The last shall be first 😂

Thank you LWs for the updates, ALWAYS appreciated! And so satisfying ;)

I don't listen to the podcast, but about the woman who "didn't like [the dude] or enjoy sex with him" but dated him anyway, I agree -- why do it? And,

Oy.

OMG, before reading TTCUMM's update I went back and took a look the original column from last May. It wasn't easy to read past "I continued to see the other guy (let's call him Todd) even after telling my husband it was over". And then that blew up on our poor TTCUMM. And today in the update we hear she felt she "did not deserve to live".

"I still mourned our relationship"

That's normal, TTCUMM. I was amazed to discover that for a while I remembered long-past the good times after ending a terrible marriage.

"I'm in a better place now"

Thank goodness! It was tough enough to read it, sorry you had to live it!

"...to the reader who responded with the advice about going to HR, I don't know who you are but I want to send a (virtual) giant hug and round of drinks (or your vice of choice) on me."

As lot of people brought up HR, for and against. But from the context I think she meant a "for HR" comment, which would mean either seatackled (just a brief mention, so maybe not the one she meant), SublimeAfterglow, or EmmaLiz. (Both of the last two seemed very substantial advice well worth a round of bong hits or whatever.)

@1 TheLastComment
And the Last shall be first.
Many are called, but few are chosen.

My resolution for the new year is, instead of recaptioning every New Yorker cartoon "Christ, what an asshole", I'm going to move to "have you tried with a buttplug?"

Now when people read fortunes in fortune cookies, instead of adding "in bed" at the end they should add "with a buttplug".

So I don't want to be too harsh on TTCUMM, but withholding the truth about the continued affair when it is likely that knowledge would be too much for your husband to forgive, is just you continuing to pull the wool over his eyes.

The only thing you got out of writing in was a way to continue to disrespect your husband, a way to avoid the consequences of your actions, and I think that's a shame. Threatening to go to HR was PART of the advice given, and specifically to prevent problems AT YOUR WORK, and to stop the harassment by Todd, NOT as a means of not telling your husband.

I get that you suffered and I respect that you understand you caused that suffering, but that doesn't absolve you of how you treated and continue to treat your husband. If you have any decency, you should either tell him or end it. Sadly, by previous actions and how you took the wealth of advice given to you (none of which was "do everything you can to keep your husband from finding out"), you'll likely do neither. Your husband deserves better. Either a better person, or a better, more honest you.

Rob @8: I agree. Also, when people pull that "well, I FEEL SO BAD about what I did so the rest of you shouldn't judge me for it (but also I'm not going to really make amends for what I did)" it's usually just a manipulative pity party meant to avoid consequences.

8,9, Rob and Traffic-- Right. And while the husband didn't write it, my question to him would be: If your wife didn't feel bad at all about what she did, what would your actions be then? That's my question to everyone dealing with a situation where they're being manipulated with "I know I've been horrible, but I couldn't help it, and I feel so guilty." Leave the horrible guilt out of the equation and see what you've got left. Works with alcoholics too.

Hmm. I'm not sure Dan was "overly" harsh on TTCUMM. In fact, reading the original advice, I don't think he was harsh at all. "Take some responsibility for your actions" is good advice. TTCUMM had completely failed to do so. Her conundrum was 100% the result of her own lying and cheating and while perhaps she doesn't deserve to die for her actions, she certainly doesn't deserve to stay married (or keep that job). Guess there's no such thing as karma after all. And I hope she doesn't read these comments because I can only anticipate that mine will be one of the kinder ones.

TTCUMM, if you are reading, FFS go get another job. SMH.

As for me, I'd be wrong to ignore the horrible guilt. I've been known to think occasional letter writers might benefit from someone coming down hard on them. But I'm not gonna do that with this one. For one, she already did that for herself, and even if that were an act I would expect that meant she'd be immune to my doing so too.

Plus, in our line of work, I think that whenever someone uses the word "suicidal" (even as something she's "never been"), it deserves a more cautious approach than I sometimes give LWs.

So I don't have much else to tell her, because I think Dan's long-patented "don't tell him unless he'll find out" makes good practical sense. Normally I'd add "or unless you'll do it again", but that seems kinda redundant after all the guilt in her update.

But this in no way lessens my reaction to what she confessed in the original column. When I wrote @5 I

" took a look the original column from last May. It wasn't easy to read past "I continued to see the other guy (let's call him Todd) even after telling my husband it was over"."

What I meant was that was just so deeply shitty I could almost couldn't care enough about her to read a word more (perhaps same as last May when I didn't say a word in response). But this is not news to her, so I saw no good purpose in saying it.

@ 10, yeah and with alcoholics, the guilt makes them feel so bad they have to go get drunk to stop feeling so terrible.....

I'm OK with giving some weight to "I feel really bad about it" if that translates into "and since I never want to feel that bad again, I'll take real steps to make sure I never do something like this again." I know that for me, guilt and shame for past actions have caused me to change my behaviour.

I also know that for some people, the guilt and shame "count" as amends and magically wipe the slate clean. It doesn't take too long to work out which kind of person you're with - my advice, after twenty years living with an alcoholic, is to not take as long as I did to stop putting up with it.

Agony @13, yeah, if you've done something terrible, feeling guilty and awful is the baseline response we should expect from a human being. Doing something terrible and feeling no guilt is the definition of a sociopath. So you feel guilty, congratulations -- now do something about it. Feeling bad is not in itself grounds for forgiveness, particularly repeated forgiveness of the same behaviour. Feeling bad should be coupled with action -- coming clean, making amends. Perhaps she's right and knowing the truth would hurt her husband knowing more than keeping him in the dark. (Whether it hurts HER is irrelevant; it's his feelings and needs that are important.) If she truly feels bad enough about this to change, then great. The proof will be in the pudding.

Dan once wrote that a LW's partner is "not as happy as he thinks he is". There's an analogy in there somewhere for TTCUMM's husband, who thinks he's forgiven her, but actually hasn't. He's simply deceived into believing he has.

Ms Fan - I was puzzled as well by where Mr Savage saw his excessive harshness. My best guess at the moment is that he knows what the tone of his answer would have resembled had he given that response to a podcast caller instead of a letter writer. Otherwise, there's the possibility that it thinks he was too harsh in inviting the inference that LW didn't take personal responsibility, that he thinks "freaking" co-worker too judging, or that simply restating the facts when they were unflattering constituted what he said he saw.

As for LW herself, she has chosen to negate her partner's agency in a significant manner, and perhaps the best one can do is to hope that her therapist can imbue in her the heft required to bear that burden for the life of the marriage.

vennominon @16: Nah, people like her just use therapy to learn new vocabulary for manipulation techniques.

It’s twitter feed Friday. Thanks for writing in ASSHOLE, again. Good to know we are all not just a bunch of hacks, some of the time. You did good though, you listened and adapted quickly.
Anger is a bust, it clouds the mind and makes us say and do stupid things. One can always get one’s point across thru assertion.
Though I can’t believe such deceit is going on in the US Senate. I rage at those ugly creepy cane toads. I remember the world wide satisfaction, as Nixon got taken down.
And our lot over here taking lessons, as always, from what the US gets away with, politically.

Hate too, not good to cultivate. Yet when I think of Rupert Murdoch, and think of the damage he’s caused to the US, Australia and Britain with his foul racism sexism and greed, a big lump of hate rises in my chest. And still that man is not seen as the Puppet Master, and stoned in the village square. I feel such shame he was born here.

I'm also wondering what the hell happened to Mr TTCUMM's self esteem that he didn't make changing jobs a prerequisite for their reconciliation. I hope he's getting some solo therapy too, homeboy needs to grow a backbone.

Last May, oh, makes sense. Because I have no memory of Todd, and given it’s way in the past, I’ll leave it there.

It's so quiet around here on the weekends. How am I supposed to avoid studying if I have no comments to read?

I didn't even notice I got 22. Lucky me! (For no other reason than my OCD about numbers.)

@13 second paragraph. yes, this. l-dub, you haven't really grown past this as a person yet. you're still building a life on a lie to another person. and ok, that's where you are. but unless/until you use these terrible feelings to improve yourself and never do anything like that again, you've just manipulated your way back to the life you wanted. and that's not a good look.

Curious @5, I read "I still mourned our relationship" as referring to her and Todd's relationship, not her marriage. But yes, that too is normal -- she must have had some strong feelings for Todd, and vice versa. This affair, wrong and screwed up as it was, still feels like an emotional loss. I hope they can all put this mess behind them. And have I mentioned that it would be a good idea to get another job?

CalliopeMuse @22: Fine, my TL;DR thoughts: this letter is full of self pity and manipulation. Other than the abusive "use suicide threats/hints whenever someone else calls you out on your bullshit" technique, she uses false equivalency to try and avoid consequences.

There's an old saying: "If someone wants to talk about chickens but you haven't any, talk about eggs, and the person will probably be fooled into thinking it's the same thing." A large portion of my job involves weeding out Elizabeth Holmes and Billy McFarland wannabees, and I see this shit all the time.

The "chicken" she's trying to trick you into thinking she's talking about is genuine remorse at the pain she's caused others. The 'egg' she's actually talking about is horror at the notion that she might have to suffer any actual personal or professional consequences, if her actions become public.

The other 'chicken' she's trying to get across is a determination to truly make things right (tell the truth, find another job), even if that means unpleasant consequences for her. However, she's really just talking about the 'egg' of minor, superficial consequences. "I'm no longer invited to Bob and Sharon's pictionary night, and I even said no to a few brunches with the girls (two-timing my husband took up all my time and money) - haven't I suffered enough??!! Isn't this enough punishment for me (so I definitely shouldn't have to tell the truth or get another job because that would punish me even more?)??"

Also, she's trying to use the 'egg' of big sweeping statements about how she feels she doesn't deserve to have 'fun' or 'friends,' to mask the entitlement of how she thinks she does deserve to con her husband into giving her another chance, and keep her job while she's at it.

Then, she tops it all off by saying that any true twinges of conscience she had was just her "gaslighting" herself! Nice to know that all her therapy has given her a whole new vocabulary for her justifications and manipulations.

TL;DR - for all her 'Woe is me' wailing, all of this boils down to "but since I FEEL really bad about what I've done (or at least I feel really bad about the possibility or suffering the consequences of what I've done) I shouldn't have to actually suffer any consequences of what I've done, right?"

@25 BiDanFan
Yes I thought she was referring to the mess with Todd too. I only intended to relate a similar experience, but I see that mine was my marriage made my point unclear.

While I agree it is \best\ to not work together after a break-up (as they well know having "had some heinous arguments at work"), now she says they "are able to peacefully co-exist in the office".

So maybe they can leave it there. Maybe getting another job is problematic somehow. Your concern was well-placed about whether her /husband/ can trust her working there, but to me (as I mentioned @12) "that seems kinda redundant after all the guilt in her update".
(To be honest, not fully "redundant", but I'm trying to be particularly diplomatic in this thread since I infer that she is with us here from that her update told us she read the comments on her original letter.)

I once worked together with an ex (who I totally blew it with) whose desk was just a few feet from mine. That sucked enormously but not as much as getting another job would have.

So my attitude is, yeah, I always advise to not work together after a breakup. And I always TOTALLY understand is that advice isn't taken.

Curious @27, your comment "I once worked together with an ex (who I totally blew it with) whose desk was just a few feet from mine. That sucked enormously but not as much as getting another job would have" reminded me of this discussion:
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/11/27/42116323/she-left-her-husband-but-still-lives-with-him-so-does-she-have-to-remain-celibate/comments

In that thread, you argued that living with an ex would be worse than any other possible living arrangement, which I argued was not necessarily the case. Funnily, here you're saying that working with her ex might not be the worst possible situation, and I'm the one who can't see how that would be possible. So I guess that if a minority of people can successfully cohabit after a breakup, a minority can successfully work together after an affair. I still think, though, that if she wants to show her husband that she's committed to the marriage she will take every step possible to be out of Todd's presence. If getting another job sucks for her, that seems like the smallest price she should be willing to suffer for her transgression.

@28 BiDanFan
Your great memory is indeed formidable, and presents an interesting comparison.

Sure, both living arrangements, and jobs, can vary from difficult to easy to change.

I guess my primary thinking is that while the former is all the non-working hours of the day (during which an ex's new love interests might be on display, and during which they might have lots of free time to fight), the later is just at work where primarily professional behavior is on display.

(Personally, I was tortured knowing that another ex was just a neighbor until she thankfully moved; I can't imagine how traumatized I would have been had she lived in my home. Being a co-worker was very significantly less traumatic.)

And it seems to me that there are orders of magnitude more places most people could live in my urban area than there are jobs they could get. And I think it's vastly easier for someone to live somewhere that's a lot less luxurious than they would like; I think it's much less easy for someone to take a job that's a lot less (money, etc.) than they would like. I've lived in terrible dumps; that experience is nothing compared to the drama/trauma of having a breakup staring one in the face at home. To get away from that I'd happily escape to a dump; I just don't think dumping one's job is as easy. With jobs there's considerations like career path; taking a significant demotion elsewhere might have lasting repercussions.

Unless one happens to be at the start of one's career path, then by all means go to the bottom of some other ladder!

"seems like the smallest price she should be willing to suffer"

A demotion could be a price in less income both she AND HER HUSBAND would pay. If he wants to pay that, sure, then she should too.

Curious @29, interesting. In the previous letter the LW had her own room, so in theory she could have spent far less time in her ex's presence than the 40 hours a week you spent rubbing desks with your ex at work. Good point that an ex might be on better behaviour at work, with HR watching. On the other hand, if one is at home and one's ex is getting on one's nerves, one has the choice to go out for the evening, hang out with friends, etc. Or just ignore them. One cannot blank a co-worker without professional repercussions.

As discussed on that prior thread, I've also lived with an ex and I've lived in far, far worse environments. So it all depends on the people involved. Getting another job would take time, but potentially far less time than finding a new home, depending on leases that may lock one in, etc. Finding a new place to live is also dependent on having an income, whereas having a job IS having an income. The fact that a drop in living standards would affect Mr TTCUMM too is the only reason I didn't suggest she just flat-out quit immediately. The ease of changing jobs really depends on her field. Are there more suitable homes than, say, positions for lecturers in esoteric branches of the sciences? Sure. Are there more suitable homes than retail jobs? Nope. At any rate, I'd be fine with a strategy of "leave this job as soon as you find one that does not entail a drop in pay or status" rather than "give two weeks notice now." (And I'd be happy with a similar strategy for moving out.) I would not be fine with no exit strategy at all.

"the LW had her own room, so in theory she could have spent far less time in her ex's presence than the 40 hours a week you spent rubbing desks with your ex at work"

Yes, but who wants to be hiding in one's room to avoid staring the person who dumped you in the face? (Heck just knowing they were in the kitchen could drive me crazy.) After a breakup I'd like to be able not to think of them every second, and I imagine that being more difficult if I outside my door I can hear them breathing, let alone their bed banging against the wall.

And sitting right next to my ex was closer than most co-workers sit. But even then we were /working/, there was little time spent focused on being tortured by our proximity.

I didn't even consider changing jobs. I wouldn't even consider not moving out immediately (unless it was a breakup we were both at peace with, which unfortunately isn't part of my personal experience). Good for you that it worked, but I have a difficult time even imagining it for most people, and I'm skeptical that anyone who needs relationship advice of any kind will make it work. (I'd like to think that I could now, but I sure couldn't back in the day.)

So what you see as relatively equivalent situations I have different takes on, I see as not even close.
Er, generally. So generally I guess the debate is kinda silly, since as you say the range of difficulty in finding equivalent jobs can be very great because the range in jobs is very great. OTOH, I live in one of the tightest housing markets anywhere, and to avoid living with any of my ex's I'd be outta here in a flash.
After leaving my ex-wife I slept on a friend's couch for a couple days finding something else; my memory of that situation are that all night every night their cats ran around the room halfway up the wall, in defiance of the laws of gravity. It was insane. But it was heaven compared to a second with my ex-wife post-breakup.

If someone tells us they think both they and their ex are totally cool with continuing to live together, I raise a glass to you and them. If either of them are less confident than that, my advice to them is to forget about it.

@31 p.s. That was re: @30 BiDanFan
p.p.s. Quite an interesting situation in which each of us feels more comfortable with the other of the two choices between post-breakup co-working and living together.

TTCUMM is the poster child for why severing any and all contact (get a new job) when an affair ends is an absolute imperative. As bad the actual cheating is, it is the lingering emotional attachment that dooms most relationships. It makes it impossible for spouse's broken heart to heal.

BDF @ 30 Re: drop living in living standards. Definitely a drop in income, but TTCUMM didn't provide any information about their financial situation. Is a drop of living standard a compelling reason not to find a new job? Possibly in the short term, but there a multitude of reasons why finding a new job is almost always the most viable course of action given that she may now be in a dead end job. Her net performance evaluation should be interesting in a Chinese sort of way.

Skeptic @33, exactly.

Curious @32, it's not really post-breakup living together versus post-breakup working together, but post-breakup living together (a hard no for you no matter what the other options were) versus post-affair-and-reconciliation-with-spouse working together, which I see as a hard no but you seemed fine with -- a view I found strange, given your preference for cockroaches or meth labs over an ex in the spare room. Skeptic @33 vocalised very well why I see this as a hard no. Working with a garden variety ex would be far more of an "it depends" situation -- though one I'm unlikely to ever find myself in, given my hard limit against dating people one works with in the first place.

@3 BiDanFan
"it's not really..."

True. I guess I was leaning towards a theoretical discussion detached from the letters.

"reconciliation-with-spouse working together"

Last May when she was asking for advice and I (as I mentioned @12) apparently didn't care enough about her even to Comment, I would DEFINITELY have recommended working elsewhere. (And without reading the May comments I'm guessing somebody did, and that she didn't take that advice, and regrets it enormously given the resulting shitshow was very traumatic.)

But now that we get an update which both doesn't ask for advice at all, and tells us that the shitshow is over and they're now "able to peacefully co-exist in the office", I can only think of one reason now working elsewhere would be called for: if her husband wants her to. And I already bloody said @29 that if he does "she should".

Do I think much of assumptions I saw upthread that he wants her to? No, I do not. Do I think we should ask her?

No, I do not
(now quoting myself from a unrelated thread where I brought her letter up[1])

"since SHE WASN'T ASKING FOR ADVICE, SHE WAS SIMPLY GIVING US A BLOODY UPDATE!"

Why the bleep are people giving her advice when she didn't ask for any, based upon an unsubstantiated guess about the husband's wishes? This seems nuts to me, particularly given that she specifically told us she'd read the prior comments thread, and had pretty much gone through enough hell.

As Dan says the only qualification one needs to be an advice columnist is that someone asks for your advice. She did last May but she didn't now. And even if she had I'm not gonna tell her she needs to pay a price because of a wish I have no idea whether her husband has.

I've stated a bunch of times from painful experience that working with an ex can TOTALLY SUCK. You mentioned @28 that "getting another job...seems like the smallest price she should be willing to suffer for her transgression." Most of this above comment addressed this, I just want to add one more thing: since working with an ex has already totally sucked for her, we can all rest comfortably knowing she has paid such a price. There is nothing more I think we are justified in asking of her.

[1] https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/01/27/42681299/straight-guy-desperate-to-know-what-hes-doing-wrong/comments/64

Curious @37, I re-read the comments and was unsurprised but pleased to see that the first thing I said was "get another job."

Why the bleep are we giving her advice when she didn't ask for any? Because this is an advice column and we are opinionated fucks. And I did address the question of why the husband isn't expecting her to find another job, my thought being that he must have very low self-esteem. Sometimes when one's partner says, for instance, "you go on ahead, honey, don't worry about me," what they really want you to do is stay home with them for the evening, right? (Or when asked if you want to have sex, "ye-e-e-e-e-s?" really means no, to refer to the same column you're referring to.) Perhaps the husband hopes she will WANT to stop working with the guy. Who knows why he's being a doormat about this, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't take the initiative of showing him some respect and looking for another job. At any rate, she's made her decision, but it's still my prerogative to opine that it was a poor one.

@38 BiDanFan
"must have very low self-esteem"

That's likely, but it could be high not low.

I can imagine some people claiming that stuff like you wrote about her husband is true of someone in a poly couple. Whereas in reality we know that being successfully poly benefits from more, not less, emotional maturity and development.

"decision...it was a poor one"

Everyone including her knows that, her update was about how horrible it was for a while because she didn't listen to you.

"it's still my prerogative to opine"

Of course, but why /now/, what's the practical value in the advice /now/? The period during which your good advice had immense value is /over/, they all suffered the ensuing shitshow period, now they're

"able to peacefully co-exist in the office"

Yes it would still be nice and helpful for everyone involved were they no longer co-workers. But as we were discussing, changing jobs can be very difficult; if she didn't do it when it was of immense value, I'm thinking there are good reasons she won't be taking that advice now. So I'd feel odd about telling her to without knowing more, and I don't really have permission to know more since I'm not being asked a question.

But I'm sure she would like to, as I'm sure it sucks to have to keep seeing Todd there at work.