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If the affair is to end then one of them must leave the company. If they both continue working at the company there's too much temptation for the affair to restart. Because your family owns the business it should be the AP who leaves and it would be best if he resigned rather than be fired. Is the AP aware that you know of the affair? The ideal resolution would be that the AP resigns and finds a job in another city and your sister gets into therapy.

Because her confession is the only proof you have of the affair, I strongly recommend you record conversations with your sister regarding the affair. Otherwise, she may very well deny everything
and both of them take the affair deep underground. That could leave you looking like a trouble maker telling lies.

Blove
I am so sorry that you are in this terrible predicament. It really is a case of damned if you do and dammed if you don’t.
I am a conflict avoidant and a people pleaser so my first instinct would be so say nothing, do nothing and wait it out until either the cheater confesses, or the affair gets exposed somehow.
HOWEVER, in your case, I am concerned about your parents and the family business. The company they built and is their livelihood is at risk because AP handles the finances. We don’t know what he might be capable of. He could destroy everything. I think this fire needs to be put out asap. I agree with the person who said you should reach out to your dad. He needs to know what is going on in his company. So many crazy scenarios. Your dad might have some suggestions on how to approach your brother in law.

I think what I would recommend doing to minimize potential drama is have a one-on-one call with your father. Explain your hesitation in betraying your sister's confidence, but share your concern that the family's financial wellbeing is at risk. Perhaps your father could handle things quietly.

IMO, your approach should be solely focused on protecting the family business. Don't get into the emotional aspects of the relationships. I think doing it this way might lessen the potential accusations of meddling.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 7:51 PM, Thursday, November 30th]

Should I give my sister a timeline to come clean herself so she doesn't look so much like the 'bad guy' when it comes out?

No, because you are putting the cheater in control of the situation. If your sister was alcoholic/addict, you wouldn't give them a timeline to get sober or let them keep drinking/drugging for a predefined amount of time. Having driven my own family to drug and alcohol rehab, you sometimes have to take them literally kicking and screaming for their own safety and well being.

My father is the owner of the company and will be furious at her because he has always feared infidelity from my mother (whom has been nothing but loyal to him).

If you can, you should tell both of your parents at the same time and do it now. There is no telling what this man could be doing to their business. I mean, he already crossed a very big ethical line, as a married man sleeping with another married woman. The cherry on top in this case seems to be that he works for a family business and the owner's daughter is involved, which makes it even messier. So, obviously I have no information that suggests he could be stealing from their business or doing unethical things with the business he was entrusted to manage, but my point is, this guy has pretty week morals, so would it be the shock of shocks to find out he is embezzling funds or anything else? I mean, he has to pay for his affair with funds and if his wife suspected something, he could have easily turned to using company money to fund his little love trysts.

I have no definite proof of her affair. But she did verbally confess to me because I called her out on her strange behavior. So if I tell my brother in law, he will have to say that he got the information from me.

This is where the group here could help your Betrayed BIL with how he confronts his wife. Oftentimes, the advice we give to a BS is that they are under no obligation to reveal how or what they know when they confront. You said it yourself, your BIL is being treated for his depression and needs medication just to cope with life right now after he saw some text messages. You confirming to him that he is in fact not crazy and that his wife is sleeping with someone on the side, probably one of the kindest things you could ever do for him. Like I said in my last post, don't know the nature of your relationship with your BIL, but if you cared about him at any level, he really deserves to know.

His body knows what is going on, because that is why he is having these issues. One thing to keep in mind, we have a lot of consciousness that we are unable to verbalize, because in the evolutionary timeline of humans, our ability to use language and some of the other higher brain functions that we associate with consciousness developed very recently, but our bodies are very much more aware of our surroundings and things going on in our lives, but those things manifest themselves in some of the ways you described your BIL dealing with. Again, back to the body keeping score. Informing your BIL would help his brain catch up to his body.

This would be fine, but my sister can be vengeful, and our relationship would never recover.

When you've driven your kin to rehab, as I have had to do, obviously, in that moment, you are the enemy and they will never talk to you again. In a similar way, your sister's cheating is going to forever alter the relationship you have with her. I'm a former wayward and a former betrayed spouse, what we call a madhatter around here, and I'm absolutely a believer that waywards can change and turn their lives around, because my wife and I reconciled. The first person that the wayward betrays is not their spouse, but themselves. Why do I say that? Because, at one point, there was I'm sure a lovely wedding ceremony, perhaps you were one of her bridesmaids, where your sister and BIL stood before family, friends and the world to profess their love and take wedding vows. Your sister had a stated vow of fidelity to your BIL and then she broke that vow. She betrayed herself by deviating from her stated value of fidelity. What this means is that waywards have a lot of healing that they have to do as part of their recovery from infidelity. One day, when she is ready, if your sister pulls her head out of her ass and starts fixing her shit, one of the things she will have to repair is her relationship with you and your parents.

Another unfortunate thing is my family lives in a very small town. Any word of this will spread like wildfire and greatly harm my sister's reputation. I know she is doing this to herself, but I still want to protect her from the consequences she has made for herself.

I get the desire to protect your family, she's your older sister after all, she's been there your whole life. Not you nor anyone else can shield her from the consequences of her affair. Try to keep in mind that those consequences were baked in the moment she made the conscious choice to cheat. Let's be clear, cheating isn't a mistake or something that just happens accidentally. A mistake is grabbing 1% milk when you meant to grab 2%. An affair is hundreds to thousands of small decisions that culminated with your sister and her AP having an illicit relationship. Over and over again for at least 6 months or more (based on the timeline in your original post), she has continued to choose her affair over everything else, almost like a drug addiction where the only thing that matters is the next fix. The consequences that come from this, be they divorce, loss of job, being the town laughingstock, etc. were all baked in when SHE decided to have that affair. I'm not saying that you have to like those consequences or that you should be rooting for them to happen, but you should also hold your head high and guilt free because you played no part in those consequences.

I can see that the thing you are concerned about is how this alters your relationship with your family, and that is of course a natural concern. Either your BIL or the OBS is eventually going to find out. Cheater's get complacent and sloppy. I can assure you that some point, this story is going to come out and I'm certain at some point, your BIL is going to find out that you knew. Again, back to blood family versus in-laws, you may be naturally inclined towards your sister, but how do you think your BIL is going to react to you if he finds out that in November 2023 you knew what his wife was doing and you didn't say something? I appreciate that you are in a nearly impossible situation, but if you are going to go down with the ship, I think you may as well go down on the right side of things and let the chips fall where they may.

This should be exhibit #4001 on how destructive affairs are, to everyone around them. You are stuck holding a secret that, if kept, will not only further hurt your poor BIL, but that also is a likely time bomb on your family's livelihood. Not to mention your own pain and discomfort for whenever you interact with BIL. It is selfish of your sister to expect you to keep this. You have to let your sister know that there are too many lives that are affected by her awful decisions and that there is no way you can keep this.

Is there any way you can let your BIL know directly, for starters. I mean, he HAS to be suspecting an affair. What reasons has your sister even given to him as to why she is so unhappy.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 8:03 PM, Thursday, November 30th]

Don't overthink it. BIL should already be on the alert, given this has come up before. All he probably needs is a seed planted. You make a remark about how much time she spends with X, or that they seem really close, or that he's her "work husband". He won't immediately pick up on it, but it's probably all that is needed for him to realize and start to investigate.

It always comes to light sooner or later. You can just make it happen a little on the sooner side.

Also, I'm a little horrified that your sister said she realizes that he may only be sleeping with her because she's his boss, and she's ok with that. Did I hear that right? Ummm... if alarm bells aren't ringing for you, imagine a man saying that about a female subordinate. That's super creepy, and it shows just how misaligned her moral compass is.

POE

You could wait until after your visit, inform your brother in law anonymously, explaining that she will cover it up if he confronts her right away. Maybe even make chat gpt write the message, so it's generic. This will minimize the impact on you.

An anonymous message is almost as bad as saying nothing at all. The sister will just deny it and say that someone is out to get her. BIL will believe his wife over chatGPT.

40YOSL

Because your family owns the business it should be the AP who leaves and it would be best if he resigned rather than be fired. Is the AP aware that you know of the affair? The ideal resolution would be that the AP resigns and finds a job in another city and your sister gets into therapy.

This will be for the family's legal counsel to sort out but I suspect that getting the AP to resign voluntarily would involve giving him a handsome severance package in order to avoid a lawsuit... and there's absolutely no way that they could force him to leave town.

Because her confession is the only proof you have of the affair, I strongly recommend you record conversations with your sister regarding the affair. Otherwise, she may very well deny everything
and both of them take the affair deep underground. That could leave you looking like a trouble maker telling lies.

The sister is going to portray OP as a troublemaker no matter what. If BIL wants hard evidence, it won't be hard for him to find it. I think recording the conversation would create a lot more drama for OP from the rest of the family than is necessary.

An anonymous message is almost as bad as saying nothing at all. The sister will just deny it and say that someone is out to get her. BIL will believe his wife over chatGPT.

From how the situation is described, it should be super easy for him to figure out if he gets heads up. Just add 2 and 2. Even if he does the mistake and runs immediately to his W, the thing will finish or blow up in a matter of weeks. OP, my suggestion was meant as last resort, if you csnt bring yourself to anything else.

[This message edited by Potentialforevil at 8:25 PM, Thursday, November 30th]

I missed the part about "AP is sleeping with the sister because she’s his boss"
This raises big red flags for me because it can be a sexual harassment situation where he claims she forced him to sleep with him otherwise she would fire him.
I hope things get resolved without a major fallout….

I think there may in fact be another way to put this...

@Blove, what would you do if you had discovered that your sister were embezzling money from your parents' company? What if she were enabling her AP to be stealing instead?

It is the same moral dilemma--or to be more accurate what your sister is doing is AT LEAST as bad as embezzling--as your sister is also putting your family's financial health in danger too.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 8:45 PM, Thursday, November 30th]

If you protect her from the consequences of her actions, she learns nothing, and she will do it again.

Block your called ID, and call his wife. That will end the affair. You don't have to reveal yourself. Heck, say you are a coworker.

She has opened herself up to a sexual harrassment lawsuit. That won't be good for business.

She is not a victim here. Her poor husband's mental health is deteriorating. His wife,and her husband, are both being exposed to possible stds.

Also..if this man who is lying and cheating on his wife is the only thing that makes her happy? Then why not divorce her husband. Because she's lying to herself..and you..to justify her abusive behavior.

You would indirectly be complicit in the cheating if you don’t tell anyone. If your sister was a drug addict you wouldn’t wait for her to get clean, you would step in and prevent this self sabotaging behavior. Atleast with drug addiction she would impact her family solely. With betrayal the damage will be worse with destruction of two families.

If it was your brother in law cheating on your sister would you accord him the same grace period to come clean ? Sorry you are in this situation and it is unfair for you. The burden to do the right thing is now placed on your shoulders and you must do the right thing for everyone involved.

[This message edited by Abalone123 at 8:50 PM, Thursday, November 30th]

In this case I would start with telling the family beginning with the co-owners. This involves your entire family's livelihood. That's incredibly foolish and selfish on your sister's part. Having said that if you picked up on this in that short of time frame, I'd hate to say it but others in your family know or at least strongly suspect the A. Good chance it's the unacknowledged known secret to them all. They are just ignoring it for the blow back. Not recognizing that blow back is inevitable. You need to make sure that everyone involved in the business knows.

Getting an owner and fiscal officer in bed together, not as literal as it is in this case, is a real issue for any business. Generally, the CFO is the biggest check on the top and that requires that individual to have exceptional ethics. That you have one that is an AP would really scare me if it was my business.

After you give your family a chance to take steps to safeguard their business, your BIL and the OBS also deserve to know.

You should 100% expose this. Even if you do it anonymously by tipping off her husband on who to watch closely. All he needs to do is hire a PI to follow the two of them and he'll have his evidence without anyone else being directly responsible for the outcome.

She told me that the only thing she wants is happiness, and the only person that brings that to her is her co-worker.

Selfish much? She sounds as though she's the only one entitled to happiness, meanwhile her husband is on antidepressants and anxiety meds due to his already existing suspicions. Her concern is everything she would lose in a divorce, forgetting that two marriages will either end or be deeply effected and there are young children in the mix. Does she understand what consequences are? She's the classic cake eater, she wants to cheat and cast aside her marriage just short of getting a divorce so her life stays intact. Her AP is no better.

Don't assume that other people haven't noticed. Affairs bring a lot of red flags with them and while cheaters think everyone else is clueless and they are just so smart that often isn't the case. If anyone else is suspicious they may just not want to be the one to expose anything.

Any idea how long this affair has been going on? Are you close to your BIL? Has he ever given you any indication of his suspicions?

The fact that the AP is involved in the finances of your family business is a big concern. The fact he's in an affair shows he has questionable morals, ignores boundaries and his trustworthiness is in the tank. You need to inform your family about what is going on for the sake of that business.

The conversation ended by me asking how I can support her, and what she would do if the roles were flipped. She said "just listen and try to understand". I then asked her if she was angry with me. She said yes because she feels as though I am trying to ruin her life.

What's there to understand? She's cheating on her husband. Period. She needs to grow up and stop blame shifting. SHE is the one tossing a match on her life. Don't let her try to put anything on you, she made choices and she needs to own it.

On my way out, so briefly, your sister is extremely manipulative.

Your BIL deserves to know the truth.

Your dad (head of the company?) needs to know the truth.

The wife of her affair partner needs to know the truth.

Please expose them asap. Your sister may be angry for a bit, but she will eventually get her head out of her a$$ and come to realize she is putting the company, her marriage, and the AP's wife/family, in jeopardy.

Tell your father so he can sort it out so it does the least harm to their business.
The dominoes will likely fall from there and save you from having to tell your BIL.

My main concern is for the brother in law. And my actions would move toward stopping the hurt that he is enduring. I have a new mindset since becoming a BS myself, and it’s not that my values have changed, but my actions in dealing with situations like this have. This is just something for you to think about for yourself, as it is something that would deeply impact my moral standing. "How can I sit by and watch one human being selfishly destroy another for personal gain" my answer? I can’t, and I won’t. I wouldn’t go public and blab it to the world, but I would most certainly tell the BIL so that he can try and take control of his life moving forward. And as a family member whose family has a business, I’d let your parents know so that they can control the prosperity of the business moving forward. Your sister’s actions are so very selfish. Stand tall and hold the moral high ground. Yes maybe some of your family will be upset with you for outing this which surely will have some backlash, but it’s the right thing to do. Please do not be a supporter of immoral behavior. You may not realize how close to the edge of suicide your BIL may be. Trust me, depression is very real, and potentially losing a life over this isn’t worth it. I’m so sorry you are in this position. This is exactly the kind of thing affairs create. They destroy everything until everything is destroyed.

Blove,

I missed the part about her being his boss… Go back to my first post and the business impact of personal relationships between manager and subordinate.
Granted – being a family-company the corporate-consequences are generally less. But with him being a subordinate this can make removing him extremely difficult.

I take it the family business is something that people important to you are dependent on.
What I urge you to understand is that your sisters’ actions are a possible and serious threat to the income of ALL those people.
Replace infidelity with another business scenario: Imagine you discovered your sister was funneling money from the company. Imagine your sister was negotiating with a competitor. Imagine you found out she was changing the color of your products from standard white to pink because that’s her favorite color… How would you respond?
I’m guessing and hoping that you would respond by letting the chief owner or COB or CEO know. Maybe he shares that he knows, that it was a loan, that there is a merger or that pink is the new white… Or maybe you just averted the company from a business-threatening situation.

What are the threats? (purely business…)
Well… OM can’t be removed because he can sue for wrongful dismissal. Even if she could prove he was willing and initiated or whatever. Boss + subordinate = a big NO NO.
He has a chokehold on her… He "asks" for a raise and she can’t say no, because then he might let her dad know about the hanky-panky… She can fire him, but then again… wrongful dismissal…
Her boss – your dad – has a compromised chain-of-accountability. She – the boss – is compromised in signing off on chart-of-accounts that he – the OM and CFO – provides. Of course the owned should do due-diligence, but now he needs to do so each and every time there is a financial statement.

From purely a business standpoint you need to let your dad know…
See what happens from there. I’m guessing the BIL and all that, the future of OM and your sis… that’s all going to come out from that single action.

Bigger,
What are your thoughts on the firing of the OM by the father as long as he fires his daughter also. Would you consider that a "safe" way to get the OM out of the business?