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I’m having a really hard time today trying to keep my emotions in check regarding my WH and his sister. For those who have read my story my POS SIL helped my WH more than forty years ago hook up with his AP (her best friend) even though he was living with me and our daughter. We separated for 2 and a half years and he returned professing his vow to be faithful to me and that he loved me and wanted to start over. We moved away and all contact stopped with AP and we got on with our lives. I did not know about AP sleeping with him again when he returned after our separation way back then. He lied the whole time and kept the secret all these years. Apparently so did the POS SIL. When their mother died they had a big fight and didn’t speak for 13 years. He went to visit her and make up in 2022 after his cancer treatments ended. How wonderful for them both as they discussed his desire to reconnect with AP and POS SIL gladly gave him her number. Guess no one thought or cared about how I would feel. He contacted AP January 2023 and I found out same day. It’s been hell on earth for me since then. He continued texting for 2 months and 10 days and acted like the typical lovesick cheater, but flaunted it in my face. I cried and raged at him but he was oblivious to my pain, saying the usual "just friends" bullshit. Then all the texting to her stopped. He claimed it was getting too crazy (no explanation wtf that meant). Since then all I get is trickle truth but more like "why don’t I get over it", insisting it was completely innocent (over 2900 texts between them and 1600 with POS SIL).

One of my issues I am dealing with is that I know whatever WH said to AP she probably told POS SIL all of it. I am humiliated and enraged by this, knowing that they all talked behind my back laughing at me for being the unwitting chump again. My blood boils and I cry with the whole messed up situation. Does anyone else have this issue or a similar one? He texts his sister every day and usually she sends one back, but sometimes 20 or 30. I think she is sending updates on AP even though he says she rarely sends anymore. What infuriates me is that I feel I have been cut of his side of the family, except for his brother, who ironically also slept with AP back in the day before WH did. WH only texts or talks to his sister from the garage, never in front of me so what is he hiding? I have asked him over and over to include me in family information or news and he just won’t unless I make a big deal out of it. This is not normal and only hurts me more. Any hope of a normal family relationship is lost to me and I will never speak to POS SIL again but for him to withhold information from me I think is cruel. Any thoughts?

I am humiliated and enraged by this, knowing that they all talked behind my back laughing at me for being the unwitting chump again. My blood boils and I cry with the whole messed up situation.

You’re not "the unwitting chump" though. You said you found out the same day the A resumed and then he flaunted it in your face for two months and told you to get over it. And it sure sounds like the A is still active. This may seem harsh, but that makes you the witting chump.

Your SIL isn’t your main problem. Your H is the problem. He does what he wants and knows that you’ll take it.

What are you going to do about it?

I think he is being incredibly insensitive and selfish. Like all cheaters. If he is ‘flaunting it’ and telling you ‘get over it’ and not telling you the whole truth I’m not sure what choices you have but to put up with it or tell him to end it once and for all with full disclosure or you will leave him.

Having a SIL that is encouraging this behaviour doesn’t help matters but at the end of the day your husband is your main concern and he is not behaving at all appropriately for a safe partner!

I'm sorry you have had to go through this, but you are expecting something this bunch will never give you: respect, honor or even acceptance. Yes, it hurts. I have the same kind of in-laws, especially 2 Sisters-in-Law. We can choose who we marry, but we cannot force their family to treat us as one of them when they are closed off to that. The thing I had to learn is that their attitude said way more about them than about me.

Distance is your friend.

I would suggest the following:

The 180 is there for a reason. Use it to emotionally detach from your husband. He’s not a person you should be making a priority.

Get your own life going. Your own friends, activities, etc. He’s neither welcomed nor invited. I’m suggesting independently living with him.

Get yourself professional counseling. Not marriage counseling but someone to support you.

My H infuriated me for 4 years with his EA that I knew was going on but he refused to admit it. I heard she’s just a friend the entire time. This was before texting etc so this was an in-person relationship. The disrespect and lies were just too much.

After his second affair I learned a few things. I put in my bitch boots and became a force. I went from a doormat to the point where he is now afraid I’m going to D him. Because he knows I take no more crap and I will D him in a heartbeat if I need to.

In your case you keep trying to change your idiot husband. He’s not going to change. He wants to be BFFs with his idiot sister? Let him. But it doesn’t mean you have to sit around and watch it. He wants to text from the garage? Let him.

But that doesn’t mean he gets to sleep in the sane room as you. Or that you cook his dinner. Or pick up his clothes from the cleaners. Or do his laundry.

That’s something I wish I had learned years ago. Because maybe then my H would not have cheated on me again.

Any thoughts?

He’s not going to change, or if he does change, it’s just going to be from an open cheater to a lying cheater, so the question is, what are your options?

- Stay legally married and in the same house but separate emotionally (180)

- stay legally married, but separate

- Divorce

- Keep doing what you are currently doing, which is likely not making anybody happy

I’m sorry that you find yourself in this situation. My recommendation in the large is to take control of the situation. Recognize what you can control which is yourself, and what you can’t control which is everybody else in this three ring circus. Then act.

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 3:39 PM, Sunday, May 5th]

I am so sorry for your pain and so sorry you are here dealing with this.

It was MIL for me. As far as I am concerned, good luck to them both—mil and Ex WH.

I interact with neither of them because I do not find liars who openly support cheating to be safe friends and because exwh was not willing to be a safe partner.

"Guess no one thought or cared about how I would feel."

That was my experience. In fact they were the types who would figuratively start me on fire and watch me burn…there were many cheaters in the family and that should have been my first clue. I stay far and away from this dynamic now.

I do regret the years I stayed after dd1. But that can not be changed. So I do my best to work on me and my happiness in the here and now. Therapy, spirituality, friends, joy.

The most powerful lesson I learned out of the whole burnt down wreckage of my long-term marriage is that I only want to be around people for whom I am a definite "yes" and who have my back. I am many years from living with the man I devoted my life to who brutally betrayed me. But I still regret that I cried the first tear over him or made any attempt to get him to change his cheating ways.

I wish you peace and healing.

I went through the same thing except it was my fWH’s 1st cousin. So would that make her my cousin-in-law? Anyway - this pos was bff’s with the AP. They were all the same age, all grew up in the same small town together, and all graduated from the same high school in the same graduating class. The cousin helped facilitate the affair, encouraged it, she was in my H’s ear the whole time manipulating him, telling him how awful I was, that he deserved better, that I was a horrible terrible wife and he should divorce me. She lied and deceived me, she and the rest of his old HS friend group (4 other people) all played a part in the deception and facilitation. What’s ironic is that the very first time I met this cousin at a family Thanksgiving dinner - when he and I had been married less than a year - I instantly did not like her. She is full of herself, excessively preoccupied with herself and her appearance. She was always hinting around for compliments because she constantly needed that validation and admiration and attention. You know the type - inflated sense of their own importance, air of superiority, believing to be much more important than everyone else. No one in the family really liked her much and meeting that first time I understood why everyone warned me she was a bitter pill. In 2011 my H retired from the military and we had a big retirement party for him. H and cousin were NEVER close but all of a sudden she wanted to come to this party - across the country. She shows up that weekend with this guy they went to HS with that she was in a long term affair with. They were both married and show up like a couple. I confronted her and she laughed it off saying her and “Randy” were just friends and were just having a good time and that “Mitchell” (her husband) had no idea and she had no plans to D her H. So that was 2011. In 2012 my H had become very active on FB friending all these old HS classmates and catching up. AP was part of this and they began an EA. AP was BFF with the cousin and she told this cousin about her feelings for my H and the cousin encouraged them, blessing off on this “relationship” and bringing on board a few other close HS friends (including “Randy” the guy she’s been screwing around with since HS) who all helped lie and deceive me and helped facilitate and hide the affair from me. When the A went physical, she was even more in my husbands ear, encouraging him to divorce me, told vicious lies about me. After the whole thing blew up and he came crawling back to me begging for a second chance and reconciliation I demanded NC with EVERYONE of those HS friends including his cousin. I do occasionally see her at family events - but now everyone in the family knows what she did, they all know she showed up with “Randy” at the retirement party and that she’s been cheating on her husband for years. (Btw her H doesn’t care, apparently he’s been cheating on her for years too - that’s the kind of shitty marriage they have). She’s deleted from our contacts and her number is blocked from our phones. When she blows in to town to visit family, she will reach out to the other cousins to meet up and when we hear about it we decline because we don’t like her. We just went complete NC with her. What helps is that my husband AGREES that she’s a POS person. What’s hard for you is that your WH doesn’t see that the sister is a bad influence and is NOT a friend to your marriage. This makes it hard for you to both have a unified front with regard to her. Both my H and I see his cousin as an enemy to our marriage and we don’t want to have anything to do with her.

I just wanted to say you’ve been heard and I understand your emotions and frustration. I’m sorry you have to deal with this. It’s hard enough to be cheated on but when the family is on board and actively involved in helping the cheater cheat - that’s some brutal shit to deal with. I wish you good luck in all of this - these family dynamics are so hard to navigate.

[This message edited by Blackbird25 at 4:37 PM, Sunday, May 5th]

Your situation and your WH's relationship with his sister are, unfortunately, eerily remind me of my ex and his sister.

My ex-SIL is arguably one of the most malicious and toxic people I've ever met. I could write a novel about her. My ex had a very co-dependent--borderline emotionally incestuous-- relationship with her. She was always jealous that I "took her brother away."

I always tried to keep peace with her but the final straw was when she invited herself on a cruise that my husband and I planned to celebrate my master's degree. I said no; this was a romantic getaway to celebrate my achievement. She threw a fit, my husband tried to get me to capitulate, but I didn't back down.

Shortly thereafter, she got in touch via Facebook with my ex's last serious girlfriend, who was still single. Ex-SIL then gave the ex my then-husband's phone number and voila... within a week, ex-gf was OW#2. Three months later, I moved out.

The standard advice on SI is that anyone who was a party to the affair needs to be cut off completely. The fact that you've realized that's unrealistic in this case and haven't demanded he cut contact with his sister is extremely generous and understanding of you, even if he doesn't realize it.

The very least that he should do is be transparent about the frequency and the content of his communications. He shouldn't be hiding from you when you calls and you shouldn't have to speculate about what they're texting.

Unfortunately, I really don't have any advice about what you could do to enforce these terms because I suspect that, even if he pretends to comply, he's just going to do whatever he wants to do behind your back.

Ultimately, it comes down to whether you can tolerate being in a relationship with someone who keeps secrets from you and values his relationship with someone who tried to destroy your marriage over his relationship with you.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 6:40 PM, Tuesday, May 7th]

Here is what I learned.

Background. My H had no Concept of time. He’s say be home at 10 pm and stroll in at 2 am. No call. No contact w/ me. Just waltz in.

10 years of asking, explaining, pleading etc. did nothing to change him or his behavior.

Why? Because I was a doormat. He knew it. Eventually I stopped asking for him to be in time or let me know if he was late. He made no effort to change. Did not even try.

Then the day came I didn’t back down. I stuck to my guns. He hated it. Acted like a spoiled toddler. Two weeks later he starts his affair. Because now he’s annoyed that I refuse to back down on something.

At dday2 I learned to not play his game. I have him free rein to cheat and be single and do whatever he wanted. Why? I was D him. I had no interest in R so I did care what he did.

Funny how’s he now trying to make amends and do all I’ve asked over the years. Including being on time. 😂😂😂

[This message edited by The1stWife at 11:25 PM, Tuesday, May 7th]