Reminding the OW to stop flirting

Three months after Dday, my husband went on a trip that kept him away from home for five nights. Not having him around to reassure me had a terrible impact on my peace of mind. I went back to pointing out to him how I wished he had never crossed that line with a colleague. I went into an emotional dip and couldn’t wait for him to be back to hear him say I what I needed to hear: that I didn’t deserve to be betrayed, that he would need a lifetime to pay me back for forgiving him and that he was sorry for causing me all that pain.

He came back at the beginning of the week and went to work after listening to my accusations and saying all the things that I demanded from him. I was feeling that he would have to apologise at the beginning of each day for the rest of our lives for me to feel satisfied. It wasn’t really like that. Once he showed true remorse and explained to me one more time how he wasn’t proud of what he did, I started to feel in peace again with my decision to be giving our marriage a chance.

When life happens and you cannot postpone going back to work anymore, it is difficult to distinguish tiredness from lack of enthusiasm. I felt that my husband was not connecting with me to the degree that would satisfy me to completely get out of my low point. So the following Saturday he went for lunch to a friend, I decided to check his emails.

As my intuition pointed out, I did find a distracting message from the other woman. She got out of our previous arrangement and sent him a personal email thanking him for being the first one to reply. I found it flirty and very inappropriate. To add to my apprehension, he replied with a smiley. Was that going to be the beginning of more lies?

I decided to tackle the issue by taking a screenshot and sending him a message while he was still with his friends at a lunch only for men: “I see you continue to flirt. Not looking good for you”.

I also felt that this was an excellent opportunity to set things straight with that woman. I called her and started by mentioning the email that she sent to my husband and how inappropriate it was, in the light of our arrangement to keep their communication strictly about work. The tone of the message was borderline flirty in my view and she should stop or I would go all the way and send the recording to her husband. I reminded her that I was willing to reveal the affair to him unless she didn’t give my husband a chance to think that they could go back to what they had before I discovered them.

Her response was manipulative and fake. Without hesitation, she said that I was “Absolutely right” and that she didn’t think about it that way. She acknowledged that she shouldn’t have sent the message to my husband and went on to explain exactly why she did it. It felt so much like a soothing reaction to my aggravation, that I still doubt that was anything real coming out of her mouth during that phone call.