DEAR ABBY: This is a common situation, so you must have covered it before. However, I don't recall seeing it recently.
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"Jane" and "John" were married for a number of years and had teen-aged children. "Mary," John's childhood sweetheart, already divorced from an alcoholic husband, came on the scene. John divorced Jane and married Mary.
Many of Jane's friends despise Mary and feel that she "stole" Jane's husband. We are fond of John and both Jane and Mary. We feel that regardless of who made the first call, John must have been unhappy in his marriage, or nothing would have happened. We don't think anyone can "steal" someone's spouse. Besides, it was John who filed for divorce, and if Jane's friends are mad at anyone, it should be him and not Mary.
Obviously, when Jane spreads the fiction about her husband being "stolen," she is compensating for her inability to hold onto her husband.
Abby, I think a lot of folks would be interested in your viewpoint. -- FRIEND OF ALL THREE
DEAR FRIEND: I agree, nobody can "steal" anyone's spouse, but in this case, the woman let the object of her affection know that she was interested and available, which was sufficient to get an affair going. And in the presence of such blatant temptation, it can be very difficult to preserve a marriage -- so don't be too hard on Jane.