'My wife's ex wants to collaborate on a work project with her and I'm suspicious.' UPDATED 3X

"My(44m) Wife(41f) was recently contacted by her ex-boyfriend/cowriter(36m) and I've grown a bit nervous."

Hello everyone, let me first start by saying that my wife and I are very open, maybe way too open about our past and past partners and all that. She is my second wife. My first wife was big on fidelity and we broke up over her cheating. The ex and I share a son. My wife also has a daughter of her own from a previous marriage. We've been married for 5 years and our little blended family works well together.

TLDR- Wife's ex-boyfriend messages my wife about a writing project they worked on years ago. She cheated on her ex-husband with this man about a decade ago. I'm worried old habits will repeat.

As I mentioned earlier we are perhaps too open about our past relationships. Her first husband, was a serial cheater. He was a musician and slept around with women from his gigs. She stumbled onto his emails only to learn that he was involved with 5 other women one of which he'd gotten pregnant.

Not wanting their child to grow up in a broken home she wanted to save the relationship and reached out to one of her old internet friends for advice, we'll call him, "Chris" The two had been friends for 7 years up until that point but had never met, they were writing partners. In fact before they lost contact they had been writing a novel together.

She tells me that when she reached out for support he was very kind and had actually been recommending a lot ways to get past infidelity or what you should speak to attorney about, in general being a good friend. Somewhere in that they decided to revisit writing their book again.

According to her they would casually flirt but as they lived on opposite sides of the country they had no means to act. She decided her marriage was dead and stopped trying to fix things, checked out I guess. She and Chris expressed mutual attraction and by the end of the year he flew out to meet her. She filed for divorce right after the affair got physical, and Chris moved later that year to be with her.

To make a long story short her daughter who was only 5 at the time didn't really take to him. As she says he didn't do anything wrong she just wasn't adjusting properly after the divorce and didn't like somebody replacing her father. My wife told him they needed to take a break due to this and do to the fact that he's a bit crass sometimes.

She had only intended for it to be a short break, but he was apparently so hurt that he'd moved that far to be turned away 2 months in and so he broke it off entirely. After months had gone by they reconnected to try and finish their book. They began sleeping together again during this time, but it was just a physical thing. They came close to finishing the book, but she started dating me,

thus they stopped sleeping together. She felt weird about having an ex hanging around once she got in a committed relationship and so by her own admission she stopped returning his emails, which were all book related, with the same frequency and stopped working on it on her end so much. He grew frustrated after a few months of this and blocked her on everything.

Which finally brings us to month ago. After 4 or 5 years of no contact he messages her out of the blue. He contracted Covid and nearly died. Chris contacted her because apparently in that time apart he rewrote the book without her contributions, managed to get published, wrote and published a sequel, and released his work came really close to not be finished if he died.

He wanted to make it known that if something should happen to him that he wanted the rights of this thing turned over to her as she knows how it will end and helped create the story. Fair enough, that actually sounds nice, but then they get to talking. He's apparently writing a comic adaptation, and he invited her to come on board for it.

He has a lot of the art done and she was very excited showing me and explaining to me who all the characters were, their backstories, what she thinks he got wrong in the design. She also read the first book and is telling me which names he changed, what characters were and weren't in their version, the plot differences and she seems to be having a lot of fun with it.

I knew they wrote together, she's mentioned it before, but I had no idea they had this whole universe created. I can tell it was something that was really important to her. She seems like she might take him up on the offer, and this worries me. Every time they've worked on something in the past it leads to sex. And there is a bit of sexual content in their writing.

I'm not the jealous type, and I certainly don't want to step on a dream she had buried, but I don't want a repeat of history. I'll admit I decided to snoop their conversation, and while he seems like he's been on the level and is only really discussing the project, she's pressing for information on his personal life. I wouldn't say in a flirty way, but she asked him if he's seeing anyone now,

and when he answered no, he's too busy, that relationships just get in the way, she told him he needs to get back out there. That celibacy isn't a good look on him. We're pretty open about our past sex life, so I know her ex-husband was terrible at it, and once when drunk she said of Chris "Don't let a great lay convince you it'll be a great relationship."

How the Hell do I proceed? I know she was emotionally broken by her ex-husband and that's why she cheated, but she did cheat with this man. I've met him, he seems like an on the level guy, but they have a history that tells me something might happen. I want to approach my wife with my concerns, but I don't want to seem like an overbearing, controlling person.

I want her to have her creative outlet, because she glows in a way I've never seen before when she talks about this book I barely knew anything about. It feels like it's something that was deeply important to her that she forced not to be important. I want that for her, but I don't want their interactions to escalate into something more like they have 3 times already.

What do you think is going on? This is what top commenters had to say:

lemmehelpyaout said:

I would say a very acceptable boundary to draw is "I'm not okay with you making a book with the guy who you left your last husband for."

IllChampionship5 said:

You tell her that you are not OK with her having contact with her former affair partner and that it will be the end of the family if she proceeds. You should not have to sit there and watch and worry and wonder what is going on between them. It is totally antithetical to any reasonable concept of marriage.

Nevereveragain0212 said:

She's an admitted cheater. Biggest fact about a cheater is that they lie. A lot. I'd be doubting her history with her ExH right now. Beyond that...I'd just end it right now. Her wanting to start any kind of relationship with a guy that she always winds up sleeping with, that's just insanely inappropriate of her to even suggest. This to me would be her failing the long term partner test.

A week after his original post, he shared this update:

TLDR- They've been screwing. And were only talking about writing as a cover for being more open. My wife's ex-boyfriend reemerged in her life asking to work on a mutual writing project that she abandoned years ago that he's achieving financial success with now.

I don't know who this woman is. The level of deception is so involved and deliberate that I'm hardly capable of comprehending that I've spent the last 6 years of my life with this person. I decided to sit down with her and talk about how I felt about the situation,

that I was happy she rediscovered her old writing and expressed that it would be cool for her to explore that as a hobby or a profession as she's quite good at it and clearly enjoys it. At the time she agreed, and said that Chris, her ex being around wouldn't be a good thing, saying she was worried that he might be using this as a ploy to talk with her again.

When she said these things I was like okay cool, she has the same misgivings I do and she's not minimizing my feelings or calling me controlling, in fact we're on the same page. Oh how wrong I was. That conversation should have been the end of it, but for some reason my brain started getting weird and I began thinking it was going too well.

Yesterday morning when she got in the shower I took her phone and went into it. His number was there and their entire conversation had been deleted. It hadn't been 3 days prior. Red flags. Checked facebook messenger, she's talking about her upcoming trip for work which takes her to Vegas.

Well apparently this two day long thing has been cancelled but she's been telling me she's going. They are discussing a hotel a town over and staying there as well as sending each other other people's vacation photos of Vegas so she'll have stuff to show if I ask. She's talking about restaurants they can go to, how there will be a full moon when he's here, and it would look great on the beach.

Oh yeah, and he's not on the East Coast as he presented, he moved back to town recently since the prick actually has enough money to live here. He showed her on google maps where he's living and it's taking everything I have not to drive my truck straight into his living room. A month ago she claimed that she had to pick up her brother from the airport, NOPE! That was him.

The messages don't go back much further than that but they reference talking about stuff during the years they supposedly haven't had contact. One line I read that he wrote has my heart racing with such madness is from him. "Yeah, we're just friends. I don't see you in 8 years and I'm inside you 20 mins off the plane. Best friends maybe."

So she's not just planning to sleep with him, she's been doing it for months. That trip to her mothers a few weeks back where she stayed the night, yeah. I haven't confronted her yet, but her smile fills me with so much hate now. I'm going to try my best and hold back on saying anything until after Christmas.

The kids don't need the holiday being a constant reminder of this, but honestly I'm probably gonna snap and confront her today or tomorrow because my ability to swallow this BS with a smile is almost impossible. I'm losing my mind right now.

Edit 1- I'm gathering info pics and screenshots of her location and speaking with a Lawyer tomorrow.

Edit 2- I've met with my brother's divorce attorney and we're making plans. I am documenting everything, all texts, her location, where she's claiming to go. I'm confronting her on the 2nd next month after she goes to the hotel with him. I'm making sure I have my ducks in a row and I'm trying not to ruin Christmas forever for the kids.