My husband’s former EA partner wants private communication with my children — am I wrong to set a boundary?
I’m looking for perspective on a situation involving a former close family friend who was my husband EA partner.
This is long and I’m sure I’m using incorrect terminology - apologies in advance.
My husband and I have been married 18 years. For several years, we were very close with another couple and our families were intertwined - cookouts, vacations, birthday celebrations, etc. every major milestone was tighter.
She and my husband began a friendship outside of the group. He had lots of friends and I don’t give it much thought. Also, their marriage looked just fine from the outside.
Last year, her husband collapsed and she learned that he was an alcoholic (apparently, she had no signs of his heavy drinking over the years, but the doctors said he should have died based on his alcohol level but only survived because he had built up such a tolerance).
My husband and I both tried to be there to support her through that crisis. But she reached out to my husband daily, at all hours and only gave me bland replies of gratitude to any of my outreach. Three weeks after her husband’s collapse she informed him they would be getting divorce (after 20 years of marriage). They did no real shared counseling. This announcement was a shock to us and a wake up call for our marriage.
Eventually my husband and I realized we needed to pull back and focus on our own marriage. When we pulled back for our marriage, my husband texted her that plainly. Said I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much, I’ve really need to focus on our marriage, I hope you can understand.
She responded that she was glad he realized his lack of communication had an impact on her and that it was confusing and hurtful. By the end of their text exchange, he essentially asked her for forgiveness for focusing on our marriage. She didn’t once acknowledge our marriage or me or our family. Just said “of course I forgive you. I love you.” She also showed other protest behavior toward him, including ghosting him in another shared chats after access changed - she and her friend just blatantly ignored him and stopped responding.
Looking back, I feel like she was essentially using my husband for spousal-level emotional support and protested when his access changed. At the time, I did not fully understand what was happening, but I felt a shift in her friendship with me and a loss of emotional connection with my husband - this lasted for a couple of years.
After a few months of ghosting, she invited him to get together for a coffee/beach walk with her. At that point, I was extremely uncomfortable and said no. But I would have coffee with her.
I had a kind anddirect conversation with her. I offered empathy for her very hard year, explained how the dynamic had impacted me, and tried to set gentle boundaries around our marriage while still giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. We worked with a marriage counselor to prep for that coffee and to handle it with care.
The boundary was that my husband and I wanted to support her together, and not have him continue as her individual emotional support person. Instead of asking questions about how this impacted us/me, she mostly explained why it made sense that she had leaned on him and focused on whether she and my husband were still friends. She said their friendship was so easy/special/unique. She said she only thought of him like a brother. She said she didn’t lean on him that much. She broke down crying saying to me that she wanted to ask him “if they are even friend anymore”. She even said to me I just always thought I was more alike with your husband and you were more alike with mine. Which still sits as so uncomfortable to me.
It has now been five months, and she has not followed up, acknowledged my feelings, or made any attempt to repair with me or with us.
After she and I spoke, I saw the extent of their communication from the prior years when we charged an old iPad. It showed daily messages, throughout the day and into the night, with lots of kissy emoji and heart emojis. Messages every day, start of the day, middle of the day, after work, at midnight. I estimated 150-200 messages a week or upward of 10k messages a year. She had asked me when we met if she had done anything “disrespectful” me and I didn’t totally understand what she meant - our marriage changes were about us. I thought she was just having a tough year. Then I understood how deeply she had depended on him.
I want to be clear that I do not believe anything physical happened. But I do think this was an EA. My concern is that the emotional access and frequency had become inappropriate and had started to affect our marriage. It made me realize that what I had felt over the years was something real and destabilizing.
My husband and I have worked through a lot and are still rebuilding. He sees most of the boundary issues now, though I don’t think he fully understands the whole pattern the way I do. I’m not sure he will or needs to - I’ve dissected the entire 9 year friendship. But we have shared expectations and boundaries and no longer work off of assumptions and good intentions.
We talk openly about when I’m triggered, he has acknowledged he would have felt uncomfortable if the situation was reversed. He remains adamant that he was trying to be a good friend and we have worked through what that friend support should look like in a healthy way, have leveraged counseling and have really invest in our marriage. We’re in the best place we’ve probably ever been in. I’m very lucky for that investment and openness from him.
But there was an other betrayal between me and her. I came to realize that while I thought we were close friend, we were not. The real connection had been with my husband. I was just access. I welcomed her into my home, into our holiday celebrations, shared ups and downs with our kids. I changed plans to accommodate her preferences. I did all the things a normal friend should do and it was disregarded.
And after all of this, I feel deeply betrayed by her. It shifted the ground beneath me and has changed how I trust. I believed her words and now see that she is highly skilled at saying the right thing and being charming, but the behavior doesn’t match the words. I felt that disconnect for a long time, but now see it clearly. Despite the good times, the memories are all tainted and I regret ever allowing her family to build such a tight and close relationship with my family. My investment now goes into our real family. That said, our children are friends with her children.
My concern is that she seems to be using my children to reengage with my family. She recently sent my teenage son a high school graduation gift and used a family nickname to address his card (one that only our family uses). I feel like this is a little petty, but it seems like an attempt to show closeness with our family after 5 months of silence without doing any real work.
She has also been privately texting my teenage daughter, who misses her and wants closure. She had essentially gone quiet with my daughter and that hurt her deeply. My daughter knows very high level that the adults were working the through some things and about the alcoholism and divorce.
But the woman has said she was completely unaware of the alcoholism and has framed herself as victim. A teenager believes that at face value and has empathy for it.
My daughter (14) has said she wants to talk to the woman directly to “say her piece” and get closure. She’s a very mature kid, but I still have extremely low trust for this woman. I worry that a conversation will create more confusion as the friend will say all the right things while still not actually repairing. I do not want my teenage daughter hurt by her as well - at least not any more than she has been.
It is inevitable that we will run into each other in social settings because our kids and community overlap. I understand that I cannot control every point of contact. But I am not comfortable with her having private contact with my minor child or continuing to act like she has family-level closeness with us. I gave a roadmap to a different way to interact with our family - shared support- and she did not engage. Honestly, I just want more distance from her in our family system. And I want peace.
What do I do now?