u/LogicOverHype

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I met him at work when he was already married. At the time everyone in our office including me thought he had an almost perfect marriage. He had been with his wife for around 10 years,they dated for about 8 years,lived together after college and had been married for two years. He constantly posted pictures and stories with her and we all genuinely admired them as an “ideal couple”

I was also in a relationship at the time although mine was extremely toxic and on and off. Eventually that relationship ended.

Over time, this man became my best friend. Both our then partners knew about the other person and the friendship. It was nothing more than that.We no longer work together or even live in the same city but we remained friends. We worked together for just 1 year.

It was only after becoming close friends that I slowly realized his marriage wasn't anything like what it looked like from the outside.

He would vent out about serious fights at his home with wife, sometimes even fights involving their families. Yet on the same day he would post happy, romantic pictures with her. Once I asked him how he could do that after telling me they had just had a huge fight. He told me “This is how it is every time. I post these things because it makes me happy. Atleast dont question my long standing relationship” He saw that an achievement that he married the person he dated for so long(it is a flex indeed) and there were lot in college who used to say this relationship won't last and his posts are a constant reminder to those that it worked out. This is one of the reasons i stopped believing the happy couple posts in social media anymore. But it was always him who does that she never posts anything. One day I remember he was jumping in happiness that she sent a thank you msg to him for teaching her swimming. Her parents appreciated her skills and she felt thankful he taught her. I asked him why are you sooo excited for that, why are you sharing this with me isnt this a regular thing. He said this is the first time she expressed such a thing to him. So instances like these made me understand that he shares a less romantic, less intense, thankless relationship with her.

Even then I never questioned their relationship, these are the judgements i made to myself. Quite the opposite I repeatedly told him to work on his marriage and give it a genuine chance when fights came.I understood that marriage was very different from a relationship and didn't want to interfere.

Eventually things became much worse. They stopped speaking even while living under the same roof over a big fight. Their families involved and there were several discussions and confrontations.

During one such conversations his wife admitted something that completely changed his understanding of their entire relationship.

She said she didn't have romantic love for him. She didn't hate him and she wanted to continue living with him because she was comfortable with him and couldn't imagine living with anyone else. But she didn't feel the kind of love he had always believed existed between them. Everybody knows that she has attachment issues even with her family or anyone else either.but thought he is an exception.

For more than a decade he had believed that she loved him deeply but simply wasn't expressive.He had interpreted her lack of emotional expression as her personality, while believing that he was the one person she was truly attached to.

He felt like his entire understanding of his life had collapsed. He became severely distressed and even suicidal during that period.

There was also very little physical intimacy throughout their relationship. According to him they had sex fewer than 20 times over more than a decade. Whenever he tried to discuss the issue or suggested counselling/medical help she would interpret it as him only wanting sex and call him a “sex maniac” and making tantrums out of it.This is even mentioned in their divorce petition and she doesnt disagree any of him claims.

Eventually, she moved back to her parents' home. They remained separated.

He filed for divorce because after what she had told him he no longer felt there was a marriage left to save.

They have now been living separately for around three years. His divorce was finally signed for mutual consent earlier this year and the legal process should be completed soon.

And somewhere during all of this something completely unexpected happened.

He and I fell in love.

There was no affair while they were living together.I wasn't secretly trying to get him away from his wife. In fact I have messages from the period when his marriage was falling apart where I was telling him to work on things and give her another chance.

Our feelings developed only after they were separated and after he had emotionally detached from the marriage.

He is now my best friend, my partner and genuinely the person I always dreamed I would end up with. We have been together for over a year now, although our friendship goes back much further. We've also been through a lot of the divorce process together and have helped each other heal from our previous relationships and everything that happened during that period.

For both of us this relationship feels like a second chance at life. We are incredibly grateful for each other and are waiting for the divorce to officially finish so that we can build our life together.

But there is one thing I can't stop worrying about.

Because our relationship happened during the divorce process and because we may announce our relationship/marriage relatively soon after the divorce is officially completed, I'm terrified that people will say

“She was the other woman”

“She broke up a 10 year relationship”

“This is why his marriage failed”

“She waited until he got divorced”

We know when our relationship actually began. We know what happened inside his marriage. I know because I was there as his friend throughout the breakdown, long before we became a couple. But obviously we can't prove our entire emotional timeline to everyone.

And I know people may look at the timeline and create their own story. Even his ex-wife would make claims like that i donno. I would like to clarify one thing that she isn't a vile woman, the only issue she had was in her marriage. She used her partner as a giver and took that for granted always. Otherwise i have not found her a problemetic person and i really wish she also finds love again.

I don't want to be seen as a 3sha/other woman/marriage breaker when I genuinely wasn't one.

So I'm asking Redditors: How would you perceive this situation from the outside? Would you consider me the other woman or an affair partner simply because our relationship developed while his divorce was still ongoing?

I know we can't control what people think.I'm more interested in whether, the timeline makes this look like something it wasn't or whether I'm worrying too much about how other people will perceive us.