Would you want to hear an apology from the "other woman"?

[MariaE]

If she approaches you then yes. Otherwise the most empathetic NO!!!! you can imagine.

[Audrey Quest]

I think the best "apology" would be staying out of their lives completely.

This.

The best way to show contrition and to avoid any future problems is to stay out of his life completely.  That means not contacting her, not contacting him, and not being in their lives at all.

[Venus193]

I agree with the others that I wouldn't want to hear it. That said, I don't think you should beat yourself up, OP. The wife is probably angry with you because it beats being angry with her husband. You both stopped it before anything really happened, so I say just let it go, and stop seeing them socially at all.

I couldn't have said it better.

[gramma dishes]

I think the best "apology" would be staying out of their lives completely.

This.

The best way to show contrition and to avoid any future problems is to stay out of his life completely.  That means not contacting her, not contacting him, and not being in their lives at all.

Add a couple ditto marks here.

[Surianne]

I think the best "apology" would be staying out of their lives completely.

This.

The best way to show contrition and to avoid any future problems is to stay out of his life completely.  That means not contacting her, not contacting him, and not being in their lives at all.

Add a couple ditto marks here.

Me as well.  Anything you can say here will likely just hurt her more.  End contact and focus on yourself and your husband, and rebuilding that trust.

[bah12]

I agree with everyone else.  Leave it alone.  You should come to terms with the very real possibility that this is a friendship you'll never get back.

[gollymolly2]

I agree with everyone - no apology - where there has been an actual affair.

I'm not sure how I feel about this case. OP never actually did anything to betray her friend. She developed feelings for her friend's husband. I don't think that's a friendship-crime, I have a friend who I think has a slight crush on my bf and I've been in her situation with another frien's bf. Here, OP responded to these feelings by backing off from her friendship with the husband, which IMO was the most reasonable thing to do.

There was no betrayal here.

The apology would be "I'm sorry that I've lead to awkwardness in our friendship" rather than "I'm sorry I totally disregarded your feelings and betrayed your trust."

I'm not saying I think she should go ahead and apologize; I just don't think the same reasoning as why you shouldn't apologize for an affair applies.

[LadyL]

You know, I don't think you really did anything wrong. These things happen - we all have crushes even in committed relationships. All we can do is modify our behavior so that the crush doesn't "escalate" and that's exactly what you did.

I will give an example of a different situation where an apology is appropriate IMHO so you can maybe see the difference: LordL was helping a friend out with her business as a favor. After about a year, he abruptly decided to stop working with her. He told me the relationship had just gone sour and I thought it was because the friend had been really flaky about communication for a while related to some medical issues she was having. When I talked to her she was really concerned that I was mad at her for how she acted. I had no idea what she meant so I told her I wasn't mad, she did nothing wrong, that it just wasn't the right time for them to work together because she needed to focus on her health rather than building the business partnership. She seemed really relieved.

Well, LordL eventually confessed that part of why he ended the partnership was that this "friend" was flirting with him and flattering him with lots of attention and it had gotten really uncomfortable. He showed me chat logs with her that corroborated the story. THAT was why she was worried I was mad. I was pretty upset that she wasn't forthright about what actually happened. I would have had more respect for her if she'd said "Hey, I developed a bit of a crush on LordL and things got a bit flirty. I shouldn't have done that and I'm sorry." The fact that she was happy to leave me with the wrong impression because it let her off the hook STILL makes me mad. I basically gave her the cut direct over it because I felt she wasn't trustworthy; if she'd apologized I think we could still have been friends.

Also FWIW if you were wondering why he didn't just fess up from the start, he was ashamed that he participated in it and afraid of my reaction. We did end up spending time in couples therapy working on these sorts of issues (boundaries with opposite sex friends, communication if we cross a boundary, etc).

[Surianne]

There was no betrayal here.

I think that would vary from person to person and relationship to relationship.  I would consider it a substantial betrayal.  You wouldn't.  But the OP doesn't know that her former friend sees it the same way you do, as just a little bit of awkwardness -- it's possible her former friend was actually quite hurt by everything, the way I would have been.

So, better safe than sorry.  Leave it alone unless the former friend makes contact on her own.

[bah12]

I agree with everyone - no apology - where there has been an actual affair.

I'm not sure how I feel about this case. OP never actually did anything to betray her friend. She developed feelings for her friend's husband. I don't think that's a friendship-crime, I have a friend who I think has a slight crush on my bf and I've been in her situation with another frien's bf. Here, OP responded to these feelings by backing off from her friendship with the husband, which IMO was the most reasonable thing to do.

There was no betrayal here.

The apology would be "I'm sorry that I've lead to awkwardness in our friendship" rather than "I'm sorry I totally disregarded your feelings and betrayed your trust."

I'm not saying I think she should go ahead and apologize; I just don't think the same reasoning as why you shouldn't apologize for an affair applies.

I don't think it matters...regardless of how innocent everything progressed.  The OP openly flirterd with her friend's husband and that led to them developing feelings.  It doesn't matter how natural or innocent, it hurts to basically hear "I fell for your friend, but now I'll stop flirting with her out of loyalty to you."  On one hand, that's great. The vows/loyalty win out and they have a chance to repair their marriage.  That doesn't make the OPs apology any more comforting nor does it help things to have to worry about the OP's feelings in the midst of all this (which an apology, in this case, sort of forces).

Like others have mentioned, the apology really will only be for the OP...to absolve her guilt. It does nothing for her friend.  Her friend needs the distance.  It may take a long time, if ever, for her to get to the point where she can completely trust her husband and the OP together again.  Why, when everything is still so new/raw, should the OP push herself on her friend?  The "I didn't do anything wrong, because I didn't let it get anywhere " argument doesn't change what happened.

I agree the OP did the right thing.  She stopped things before anything happened and I commend her for that.  But I still say that she needs to leave her friend alone.  This is something that needs time to heal. 

[NyaChan]

I think this is a little different though - this wasn't a one way crush that was never explicitly voiced.  2 people were developing a flirtatious relationship with feelings and subsequently had a conversation to discuss the fact that they had gone too far or were heading in that direction.  The fact that they then went to confess to their spouses kind of implies that they were at a level that the spouses would not typically brush off. 

[EMuir]

I wouldn't want to hear from the other woman, and I wouldn't want us to be friends with them any more.  If it almost happened under my nose, and only didn't happen because they decided it wouldn't, I wouldn't want to risk that again.

[gramma dishes]

I have a question.  If I understand correctly this is the sequence:

1.  OP and Friend's husband jokingly flirted around a bit for a long time.
2.  OP and Friend's husband began to gradually realize they really were strongly attracted to one another, dangerously so.
3.  OP and Friend's husband made a conscientious decision to screech to a halt and stop their destructive (to both marriages)
     behavior.
4.  OP and Friend's husband told their respective spouses about this emotional, but not physical affair.

Why did you two decide to go to step 4?  It seems that since there was no actual physical aspect (yet), there was no danger of pregnancy, STDs, etc.  So why didn't you resolve this between yourselves and leave the other spouses out of it.  It just seems that the other two "innocent" people were hurt here, maybe unnecessarily.

I do think you and Friend's husband are to be commended for shutting down this untenable situation and working on each of your respective marriages instead.  I just can't help but wonder, since you reached a resolution by yourselves, if the other two might have been better off not knowing.

[PeterM]

You know, I don't think you really did anything wrong. These things happen - we all have crushes even in committed relationships. All we can do is modify our behavior so that the crush doesn't "escalate" and that's exactly what you did.

I will give an example of a different situation where an apology is appropriate IMHO so you can maybe see the difference:

I completely understand how you feel, but the difference in your story is that you were not aware of the specifics of the situation, and you deliberately approached your friend to talk about it. The woman the OP is talking about has supposedly been clued in to the situation by her husband, and has made absolutely no effort to get in touch with the OP.

OP, I echo what pretty much everyone has said. Don't contact her to apologize. No matter what your intentions are, the overwhelmingly likely result is to make you feel better but her feel worse. If she does contact you, though, then you can apologize.

[DuBois]

I have a question.  If I understand correctly this is the sequence:

1.  OP and Friend's husband jokingly flirted around a bit for a long time.
2.  OP and Friend's husband began to gradually realize they really were strongly attracted to one another, dangerously so.
3.  OP and Friend's husband made a conscientious decision to screech to a halt and stop their destructive (to both marriages)
     behavior.
4.  OP and Friend's husband told their respective spouses about this emotional, but not physical affair.

Why did you two decide to go to step 4?  It seems that since there was no actual physical aspect (yet), there was no danger of pregnancy, STDs, etc.  So why didn't you resolve this between yourselves and leave the other spouses out of it.  It just seems that the other two "innocent" people were hurt here, maybe unnecessarily.

I do think you and Friend's husband are to be commended for shutting down this untenable situation and working on each of your respective marriages instead.  I just can't help but wonder, since you reached a resolution by yourselves, if the other two might have been better off not knowing.

IDK. I hear what you're saying, and you might well be right. On the other hand, I could imagine that OP and the 'other man' both felt that they owed a measure of honesty to their spouses.  I could imagine that they both felt that they should 'clear the air' and that not to disclose these feelings to their respective spouses (when they had disclosed to one another) would be keeping something back, and be a form of deceit. I don't know, of course, but I could imagine that that could be the reasoning.