Note: Names have been changed for various reasons.
James and Sarah have been like family to my wife and I for several years, practically ever since we moved across the street from them. The four of us were extremely tight. Our kids are the same age as theirs and we are all good friends. We were one big family unit. We did dinner together a few times a week. We went on vacations together. I truly saw James as a brother, and my wife and Sarah were very close too.
Five months ago, I was completely blindsided by the discovery of an affair between my wife and James. My wife had left her email open on our computer, and I saw an email from her to a long time therapist saying that James would be joining her at an upcoming session “again”. Uh, WTF? My mind started racing - why in the world would James be go into a therapy sessions without my knowledge.
I did a search and found some other emails too and from the therapist proving that James had been going to sessions together with her for about six weeks. I checked our mobile phone account and discovered that, since late summer, they had been exchanging hundreds of texts every day, peaking at nearly 500 per day by the holidays.
Speaking of the holidays, my wife and I hosted both of our families (parents, siblings, etc) for both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, and James and Sarah joined us either for dinner or after dinner on both holidays.
Text records show that the entire time that they were our house celebrating with our families, my wife and James were texting each other across the room. They were doing that pretty much every time the four of us hung out, for months. And, you know all day every day just in general. But what bothers me the most is the way they were doing it with Sarah and I right there.
I confronted my wife with the evidence and she admitted that yes, she and James had fallen in love. “It just happened! I don't know how! But I love him and I just don't feel anything for you anymore, I'm sorry!” They had gone on a school district trip together, something had happened in a hotel room and things had moved quickly from there.
She explained, as I laid face down on the couch, unable to look at her but they had already made plans to move out and divorce me and Sarah, and while they didn't plan to move in together immediately because of the kids, they'd probably do so eventually.
The meetings with a therapist were supposedly mostly for the purpose of finding a way to break this to me and Sarah as gently as possible, because they were so very concerned for our well-being. (Sarah and I are fairly certain that they weren't planning on telling us about the affair at all, and was simply going to “discover” their feelings for one another several months down the line, after they'd come up with some other reason to divorce the two of us).
My wife moved out two months ago. I was, and still am, utterly destroyed. I cry every day. I cried writing the first few paragraphs of the story just now. I worry non-stop about the impact on our kids. But I am not exactly a shrinking violet when I feel that I've been wronged. And in this case I was, objectively very very wronged.
So a couple of years ago, James ran for a Board of Education seat as a pretty extreme underdog. I helped him with his campaign materials and debate prep, and my wife a well-known school district employee (this becomes important later), got the word out as best as she could. Much to our surprise, he actually won in a squeaker, by just a few dozen votes.
Being on the board became the center of James world. He joined every committee that he could. This turned into the foundation of his affair with my wife, as they were constantly going to school events and meetings together on evenings and weekends.
Once I discovered the affair my thoughts turned pretty quickly to revenge, and it occurred to me that an extra marital Affair between a member of the Board of Education and an employee of the school district was at least bad politics and possibly violated District policy.
Making things far worse for them was that my wife was in the running for an open administrative position and everyone knew that she was more or less guaranteed the job and the major pay rise that came with it. She just finished a master's degree in school administration, at the urging of a principal and the superintendent, so that she could be promoted to the specific position.
I had plenty of evidence of the affair texts from both of them admitting to it, text records showing that they were texting hundreds of times a day, emails to and from the therapist, etc. I considered simply emailing all the evidence to the board in the superintendent but felt like I, as the grieving betrayed spouse, might not be seen as a credible source.
So instead, I invented a fictitious “furious friend” who was planning on showing up to the next board meeting and publicly shaming the two of them for their affair. I told my wife that I tried to talk this person down but couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't show up and humiliate them publicly. As I expected, this led James had to conclude that the only option was for him to preemptively admit the affair to the board.
The superintendent subsequently recommended that James resign, which he did. Sarah said that he was utterly humiliated and crushed, and barely got out of bed for a few days afterward. Once word of the affair in James’ resignation started getting around, the superintendent (a longtime friend of both my wife and James) contacted my wife and cheerfully informed her that it was no longer politically appropriate for her to be promoted to an administrative position within the district. The position that had been lined up for her was later filled by an outside candidate.
This sent waves of confusion and rumor throughout the district, as it was pretty well known that my wife was getting the job. The day after she was informed that she wasn't getting the promotion, my wife and I, despite our crumbling marriage, took our son to breakfast together on his birthday, and her parents stopped by our table to congratulate her on her new role. She said thanks, and excused herself to go cry in the bathroom for a while.
I let the dust settle for a couple of weeks, and then, right before my wife moved out let them in on my little secret - there was never a “furious friend” threatening to expose them in the first place. Just me.
Word of all this has gone around our fairly small town, which James grew up in and my wife has worked in for nearly 20 years. My wife refuses to talk to me about how things are at work now, I've heard from some people I know in the district that I formerly spotless reputation has taken a major hit. James, formerly a gregarious social presence in our neighborhood and at events and pubs in town, has completely gone underground and barely emerges to mow his lawn.
He's moving out soon to a shitty little townhouse which is all he can afford due to all the child support he's going to have to pay his wife. My wife and James claimed that they plan on trying to make things work together, despite all the public humiliation. I wish them lots of luck with that. I'm sure it will be a lot of fun to show their faces together in town.
I've been getting a surprising number of requests to post an update to this story. I guess it blew up a bit on TikTok, which I don't use. Where to start? It's been a bizarre few years, especially with covid thrown in the mix (which I somehow still have never caught, despite my kids getting it twice each; thankfully just mild cases).
I had a very specific plan and everything I needed to do it. The one thing that gave me any kind of relief was telling myself and if life got any more unbearable, I had a way out. So yeah, shit got bad. But I'm still here, and thankfully I don't think about that option anymore.
I reluctantly decided to dip my toe into the online dating world and after a number of short-term things that didn't pan out, I actually connected with someone. We’ll have been together for two years next month. She's absolutely amazing. We don't live together, and for the time being we're both good we've seen each other a few times a week.
Would I love to see her more? Yep, am I ready to live with someone again and go all Brady Bunch with our respective kids? I'm not sure. For the time being, we have a lot of fun together, and that's more than good enough for me.
As far as things stand with my ex and James, they're still together but there seems to be trouble in paradise because my kids report that they almost never see him anymore. My kids don't like him at all and they just avoid him when he's around, according to my older one. When all of this started, she had seemed confident that they'd be living together pretty soon, but they still don't, as far as I know there are no plans in the works for that.
They did buy a boat together, which I find hilarious for some reason. It just seems like the classic affair couple thing to do. Sarah took a long time to accept that her marriage was truly over, but once she did, she really did an admirable job of moving on. She engrossed herself in Home Improvement projects. She remains the same incredible mum that she's always been and she's been in a friend with benefits type relationship (which is all she wants right now) with a nice, funny guy for almost two years.
We hang out here and there especially when my pool is open in the summer. We aren’t nearly as dependent on each other as we were in the beginning but we're still close friends. And no, though nothing more than that, which I'm glad about because the one thing the situation definitely never needed was more drama.
My ex left the school district she was looking for and took a job in a neighboring District. I had no idea what James is up to nor do I care. I hardly ever see him except at the occasional school event. For a while there, I was worried that he'd look at me the wrong way and I'd wind up in jail for knocking him out in an elementary school cafeteria or something, I just don't care enough about him anymore for that to be a concern.
So, all in all, life is pretty okay right now. I do miss being a family. I still have nightmares about all this stuff and deal with intrusive thoughts at times. I fall asleep to audiobooks now to keep those thoughts at bay otherwise; I still struggle to sleep sometimes. But my girlfriend is amazing I have an incredibly supportive family (I just officiated my sister's wedding a couple of months ago!), and I have a big dog who needs a lot of walks and that's a huge help for me on so many levels.
Thank You!
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