I CAN’T FORGIVE CHEATING FRIEND’S LIES

DEAR Bel,

MANY years ago, I was shocked to suspect my husband and best friend were intimate. I didn’t do anything as I didn’t want to ruin the special foursome friendship we had.

Now I regret not speaking out. My husband died, and years later, a close friend revealed that he did have an affair with my friend.

I sent a message to her saying that I would be speaking to her husband about what I now knew, especially as I heard she had also been seeing another friend’s hubby, too.

But she got in first and told her husband I was lying about this other man and her.

She stopped him from coming to confront me, as she knew the truth would come out about her affair with my late husband.

It so happens that my granddaughter married their grandson. Now, at family gatherings, I have to be sure to sit elsewhere because my daughter (the granddaughter’s mother) and this woman are close.

My daughter and I haven’t spoken for years as I could never get Mother of the Year award — but I am just fine with my three other children.

That ‘other’ woman’s lies have destroyed me in so many ways, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my days having to put up with the dark looks from her husband.

By me keeping silent she is winning, but if I speak the truth I have no proof.

What are your thoughts about this horrible situation? HILARY

MANY families harbour dark secrets — and the repercussions can continue for decades. Had you acted on your suspicions all those years ago your marriage might not have survived, and the ‘ special foursome friendship’ certainly would not.

But the fact that you kept your suspicions quiet must also have had an effect on your marriage and your relationship with your best ‘friend’. When, after your husband’s death, that person told you the truth (and how I wish he or she hadn’t — since it did no good) your first impulse was towards vengeance: to blow the whistle on your ‘friend’.

Many will find that understandable — although (again) it did no good.

You still long to expose your ‘friend’ as an adulterer. This bitter situation is causing nothing but stress and unhappiness — to you.

You also reveal you are estranged from the one daughter who’s close to your former ‘friend’. I think you need to think very deeply about what went wrong there. I want to suggest that right now it’s your own inability to come to terms with it all that is causing you most grief.

You have to deal with the present. Two grandchildren met, fell in love and married — so like it or not, you are all connected. The first thing to start the process of healing yourself would be to make up with your daughter. There might be an easing of just some of the anger within your heart. You’ll never be able to forgive your former ‘friend’. But your choice is between lonely estrangement from this part of the extended family, or doing something to enable you to cope with the gatherings.