my dh left me a month ago, possibly coming home, anyone experienced this good/bad

[canttypefortears]

Sorry being a bit greedy as I have another thread running.

Backstory goes....DH of 15 years tells me he does not love me anymore on christmas day.for me there was NO warning we were rock solid, at least I thought. He stays for two weeks then leaves me and the kids
without explanation/or good reason. He stayed with a mate for one night but has been sleeping on monster in laws sofa for the past 3 weeks. It took me 2 weeks to drag an address out of him (his mum had just moved, I only knew the town name).

He then goes NC, phone not answered, off, straight to voicemail, no text replied. I panic he has done something stupid. Eventually he contacts me and accuses me of stalking him and madness!

He spent the first week away getting drunk, the second angry at me? And the third calm.

He had scared me with his suggestion of divorce we went straight into mediation.He was calm again in this meeting, I was bewildered.

Since the mediation he has been back round a few times and he got talking of what he is losing and the realisation of his actions. This had been the first occasion weve had the chance since the split without the kids around. I saw glimpses of my DH again for the first time since his revelation.

It has dawned on him what he is losing and the damage it has caused. I have always told him the doors open. He is having a crisis of sorts, feeling life is going in circles as if each day is groundhog day!Any little problems we had have built up in him until he imploded.

He is finally saying he may come home but that it should be for the right reason, his commitment to me. I know his right. Im now left in limbo as hes got to clear his head. Of course I want him back.

Has anybody got any experience if things can go good (or bad) after a situation like this?

My husband and I were close before all this, no ow,despite everything we are still really friendly.

Help I want it to work!

[kindlefire]

Sorry to hear this , I would be surprised if there wasn't someone else involved .

[canttypefortears]

Absolutley everyone suggests that. I have been deciding there must be one moment and cant be next. I really dont think he has ever had an opportunity and i just dont think he would. I know your all screaming. NIAVE! I think im right.

It seems more like an early mid life crisis to me. So our lovely home, two beautiful kids, nice holidays, weekends away arent enough for him. Work is the big downer for him, he is a grafter works outside but feels he has been treading water for years. He seems bored with life.

Im hoping we can work through everything, he has just got to try.

[cece]

Two thoughts.

Firstly he seems to be calling all the shots. I think you need to take some control back.

Secondly I suspect another woman, especially as it all came so out of the blue.

[SavoyCabbage]

How awful. I'm sorry this has happened to you.

I would be worried that he is coming back because the alternative is harder. Living at his mothers then finding some flat to rent. Doing everything for himself instead of as part of a team. Having the children at weekends. Hard.

Picking up his old life. Easy.

[AnyFucker]

Hello, love. I am so sorry you are so bewildered and hurt. I have lurked on your other thread

I have a question for you

Is he desperately looking for answers as to why he is behaving as he is, casting around websites for someone anyone to tell him it's ok, reaching out to strangers for comfort ?

Or is he sitting pretty wherever he is, hugging his "reasons" (and his secrets) to himself while he watches you tie yourself in knots and make yourself ill in pursuit of something he has tarnished with his selfishness ?

[shey02]

Sounds very odd. I realise that good people can have breakdowns and crisis's of the soul. It could very well be that and in that case I hope it can work out.

However, when my ex was acting strangely and erratically and NC and finding himself, he was in fact having an affair. I was blind, I didn't want to see it. However in hindsight, all the classic signs were there. My ex and I were very close friends, but he still did it.

Do you feel let down at all? Do you feel that you can trust him after this behaviour? Could you imagine walking out on him as he has done to you? It's not insignificant what he has done, I'd be so mad with him!

[Bogeyface]

I was thinking the same as AF funnily enough.

Who is the one runing round like a headless chicken trying to work out the whys and wherefores? Who is talking about working on your marriage? Who is the one in tears and pain and desperation?

It aint him is it?

Sorry but I agree with Savoy that OW or not, leaving has not turned out to be the Nirvana he thought it was. Its not fun, and its actually quite hard. And yes, he will have to be a father with no back up to your DC when he has access, he will have to pay maintenance, pay all the bills on his own, do his own cooking, cleaning and washing.

This isnt about love, its about convenience. I said on your other thread that I thought you should give yourself a time limit, in that he doesnt move back in until say, 6 months have passed. I rather suspect that when the 6 months is up, you will feel differently about having him back, and if you dont, well enough time will have elapsed that you can both be sure that you are doing the right thing for the right reasons.

[canttypefortears]

Hmm i do see what you are saying.

He has been searching online for reasons as to why/ what type of people do what he did etc, he quoted stats, you could tell he was trying to make it look better. But, i doubt he uses an online forum like this for support and advice.

He does miss the kids and he knows he cant really afford a decent place for them to stay. But he has said he cant come back because of finances. He wants to give me what i deserve and hes unsure he can deliver.

I just hope he decides in favour. Yes he broke my heart on a very important day, yes he broke the kids hearts for leaving them too, but he broke himself on route too. I also dont believe he had been a naughty boy, the opportunity was not thete. Our love for him is unconditional,

[Ohbyethen]

I'm in a similar boat to you and had my own thread over New Year.

He has also announced he still loves me and wants to come back. At the time it was happening I offered a lot of options to fix things, he acted appallingly. Now reality has bitten him hard on the arse and he wants to come home to his safe and comfortable life with me and my spade digging him out of his hole. He'd quite like to take me up on some if the options too. Cake, eating it.

He is not coming home. He is my true love, my soul mate and I thought we would face the future together. I still love him deeply and painfully. But he is not coming home. I'm not going to graft and hurt and suffer to get things back on track, make my dc do the same & support them and then have us live with the shadow of his selfishness forever. Waiting until he hates his job again, I'm busy with poorly dc, money gets tight and things get hard - waiting for when we need him most and he chooses to abdicate his responsibility and leave.

He is on antidepressants but as much as I want to hangeverything on crisis and give him a get out of jail card. That would be a lie of denial. He opted out and he chose to do so. He tried to keep me on a string and jerk me to his tune of poor me just like yours is.
That's bullshit, that's not crisis, it's being too chicken shit to jump the fence because no one will be there making his life easier.
Mine might feel genuine remorse, but he isn't yet. He didn't love us enough to 1) work things out like a grown up 2) treat us as loved and important. We were reduced to little dolls in his mental stage play dancing around him, not proper actual people as important and valuable as him.

You do what you feel you have to do. But do it with your eyes open, your children at the forefront of your mind and on your terms.

[ChippingInWadesIn]

Why did you start a different thread - are you hoping to get different replies?

Honest to god, there is a script, he is following it :(

Stop throwing yourself at him & letting him think he can treat you how he likes and you will still be fawning all over him.

As I said to you on the other thread, another woman will come out of the woodwork - at some stage. Clearly they aren't in a position to be together right now - she probably has a husband and can't get the courage up to leave him. It's uncomfortable at his mothers and he wants the creature comforts back.

Relationship aside - you would seriously let him move back into the family home after the way he has treat his children?? Really? You'd put them at serious risk of him doing this again??

[AdoraBell]

I don't know if there is an OW or not, but the only way that he hasn't had an oppotunity is if he had never left the house or spoken To a woman on the phone.

Maybe he wouldn't take an oppotunity if presented with one, either way I agree with those advising you To take back some control and give yourself time before you decide weather to allow him To return.

[canttypefortears]

Unconditional love, you love them no matter what, however they have treated you? (As long as it wasnt an ow!). Not only a parent-child love.

I have thought through most of your comments over and over already. And, i have no idea if he will actually come home.

In the meantime DONALD im thinking along the lines of option a). We have breathing space for a week now due to my work commitments. Hopefully he will confirm to himself how foolish he has been. Anything that has gone wrong between us is no deal breaker, it can be sorted almost overnight.

[familyscapegoat]

The love we have for a life partner absolutely shouldn't be unconditional. Because that gives people free reign to treat us badly with no consequences.

So here you are, with a husband who's treated you and the children truly dreadfully and yet you're still willing to leave the door open to him.

If you agree to him coming back, you will even against your better judgement, try to be all things to one man in a desperate attempt to get him to love you again and not leave. You'll take the responsibility for not messing around your children again on to your own shoulders and will blame yourself and not him if he leaves again or looks like he's going to.

I would strongly suspect an affair that is perhaps looking a little less tenable than it did a few weeks ago - and this is why he's keeping one foot in the door. This, together with a mounting realisation that divorce and child support is a costly business.

I've done a lot of reading about affairs and have learned that even when you might think there are no opportunities, there always are. People working on roads get chatting to householders, people meet others in pubs, people connect together online, friends and family members introduce new people all the time. Men and women have affairs with in-laws and friends in absolute plain sight too.

I'd so strongly urge you not to have your husband back even if he wants to come.

If he does want to come home, say no but insist he gives you all his phone bills for the past year - and passwords for any networks he is on.

If that comes up clean, suggest he gets some therapy on his own and then take it slowly. No moving back in, him doing his fair share of the childcare and you meeting up to talk from time to time.

You cannpt lose by adopting that strategy, but for this marriage to work, he has got to be completely committed to it and you'll need more than his word alone that there was no affair.

[canttypefortears]

Chippingin

Ive never posted before my original thread so if ive done the wrong thing im sorry! I was always an aibu forum lurker until now.

As the title suggests dh is thinking of coming back has it ever been a sucess for anyone? I assume there have been a hell of a lot of disasters. So i thought i was asking a different question although i suppose my original thread had been going that way. Oh well, didnt mean to offend .

Oh and i did read the script too!

[prh47bridge]

I'm not so cynical as to say there is definitely another woman. It is possible there is but by no means definite.

People who are depressed often fixate on the belief that if they made a big change in their life (change job, move house, have a baby, get divorced, etc.) it will fix their depression. Sometimes it works for a while but most of the time it is at best a temporary fix because it isn't addressing the underlying problems. Depressed people make bad choices. They can be very selfish. They can undermine themselves by throwing away things they value - the partner they love, their dream job.

Sometimes they will repeat their mistake if they become depressed again. Sometimes they will learn from their mistake and won't repeat it. And sometimes they won't get depressed again.

I know couples that split up at the instigation of one partner and then got back together again, in one case many years later. Some of them are very close and have a strong relationship. For others (including myself) it was a disaster. There is no way of knowing what will happen in your case.

Having said all of that, I agree that you need to take back some control rather than just hanging around with your life on hold while he makes up his mind.

[familyscapegoat]

I don't tend to click on established threads so I wouldn't necessarily have posted on it. Others might be the same. As long as the information isn't different on the two threads I can't see the harm, although I accept it can be annoying if posters seem to be looking for what they want to hear, rather than get honest responses.

As none of us so far appear to be saying "Yay! Go for it" and are all expressing caution, maybe this thread would be good for you?

[kindlefire]

When someone suddenly declares they don't love you any more , with no prior discussion , that's cheat speak for I've met someone else. Like another poster says , a ow will probably make an appearance at some point . Do you know one hundred per cent that he was at his mother's ? Would his mother support him seeing someone else ?

[Ohbyethen]

The notable recently was a poster who updated us all the other day.
She took him back. It was clearly an affair but that wasn't really the point. Point was he dithered and mithered and thought he'd hedge his bets. His loving and committed wife took the brunt of it with their child. Fucked her up a bit tbh, messy and cruel.

Latest in a long line of the same kind of story. Personally - I've never witnessed a true happy ending.

Unconditional love for a spouse? Now that is stupid. It can be deep, abiding, committed and intense but it's contractual for anyone with normal, healthy boundaries.
I will support my child if they beat me up, emotionally abused or threatened me (as far as my last shred of sanity would take me, but I would still love them) if a partner abused me or behaved badly? I will not condone it, out. Unconditional love for a partner is not something I would encourage anyone to aspire to.

[canttypefortears]

I know im being too nice. But up unti 5 weeks ago he has never been mean or nasty. We didnt row ( occasional cross word), no name calling etc etc. He just bottled things up and let rip christmas time.

He stayed at home feeling bad for what he had said/done. He left and had a lost week drunk. He had an angry week blaming everyone but himself. He had a calm week. He is now being honest. I trust this honesty yes, but i do have concern he would do it all over again down the line.

But, he was the one who said he couldnt come back for the wrong reasons namely finances, just for kids but because he wants me to be happy and hes got to work out wether he can....He doesnt want and wont put us through it again if he seriously doesnt think it will work.

Only he can make this decision, i cant make it for him.
Im hoping im strong enough to take rejection again. X

[familyscapegoat]

But it's the suddeness that's the biggest clue to all of this. I can quite envisage that he was never mean or nasty before. Affairs though produce that sort of behaviour.

Unless you've had him under surveillance since he left, you've only got his word for how those weeks have panned out. Stop believeing everything he says as gospel. He could just as easily have spent several nights in hotels with an OW. You can't prove anything and you really must be more cynical and circumspect.

So when you say he's being cautious about coming back for the right reasons, I'm thinking 'The OW won't leave her partner/it's not as much fun with her anymore/she doesn't have as much equity or money as I'd thought/she's having second thoughts'

Suspend belief. It will protect you. Trust only what you can prove.

[redrubyindigo]

Look to the future and not the past because you are not going there.

Your future and what you want? Does that involve a daily inventory of his whereabouts/emails/texts etc?

That is a bloody exhausting exercise, time consuming and futile.

The future is yours. Captain your own ship and set the sails.

You are strong enough to do that.

[Ohbyethen]

Do you not feel you have any agency? He, he, he, he - what are you? A doorknob? You only function when a real person comes and gives you a twist? No. You are a person, a mother, who is important and have value. You should also have boundaries that protect yourself and dc, your self respect and esteem.

There's a lot of him and not a lot of you. You might find it useful to have a little mull over of that.

It's really not for me to say do x or don't do x. But, don't do anything just to get the hurt to stop, it sells you out. And we don't value what we get cheap.