RE: I will not be able to be myself and will feel like every move I make is a "strategic decision" of some sort.

Well, it sounds like every move will involve a strategic decision of some sort. I wouldn't want to be in your place. This is a tough one.

I will share something that happened to me, and how it went down. I had had a friend for, I dunno, 7 years or so. She loved to have two men fight over her -- and I mean right down to fists flying. She started an affair with an old beau at her wedding.

Fast forward two years or so. I am a houseguest. She wants me to be her beard so that she can introduce me to her lover, claiming to her husband that she was showing me a night on the town. The whole thing made my stomach hurt so badly that I got cramps and diarrhea. She had zero sympathy for my pain, and said I had to go out with her to meet the bf on the side, otherwise her darling husband would know something was up if I stayed in and she went out alone.

In the car, she said that she was so glad that I lived in another city, because I could be her confidante about this new relationship, since there was no chance that I could drop any information by accident to mutual friends. I told her that I did not want to be her confidante, and she told me I was narrow-minded.

She was fine with her husband the next morning to all appearances, but I was completely weirded out. I also felt that if this was the way she treated the person she had pledged to love and treasure for her whole life, I could never expect her to show any greater respect for me, a mere friend living in another city.

She tried to keep in touch, but that was it for me. There are some notable differences between my story and yours -- she was cheating in her marriage; she was using me as a beard; she disregarded my physical pain in a callous way.

Would it help to tell your friend that being her confidante creates an uncomfortable barrier in your relationship with your husband -- and that you have to put those ties first? That you wish her all the best, and you will always be there for her when she is in need, but when it comes to this one thing, she cannot expect you to keep her secret???