'What are my next steps after I caught my wife in a compromising position with my friend?' UPDATED

"What are my next steps after I [42M] caught my wife [39F] in a compromising position with my friend[43M]?"

This is not a clear cut cheating story, so I’m truly at a loss. My wife and I have been married for 15+ years with kids. About 2 years ago, we started hanging out with this other couple we met through our school. We’ve gotten really close. I consider the guy my friend, and my wife also hangs out with his wife. When the four of us hang out with our families, there’s usually a good amount of alcohol involved.

The event in question happened right before Mother’s Day, and I still haven’t digested it. We were hanging out with the other couple as usual, when my wife went to the kitchen with the guy to refill their drinks. I had a mostly full glass and was looking pretty comfy on the couch (still talking to the other wife), when I decided to go join them in the kitchen for whatever reason.

When I got there, I saw my wife with her back against a wall laughing, with my friend leaning over her, his mouth maybe kissing her neck or really close to it. They were both pretty drunk. I immediately screamed wtf is going on. They jumped apart looking shocked to see me, and my wife kept saying she could explain etc.

It was like out of a sh#$ty lifetime movie. We were all talking over each other, and then I started heading to the car, grabbing my kids on the way. I was about to leave her, but she climbed in the passenger seat anyway. I wasn’t going to kick her out of the car with our kids in the back so we drove home in silence. When we got home, my wife started crying.

She told me that this is what happened: weeks ago, he started doing random small things around her while we all hung out if my (and his wife’s) back was turned. He would grab her hand or touch her hair. The most they spoke about it was that she said he should really stop doing these things, but then kept letting him or finding ways to be alone momentarily with him.

She claims they never communicated by text/phone call, never met up, and never even kissed. In retrospect, I do think he was subtly flirting with her, but I thought at the time that it was the usual gentle teasing we would all do as friends.

I asked her if they were going to kiss that night if I hadn’t caught them and she says she’s not sure, but she may have let him. She says she’s not even physically attracted to him, but enjoyed the validation she got from him putting these moves on her.

She has had a long history of requiring a lot of reassurance that she’s attractive and that I am still into her. She immediately let me have her phone and search through it, and I didn’t find any texts between them. I asked her if this would have led to s#$, and she adamantly said no.

The worst thing then was that I asked her if she fantasized about him when she was with me or getting herself off: she said no to thinking of him while with me but admitted yes to thinking of him when alone. Needless to say, I’m cutting off all contact with my “friend”. I told my wife I’m thinking about divorce and she’s begging me to reconsider.

She’s telling me we will go to counseling, I can track her location…all the things. This really sucks. I don’t know how I can get past this betrayal. I don’t know how I can trust her again. But I also don’t know how I can leave what I thought was an amazing marriage and give our kids a broken home without attempting to try to work through this.

I can’t talk to any of my friends or family about this because it makes me sick, and I feel embarrassed that I let this happen. It’s been hard pretending to be happy on Mother’s Day for the sake of our kids. I can’t sleep and have barely eaten. I can’t concentrate at work. At home, my wife just cries all the time. What the f#$k do I do.

TLDR: I caught my wife about to kiss a friend while we were hanging out. She says she accepted his advances because she liked the validation, but would have stopped it before it led to s#$. She appears remorseful and is begging me to not leave her, and I don’t know what to do.

ETA: I just want to clarify one point since I’ve had many comments addressing this. We do NOT drink and drive. One of us is usually the DD and has like one glass of wine with food, while the other 3 get a little sloshed. Just needed to say this so people didn’t keep assuming we’re putting kids in danger. I was not drinking the night this happened, and I’m sorry for not clarifying this before.

The internet did not hold back one bit.

slimjim2019 wrote:

You didn't catch them and they would have done more and more each time until finally meeting up alone. I dont know what you do here to be honest. Obviously the friend has to go and blocked everywhere. What did the guys wife do about all of this?

OP responded:

I honestly wasn’t watching the other wife that carefully while this was going down because I was freaking out. She also seemed shocked but didn’t say much, just kept repeating “what happened?” I watched my wife send her one text since then saying “I’m sorry for not stopping this and my part in everything” but she didn’t respond. I have not tried to reach out to her myself.

littlewing1307 wrote:

She's lying to you. No one has fantasies about someone they're not at least semi interested in. You can be flattered by interest and make it clear it's not welcome. She did nothing of the sort. She encouraged it. And got off on the sneaking around which means she got off on lying to you.

OP responded:

She explained that she isn’t physically attracted to him and wouldn’t imagine herself actually having s#$ with him as he is in real life. He was more of this vague presence in her fantasy that was just obsessed with her and made her feel desired. You’re right she didn’t stop him as she should. She said she got off on the high of feeling wanted.

roadwhiskey wrote:

My ex cheated with my friend and it started exactly like this. If she didn’t shut it down immediately and tell you then she either has cheated or was going to. They’ve been intentionally sneaking moments together for months. She says she’s not attracted to him and yet masturbates to him. This is already lies and 1/2 truths.

The trickle truthing is the worst. As you talk about this more she’s going to forget what she’s already told you and what she hasn’t and you’re going to find it’s way worse than you think right now. If she’s honestly never even kissed him then maybe you can salvage it. But don’t let her act like this wasn’t cheating; intentional, repeated cheating.

Given my experience I’d say leave now, this is not the kind of person you want to be with. If you stay, on top of couples counseling, insist she get individual therapy. She didn’t make a mistake, again this was intentional. She has a problem. And until she gets it fixed you’ll never be able to trust her.

Two weeks later, OP shared an update.

Sorry, it’s taken me a while to get back to this. It’s been really busy as you can imagine. I appreciate all the support and advice for this difficult situation. Shortly after the original post, I did reach out to the other wife, asking if we could meet in person or at least talk on the phone to see if the stories matched.

She pretty much responded with a version of “We are planning on moving forward as a family and talking about it with you will not be conducive to that process for us.” She wished me peace or some bs and then both of them blocked both of us. I know there’s other ways to contact them, but I’m not gonna be that guy.

We decided to start marriage counseling and have an appointment set up this week. I also finally convinced my wife to get therapy for her issues as well, but her appointment isn’t until later in June. She is still being transparent and asking whatever question I have about anything.

She is still maintaining that all she would ever do is flirt and a few touches here and there while we were all hanging out, and would never have met up with him outside. She says she enjoyed the thrill of being found desirable by someone that was taboo. It got to her head. I looked through her phone many times again, more thoroughly, and I didn’t find any deleted texts, apps, etc.

I even looked up websites on how to catch cheating on phones and followed their advice on how to search. I hate to disappoint most of you who commented, but I am trying to give her this benefit and move forward with our marriage for now, as she has been an amazing wife otherwise.

I do know that I may never have 100% of the truth. I’m not an idiot. I don’t trust her fully, but maybe one day I can get there. Here’s the tricky part. Our kids are in the same elementary school as theirs, and my wife is involved in the PTA, so there’s a guarantee we will run into this family. It’s actually pretty surreal to go from being such good friends to no contact.

My wife has begged me to not divulge any of this to anyone at the school or mutual friends, as she doesn’t want our kids to lose friends or our family to be stigmatized. I do see her point about that. But I did follow your advice and spoke to a couple of my best friends from before about what transpired. They were shocked she would do this, but supportive when I told them I’d try to forgive her.

I’m thinking of getting a therapist though. I still don’t want to tell anyone in my family because they can keep grudges and would use this against her forever. Finally, I’m sorry I made the original post seem like we were all alcoholics or something but that’s really not the case. We would get together and drink 2-3 times a month, and it was our main social drinking outlet.

We would have maybe 3-4 drinks each except for the one who was the DD. We don’t drink when it’s just the two of us, except for date nights. We don’t do weed or other drugs. I just mentioned the alcohol to give context that they were both under the influence when this happened, not to give an excuse or serve as the focus in the story.

Thank you again for all the comments. It was helpful to have a place to go to initially for this shit before I was ready to talk to people. It still feels like my life has turned upside down, and I still am hoping it’s all a bad dream, but I think I’ve accepted it better now.

The comments kept coming in.

Necessary_Tap343 wrote:

How are you going to handle interactions between the children? Im guessing they will tell their kids to stop being friends and even talking to your kids. That is the where your wife really screwed over your family going forward.

The kids will be hurt. Teachers and parents are going to pick up on the relationship tension and make assumptions about an affair happening. Once people comment to your former friends, what are they going to say? What are you going to say?

OP responded:

We told them that we had a disagreement with them and won’t be going over there anymore but said they can still be friends and play together at school. That’s it so far, and we will play the rest by ear. Yeah, I understand people may hear of it and make assumptions, but friends fall out over many other things.

fearless-speech-1131 wrote:

The other dude definitely told his wife that it was your wife that came to their home and seduced him. Partly true of course. It was disrespectful and any wife would be mad.

As for your wife, her need for constant reassurance practically guarantees that she'll do this again with another man. No amount of therapy or checking her phones, her movements will stop this desperate need inside her to feel a thrill by other men. You're delaying an inevitable outcome.

Bobozett wrote:

OP I'm noting an imbalance here.

You get your trust shattered. You run the real possibility of never knowing for sure what went down and your only recourse is to trust your wife.

You get the burden of pretending that everything is ok, and you have to cover for her.

You, the betrayed party, now have to protect her image.

Your wife gets:

To choose therapy at her convenience and that after you insisted.

Still gets to meet AP if she wishes so, PTA meeting and all.

Is facing no real consequences for her actions.

It seems that you're doing all the hard work while she is being passive. Shouldn't she be begging for forgiveness and asking for a second chance?

Her actions don't show this. She seems more concerned about protecting her image than saving her marriage.

Edit - the other wife's silence suggests that something happened. If it was indeed nothing then she'd be open to talk and reassure you.

Gazelle-Dull wrote:

If she behaved this way with you mere feet away in the next room..how do you think she behaved when they have an afternoon to themselves and the privacy of a nature hike or motel room....or empty classroom, locker room, etc?