Has anyone ever thought of this

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Has anyone ever thought of this
14
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 10:28am
I know right now we feel pretty comfortable with the realtionship we have with MM, MW, OM, OW. What happens "IF" things take a turn for the worst. "IF" there is a bad breakup, things get ugly. I know you can't speak for the other party. What "IF" they try to do you harm, or be revengful, or hurt you. Meaning if they get mad, because of the breakup, and tell your spouse, and actually have the proof, that there was an EMA. Sometimes these breakups get out of hand. Do you have any damage control in place?

Have you thought about how you would protect yourself?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 06-30-2003
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 10:44am
Secret,

You post made be laugh. Sorry to be rude, I know you asked a valid question. I would think mostly we TRUST the other person not to seek revenge or be vindictive after the affairs end, since we trust them to keep mum when the affair is still going on. But who know for sure? Anything can happen. If you are smart like some, who cover their tracks paranoidly maybe then you can say you are damage-proof in the post affair scenario. If you are smart enough maybe you will do the same and cover up every little thing you did and said with out a trace. Good question, food for thought.

Charm

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-03-2003
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 10:55am
How do you cover your tracks? Do you mean, as in never putting anything in writing or something like that? How else would they have proof unless you left something in their car or their house...and even then, that could be explained. I suppose they could videotape one of your liaisons but if you're always meeting in a car somewhere, that's unlikely. How else can a person cover their tracks? You really never know someone until you see them put in a crisis type situation. You may think you know your guy, but it's very possible your rejection could do things to him... Emotions run high in these things.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 11:10am
I posted for this reason. Things have been rocky for MM and I. We had a really bad breakup last year, and things did get ugly. I won't go into any details. But, when I decided to get back with him, I had my gaurd up, JUST IN CASE. I have saved EVERY e-mail that he sent me. EVERY voice message that he has left on my phone, I have saved. If he writes me a check, I make a copy of it first, before I cash it. If we go to a hotel and get a room, I'll ask him to let me hold the receipt show his W won't see it, and of course I save it....it has his signature on it.

You may burn me, but you won't burn me twice. I just wondered if anybody else had the thoughts of things going bad.

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-03-2003
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 11:29am
MM and I never communicate anything important through e-mail. Our work e-mails aren't 100% private and he's not computer-savvy enough to set up an internet e-mail account and even if we did, he probably wouldn't use it. He's just not the type who likes to write. I am, and I'm a little jealous of those of you who get to communicate that way. He calls me and it's always on the work phone. He gave me his cell phone # but I'm not going to use it, since his wife pays his cell phone bill. He has my cell # too but he has only called it once. That was a prearranged time. I call him from my cell phone sometimes on my way home if he's still here. H knows MM and I are friends and they know each other, so if it was ever mentioned it wouldn't be that far-fetched that I would have called him for some work-related reason. I guess I need to come up with an excuse for those one or two calls a month...but my cell phone bill is online and even I don't really ever look at it. H doesn't have the password to view it even if he wanted... MM has much more to lose than I do since he has a daughter -- there's NO WAY he'd ever expose me to H. Plus he likes H and feels horrible all the time for even thinking about hurting him. Actually, MM is more cautious than I am. He's afraid I'm going to tell someone about us -- even a friend -- and that it's going to get out and his W will find out. He trusts me enough not to go psycho, but I'm sure the fear has occurred to him. As I've pointed out, though, he's more emotionally invested in this than I am. Strange but true. If it ended today, I think I'd recover more quickly than he would.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-12-2002
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 11:47am
Good Lord, no. There isn't a vengeful bone in OM's body. I have seen him deal with difficult, nasty situations, and he always takes the high road. He is never nasty or unpleasant to anyone, though he will be brutally honest when need be. He is the sort of person who would always rather move on and be happy than ever be nasty to anyone for any reason - the sort who truly believes that being ugly to others is not worth the destruction to your own spirit.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 12:15pm
I know most of us have only seen the nice, quiet, reserved side of the one we are in an EMA with.

Here's what happened to me. Last year when MM was seperated from his W, MM had given me a key to his apartment. His W was driving through the complex, being nosy, and saw me come out of his apartment. MM, and I had gotten caught in our relationship, so she knew my name, but had never met me face to face. When she saw me come out of the apartment she, she approached me, and asked if I knew MM. I said yes, allow me to introduce myself and said my name. You could have bought her for a penny, she was so mad. She stormed off, burning rubber all through the complex.

That's when things got ugly. She called my job, tried to get me fired, she talked to my boss, tried to get me fired. She told my friends, and family, that I was a whore. She got my ex-husbands phone number, told him that I was an unfit mother, and she should try to get sole custody of our daughter. All this while MM did nothing. He himself was so afraid of loosing his dd. She threatened to move and not tell MM, where she and his dd was. MM, lied and said that I was chasing him. That he had tried to break it off with me, but I just kept calling him, and that I wouldn't take "NO" for an answer. He made me seem like I was some crazy woman chasing him. And, of course she believed her husband.

Well, if that happens again, I can say otherwise. My MM is afraid of his W. He always has been. He is no help to me, when it comes to her.

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-09-2003
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 4:58pm
Funny you should pose this question. I was in that very kind of situation about a year ago in my first EMA. Let me just say...I was terrified! I was involved in an EMA with a SG. It was purely a physical thing...we were f*** buddies. He was going through some financial strains, and I FOOLISHLY loaned him a substantial amount of money...which he promised (yeah, right!) to pay back in monthly installments. Well...to make a long story short, things got VERY ugly from that point on. He made 1 payment, and that was it. He got fired from his employer and blamed me for it...said I "slandered and defamed" him (which I did not do) resulting in his termination. He said he was going to slap me and my employer with a defamation and slander suit! Not to mention telling my H EVERYTHING! Fortunately for me, he was only bluffing and just trying to scare the sh!t out of me (which he successfully did). It was all apart of this grand extortion plot of his...he wouldn't sue me and tell my H, as long as I didn't bother him for my money...NICE, HUH? Needless to say...I never got my money back and will be paying off that debt (I got the money through a cash advance on my credit card...I know, I know..STUPID) for the next 3 years and trying to hide it from my H. Moral of the story...DON'T TRUST ANYONE!
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-30-2003
Fri, 09-05-2003 - 5:11pm
I agree with you butterfly. Trust no one. Keep your records and cover your tracks well. This will help if W/OM/MM tries to take advantage of your situation. Its easy to be taken advantage off given the secretive nature of the R. So please be careful since your career/family is also on the line. Don't implictly trust you OM/MM to be the knight in shining armor when things go wrong. These guys time and again go back to their wives and deny their role in the A making you look like a fool. My 2 cents.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-24-2003
Sat, 09-06-2003 - 2:54pm
I often thought about posting a message about trust, but was afraid that I would get flamed. I read on here all of the time about never being able to trust our MM/MW nor they being able to trust us. In my mind, this entire EMA is based solely on trust. We trust each other not to destroy each other’s lives. What more trust is there? In my case, both families and careers could be destroyed in a matter of minutes.

In answer to the question, our EMA is based on a trust that should this end, it ends peaceably. I absolutely trust my MM to uphold that trust.

Good question.

Hugs

RH

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-24-2003
Sat, 09-06-2003 - 6:07pm
Good post, RH. OM and I have a similar basis in trust. In the beginning, I did not convey to him the extent to which my marriage was failing and he, having been my friend for well over a year at that point, was strongly encouraging me to work on my marriage and get through this tough time. He told me many times then, that if my H would make the changes he needed to to make me happy, he would step aside and not get in the way. He left that decision to me, always. Anytime I thought I wanted to concentrate on my M, he would step back into buddy mode with no hard feelings. And in return, I promised him honesty. That I may not be able to tell him everything, at least at first, but anything I did tell him would be the absolute truth. And I've upheld my end of the deal, as has he.

Things have changed; we have fallen in love. But the rules haven't...we both fervently hope that this thing between us will last, yet we're both willing to step aside whenever the other needs us to. We are grownups who know what we're doing. This is my first affair, but it's not his. He has played all the parts in an adultery scenario. One of his wives cheated on him. He's dated married women before. And he's cheating on his g/f with me. Although that's kind of a different story because of the unconventional nature of their relationship. They have an open relationship, but he doesn't tell her about me because I am married. He doesn't want her causing problems for me should things go sour between them. If I were single, he'd own up to our relationship to her, but he's protecting me, and in the process, breaking one of the rules they have about dating others, so I take heart from that.

So, we're like you guys...this relationship is all about trust. Shoot, I trust him more than I do H.

Lucky

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