My friend and I met at school. I moved away but we kept in touch. After she had a baby, I went to visit without my husband. We all had too much wine, and she went to bed. I stayed chatting with her husband, who had also been at school with us. But as I went to leave, he tried to kiss me. I pushed him away but he kept coming towards me. I told him to stop but he didn’t. So I ran out of the house.
I told my husband. He was aghast and thought I should tell her. I felt I’d be potentially breaking up a young family. I was also unsure if she’d believe me. I was notorious in our social circle for sleeping around as a teen. My husband made it clear he never wanted to see her husband again. I didn’t feel confident enough to meet up with them both. And so I left it. I didn’t say a thing but kept my distance.
We exchanged occasional texts. The tone of hers were always: What did I do? Why don’t you come and see me any more? I would feign other commitments. Slowly but surely the text messages stopped.
Our own baby arrived at the height of the pandemic. I posted a photo on social media and had a text from my friend. Why hadn’t I told her? What had she done? Since that exchange, where I again assured her that she had done nothing wrong, that life had got in the way, there has been nothing.
But it eats me up. I want to make contact. I want our children to meet. I want to tell her how much her friendship meant to me. But she is still with her husband and now I don’t know how to rectify the situation.
You gave lots of detail, which I have omitted, but it was clear your friend stood by your side through some difficult years. You didn’t say how long ago all this was but it seems the incident with her husband happened a good few years ago.
But my overarching question is: why now? What has changed from back then given that seeing her now would bring up the same problems, other than maybe her children are older? I also think you need to ask yourself who you’re trying to make feel better – you or her.
I consulted UKCP registered psychotherapist Stephen Westcott on this. Westcott felt that back then, your “fears at not being believed” may have been the primary reason for not saying anything. Maybe you feel stronger now, more separate from who you were then? Westcott also felt you were “in a way protecting the husband by seeming to take responsibility [for what happened]. Also you assumed that it would break the relationship, and that may not have been the case.” He also pointed out that what the husband did was “verging on assault”. I wonder what that says about the sort of man your friend still lives with. You knew him: is this out of character? I have some sympathy for a bit of drunken flirtation, but absolutely none for not accepting the word no.
This all happened a while ago and your friend has now gone silent so if you pick up the baton, you really do need to make sure you aren’t going to go awol again. I think ghosting her twice would double down on the hurt – meaning confusion for her and guilt for you.
If you really hanker after a friendship that encompasses you all as families, you will also have to get your husband on board (what does he say?). And it will mean facing her husband again, too.
You mentioned that in the earlier stage of your friendship, social media didn’t exist. But it does now, and it’s an ideal way to test the waters. If you really want to get in touch, you could use it to see how sustainable the friendship is now for the two of you. Your lives may have diverged too much, in which case you could just have some online chats on DMs and it may naturally peter out. If you both find you want to see each other, it’s perfectly OK to ask that it’s just the two of you (and maybe the children) to begin with. I have lots of girlfriends I see “just us”.
But ultimately my advice is that it’s not your responsibility to tell her her husband is a shit.
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