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My BH and I have decided to attempt reconciliation. This is a longer story and I will post about it I. The Reconciliation forum as soon as I can organize my thoughts about the last six or so weeks.

Anyway one of the conditions my BH set for reconciliation was that I cut mine of my best friends out of my life. She knew about my affair, encouraged it and even offered to help me lie to my husband. To her (and me at the time) it was all some big adventure. Well my husband has read all the texts between us about it and stated that he cannot move forward with me is she’s still in my life.

There is nothing more important to me right now than trying to make this work so I had a difficult conversation with her last night. She feels she did nothing wrong, she simply felt she was standing by her friend. But he also feels betrayed by her because he considered her a friend and trusted her too. So after much arguing I told her I was sorry but I understand his feelings of insecurity about our friendship.

She says I’m letting him control me and I’ll be sorry in the end. I don’t feel he’s trying to be controlling at all. He’s given me full access to his phone, email, and social media as after we separated he had a revenge affair. I have full access to his conversations with this woman and believe him that he hasn’t had contact with her since last fall. He’s also stopped spending time with his one half brother who encouraged him to be with this woman. I also have some thoughts about his revenge affair and will make a separate post about those thoughts soon. Posting here is very therapeutic for me.

I feel like these are steps we both needed to take to try and build some trust between us. I will provide more details about how we arrived at our decision to try to reconcile. It’s been just a roller coaster last six or so weeks for both of us and I think we realized we both want to try to make this work.

I'm so glad to hear this, LAH.

I think you're making the right call about your friend. People who enable us at our worst are not "standing by" us. It would be a tougher choice (IMO) if she had tried to talk you out of cheating but stopped short of actually telling your BS. But cheering you on, and doubling down on that choice as just being ride-or-die, means that this person clearly isn't a good influence in your life.

After my A, I distanced myself from several friends whom I had in common with the OM. These friends were not enablers; they had no idea that I was cheating. However, staying active in that circle would have greatly increased the likelihood of crossing paths with OM again in some social situation. I knew my BH couldn't have healed under those circumstances, so I let the connections fade away. It's a loss, but it's nothing compared to what I saved, and I have several other close friends from that era who remain important to me.

I'm looking forward to reading more about your work towards R and to offering help where we can.

L&H

It’s nice to read some good news for a change. I will be rooting for you both.

To echo what BSR said, I am looking forward to your updates.

LostandHoping,

This is excellent news! And you are also extending the gift of R to your H. I wish both of you the best as you begin healing yourselves and your M.

I had to cut a lot of people out of my life as well. At the time it was painful, but looking back it is now easy to see that these "friends" were only enemies of me and my M. The only true things I had in common with them were working together and the fact that we all liked to drink to excess. Not a recipe for healthy friendships at all and those relationships were only detrimental to my life.

Please keep posting. I'm a long time lukrer who finally threw his hat in the ring on the advice of my therapist. Reading here has helped me tremendously and I hope I can offer some too.

Anyway one of the conditions my BH set for reconciliation was that I cut mine of my best friends out of my life. She knew about my affair, encouraged it and even offered to help me lie to my husband. To her (and me at the time) it was all some big adventure. Well my husband has read all the texts between us about it and stated that he cannot move forward with me is she’s still in my life.

There is nothing more important to me right now than trying to make this work so I had a difficult conversation with her last night. She feels she did nothing wrong, she simply felt she was standing by her friend. But he also feels betrayed by her because he considered her a friend and trusted her too. So after much arguing I told her I was sorry but I understand his feelings of insecurity about our friendship.

She says I’m letting him control me and I’ll be sorry in the end. I don’t feel he’s trying to be controlling at all. He’s given me full access to his phone, email, and social media as after we separated he had a revenge affair. I have full access to his conversations with this woman and believe him that he hasn’t had contact with her since last fall. He’s also stopped spending time with his one half brother who encouraged him to be with this woman. I also have some thoughts about his revenge affair and will make a separate post about those thoughts soon. Posting here is very therapeutic for me.

I'm happy for you and sad for you at the same time. Happy that you have a glimmer of hope that you and your husband are going to give things a second chance after what you've both been through and sad that you are losing a friend. In my case, my best friend didn't know anything about my affairs, and I'm certain if he did, he would've been the friend to slap me silly and talk some sense into me kind of friend, but had I been asked to cut him out of my life entirely as part of reconciliation, I'm not sure where I would land on that one.

I know you shared that your friend encouraged your affair and offered to help you lie, but is it possible that she was mirroring what you were putting out to her as the vibe for what you wanted? Sure, we can call into question her morality in the situation as to whether she should've stood up to you and told you no, but you were deeply ensconced in your affair, you knew what you were doing was wrong but I'm sure she found out because you wanted someone to help justify to you that what you were doing was okay because of X, Y or Z reason, no matter how flimsy the rationale. I don't know the nature of the friendship, but I imagine it is pretty hard to let go of her friendship.