Should you confront the other person?

1. What was your purpose for confronting the OP and what did you say/do?

I wanted to hear from her that this affair happened. I couldn’t believe my husband would ever do this. I called her and asked her about it, and she lied and said nothing ever happened. (She was married too.) She told me she wanted to help me.

2. What happened? What was the outcome?

She called my husband later that night and blamed him for everything. Said he was living with a crazy person. I think this was the first step in healing our marriage. He realized that she did not care about him to even admit the affair.

3. If you were to do it again, would you do it differently? What did you learn?

Three months (and a lot of counseling) later, I did call her back. At the time, I knew my husband had kept every e-mail and chat from their time together. It was all pretty graphic. I called her to say that I was sorry she was in a bad marriage but that didn’t give her the right to ruin mine. I told her that my husband kept every contact with her and that she would be wise to stop contact with him. A little threat, yes. But I felt better after that and never called her back.

Coach’s Comments:

1. It appears that husband and wife are fairly well aligned in this case. The husband was willing to divulge information to his wife, which gave the wife considerable power in confronting the other person.

2. The husband seemingly wanted out of that affair. His response to the other person’s phone call to him sealed the deal. He was outa there.

3. Divulging the fact that her husband had evidence was a clear and powerful way of cementing their alignment. As well, it set a clear boundary: stay away!

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