A few months agoskygaming777, I learned that my husband had an affair with one of his colleagues, with whom we were also friends. This coupling happened before and during the pandemic. The friendship fizzled out as lockdowns ended — and long before I was told about their relationship.

She and I texted a little after I learned of the affair. I told her I knew and that she had done a terrible thing. She offered to meet me, then stood me up, suggesting that I would be better prepared in a few weeks’ time. This annoyed me. Who is she to decide when I am “ready”? But I gave it six weeks and emailed her asking to talk. I made it clear that I didn’t want to yell at her or to tell her what a horrible person she is, but that I wanted to talk about how she betrayed our friendship. It has been over a month, and she hasn’t replied.

If the circumstances were different, I wouldn’t pursue “the other woman,” but I had a separate friendship with this person. As my husband and I go through the process of mending our marriage, I feel as if I’m struggling to get closure with this hanging over me. The fact that I was betrayed by both a partner and a friend has made it very difficult for me to feel as if I can trust anyone.

Would knocking on her door be a step too far? I know she’ll ignore me as long as she can, but we live in the same area and running into each other someday is inevitable. I don’t want to be caught off guard when that happens. I don’t expect a meaningful apology, but at the very least I feel she owes it to me to look me in the eye. — Name Withheld

From the Ethicist:

The question of what your former friend owes you may distract you from a more pressing one: What is it that you’re hoping to get from confronting her? You say you’re struggling for closure and apparently think that sharing your feelings with this woman will help. Whether it will, though, depends on the nature of the encounter. What would you say to her that you haven’t said? How would you expect her to respond? After you remind her of how she betrayed your friendship, does she dissolve into a flood of abject tears, convulsed with self-loathing and a full acceptance of her awfulness, or does she become defensive and brittle, offering formulaic words of contrition that only deepen your sense of betrayal? You’re anticipating an exchange between victim and victimizer. But she may see herself as a victim, too. Perhaps your husband had intimated to her that his marriage was loveless and gray; she was led to imagine a future in which they would make a life together, electric with love, and his change of heart has left her grieving. I can imagine 50 ways this exchange could go, and few are likely to satisfy you.

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If your former friend doesn’t want to meet you to talk about her offenses against you, I doubt she’ll welcome you into her home if you show up uninvited. She might also worry that you pose a threat to her; your unannounced presence may suggest that you are spoiling for a fight. Forcing her to “look you in the eye” in those circumstances isn’t likely to be all that rewarding. As with a cultured pearl, the extracted apology isn’t a patch on a spontaneous one. Reparative justice in the emotional realm can happen only if she freely chooses to talk with you. The social theorist Erving Goffman saw apology as “a splitting of the self into a blameworthy part and a part that stands back and sympathizes with the blame giving, and, by implication, is worthy of being brought back into the fold.” But you can’t force that splitting, and it doesn’t sound as if you’re ready to bring her back into the fold, either.

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