Quad gone nuclear, is there anything left in the ashes?

persephone

New member
(This is a bit long.) Until about 36 hours ago, I was in a loving relationship with my boyfriend, J., of over a year. We have been friends for even longer than that.

Boyfriend and I had some bumps early on in our relationship in that he tried to date me along with his wife, C., kept inviting her on our dates last minute, etc. (Both us ladies are straight). I set a firm boundary, early on, that while I was open to being friendly with C., I was not dating another couple on my own and that was that. J. was very resistant at first to this, since both his previous poly relationships (both over a decade ago) were with women who had been good friends with his wife, and all their socializing, even all their sex, took place with C. present. J. told me he never took either woman out on an individual date.

Eventually, J. realized that I was not budging on this boundary. We actually broke up once before he finally realized that I was serious about it. Then he and I reconnected, and we started to finally have an individual relationship. His wife C. seemed supportive of this. About a month later, C. indicated an interest in having a relationship with my husband. If we had to be a group thing with his wife involved, as J. still seemed to want so badly, this group dynamic, a quad, worked better for me than some bizarre triad with two straight women. I encouraged it, J. encouraged it, my husband decided that he did indeed find boyfriend's wife attractive and nice, and we all jumped into a quad. An idyllic month or so for the four of us ensued. Boyfriend told me he loved me for the first time around then, and I told him I loved him too. Our spouses seemed to be good friends who really enjoyed each other's company both in and out of bed. J. and I were hopeful that they'd both eventually "catch up" to us emotionally and also fall in love.

Things started heading south when my husband and I started having issues in our relationship of over 20 years. He broke a relationship agreement in a really disrespectful way, and did a couple of insensitive and very hurtful things on top of that, all of them connected to C. I never blamed C. for any of what my husband did, I know she never encouraged him to hurt me, nor was she even aware of most of what he was doing. Husband and I were definitely tense with each other for a while. Husband confided in C. about our issues. I confided in J. too. We considered them really close friends who cared about us, outside of the romantic relationships we had with them. We both thought that confiding in them and receiving support from them was the natural thing to do. We never asked them to take sides, mostly we just wanted them to listen and comfort us.

Husband decided to enter individual therapy to figure out why he kept screwing things up between us when he was in a new relationship (since we have had these issues in the past too). He and C. agreed to a temporary halt on their romantic and sexual relationship, with hopes of resuming things once he was farther along in therapy. They remained good friends. Things were mostly better with me and my husband. Things were fine between me and J. too.

Then, we spent an evening with J. and C., where my husband and I had a bit of a communications breakdown. I got annoyed with him in front of them (no raised voices, but definitely annoyance), he explained himself, I was fine with that, and the evening continued in peace and harmony, or so we thought.

That evening set off a two-week fit of emailed rage and abuse from C., to both me and my husband. I allude to a little of it in my recent thread on "trashtalking."

I did not engage in the drama, I didn't answer any of the torrent of verbal abuse C. sent me, and I blocked her after her seventh hysterical email, and told J. I was doing so. My husband patiently tried to engage with her for the sake of making peace between the four of us.

While her point of view doesn't make a whole lot of sense to either me or husband, the pertinent parts seem to be this:

1. C.'s anger against me started back in August (a couple of weeks after J, her husband, and I fell in love), when my husband allowed her to overheard an argument he and I had via cellphone. I had not known husband was with C. when I called, I was out of town at the time, and he only told me toward the end of the call. She has been angry at me ever since that night for triggering her (self-diagnosed) "anxiety issue," something neither I nor husband had ever heard abouut, until now. It is clear that her anger has only built since then.

2. While I knew that C. and J. had transparency in their relationship, to the point where C. was allowed to read emails and chat logs that he and I had, even our texting, I had the idea that he shared with her only when something was puzzling him. But it seems to be clear now that C. was routinely reading every single line of everything (and there was lots, over almost two years, he and I IM quite a bit). While I know for a fact that I never said a single critical thing about her, to J., either in writing or in person (because I just don't do that, and also, because I had actually liked and respected her and considered her a friend), J. and I did have some normal couple disagreements (some things connected to his early insistence on a three-person relationship, a couple more recent things where he was insensitive about something or other).

All of these issues were resolved quickly between J. and I without incident. However, apparently, if I have a disagreement with my boyfriend and his wife is privy to it (and she has been privy to all of it, as it turns out), she holds it against me and thinks I am a bad person for being critical of her husband.

C also recalls incidences of me actually shouting at J. in her presence. Nothing of the sort has ever happened, in fact, I have never even raised my voice to J. even when we were alone. J., and husband, also say they don't remember any such thing ever happening.

3. Boyfriend's wife now says she wants nothing more to do with me socially. I feel exactly the same way about her, she said some truly unforgivable, hurtful things in the past two weeks, straight out of the Mean Girls movie. She has not apologized to me for any of it. In fact, she has been demanding that I apologize to HER, for getting annoyed at my husband in front of her that night, and also some other stuff (making her feel "invisible" or some such nonsense).

So, I took a good look at the situation and talked to J., the man I love, who says he loves me. I told him that I loved him, that this situation was very hurtful and stressful for me, but I wanted to get through it with him. I asked for his comfort and support. I told him I believed his wife might be mentally ill, and urged him to get her some help. I told him he and I could have a "separate relationship," meaning he only saw me without her along. I said I knew that wasn't ideal for him, but I said, "We need to deal with the bad hand we've been dealt here."

J.'s response was to wring his hands, tell me that his wife was his number one priority, and that he didn't feel that a separate relationship with me would be "emotionally satisfying" for him. He did not offer one word of comfort or support to me over these past two weeks, in fact, he even tried to prevent me from getting such from another partner of mine, because he didn't want his wife to "lose face" among acquaintances (she has met my other boyfriend exactly twice). As the final slap, J. let slip to me that he was already thinking ahead to a new sexual relationship, with a long-time platonic female friend of his whom I don't know. He shared this with me perhaps five minutes after he told me that he couldn't go on a romantic weekend away with me, which would have been our first, that I had lovingly planned for us.

I told J. it was over the night before last, with tears running down my face, and walked out of the last place we talked. He called after me "I hope we can still be friends!"

I'm not sure what kind of advice I want here, except perhaps some opinions, based on what went down here, if there is any way for me to have a friendship with J. now. We may need time. Or it may not be possible at all. I don't know.

I feel as if I have wasted close to two years of my life on a man who thinks women are essentially interchangeable, who didn't really love me at all.

'
 
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Were those two years really "wasted"? Did you not do anything else worthwhile during those two years? Do you value your life so precariously that one thing gone wrong means you "wasted" it? How long do you think a relationship "should" last in order for it not to have been a "waste"? I did read your entire post and although some unhappy shit took place, I didn't see anything that was especially unusual to the point where I would consider two years of my life "wasted" - although I realize that when it's not YOU (me) it's happening to, it's a lot easier to just brush it off as "water under the bridge" or something like that. However, you weren't being abused (were you? you didn't say so), you didn't invest a ton of money in some kind of venture with these people (such as starting a business), you didn't tear yourself apart with self-destructive behaviour, or anything else that would impose severe, long-term repercussions, so I don't see how "wasted two years of my life" applies to this. It's just one of those things that didn't work out. They say that NRE lasts anywhere from 6 months up to 2 years, so maybe this relationship was coasting on NRE and finally ran its course. Also, 2 years is not a very long time to figure out if something is right for someone(s).

As for being friends, don't decide that right now. I have seen other people give advice on here that says to take some time apart and THEN re-connect and figure out if "just friends" is a viable thing.
 
Boringguy, I think I tend to feel that I've wasted my time in a relationship when it has been with someone who was insincere about their feelings, to me. I feel that is the case here. J. has been telling me he loves me since this past summer. Yet, he was perfectly willing to toss aside our relationship the second his wife, a person who clearly has a lot of mental instability, threw a tantrum. He didn't make the slightest attempt to calm her down or go to bat for the relationship he and I had built for almost two years, he just caved, and started to look forward to his next sexual partner. That is not love. That is a guy who had a friendship with benefits and called it love. So yes, I feel that I wasted my time there, not to mention my heart, because I did love him, and it was clearly misplaced.

I did learn a few valuable things from this, so not a total loss, I guess.
 
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Hey, I don't really have any useful advice, but I just wanted to say that I'm sorry you're going through this. Getting veto'ed SUCKS and what you're saying about feeling disrespected and like his feelings weren't authentic because he didn't fight for you, that all feels perfectly valid to me. In the end, it sounds to me like he was cowardly -- he didn't want to challenge his wife. You could do better, it's just a real shame that it took so long for that to become obvious.
 
Yes, AnnabelMore, I can do indeed do better, and I already am. I have a loving husband and another boyfriend who truly loves me and would never let HIS wife throw a tantrum and exile an established partner without grounds. My feelings for J. were never as intense as mine are for my other boyfriend, not nearly, and I used to actually feel guilty about that, silly me. So if I had to lose a partner, I lost the right one. I know that now.

Thanks for the support.
 
I think I tend to feel that I've wasted my time in a relationship when it has been with someone who was insincere about their feelings, to me.

Was there no sign of this during the two years? Did it really just happen 'out of the blue'?

I know how easy it is to see what it is one wants to see, and part of the learning might be for you to learn to heed the warning signs that I suspect might well have been there...

And, indeed, it sucks when one is dumped. Keep breathing.
 
Northhome, J. and I were platonic friends for close to a year before we actually went out on a date. I had known him for over a year before we started a physical relationship. We broke up, the first time, last February. We resumed things last April, but waited another three months to start sleeping together again. He has been saying he loves me since late July. I had no reason to believe he was insincere. He wrote me love poems (pretty good ones too), he took me on moonlit walks, he paid me all kinds of compliments, he looked me in the eyes when he said he loved me. He was affectionate and tender with me. The bedroom was good for us, and I know I did a few things for him that his wife either can't or won't do. It was all very seductive and I succumbed to it, even though I always knew that he wasn't the kind of emotionally brave person I tend to want to be with, that he valued "safe and comfortable" more than just about anything else. I just never realized that his lack of bravery could impact us like this. Live and learn, I guess.

Thanks for the support.
 
even though I always knew that he wasn't the kind of emotionally brave person I tend to want to be with.

So it's not really a surprise after all? Sounds like you always knew deep down inside that the whole setup was fragile.

I guess I concur with the previous comment, take what you can from it and leave the rest. It's no good leaving bitterness and upset in your system! Still, it does take time to get over these things.
 
I'm sorry to hear all this. It's very sad.

I wouldn't try to remain friends with J. It doesn't sound like he cares about your feelings enough to make a friendship worthwhile.

Also, he seems to have no boundaries whatsoever with his wife. Ick.

I totally get what you mean about feeling like you wasted time with someone who was ultimately not worth while. However, the great thing about polyamory is that you didn't totally waste that time--you were building / enjoying / maintaining other relationships during that time.
 
. Yet, he was perfectly willing to toss aside our relationship the second his wife, a person who clearly has a lot of mental instability, threw a tantrum. He didn't make the slightest attempt to calm her down or go to bat for the relationship he and I had built for almost two years, he just caved, and started to look forward to his next sexual partner. That is not love. That is a guy who had a friendship with benefits and called it love. So yes, I feel that I wasted my time there, not to mention my heart, because I did love him, and it was clearly misplaced.

I did learn a few valuable things from this, so not a total loss, I guess.

It is indeed a shitty feeling, when you realize somebody has this 'box of love' they have pre-built, and it's interchangeable for whatever person comes along. It leaves you feeling as though every word uttered was false.

Be pissed off. Bitch, moan, and don`t think you can be friends with him. Not yet, anyhow. It is a process of coming to terms with these kinds of things. Hopefully it doesn`t take terribly long, but usually,...it does indeed take time.

....and definitely take the lessons. Time is not wasted, anytime we learn more about ourselves, or those around us.
 
Of course he is going to side with his wife. Why would you ever expect anything less? You would expect your husband to side with you, no?

Life is painful. But it is in the pain that we learn the most valuable lessons.
 
Of course he is going to side with his wife. Why would you ever expect anything less? You would expect your husband to side with you, no?

Umm, because it sounds like the wife is insane? Because she has imagined things that never existed (like the OP yelling at one of the men), is nursing grievances until they erupt, rather than communicating about them, and is basically acting abusive and bat-shit crazy?

I don't know what your marriage is like, honey, but while I want my husband AND my partner to validate my feelings at any given time (perhaps especially if my feelings are irrational) I also want them to let me know when I've grown too angry/irrational for a given situation. If I have to be talked down off a ledge, they better be the FIRST two lining up to do it, not sticking their heads in the sand because they're afraid of confrontation and don't want to rock the boat. The OP had every right to think that his professed love was strong enough to at least have him make an effort to deal with his drama-queen, butt-hurt wife, rather than escaping to the next potential partner.
 
Of course he is going to side with his wife. Why would you ever expect anything less? You would expect your husband to side with you, no?

Perhaps not relevant...but...one of the most significant instances that let me know that MrS was OK with my relationship with Dude was when he led me aside and told me that I was beng an irrational BITCH when it came to one of Dude's triggers that I insisted on pushing (that I strongly disagreed with).

Why? Because it let me know that MrS supported my relationship with Dude and was willing to support and encourage rational behavior even if it pissed me off at the time. A spouse is not required to "side" with their spouse in all matters - if their spouse is wrong it is their obligation (in my opinon) to point it out (gently and with compassion...if possible...not so much in my case, it takes a hammer...I am stubborn :rolleyes:)

JaneQ
 
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Thanks for the support, ThatGirlinGray and others.

I let J. IM with me last night. I didn't want to talk to him but he accused me via email of hiding from him, not letting him speak to me (because I hadn't signed into gchat for a few nights, I guess), so I signed in and let him talk to me there. He told me the following:

1. He had always felt insecure in our relationship. I had actually known that. Like most women who have an online profile or two on dating sites, I routinely have men online soliciting me for casual sex that I don't want. J. was well aware of that because I used to show him the more amusing examples of "Hey, babe, I'm a horny guy, want to hook up RIGHT NOW???" For some reason, men offering me casual sex, translated, for J., to "She has a lot of guys after her, why would she want me?" He even said once or twice that he feared I was only with him until someone "better" came along. I stopped showing him those silly emails at some point in the relationship, for that reason.

I have spent the last five months with J., since my feelings for him deepened, telling him that I loved him, that I found him very attractive, that I enjoyed his company, that we had a good time in bed, that our relationship was working fine for me after a somewhat bumpy start. I thought my words of affirmation would abate his fears of abandonment. I guess they did not.

2. He said that my refusal to engage with his wife in the confrontation she was attempting to create (since I did not answer any of her abusive emails), made his love for me "wither." But I know he would not have been happy if I called her on any of her bullshit and pointed out her attempts at control of both of the relationships I was in, the one with J. and the one with my husband. J. made it clear that what he wanted me to do was be conciliatory to her. I could not do that and remain true to myself, even if I allowed myself to get sucked into drama with toxic unbalanced people, which I do not.

A good friend of mine heard about this and said, "He just walked away because it was easier to walk away and move on to the next thing. And no, he didn't love you, and probably never did."

The last time J. and I slept together, two and a half weeks ago, we fluid bonded. We had talked about it for months beforehand, and I was so excited that we did. While fluid bonding is mostly a practical thing for me, it is also something I have only done once before outside of my marriage, and I would only have ever considered doing it in a very serious relationship, as I thought mine with J. was.

I can't be his friend. I said something very bitter about how he should move on to his next disposable fucktoy, and then I signed out and made sure he couldn't contact me again.

I am hoping that we won't run into each other ever again, but, with my luck, he'll probably make a point of hitting every poly social event he knows I go to from now on (none of which he had ever attended until I brought him), along with his wife and probably the next flavor of the year too. Sigh.
 
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You already sound like you are taking the steps you need to do for your own self care.

I just wanted to say that I'm sorry you are hurting. I know this isn't fun to feel :(

Galagirl
 
Let me preface this by saying that I am really, really bad at letting go of someone I love. And I can be bad at this to the point of stupidity.

The Newtown shootings hit me hard, as they did most of the people I know. My local paper ran photos of all those sweet little children and blurbs about each that talked about their hobbies and families and pets. I was crying by the eighth one. That day, I felt that I needed to honor those kids too in some way. The overwhelming feeling I had about that was that I had turned my back on someone I loved, perhaps unjustly, and perhaps I could turn that around. The person I was thinking of was J.

Our last conversation, a week or so prior, had been really upsetting and I had blocked him on IM, which had always been our main form of communication when we weren't together. J. had contacted my husband and asked if he was blocked. I unblocked him and let him know this, and we talked again. I was not comfortable talking to him on IM knowing that his wife read our conversations, but we discovered a feature that disabled chat logging for both of us. (This was fine until we had an evening where she came in and started reading over his shoulder. He told me this, I objected and signed off, and then she got to be upset, with me, about feeling "persona non grata" in his life. Sigh.)

J. and I were generally going over what had happened and trying to see a way forward. He said he still loved me, and was so sorry for hurting me, and had never intended to. I said I still loved him too and also regretting hurting him. My other boyfriend, the one I was still close to, kept saying I should just apologize to the wife, C., and things would be fine. I just could not do it. I felt that apologizing to C., for upsetting her when I got annoyed at my husband, was basically conceding to her that she had a right to control my marriage and how my husband and I interacted in her presence, not to mention, how I interacted with my boyfriend outside of her presence. I have always believed that if I don't like how others interact, then I should just not spend time with them, because other people's relationships are not my business and not for me to control.

In hindsight, I think I must have known, deep down, that no amount of apologizing to C. was going to appease her. A good friend of mine said recently that one should never apologize to certain people, because it whets their appetite for twenty more apologies.

J. and I were not really getting anywhere. I could not really get him to talk about what he wanted for the future, and he would not agree to take our relationship off hold, which, to him, seemed to mean that we saw each other, but weren't being sexual and weren't counting on any kind of future. I kept saying, "Why are we on hold when we love each other and I didn't do anything wrong?" I feared that J. blamed me for C's upset in some way, and kept asking him if he did, without ever getting a clear answer. We were seeing each other fairly regularly, kissing a bit, and talking endlessly about C.'s unhappiness with me and what to do about it. J. kept insisting that I was not vetoed as a partner for him, but he would not take our relationship off hold either.

My husband was part of some of our discussions and he was very helpful at facilitating my interaction with J. He and J. came up with the idea of both of them talking to J.'s wife, C., without me. I told my husband I was OK with that. I knew that C was still very fond of my husband, they had once been lovers, and she would probably listen to him much better than she would listen to me. Husband got home very late that night and didn't have much to report to me. I asked him to just tell me if C. had indicated that she would support my relationship with J. going forward. He was not able to tell me this. They had all talked for hours and hours, and husband insisted it was productive, but the only thing that I heard about that actually happened was that C. talked a lot about her unhappiness with me.

I didn't sleep much that night and woke up feeling hopeless about things. My head was telling me to just end things with J. decisively, but my heart objected. I was also dreading the prospect of having to spend time with C. in the future, since it was so obvious that she was still very angry with me and it wasn't getting better. I had stupidly introduced both C. and J. to a private social event that typically happens twice a year. Then I remembered that J. had said to me, a couple of weeks prior, that he didn't want to follow me around to social events if that made me uncomfortable. I got in touch with him and asked if his promise still stood. I said, please just give me my space at this one social event and if we coincide at other things, as we likely will, I'm OK with that. He agreed to do that. But he believed that me requesting this from him constituted me dumping him again, and he went on the email group for that social event and publicly announced that "someone" had asked him to leave the group. It caused a bunch of discord. The host of the event got upset with me (I managed to smooth that down). I lost a friendship with someone I knew from that event who jumped to a whole lot of judgmental assumptions even though she knew nothing about my relationship with J or what agreements we had. And C. asserted to my husband that SHE never agreed to give me my space at the event and would not, and her husband would, of course, accompany her.

I heard from my husband that J. was very depressed and angry and believed that I had dumped him, again. And I decided to finally take control of the situation, if I could. I wanted to end everyone's pain and unhappiness, especially J's. I decided to write an apology to C. and copy both men on it. I did not know how to go about it, since I felt so strongly that she was trying to control my relationships with my husband and with J., but once I got going, I found a way to do it. This is what I wrote (edited for anonymity):

I realize that I have been afraid of trying to sit down with the four of us. As J. and my husband both know, I tend to be totally avoidant of people who give me the impression, by their words or actions, that they wish me ill. That is how I have felt about you, C., since Thanksgiving. That is how I feel about my brother and his wife. In the case of the two of them, I know by their consistent rude and belittling behavior towards me, and now, even towards my children, that I am not really off base. It has gotten so bad that my mom recently promised, independent of me, that she will not subject either me or my children to their presence at family gatherings ever again. Fortunately, my niece is almost 16 so we should be able to see her without her parents.

My husband has helped me realize that what is true in my family may not be the case here, that people sometimes do just get really upset, about things that do not necessarily make much sense to the rest of us. I think what spooked me here is that you seemed so angry for so long, C. I have a temper, I sure know that, but in most cases, I don't think I stay mad long at anyone. When my husband spent so much time, so many emails, trying to calm you down and help you see what our side of things was and you just did not seem to calm down, or really hear him, my feeling that you were someone I had to avoid at all costs, someone "toxic," kicked in. That's why I tried to persuade J. that he and I could continue our relationship independent of you. That's why I told him it was over when he would not agree to that. But I was not happy with not having him in my life at all, and I am still not happy at the prospect of that, and I don't think I could be.

I have been stumped on how to handle this, but here goes.

C., I want to apologize for upsetting you, last month. It still seems inconceivable to me that the interaction I had with my husband, in your presence, could have caused such emotional turmoil for you, but I accept that it did. I also do not understand how previous events, issues that were between me and my husband, or between me and J., could have upset you to the extent that I heard they did, but I accept that they did, and I am sorry you were hurt by them.

I know that saying that has been a long time coming, and here is why. The other part of my family history that is pertinent is that I grew up with one very controlling parent, and C.'s upset, to me, felt like an attempt to control my relationships with my husband and with my boyfriend.

Also, I have hung on to the idea that since C. was the person who initially attacked me, not vice versa, the burden was on her to apologize first. But that is really pretty silly, I guess. My other boyfriend teased me recently that it was a good thing I wasn't in charge of the Middle East peace process, and I guess that finally sunk in.

I also want to apologize to both of you, J. and C., if you felt hurt when I asked J. to not attend the social event that I introduced you to again (I assumed that you, C., would not attend without him). That was more of my "avoidant" behavior kicking in.

If you three think it would help to sit down and talk, I am open to it, even though the prospect is a bit scary for me. If you think the situation is too far gone, I accept that.

Thanks for listening.

Persephone

C. wrote back a sort of apology too. It still managed to be very accusatory towards me, but she did apologize for losing her temper to the extent she had, and for making some very personal attacks that had nothing to do with the situation at hand. I thanked her for her graciousness (such as it was), and thought we were well on our way to solving our issues. (to be continued in next post)
 
(continued from previous post) J. said that sitting down the four of us was a great idea and we arranged a lunch at a local restaurant this past weekend. He said, each couple should bring along their written relationship rules and we would discuss them and see if everyone was on the same page. I had never seen any from him and C., and I knew that he had been working on some since I had talked to him about veto power and how it was unethical to have no limits put on such even regarding established relationships, as ours was. He had seen the ones I have with my husband, and had expressed concern that the way we had worded them made it seem like we were not open to having committed relationships with others.

We made some revisions to our rules and showed up to the lunch with written copies. J. and I talked about commitment. I clarified that I was indeed open to committed relationships and always had been, but I didn't know what any kind of formal commitment would look like since I was not open to living with other partners, or holding additional partners as primary along with my husband. I said that if our relationship could be patched up and continued to deepen, that I would be open to exchanging rings privately if he wished that. I also said that the fact that I was still in his life, still trying to work things out despite a lot of difficulties, should show him how committed I was to our relationship.

C. was very quiet for a while while J. and I talked, then she took the floor. She began making accusations towards me about various things, 90 percent of which I had already specifically apologized to her for. My husband tried to calm her down. J. just sat there. I tried to keep my cool and I did for a while, but I am not good at doing that when someone else is berating me. When C. literally started shouting at me in the middle of the restaurant, I lost my temper too and responded loudly and angrily for a couple of minutes. I tried to get up and leave, but my husband literally would not let me out of the booth we were sitting in. (He regrets that now, but at the time he believed that if I stayed, we could somehow fix things in the end.) I gave in, stayed, and tried to take deep breaths. We ended up spending over three hours there, with C. continuing to berate me on and off.

The only other thing that we accomplished, outside of J. airing a few of his concerns (that I might not support his relationship with his platonic friend should it ever turn sexual, that I might not support his decision to have more children with another partner, since neither me or C. are capable of that but he does want more children), was me finally seeing C. and J's written relationship rules and discovering that they still said nothing about limiting veto power over established relationships. I expressed amazement that they had not tried to deal with this issue, after everything that had happened with me, and C. expressed loud outrage that I was trying to tell them how to run their relationship. At that point, I just shut up.

My husband and I went home, extremely shaken. I felt that perhaps I should end things with finality, that it was hopeless to try to persist in a relationship with a man whose wife clearly loathed me and wanted me gone. But then I decided that if anyone was going to end things, I did not want it to be me. Instead, I wrote a brief email to J. telling him that I felt that three of us had gone to lunch with good intentions and it made me so sad that C. was not able to let go of her anger and resentment and bad feelings towards me. I asked to see him, to just do something fun together and not talk about our issues for one evening. My husband wrote a much more forceful email to both C. and J. that expressed his discomfort with how she had attacked and berated me and derailed the peace process under the guise of "having her feelings heard". He said he had not agreed to be a part of anything like that, and he would not be sitting down with her again.

J. got in touch with me the next day and wanted to make plans to see each other, and we did. That same evening, I received an odd series of emails from C. In them, she insisted that I had written the email my husband had sent, the one that expressed displeasure with her behavior, and sent it from his private email account, and signed his name to it. She even taunted me that maybe it was time to veto me once and for all. Husband has been writing to her from that account for months and never gave her any indication that it was a shared email account, which it is not. I just threw up my hands at her paranoia, and my husband wrote to tell her that his email account was private and he had sent that message, not me. I can only assume that she could not get her mind around the idea that he thought badly of her, so she jumped to the conclusion that I must have hacked his account.

The next day, I got an email from J. telling me he was sick of the "roller coaster" and he no longer wanted the relationship with me. Nothing at all had passed between us since we made plans for a date together.

I was sad for perhaps six hours, then it felt like a huge weight had been lifted. No more drama, no more of an unbalanced, paranoid woman berating me and me being forced to bite my tongue because I wanted to keep a long-term relationship with her husband. No more of my husband feeling bad because he couldn't help the situation despite his great empathy and diplomatic skills (which are so much better than mine).

I also realized that J. must have known what C. intended to do at that lunch. He is a very deliberate person who plans everything down to the last detail, and he would never have gone into that situation without having some idea how it would have gone. I believe that he felt I needed to be punished in some way for C's upset, and that is why he just sat there and let her attack me.

I have learned from this situation that I need to get better at spotting crazy people (meaning C., perhaps even J. to some extent), and that I need to know precise details of how a couple does veto power, if they do, before I get into a relationship with one of them.

I may still have to put up with J. and C. socially to some degree. I think it could be uncomfortable for them socially at events that contain a lot of my close friends, because my close friends know what has been going on and have been supporting me unconditionally and have expressed horror at both C's and J's behavior. I can't say how my friends will treat them. But I will be OK with being polite and distant to both. This may, in the end, be the easiest breakup I have ever had.

I just wanted to finish the story here since I started it here. For anyone who was brave enough to read the whole thing, thanks for your interest.
 
Speechless... my goodness! :eek:

I was sad for perhaps six hours, then it felt like a huge weight had been lifted.

I am glad you are done and moving toward the healing place and feel like your burdens are lifting. That's been a LOT to have to endure. :(

*hug*

GG
 
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