So I’m a 30-year-old guy, and I help my best friend (also 30) with her small business. We’ve been close for years, strictly platonic, and she gave me full access to her Google Drive last year so I could manage things like invoices and branding files. Over the weekend, I was organizing some folders when I came across a document named “therapy_notes.doc.” I assumed it was hers and clicked on it without thinking. Turns out, it was her husband’s journal. I only read a few entries, but it was more than enough. He’s been writing about an emotional affair he’s having with a coworker, how he thinks he’s falling in love with her, how guilty he feels lying to his wife (my best friend), but how he doesn’t know how to stop. He says this woman makes him feel alive again. The most recent entry was just a few days ago. My friend talks about how much she trusts him, how happy she is, how she finally feels secure in her relationship and here I am sitting on this awful secret. I haven’t told anyone. I’m honestly not sure if I should stay quiet or blow everything up.
TL;DR I found my best friend’s husband’s emotional affair journal by accident while helping with her business files and now I don’t know if I should tell her.
Comments
Say something. Your friend deserves to know. If it were your partner cheating on you, wouldn’t you want to know?
who are these boomers who are writing secrets on a shared google drive???
Blow. It. Up.
Take screenshots in case it’s deleted and tell your friend and show the proof with it sometimes without proof you won’t be believed
Change it so you’re in it then show her
If I was the husband, I’m sure there are infinitely better places to leave his therapy notes (that indicate he’s cheating) than a Google Drive account his wife uses for her small business…
Talk to a therapist not strangers on internet
Congratulations, you have become the “accidental marriage assassin”
Welcome to Google Drive Hell where you hold the nuclear codes to your best friend’s heartbreak.
I agree with everyone saying you should tell your friend but I have a question. Why would you read “therapy notes” that you think are your friend’s? Bit of an invasion of privacy imo.
Since you found this info in a file named therapy notes on her google drive, I’d assume she knows already and this was something they have spoken about during a therapy session?
Either way, private info. Could mention that you have accidentally opened this private document and ask where to put it if it was in a location with business files. She will be able to look at it and then decide what to do with it.
Sounds like he wanted her to find it….. here, let me hide my inner most thoughts and secrets in a shared drive…. I’ve got a great idea!!!! Maybe I should call the folder “here’s what I tell my therapist about you but I’m you afraid to tell you so I left it here for you to read so please do” UGH!!!! Sorry you are in the middle. Be a good friend, rip off that bandaid and those rose colored glasses!
Add a shortcut to a folder that will definitely be found… the messenger will be shot otherwise.
Work on your surprised face 😯
Unpopular opinion, I’ll for sure be downvoted. But I believe you shouldn’t interfere. The husband is obviously in therapy, realises what is happening and that it’s wrong, and trying his hardest to solve this. We can’t control who we develop feeling for, we can only recognize that it’s wrong and that we shouldn’t go down that road.
Maybe you can bring it up in conversation and ask her if she knows abot the doc.. feel out her response. Probably not a great folder to stumble into but now you have the information. If he’s feeling this way, how long until goes physical instead of just emotional? Now might be a great time for an intervention and conversation where they can either figure it out or go their separate ways before she spends time and energy loving someone that is secretly betraying her. I would want to know so I could address it and try to fix it or move on.
“Therapy notes”
Of course I’m clicking!
Jesus fucking christ. Either this is about disgusting people, specially OP, or this is another frustrated writer testing their stupid AI sketches.
Tell her you found something odd on the shared Google drive and then tell her to read it.
I’m so confused why you would open her therapy notes to begin with.
Either way, download it and screenshot it. Find the author… Right click the document, view details and it’s somewhere under there I believe
Afterwards, tell her in person not over the phone or socials.
You find a friend’s file called therapy notes and READ IT?? What kind of friend does that?
Apart from this severe breach of trust, don’t use it to play the god/goddess of fate by letting your friend know about the content now. There’s still a chance that the husband successfully gets his feelings (and actions) for the coworker under control, saving the marriage. If you force a confrontation now by telling the wife, you could destroy the one chance he has to fix this.
The husband is reflecting on his feelings for a coworker. This is a helpful and mature way of dealing with a strong emotion. He cannot switch this emotion off at will. (Storing it on a shared drive is stupid of course.)
As long as the husband isn’t acting out his attraction to the coworker by cheating on his wife, he is doing the right thing, and by you telling the wife about it, you could potentially destroy their marriage unnecessarily, and it could backfire badly because your friend hates you afterwards.
You need to mind your own business.
This should be on AITA
Why the fuck would you read your friend’s therapy notes? You’re a piece of shit.