Reader With Friends Like This... writes,

My husband left me about two months ago for my best friend. I just found out that she was the reason he left. She has been just about my only confidante since he left. The first one to show up the day he left and honestly pulling me closer every day. Our sons are also friends.

They are already talking about getting married and living together. My husband and I have three small children, five year old twins and a nine year old. I'm extremely worried about how this relationship might hurt them.

Do you have any suggestions for books or research on how something like this might affect kids? He is a good dad but is completely lost right now and doesn't think it will be that difficult for the kids.

He also suggested that it is my responsibility to be supportive of her to the children after they are introduced to her as his new partner ... I think that's pretty ridiculous given the situation. If we were a year or two out of the divorce and he was entering a healthy relationship with someone who hadn't shown such cruelty to me, I could see his point.

I truly feel this woman has sociopathic tendencies and is not a good person. So while I don't plan to trash her to my kids I also don't intend to pretend that we are friends and that I approve of the situation.

Thanks so much in advance for any thoughts you might be able to share.

Dear WFLT,

Whoa. This situation is so awful that it sounds like it couldn't be real. Yet, sadly, you're not the first person to have suffered a betrayal like this. As you realize, something is obviously very wrong with your ex-best friend. I don't know if she's a sociopath or what. She may be borderline or narcissistic. She feeds on drama and intensity. If your husband wasn't married to you, it's unlikely she'd have ever gone for him, because where would the drama have been?

As for your husband, he sounds like a narcissist too. However, you haven't realized this yet which is why you call him "lost." He is caught up in his exciting and dramatic life and your feelings matter not at all. For that matter, he honestly has just as much chance of being sociopathic as her. I mean, he cheated on his wife with her best friend and also didn't care that he could ruin the friendship between your kid and hers. Something is wrong with your husband and it is possible that you ignored some red flags along the way and tried not to believe that he was as self-centered and unempathic as he really is.

Sometimes, when two narcissists get together, their relationship turns into a folie a deux, or a delusion for two. Here, I am imagining the shared narrative is that they have a fated love affair which was so passionate and so overwhelming that they were swept up in it, and of course they didn't mean to hurt anyone, but this kind of love only comes once in a lifetime and they were really both living such meaningless lives, in retrospect, until they met the other one, and the normal rules of the proletariat don't apply to couples who have experienced Real True Love like This, and they tried to resist but resistance was Futile, and vomit vomit vomit. But this is what they really believe, if they are narcissists and not just sociopaths.

Another possibility is that you were always really nice but kind of stable and predictable and your husband used to be a big dork who never really had a girlfriend before you, and you liked him for him, not for his huge penis, since he doesn't have one, but your borderline best friend seduced him and convinced him that he is sexually irresistible, and she herself is very dynamic and sexy, and he was really just shocked that a woman could want him as bad as she professed to want him, so he turned off his conscience and threw himself into this porn-like affair. In this case, he will likely realize within the year that he has made a terrible mistake (also everyone he knows will tell him this too), but by then I hope you will have moved on to a man with a conscience as big as his penis, and make no mistake, I am hoping both are tremendous.

Since you tossed me a layup with the book question, I'll shamelessly tell you that my book, How to Talk to Your Kids about Your Divorce: Healthy, Effective Communication Techniques for Your Changing Family, explains in detail why you have to be nice about your horrible best friend in front of your kids. You obviously know that they are both damaged, dysfunctional people, but you can't let your kids know that, especially about their dad. If they think he's a loser or a jerk, it's like thinking half their DNA is tainted. They need to be able to form a loving bond with him, and just because he's a crap husband doesn't mean he'll be a crap dad. Really.

As for your ex-best-friend, despite you, me, and everyone else knowing that she did a heinous thing, you have to allow your kids to potentially develop a courteous and respectful relationship with her. They may end up spending half their time at her house, which although I'm sure is nauseating and painful to contemplate, is the truth. You need to make it easy on them, so no snarky remarks, and no "they deserve to know the truth" excuses for telling them what a lowlife she is. They don't have to know now. Their parents are getting divorced and that's hard enough. If they also have to start hating another adult in order to be loyal to you, this will mess them up and alienate them from their dad. Believe me, when they are adults, they will be able to understand this situation in its entirety and make whatever judgments they want to make. But for now, they are kids and should be protected from as much bitterness and anger as possible.

One caveat: if she is in fact a sociopath, and does anything bad to your kids, then of course get them out of that situation however you have to. But the fact that your kids are friends indicates that you have observed her parenting and haven't found it abhorrent over the time that you've known her. How she will act to stepkids is another issue, but if she's playing the role of Perfect Goddess to your husband, she'll likely kill them with kindness (in fact I'd worry more about her trying to one-up you with your own kids than doing anything harmful to them).

Also, get yourself a therapist. If anyone needs a support system, you do. At a later date, you may wish to explore why you are drawn to narcissists for the most important relationships in your life, both mate and best friend. I would imagine that one of your parents tended toward self-absorption and the other was an enabler or at least was blind to the narcissism. If I'm at all on target, you might want to read this book.

Good luck, and keep me updated. Till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Also Don't Tell Your Kids To Put Nair in Her Shampoo, Even Though It Will Take Restraint.

This post was originally published here on Dr. Psych Mom. Follow Dr. Rodman on Dr. Psych Mom, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Order her book, How to Talk to Your Kids about Your Divorce: Healthy, Effective Communication Techniques for Your Changing Family.