Hi all
this is going to be a long post...so thank you to those reading to the end.
don’t know whether I’m posting for advice, perspective, or simply to get this out of my system. My last post here was , ironically enough , was about the person he now married, who he then positioned as a play date for our son and the hive mind was right ....but I digress
I have Asperger's and was married before to someone with Asperger's (both diagnosed later) and had an amicable split and 5 children together (4 living and one stillborn )
id say I was inexperienced with men ....
I am late 40s, recently ex husband 58 and his new wife 31, he has two adult children from a previous long term unmarried partnership (which broke down due to his adultery as I later learned )
now to the story
I was with my recently ex, let's call him Max, for eight years and we have a five-year-old son together.
When we met, he was very attentive and affectionate. Looking back, there was quite a lot of love-bombing. He moved things along quickly, proposed after 3 months, talked about the future early on and made me and my children feel very special and chosen.
Over time, however, there were increasing problems.
He became very controlling about who I spoke to, where I went and what I did. He would become jealous if I talked to men (even at choir or long time friends, or work) , even casually, and often accused me of flirting when I was just being friendly.
He frequently monitored conversations, broke into my phone, read diaries (using translation tools as English is not my native language although I am practically bilingual) , questioned me about phone calls and wanted to know exactly who I had been speaking to and why.
he bought many books about Asperger's in women and studied them ...
He had a lot of interest in my ex husband and my only platonic boyfriend, later building his own stories and telling me what I did and when and how I felt when with those people
.
He had a strong tendency to rewrite history and blame others for his own decisions.
there was a lot of I love you I don't love you and things like calling me selfish and getting extremely angry when I didn't want to wait a day until he could attend an emergency early pregnancy scan with me, especially given I had a miscarriage at 9 weeks a few months previously. He was livid and said I should have waited for when he could come.
In 2022 I discovered accidentally that he was still perusing his married ex lover for 3 months in the start of our relationship and proposed to me when she stopped replying
i confronted him and was told it was my fault and I ruined everything by finding out
it all went downhill from there really. Realising our marriage built on a lie was tough.
later that year he suggested a threesome with a much younger friend we had , then retracted and resorted to mild violence towards me....which was a lot on top of controlling behaviour....
in 2023, while supposedly trying to reconcile with me after an episode of DV and briefly living away, filing for divorce but then saying he doesn't want to go through, he began seeing another woman. She was positioned as a play date for our son, he met her and her daughter at a playground and kept her name and any info secret ..he spent every weekend in her and her then 2 yo daughter's company and as I later learned every day too . . I later discovered he had been involved with both of us simultaneously for several months....
a few months into their "friendship " she shared her views with him. And revealed her ex was in prison and she holds very extreme views but I not sure I am allowed to mention those due to political correctness . She is not British and is from a south European country
....to add insult to injury he announced to family we were reconciling and we sent the D11 off to cancel divorce and on the same day I discovered them in his car , her on top of him, kissing passionately. I opened the door, she was surprised I was upset as he told her he was close to finalising divorce.
after telling me it was their first kiss he tried to end the relationship with her and eventually did a month later, and told me he had chosen me, loved me and wanted to recommit to our marriage. At this point I am not proud to say, I broke into his phone and realised it was a full blown sexual relationship. Just before he broke up with her he told me everything ....their trips , his working there every day, etc
this was the end for me really but the logistical nightmare was just beginning.
He broke up with her but continued telling her that he loved her deeply and was devastated about hurting her. All the big declarations of everlasting love rang a very familiar bell
she eventually blocked him telling him if his marriage is not over she is not interested.
Over the following two years he repeatedly reassured me that he wanted our marriage to survive, that he never wanted another divorce and that he wanted us to remain together forever,....while intermittently threatening to start taking her out again (he took them to national trust places during their "friendship) ... the divorce was still hanging there being dangled over me every time he was displeased and 2 years after conditional order was granted it was still possible to finalise.
during those 2 years , while telling everyone we were together he was trying to run into her everywhere he could. He told me he was having intrusive thoughts about her and even did a ritual trying to free himself of them.
at the same time he became more controlling over me, saying he "gave up someone properly for me", some days saying he did it for duty, other times that he did it for love.
He became hostile to my children ...which I guess makes sense based on his earlier statement that a man loves a woman's children through her ...and I guess he didn't love me ...
he did a weird thing in October last year, sat next to me and showed me all their trips on air BnB and describing in detail what he did etc....when I tried to walk away he pulled me back down and continued... it was almost sadistic only somehow didn't hurt (I think by that point I was numbed) . He had an explanation why he did it, said he knew I wanted to know.
He continued stalking her, leaving gifts on the gates of her flat, took our son to the playground they met at many times and eventually saw her there Nov last year. Got very angry when son told me.
in Jan this year after an argument he applied to finalise divorce in front of me saying "you think I won't do it but I will" ...the next morning he said I forced him to do it and he will cancel. The court requested additional info given two years have passed and he then said "no I'm committed to this marriage so not proving anything. "
also in Jan this year, after applying to finalise divorce he overhearing a phone conversation I had with a long-standing friend of 20 yrs, who was going through mediation and we talked about the session , my ex suddenly claimed that this conversation was interfering with our marriage and how dare I have it in another room....
in March this year before I went away for a couple of days to see a friend I saw him messaging her. I realised he re established contact somehow
same week he provided courts and tribunals with the info they requested and 3 days later we were divorced. He refused to do a financial settlement while dragging out divorce so now we still have the house, offer accepted but sin and I not really protected financially...he is offering me half the equity (which is not much) , having drawn out and spent his private pensions as soon as he applied for divorce 3 yrs ago.
he proposed to her 3 days after divorce was finalised and married her a couple of weeks ago.His family did not attend , only his old friend and his mum who felt she had to.
Despite marrying someone else, he still says things such as:
“If you hadn’t spoken to your friend we’d still be happily married.”
"we were fine"
"he (friend) interfered with our marriage with that phone call
“You ruined our perfect life.”
“I got rid of you.”
it doesn't end here ... in the weeks leading up to his wedding he was also asking me to lie next to him, trying to me, touching me and telling me that he was still emotionally and physically attached to me and suggesting intimacy. When I asked him how she'd feel if she knew this he said she doesn't need to know and it will help us detach (!).
He said he loved both of us.
all this while trying for a baby with her and about to marry
He repeatedly said that I was “his wife” to others despite being engaged to someone else.
He asked me whether I would sabotage his wedding if I could.
He invited me to object when his wedding banns were read in church.
He told me details about the honeymoon, wedding clothes and his future plans with his new wife.he later his wedding suit on my bed before setting off down south to get married
At the same time he remains extremely controlling towards, extremely volatile at times
Although divorced and remarried, he still questions who I speak to, becomes angry if I spend time talking to other people, complains if I visited his mother who invited me with our son, and tells me that the house, everything in it , car and even the bed I sleep in are “his”.
He often says:
“It’s my house.”
“It’s my bed.”
“It’s my car.”
“You live in my house.”
we are still in the family home and so are two of my children, my son with him and a young teenager from previous marriage (my other children are older and adults/at uni)
He brought his then finance into the house several times last month despite of promising me he would not, and plans to do it when I am away later this week.
he spends every night at her council flat but pops home to see our son for an hour or two but even then sits there on his phone disengaged.
he'd tell me how happy they are and then in the same breath say that I failed in my duties “as a wife”.
He can move between telling me I am not family and telling me I should still behave like a wife within the same conversation.
He also becomes angry when our son prefers me for comfort or bedtime.
He returned from his honeymoon irritated and argumentative, telling me how romantic it was, while picking fights over coffee pods, school clothes, car seats and household arrangements.
I genuinely don’t understand how someone can claim they would still be happily married to one person while simultaneously marrying somebody else and insisting they are blissfully happy.
I appreciate there are two sides to every story and I’m certainly not perfect.
But I’m interested in whether other people recognise this pattern of behaviour.
Is this simply someone who cannot tolerate responsibility for their own choices?
Is it an attempt to keep an ex-partner emotionally attached? Overlapping?
Or is it something else entirely?
it also strikes me he talks about how she loves him with no mention of his feelings.
For context, I don’t want him back. I won't miss the messy house, his inability to tidy up after himself, the shouting, the constant arguing over everything, the "I am so important" (he is a rather senior civil servant"
I just feel extremely worried about our son, hurt he married the very person he cheated with, was irresponsible enough to not finalise finances before divorce, treats me like dirt and enjoys it.
What I seem to be grieving is the loss of the family we had, the betrayal, and the fact that he has managed to turn an affair into a wedding while continuing to blame me for his choices.
thank you for reading and I apologise for any typos which I guess there will be a few