Thank you for your response Perna.

I consider my wife to be my best friend. I do not share anything with my friend that I do not share with my wife.

The other two people I am close to besides my friend and my wife are my sister (who knows about the affair) and my mom (who does not). I agree that having only one friend that I am close to outside of my family is not a well-rounded support system. I am working on gaining the confidence to put myself out there and make more friends. I am friendly with several of my wife’s friends but we are not close and I do not see them without my wife present.

I would like to keep my friend in my life. She is the only one (outside of my family) who is still around after all my struggles with depression so I would be sad to lose her. However, my wife makes a valid point that she may be around for the wrong reasons.

I should clarify that her, my wife, and I were all friends and mostly hung out together. Her and my wife did not spent much time together without me but they were friendly until this happened; now they do not really speak. My wife is not an angry or jealous person so she is not opposed to her being around and being friends again but she needs her to acknowledge what she did beyond just saying “sorry,” which I understand.

I like the idea of my wife and I being friends with the friend and her significant other. This made me look back at our nearly decade of a friendship and realize that my wife and I have never spent time with my friend and any of her significant others. Besides meeting her latest significant other once briefly I have only actually met one of her other significant others (she has been in at least 5 serious relationships since I have known her). Like I said, I don’t see much of her when she is in a relationship.

Anyway, I will bring your suggestion to my wife and see if she would be open to doing something with my friend again and see how that goes. I have been keeping my relationship with my wife and my friend separate since the affair in an attempt to try to focus on each relationship individually and avoid the obvious awkwardness involved. I realize now that that was not the best way to go about mending things.

I really appreciate your input.