Woman finds out her husband's horrible boss is her ex-BF; husband freaks out. UPDATED

"I have a very awkward potentially devastating situation with my (29F) Husbands (30M) boss."

Here's the original post:

My Husband hates his boss. I mean loath's him and has since he was transferred to his division almost a year ago. He would come home almost every single night complaining about him. He works in a very specific creative job and there are very limited jobs in this area for his field of work.

He is paid very well for his job and if he wanted to stay in the same field he most likely would have to move half way across the country. Which all of our family and friends are right so neither of us want to do that.

It had gotten so bad that he was looking at quitting and just taking a cut in pay. I told him I was fine with it but he spent his entire life studying for this job. So his company has an annual holiday party and last year we were gone so we did not attend. This year however they had it this past weekend and lo and behold we were available to go.

This is a very large corporation so there are literally hundreds of people at this party. When we go in we start to talk to people and I go sit down at our table while he goes to meet with some of the people who work in his division who were standing at the bar.

While I'm sitting there I feel a tap on my shoulder and there stand Paul. I have not seen Paul in years and I immediately got up and we hugged each other. Paul and I used to date in college and we parted amicably because we both were going to separate places in life.

But we did date for over a year and as I said I hadn't seen him in a very long time. So I was thrilled to see him again and catch up on our lives. I have no feelings for him other than that of an old friend and I just was happy to catch up. We talked for a good long time until he asked me why I was there and I said I was there with my husband.

Yes, you can see where this is going. Paul, my ex, is the boss that my husband hates.

He asked who my husband was and I said his name and Paul kind of looked stunned and asked if it was the same person he knew and I said I didn't know.

He said he was the department head of (title of job) and that is when it struck me that this was the boss my husband had been complaining about for the past year or so. He just said that he knew my husband and didn't say anything else.

We continued to talk for awhile and he said he would love to speak more with me but he had to go back to his table as he was one of the speakers for the night. We both hugged each other and he left.

My husband walked up just as were pulling apart from our very platonic hug. As Paul walked away my husband asked me what that was all about? I could tell he was very upset and he asked if Paul was trying to hit on me. He of course has no idea we knew each other. He was starting to rant and rave about going to HR to file a complaint on him. I mean he was fuming mad.

I was kind of stuck because if I didn't step up and say something I think he would have gone over to the HR table and filed a complaint right there and then.

I just told him that we were old friends from college and that we hadn't seen each other since graduation. I could see the color drain from his face. We spent the rest of the night with him watching his phone and leaving right after eating. He did not say a word to me on the way home.

Once we got home I tried just talk in general and he wasn't having any of it. I got the grilling of a lifetime. I could tell he was completely unhinged. He wanted to know why I didn't tell him I knew him. He went on to accuse me of laughing at him behind his back. He even went so far as to ask me if I was having an affair with him. I mean he was in a total melt down.

This is not normal for him in case you are wondering. He is honestly the most rational person I know and he has never even so much as raised his voice to me in all of the years I've known him. He did eventually apologize to me and then went on to continue to talk about how his life was hell because of his boss.

Now here is the issue. I was absolutely petrified to tell him the real truth about Paul. He was completely irrational and I was honestly afraid he would have spiraled out of control if I told him that Paul was more than just an old friend but was actually an ex.

I was not afraid for myself by the way, I never feared that at all. But I honestly don't know mentally if he could have handled it at that moment. I think he might have done something irrational to himself or our relationship.

I never hid this relationship from him. Neither of us have ever asked about previous relationships. I only know about one of his previous girlfriends because her sister said hi to him when we were at McDonalds. He knows nothing about any of my previous ex's, we've both agreed that the past didn't matter. Well I have a feeling it's going to matter.

I am deathly afraid that Paul will say something to him now, not in a mean way but just in a passing way, that we used to be a couple. I have no idea how my husband will handle this. He is the love of my life and I do not want to hurt him. I don't want to hide this from him nor lie by omission. But I am very much afraid what this will do to him mentally.

I am open to any suggestions here. Also please don't think poorly of my husband. He is a great guy and has been more than anything I could have ever dreamed of as a partner. But whatever Paul has done over the years has just made him insane.

Here's what top commenters had to say about this nightmare situation:

sideoats_gramma said:

You have to tell him. If Paul says something crude, it might get ugly. Also for some reason I keep coming back to your post, honestly it is one of the most horrifying stories I have heard in a while. I feel so sorry for your poor husband. Of course you know if you value your husband at all, there can be no contact with Paul.

lissy51886 said:

I don't have any advice on how to go about telling your husband, but you absolutely need to let him know about this before Paul does.

And [deleted] said:

Sorry to say this, but this is going to get so f*cking worse before it, if ever, gets better. The last person a guy wants to have slept with his wife is some guy he hates the most. The past is not the past. Good luck.

A week after her original post, she shared this intense, emotional update:

After posting what I posted and reading a lot of the reply's I knew that I had no choice but to tell him and to tell him the very next day. There is a lot of preamble that needs to be said here and I will get to it below but let me just get to how this went down for those of you who are only interested in hearing what happened.

He came home, I had supper prepared. He was in a fairly good mood, which at first I thought would make this a little easier but in retrospect it did not. In fact it made it worse because I hated seeing the happy look dissolve.

After dinner I took him to the living room and sat him on the couch. I had a pretty lengthy speech prepared it was a combination of facts and well honestly a list of all of the great things about him that I love knowing that I was going to have to be there to support him.

He pretty much cut off my flowery speech and just said to say what I was going to say because whatever it was I was trying to say obviously was important. So I just said it. I just said "look I didn't tell you that night because I was very much afraid of how you were going to take this, but Paul and I dated for almost over a year in college".

"I had no idea he was the Paul you were complaining about, I didn't even know he lived around here". "I have not had contact with him prior to the Christmas Party for almost 10 years and even that night I had no idea who he was in relation to you until just literally moments before you came over".

He just sat there for what seemed like forever and then all he said was "I understand". That was it, it was monotone and passionless. I asked him if he believed me about the time frame and that I did not know who he was that night. He said "yes", that was it.

So I now go into my speech about how embarrassed I am about all of this. That under no circumstance on the planet would I ever do anything to jeopardize our marriage. That he was my number one focus and then i started talking about how much I loved him and would do whatever he wanted to do even if it meant moving or doing something different.

While I was talking he stood up and said that he would like to be alone for awhile and that he needed to leave to do this. Like an idiot I start crying, I tell him that if he needed to be alone that is fine but I would be happy to leave and he said no he wanted to go out to clear his head.

He left in his car. I waited for little bit, not nearly as long as I should have I'm sure, but I then started texting him telling him how much he meant to me. Telling him that I would answer any question and well you can imagine all of the things I texted.

He never replied. He left the house somewhere between 7:30 & 8. At 10:30 I received a phone call from a number that I do not know but I did not want to be tied up hoping that he might call me. At a little after 11 I saw car lights pull in the driveway so I was thinking he was back but then the doorbell rang.

There is no worse feeling on the planet earth than having two state troopers with their hats in hand at your door. As soon as I opened the door I started screaming and crying. One of the troopers told me that my husband had been involved in serious auto accident and that I needed to either go with them to the hospital or have someone take me.

Obviously I am hysterical at this point and am asking them if he is dead. The one trooper said that they did not believe he was but they were notified by the hospital to notify me because they couldn't get in touch with me. The number I ignored was the ER calling me.

I grabbed my phone and went with them to the hospital. On the way I called his parents and told them to meet me there. I called my Parents to let them know but they were out of town for a few days so I left a voice message.

I got to the ER and the troopers took me in through a back door as to avoid having to go to a desk and my heart is about to explode and they tell a nurse who I am and she walks over and pulls back a curtain and there sat my Husband in an ER bed. He was awake and held up his arm to show me his cast. I was both relieved and overcome all at the same time.

Of course I held him and bawled for quite a long time. He apologized for scaring me and said he would have called me but his phone was still in the car. I asked him what happened and he said he hit some ice on the road and lost control then slid off hitting a tree. He said he thought he car was totaled.

The rest was pretty much a blur but eventually once his parents got there I left them in there with him to call my parents again to update them. That is when the state trooper approached me and wanted to talk.

He said that while they can't totally dispute what my husband was saying that his story about ice did not hold up. Yes it had snowed lightly but there was no real ice on the road and that there was no evidence at the scene to show where my husband attempted to either brake or swerve.

They also said that the only reason his injury was as minor as it was was because of our airbags because to do not believe he was wearing a seat belt. At first I had no clue as to what they were trying to say but ultimately it sunk in that they were implying he tried to kill himself.

No matter how bad this made me feel, and believe me I felt like sh!t, my top priority at this point was him. So I went back into the room with him and mind you he is acting like everything is fine, like our conversation from earlier didn't even happen. In fact he was definitely overcompensating trying to act happy and nonchalant.

He was however admitted for 23 hour observation. He ended up with a fracture to his right forearm & bruising to his chest wall. I stayed with him and his Dad went over the next morning to the wrecker service to get his things from the car.

When we went home he went from overcompensating to him turning on me accusing me of trying to have him committed in the ER. He became very mean and isolated himself in our bedroom for the next day.

Eventually he came out to eat and that is when he dropped his request for a divorce on me. As you can imagine I was a little distraught but I told him that he needed to focus on getting better before we make any kind of decisions or even talk about it.

The next day he just let me have it. He totally believes that Paul and I have been conspiring against him for over a year. That the reason Paul has been so bad to him is because of me. He basically said a lot of vile mean $h^t and well frankly he was not the man who I knew and loved at that moment.

I let him say whatever he wanted to say and didn't argue with him. After he settled down I just asked him to explain logically how I manipulated him into this department to that I could get him to work for a person I didn't even know was there. Obviously he couldn't but that didn't make him any more rational or less angry.

The next day was a little better, he did apologize. I told him that of course I accepted his apology but that I wasn't going to take being called those vile names by anyone let alone my own husband. We both agreed to just let him heal and not to bring up divorce in the meantime.

Later in the day he agreed to go to marriage counseling and I told him that he needed individual therapy for himself because it wasn't healthy to be this angry.

\Also I want him to be able to admit what his parents, the State Troopers, the ER Doctor and myself all believe. He tried to kill himself that night. BTW my heart sinks typing that and I can not tell you the damage this has done to my own emotions and to our marriage.

However I am committed to making this work. This is not him, this is him having a psychotic break but he is not himself. I will stand by him throughout this even if he has to be angry at me for some time. I know I did not do anything wrong but I also understand from his point of view this all looks very suspicious. .

Commenters are responding to this update:

wtfthecanuck said:

He has to resign. If he doesn't get distance from his boss, he will continue to destroy himself and drag you down as well.

funkatronikal said:

Yeah he's right in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Paul was probably the main reason for it, you having dated Paul was probably the straw that broke the camels back. I honestly think that he's going to be alright. With someone as supportive and understanding as you, he'll get through this.

That just leaves you... I think you could probably do with some individual counseling yourself. This will have taken a huge toll on you mentally and you won't even notice until you have a breakdown of your own. Thanks for the update and I wish you nothing but good things.

And WorkWorkZubZub hypothesized:

Paul's plan is moving along nicely.

What do you think? Do you agree that he should quit his job? And do you think Paul knew all along and masterminded this whole situation?