby doesn't know I wrote.

I wrote her back, explaining why I'd thought what I did—about them both. That if everything was above-board, then he shouldn’t have deleted those emails I asked to see (which he much later said was because I’d have misconstrued them but no explanation as to what was actually in them); that if he was so busy with work and had little time for anything / anyone, then he should’ve been spending it doing something with me instead of emailing with her; that it shouldn’t have been behind my back (in her Christmas notes to us, she acted like it was the only time in the year she was in contact—or so it seemed to me). I wrote that it was a stress-filled time that can be critical in marriages: major relocation, death of his last parent, end time of my last parent, job stress, building a house, heavy drinking, etc. He didn’t need to be “seeking counsel” with someone who wasn’t a friend of the marriage, someone who might’ve had ulterior motives of her own, someone who could remind him about their teen years, etc. I ended it with an apology in case this was just menopausal hormonal paranoia and to look me up on Facebook or send us a Christmas card if she really wanted to be friends…..

Anyway, a few months after all that was all over, he had a health crisis and it was finally figured out that his med had been causing quite a few problems over the years (including the restless legs that miraculously disappeared after the first med decrease). He started weening very slowly off it, and when he was about 50% off the med, he said he could feel a fog lifting from his brain and said some of the things I’d been upset about in the previous year simply "hadn’t been him". He also couldn’t remember a lot of our disagreements nor could he remember the family drama we’d gone through with his siblings when he mom was dying (that was a big eye-opener). 

All was (is) good……then last week I came across a book in our bookcase that I didn’t buy—he’d brought it home from his old job. He'd said someone had given it to him (he’s not a reader, so he gave it to me, and I’d put in the bookcase). I was tossing books in a box to go to Goodwill the other day, and I thumbed through it before tossing it and noticed a note tucked inside. A typed letter from the friend. The book was a gift on his birthday, the letter was platonic but flowery, dripping with compliments (written the year BEFORE I knew about the emails of last year). She twice called him an “amazing man” and commented on his amazing qualities; she said she was proud of him. That his friendship was one of the biggest gifts in her life; she was so grateful for him. From the letter, I realized that they’d been in contact since the very beginning and that she’d been calling him at his office, AND sending him presents to his work address. It’s like she’d studied “The Other Woman 101: Top things to say to your married man because he might not be hearing them at home after 25 yrs of marriage”; send a book that could spark discussion about the path taken in life (she just didn’t know he’s not a reader). He said he honestly doesn’t remember getting the book from her, never looked at it, and never saw the letter. I believe him—the book was pristine with unbroken spine. 

I’m just unreasonably mad right now. Hubby doesn’t get it—that seeing that book is like it’s just now happening, even though I know it’s from 2-3 yrs ago. I’m mad that another woman thinks her long-suffering friend (from whatever woes he might’ve told her—the med made him feel “stuck in a miserable existence” at times with no real feelings for much of anything) really is married to a witch because where the friend got to see an amazing man, she thinks I saw a man in the middle of a mid-life crisis (from my letter, description of our then situation) and that I don’t appreciate what I have, etc. I want her to know she didn’t fool me (or could I have totally misread her motives?). 

I have a vivid imagination and I toyed with the idea of sending the book and note back to her with another note from me, this time with me knowing MORE of the story.

In her reply to me last year, she said she didn’t need this kind of drama in her life, so she was “finished with both of us”….that her marriage had been filled with drama and she wanted peace. I find myself wanting to tell her that if she hadn’t wanted drama in her life, then she shouldn’t have set out to have a secret relationship with a married man behind his wife’s back. Hubby said during our last discussion he kind of felt like she was a hypocrite—it’d happened to her marriage, and yet here she was, trying to do it to someone else’s. I want her to know that. But that’s mean. I know it’s over and in the past, but reading that note, it was RIGHT NOW in my heart. I also worry about what she might write back to me if I did that. What if one of those times he was writing to her, he was drinking? Loss of inhibition, etc. He could’ve said something to make her think she might could get more….who knows. Anyway, that’s why I’m here, venting. Hoping that’s enough for me—to discuss her motives, to realize I’d read them right and that I’m not a bad person for suspecting it and putting a stop to it. 

If you’ve read this far, thanks! I feel better….I think. I just know I need to get her out of my head, one way or another. Hubby doesn’t understand why I feel the need to discuss it. He’s the type who won’t dwell in the past—sure wish I were that way! It’s just that I never felt my curiosity was satisfied about those “secret emails”. I know he didn’t do anything (physical with her, nor do I believe he would have), and he quit writing her without me having to insist on it—I just made sure he knew how she’d said her marriage ended and told him I thought she looked him up in hopes she’d have it work out for her—like it had for the “other woman” in her own marriage. So what’s my problem? Finding the note in that book has just taken me to a level of anger that I’ve never known before. 

Anyway, thanks for listening.


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## Openminded (Feb 21, 2013)

Of course you're angry. She's after your husband. And his refusal to let you read the emails was a red flag. Are you sure she's not still in touch with him -- she sounds very persistent. I think she's convinced he's the love of her life and now all she has to do is make him realize that.


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## catfan (Jan 12, 2013)

Your problem is that your husband isn't honest and telling you what she all send and said. For instance not showing your those emails. This would linger on my mind too and make me distrust him. As long he doesn't share this, he is not being working together with you for the marriage. Or giving you peace of mind it's really over now...


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## Coffee Amore (Dec 15, 2011)

I wouldn't encourage my husband to keep in contact with an old friend who had an interest in him. That never seems like a good idea. Maybe it's me but that woman wouldn't go on my Christmas list nor would I encourage him to send a short note to her. Of course that's all water under the bridge as the saying goes.

He needs to go No Contact with her and you need to snoop more. Don't ask to see his emails. Read them yourself before he deletes them. If I were you, I'd install a keylogger in the computer and maybe even put a voice activated recorder (assuming there aren't rules against it in your state) in his car. 

You should not contact her. Don't tell her all the problems in your marriage, his health woes and the stressors in your lives. That just helps her gain inside knowledge into your relationship and helps her figure out what to say to your husband to be emotionally supportive. 

Read the book "Not Just Friends" by Dr. Shirley Glass. I think you'll find it valuable.


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## Tabitha (Jun 17, 2014)

Good grief, I really did write a novel.

Yes, I'm 99.9% sure he's had no contact with her. I don't think she ever meant enough to him even as a friend to risk his marriage over. It was only after I asked to see what she could be writing so much about that it woke him up that I might not like what she's writing, and that it wasn't worth the fighting with me. 

When he didn't respond to her and I did last summer--when she found him via LinkedIn--I think that was probably enough to make her aware that she wasn't getting his friendship back. It's just finding that book with note tucked inside the other week (from 3? yrs ago) that got stuck in my craw. It's SO in the past for hubby--and to him, it never was a big issue to him--that he says I'm the one with the problem for bringing it up after all this time. Besides, he says, he never saw the note. 

Obviously, when I encouraged hubby to just "play catchup" with her 8 yrs ago, I didn't realize how badly she'd wanted him back then, or especially now for that matter. I like to trust people, esp. my own husband. If I'd known she was doing more than learning how an old friend had ended up, I'd never have had him write that first time at all. I certainly didn't give her his email address or our phone numbers, etc. 

I can get on his email (both personal and business) if I really wanted, and back at that time--due to other things going on with his escalated drinking (which we figured out why was happening)--I did check. Nothing more from her.

I just need to get her out of my head because I know it's over, but it's like I said--not finding that letter until recently, it's like it was just NOW happening and he was too "dense" to see it....or maybe he said something when he was drinking and emailing that encouraged her but that he doesn't remember. I don't know......that's the problem. I have this insatiable desire to know. And I should be able to let it go because everything is okay now. 

Anyways, thanks for listening. It's the first time I've "talked" about this.


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## devotion (Oct 8, 2012)

Everything seems above board except for the whole deleting emails stuff. 

Just make sure he agrees on 100% no contact. I'd also ask that if she contacts him he lets you know, and that you are doing this not because you don't trust him, its that you dont trust HER (which you shouldn't). Hopefully he will be flattered by your attention rather than feeling you are putting him in a box.


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## changedbeliefs (Jun 13, 2014)

Coffee Amore said:


> He needs to go No Contact with her and you need to snoop more. Don't ask to see his emails. Read them yourself before he deletes them. If I were you, I'd install a keylogger in the computer and maybe even put a voice activated recorder (assuming there aren't rules against it in your state) in his car.


I can't let another one of these comments slide. This is considered a viable solution in a relationship? SPY ON THEM! Tell them who they can and can't speak to! Invade their privacy, track all of their conversations! You have a right, how DARE this person betray you!

Yet people believe marriage is about selfLESSness? It is the height of seflishness....none of you will admit it, until the other person does something you deem "wrong," but then all the claws come out full force.


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## WillinTampa (Jun 18, 2014)

I doubt that he would be looking to dump you for another woman of the same age.

Usually, if a guy is going to go through all the pain of leaving and divorce, its going to be for a newer model. 

It does sound like she was after him -- but, if he wasn't interested in her romantically then, there's even less chance he's going to be now. 

I have a number of female friends. I enjoy their company and insight. They are attractive, but nothing romanic has ever happened and won't ever either. 

..


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## Coffee Amore (Dec 15, 2011)

changedbeliefs said:


> I can't let another one of these comments slide. This is considered a viable solution in a relationship? SPY ON THEM! Tell them who they can and can't speak to! Invade their privacy, track all of their conversations! You have a right, how DARE this person betray you!
> 
> Yet people believe marriage is about selfLESSness? It is the height of seflishness....none of you will admit it, until the other person does something you deem "wrong," but then all the claws come out full force.


Calm down.

My comments can be followed or not. It's up to the original poster. We offer advice and she can do with it whatever she chooses.

Yes, I think some snooping is warranted in this situation. You disagree. That's fine. Different strokes for different folks.


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## Tabitha (Jun 17, 2014)

No, I know they’re not in touch now, and I know that he’d already gone “no contact” with her—for sure by the time his work place and contact info changed since he didn’t give it out to her, nor did he respond to her LinkedIn attempts at reconnecting at his new email address. 

I’m just still upset that he didn’t show me the emails I asked to see—and yes, that was during the medication “fog”….there was other out-of-character stuff from him during this time, and increased drinking. My other big upset was that he never told me how much and the type of contact that she had with him (the phone calls to his work and sending him a gift—maybe more than one). THAT is what I just found out when I came across that note of hers inside the book/gift mailed a year before I saw that she was emailing him. I know it’s over and done with, but the discovery of that book made it like Day 1 for me, and it’s driving me crazy. 

No, I KNOW he wouldn’t risk his marriage over her—she’s a year older than him and a grandmother; he’d definitely make it count (with someone younger, etc.) if he were going to do something bad enough to ruin our marriage. The worst he probably “did” with her was talk about marital issues with her. BUT, he kept it a secret (maybe to his mind it was just one of omission), and when discovered, couldn’t show me the emails I asked to see. Other than tell me what I want to now, I can’t fault him after that all happened, because he did drop her and then didn’t pick it back up last year when she attempted contact again. I’m the one who feels like a heel for chewing on this bone. He just doesn’t understand my need to know how he allowed it to get to the point that I couldn’t know what was going on. Aaarrgh. 

She was put on the Christmas card list WAY BACK in the beginning when they exchanged “catchup” letters—like all our other old friends from college and high school (but removed after I discovered she’d been in constant contact with hubby). No, I’m not FB friends with her (and hubby doesn’t do FB)—I only threw that out there just in case I was way off base with my accusations of her. And of course, she never looked me up. 

I didn’t know she had had it that bad for my husband back in the day….only that he felt like she wanted more than he did. She confirmed it, though, during their emailing. I mean, she was telling him that she’d been ready to lose her virginity to him. What kind of woman tells an old married male friend at this point in their lives? That—and a detail or two about the drama in her marital life—is the only thing he’s shared with about what they talked about. 

Last year after she tried to contact him again, I did get the book “Not Just Friends” and read it. Hubby doesn’t read, though (not literally), but I’ve given him the gist…..for going forward with new friends at his new workplace. 

I have his personal email acct password, but it’s mostly LinkedIn stuff anyway—everything else goes to his work address. I couldn’t access his work computer even if I wanted to. No kind of personal program—certainly not something like a key logger—can be loaded onto it, and it’s got the security of Ft. Knox built in to accessing it in the first place. However, if I really wanted to, I could use his business smart phone and probably get in, but unless he gives me a new reason to feel the need to check, it’s best I leave it alone. I’m a very curious person to begin with, so snooping would be way too tempting and a habit hard to break. 

Thanks, all. This has been therapy for me. I’ve kept this anger inside for far too long. I just feel the need to be mad at someone without causing new marital problems. He’s in a great place now that he’s way down on the meds, and I don’t want to ruin it by dragging him back to a time when he was simply existing in the zombie state of emotions that the med put him in. If only I’d never picked up that book and found that note…...


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## Cynthia (Jan 31, 2014)

I’m glad your husband is off that terrible medication. I hope things change for the better now.
As far as the stalker, the letter you wrote to her with personal information about your husband and your marriage was extremely inappropriate. Never, never do anything like that again. It only gives her fuel and it’s a violation of the trust in your marriage.
I agree that it looks like she has been after your husband.
You are upset about this, because you just found the note. The fact that you don’t have any friends close enough to discuss this stuff makes it more difficult to cope. I recommend that you keep posting on TAM and you make an appointment to see a counselor so you have someone in person to talk to about stuff. You have had a lot on your plate that would be helpful to process with a trained counselor.


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