SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

And how exactly is this being threatened?

Because the sister is his boss. He is a subordinate. She has opened the company up to a sexual harassment lawsuit.

I think you would have been better off simply letting your dad know and let him take the next step.

I agree. Too bad the horse is already out of the barn, and now the AP knows that DDay is coming. I hope he doesn't hurt the business on his way out.

Blove,

Find out as much as you can about this OM, I hope he is a professional and may be equally concerned about his reputation and future prospect for advancement and employment.

You Father needs to speak with a lawyer in any case and needs the details to protect the family whealth.

Your sister needs to be reminded that her actions are putting her daughters future financial security at great risk.

Your sister needs to be reminded that her actions are putting her daughters future financial security at great risk.

Sis won't listen to any of that. The OM would never do anything to hurt her. They're in lurrrvvve.

OP, please know that I have the utmost compassion for your predicament and I know you that you're trying to handle a very complicated, delicate situation as best as possible... but I need to be blunt.

You can't have it both ways. You can't do the right thing by your family (including your BIL) and keep your sister happy.

Your sister is not going to tell her BIL anything. At most, she's going to give him a highly sanitized version of events. She's also going to do her best to smear and undermine you before you ever get a chance to tell him anything.

You're also betraying your family by not telling them about the affair. I know you said in another post that your father has a temper and "low emotional intelligence," so he wouldn't react well if you told him about the affair.

OK... so how do you think he will react when the ticking bomb that is your sister's affair goes off and he's completely unprepared? How do you think he will handle the realization that he put his trust in people who were actively lying to him (including you)?

The reality is that you need to make a decision between 1 of 2 options:

(1) Keep your mouth shut and tell your sister you don't know want to hear anything about the affair or her marriage. Then, let the chips fall where they may. When-- not if-- this affair explodes, creating a wreckage of both your sister's marriage and your family's business, hope to God that your sister is as loyal to you as you were to her and doesn't tell anyone that you knew about the affair.

(2) Tell your BIL and tell your father right now. Accept that your holiday season will be miserable but that you saved your family a lot of long-term misery.

And one final point: Your sister does not give a shit about you. She told you about the affair (either to relieve her guilt or for the sheer delight in sharing a dirty secret) with no consideration for how painful and burdensome it be for you. She's already blaming you for the impending demise of her marriage and the possible loss of time with her daughter. She's made it clear that your relationship with her is over unless you keep her secret. She's playing the same manipulative games with you that have caused her poor husband to heavily medicate himself in order to cope with every day life. She doesn't care about all the sleep you're losing over this.

So keep that in mind whenever you start doing mental gymnastics in order to see your sister in the best positive light.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 3:20 PM, Monday, December 4th]

You've been given so.e sage advice (for the most part) and have a difficult road ahead. There is not perfect plan of action, as every one of them has downsides.

As for "meddling", I would see your actions as stepping up and doing the right thing. We have a western,a maybe universal concept of "duty of care". I think I can make the case here that the moment you found out about your sister's A, the die was struck and you were locked into a course of action. Sucks, as you have no choice in not being involved.

Be strong.

Just to add, others have said that the sister probably forewarning her AP. It's possible that she's giving him a heads-up so they can get their stories straight and cover their tracks.

But I also think it's more likely that the sister hasn't given AP a heads-up because she's terrified that AP would break up with her if he knew that the sister "betrayed him" by running her mouth to OP.

Either way, OP's father needs to be told before AP has any opportunity to take retaliatory action.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 3:45 PM, Monday, December 4th]

Also, your sister may use her child as a weapon to keep you quiet..but I bet BIL will allow you time with your niece, if you show him the respect and compassion he deserves.

You should call and expose this all to your father right away. Your sister making excuses about her BH's birthday and Christmas, so what? If those days are ruined, it is because she was sleeping with her AP. I mean, she sure has got some nerve to think that she should be able to control the information about her affair and tell him at a time that is more convenient to her.

So if we are keeping score at home, she took no issue with having a 6+ month affair that has been physical for quite some time now and the timing of that whole thing, but now that it's time to tell her husband, she doesn't want to ruin his birthday or the Christmas holiday. Well, you know, New Years is right around the corner, then we get Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and back around to his birthday and Christmas....Just give her some time, she will tell him after Christmas, it's just a matter of which year?

Again, your sister had no issue with devastating your BIL by cheating on him and has not shown any remorse or regret over how much her affair his impacting her BIL, but now we are supposed to believe that her concern and care for his well being so as not to have his birthday and Christmas ruined by her affair? I sit her totally astounded that she thought that to be a plausible explanation as to why she can't tell her BH that he is being cheated on.

She blew up at me some more, and reminded me that her husband's birthday is in two days, and Christmas is right around the corner.

I can tell you that every memory during the A is tainted. Waiting will taint this birthday and Christmas forever. I am close to be healed and we are doing well in R, but anytime a picture or memory comes up I have to calculate in my head the time frame to decide if it’s a good or bad memory. The A timeframe is ruined forever.

The sad truth is that infidelity comes with degrees of selfishness and deception that we almost never encounter in life, so we’re never prepared for it. The part of your sister that is enabling her to act so atrociously, you probably don’t know that part of her. She’s going to act in ways that defy all your assumptions of good will, but she is already manipulating you by appealing to your loyalty and care for her. It’s really hard, but just assume she is lying to you. Set your mind to the truth you know, and take care of the real victims (niece, BIL, family business partners, OBS and her kids).

Again, you’ve already done more than most would in your situation, even just coming to this forum. Best wishes.

I've written like eight different versions of a response but I keep deleting them and starting over in frustration.

I'm just going to skip to the point.

*insert 18 paragraphs of reasoning and passioned pleading with anecdotes*

Call BIL now and tell him.
Call OBS now and tell her.

Not after Christmas, not this weekend, not tomorrow, and not after dinner. Now.

.

I can tell you that every memory during the A is tainted. Waiting will taint this birthday and Christmas forever.

This is 100% accurate.

The more I think about it and the more I read, I am in agreement with the others that your BIL (and your father) needs to know NOW. There is no good in waiting until even after BIL's birthday (poor guy) Heaven forbid after Christmas, and there is too much potential for further harm in delaying DDay any more. And I say this knowing full well that YOU are not the one who cheated and it does suck how this fell into your lap as it did.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 5:57 PM, Monday, December 4th]

Meddling? I guess you can frame it that way - but IMO the meddling is totally warranted.

I can see giving your sister time to tell her H, but I'm with Bigger - the business needs to be told as soon as possible. That means today, if you can do it today. And of course, once it's out in the biz, your BIL is likely to find out.

Your sister seems to feel abandoned by you. That's her problem. Your infrequent visits may be exactly why you noticed the A while the people who watched the A start and continue didn't notice small day-to-day changes. even when they add up to big changes.

My reco is to identify the clues that made you ask your sister if she was in an A. Assuming your sister accuses you of lying, rely on yourself to keep repeating: 1) She told me she was cheating; 2) on these _ dates, she told me she was cheating; and 3) above all, she told me she was cheating.

Your family may expel you now, but they'll accept you back when her A comes out, as it will, inevitably. Your outing now will cause people to notice your sister's behavior in the near future. Your sister will probably take the A underground in the immediate future, but she probably won't be able to hide it for long under these conditions.

Again, the business needs to know yesterday.

I've been in your shoes.

I was told by a WW, we'll call T, about her A. I'm fWW myself, and she heard rumors of my A and decided that, since I was a WW too, her story would be safe with me. T heard about my A from my friend "R" and decided that I should be ok to tell and unburden herself to. She had told R, and R promised not to tell her H- who happened to be one of T's BH's best friends. Convenient, no? She claimed that she was in therapy and going to "fix herself," so there was no need for her BH to know... Right.

I initially agreed to keep quiet too, but thought about it for about 2 minutes after she left, and decided that the secret of her A was not one I could keep. With me being so freshly out of my own A, hiding it was more lying, more secret keeping. And hiding it was essentially being party to the A, no matter if T had stopped seeing her AP. I shouldn't have agreed in the first place. It was early days in recovery, so... yeah, it took me a while to get what most people understand automatically.

So, I told my H. T was upset, R was upset and I basically lost those friendships (although R and I are becoming friends... very cautiously... again. FWIW, I hid my A from R until dday and it all came out, she had no part in it.) Later that year (October, about 3 months after hearing of the A and telling my H), I ran into R's H and told him the details of T's A. T had not revealed her A to her H and it was eating away at me that her H didn't know. No matter she "stopped seeing" her AP, she had no accountability and no saying she wouldn't get into another A. R's H was shocked when I told him, as he had not heard. He immediately assumed R didn't tell him as she was "sworn to secrecy" (I confirmed that), and decided not to be mad at her. I left it from there.

Thanksgiving rolls around and I get a string of angry texts from T saying how, "I wrecked her family and aren't I happy now??" My best guess is R's H told T: "tell your H about the A by XX date, or I will tell him myself!"

Yup. She was really going to do the work on her own after quitting her A. Sure.

I'm not sure how's she's doing or how her kids are doing. I wish them well. I wish her and her BH healing.

HOWEVER, I do not once blame myself for the fallout of her A, nor regret the "behind the scenes" work I did to make sure there was disclosure.

I can go into the psychological emotional work one has to do to disentangle from feeling guilt over not covering for someone else's shitty decisions. If you'd like to chat about that, please PM me once you're over 50 posts.

TLDR: don't cover for other people's shitty actions. Don't feel guilty for the consequences that come from their choices. They wouldn't have these consequences if they didn't make these choices. Your sister had other choices than to pursue an A. All us WS's did/do. That's on her, not on you.

I think OP that this is the most appropriate way of looking upon this. You just came across a CRIME SCENE, where there are INNOCENT VICTIMS. Would you give the suspect time to cover up the evidence and possibly even escape, or would you instead do what you could to secure things ASAP--or alert the police.

You had better believe that the extra time you are giving your sister, is being used by her and OM to obstruct justice--e.g., cover their tracks, come up with a plausible lie and sync it with each other. It may even be used to cause more harm--get further ahead of your BIL and even your family in the legal game, even embezzling money...

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 6:36 PM, Monday, December 4th]

Blove,

I mentioned in your very first post the similarities in Wayward thinking vs. the thinking of an addict. You can see, first hand, the impaired reasoning, the bargaining, deflection, single mindedness, blame shifting, guilt tripping, the cognitive dissonance. She knows deep down she’s in the wrong, but doesn’t care-can’t care. The only care in her world is keeping the affair going, getting her next fix. She will hate bomb you one minute and then nice bomb you the next. It’s like trying to reason with a hard core alcoholic. Affairs are extremely addictive, the biochemistry involved literally lights up a CAT scan. When APs are cut off from their affair fix, they literally go through withdrawals-depression.

Keep this in mind as you proceed forward. You’re dealing with someone who is largely impaired and not entirely competent.

I would advise the CEO (your Father?) of your family’s business so he can prepare for the possible worst case scenario consequences, avoid wrongful termination or sexual misconduct issues, take advantage of probationary period loopholes, avoid liability, consult his attorney. Hopefully, when the OBS finds out, SHE will mandate NC as part of a possible R condition and her WH will leave on his own, but I wouldn’t assume as much.

"Doing the right thing is seldom easy. If it were, we’d all be doing it more often. "

Send an anonymous email or text to your dad and to your brother-in-law telling them what you know and why. She may know it was you, but then she has to explain why she knows it’s you if she tries to call that out. By being anonymous, you can hold the upper hand because she would essentially have to admit anything about your conversation to get out of that. Send the anonymous message today. That can help protect the business in a timely manner.

OP, I do understand how you're feeling.

My sister cheated on her boyfriend. He had also cheated on her. They live together. They now have 2 babies. Her cheating was emotional,and happened prior to getting pregnant. His cheating was emotional, and physical, and happened while she was pregnant. And before her cheating on him.

I won't address his cheating,because that's not really relevant here.

When she told me, she was full of all the typical ws rationalizations. I heard her out. Then I called her out. Her boyfriend did know,so I didn't have to force a confession. But I did have to tell her she was wrong. And their rugsweeping wasn't the way to go. She became angry with me. She was mad, because she knew I was right.

We didn't talk for a few months. Then,she called and told me I was right. And they were working on a proper reconciliation.

So..I do get where you are coming from.

The thing is..what she is doing is so incredibly destructive. To her husband, and his wife, absolutely. But,also to herself. And her child.

If she were using heroin, would you stay silent? No. I'm sure of that, just from reading how thoughtful and loving you've been with her. You must call your father and tell him the truth. Today. Now. The family business is at stake.

Then,after she claims to have told her husband, call him,and ask hiw he is doing. Feel him out. Does he know it was physical? If not,tell him. He needs to be tested for stds,and he deserves the truth. Encourage him to call obs, for the same reasons. Direct him to this site. The way your sister has treated you,it's very clear she will blame him. That will cause him further mental stress. He will need us.

You've been very brave,so far. But,it's not over. Call your dad. He doesn't deserve to lose the business he has built, because of your sister's selfishness.

[This message edited by HellFire at 7:54 PM, Monday, December 4th]