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AIBU?

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Original poster

To hire a private investigator to follow my ex?

87 replies

Duckydoop · 11/05/2024 09:05

I was married for 20 years and had a relatively good marriage with minimal conflict. My husband would tell me that he loved me regularly and we spent lots of time together. Everyone on the outside said we had an envious marriage and that my husband looked so inlove with me. I felt secure and happy to spend the rest of my life with him.

This all changed when he told me one day that he had mental health issues and needed sometime away from me and our children (we have 4 children together). He proposed spending a couple months living away from the family home to sort himself out.

I was devastated and told him that if he left and didn’t work on our marriage (I suggested, timeout and space but still living in the family home and counselling) then to forget it. I felt like I didn’t want to wait around for a whole 2 months looking after the kids, working and suffering while he was out doing god knows what.

2 weeks after telling me he was unwell mentally, he left the family home. I don’t have much of a support network, no family in this country and very few friends I can ask for help. So I really struggled to take care of my children and work full time, whilst feeling very alone and confused.
However, people around me at the time said that he must of left for another woman and surely I must have women’s intuition. I really did not see all of this coming and the only reg flags were when he started a new job he started losing weight and dressing differently. He was also secretive with his phone but really wasn’t spending any time outside of the family home, he spend weekends with me and would come home on time from work everyday.

Since he left 18 months ago he has sworn on his life that there was no other woman involved. In this time I filled for divorce which he begged me not to do. He said he still loves me and one day we’ll be together but refused to move back into the family home and work through things. He has continually breadcrumbed me and I feel so depressed and alone. I have constant anxiety and just want to know why he left and have some closure. I feel I deserve this after 20 years and 4 children. People keep telling me that I need to move on because it’s obvious he has someone else. But i just really want to know to help me from constantly trying to figure out what happened. In our time apart he managed to complete a master’s degree, which people say should prove he wasn’t suffering from mental issues.

The thing that makes me confused is that we talk on the phone multiple nights a week for hours at a time. He also sometimes stays at my home on the weekend (no sex). How would he be able to do all this with a partner?

I feel so desperate to end the breadcrumbing cycle and accept that our marriage is over. But, I really want the truth AIBU to hire a private investigator to follow him, so I can finally get answers and the closure I need?

OP posts:
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LifeExperience · 13/05/2024 00:02

You should not have told your children that he left because of you. That's not true. He left because of him, and he's been cruel to keep you hanging for so long.

Let him go. Whether there is someone else is immaterial--he is unwilling to move back and continue the marriage. Even filing for divorce hasn't brought him back.

If he wanted to be with you he would. But he doesn't; he just doesn't want to admit that to you. Stop torturing yourself and move on.

NCA24 · 12/05/2024 23:14

@Duckydoop I firstly want to apologise if my first response was a little curt. It genuinely wasn't meant to be and given the awful circumstances and the length of time you've been together - you have been pretty damn amazing. My point was, if you had wanted a PI you should have got one: you didn't need to justify it to anybody or seek an excuse to do so. You deserve that power.

After seeing your update, now you KNOW this shit show was nothing to do with you and what you did or didn't do. This situation is WAY beyond anything you could influence. I really hope you can move on and now grt the closure you need.

If anyone deserves it, you and your children do.

generella · 12/05/2024 21:19

I'm sorry, OP. I wondered whether he might be gay because it sounded as if he values closeness to you - though not enough to be fully honest - and family life too. But there was something important in the way.

It must be so difficult, a very particular form of betrayal. You deserve honesty and I hope it gets easier day by day.

takemeawayagain · 12/05/2024 19:21

He left to fuck around while trying to keep you on the backburner with lies and false promises. What a dick. At least now you know what a lying loser he is and you can stop being his emotional support person and start moving on. Tell your kids it's best to ask their dad why he left because you don't really understand it - it's up to him what he tells them. Stop concerning yourself with him and just concentrate on yourself and your kids. You deserve a thousand times better than this.

m00ngirl · 12/05/2024 18:52

Wow that is a lot to deal with OP. He sounds like a selfish bastard. I'm so sorry. The ONLY silver lining is that now you know. Hope you have some ladies around you that you can confide in over a bottle of wine or three whilst you work through this. Keep all your energy to yourself and your kids now, not that leech, you deserve it. No doubt better days will be ahead ♥️

GrumpyOldCrone · 12/05/2024 10:50

Yeah, I get that it’s confusing, because you wonder if he was always unsure about his sexual orientation, and what that might mean about your relationship history. And maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but it changes how you see things.

I probably wouldn’t tell the children anything beyond: dad decided he wanted to live separately from the rest of the family; sometimes people do inexplicable things for reasons they themselves don’t entirely understand.

Sorry you’re going through all this! I hope things will start to get a little easier from now on.

WifeOfMartyr · 12/05/2024 10:49

Ah sorry @Duckydoop, took me so long to post that I didn't see your update!

V glad you can move on now :)

EverybodyLTB · 12/05/2024 10:49

Forget anything that isn’t you and your kids getting counselling, and official CMS. I know you’ll struggle to do this, and I get it, but you have to fake it to make it. You’re torturing yourself by still treating him as a friend and ally. He is neither, he is a manipulative bastard and is using you and ruining your life for his own ends.

Stop focusing on him, learn about manipulation and abusive relationships, get professional help. You need to heal yourself. Stop interacting with him, as painful as that will be, you are causing yourself immense harm in keeping up his charade for his benefit.

WifeOfMartyr · 12/05/2024 10:47

To give a different perspective, I did hire a PI once and it really helped to give me closure.

The one thing I realised afterwards is they don't have all the info you do. Something he thought was insignificant, I knew was highly significant.

I would say go for it. He will never tell you the truth and it does help you move on especially with men who are so proficient at lying, gaslighting and breadcrumbing

SwingTheMonkey · 12/05/2024 10:41

Ereyraa · 12/05/2024 10:40

It’s his job to tell them, not yours.

Show quote history

Absolutely. Your ex needs to grow some balls and be honest with your children. You need to stop protecting your ex and look after yourself.

SwingTheMonkey · 12/05/2024 10:40

Glad you’ve spoken to him op. I have to say I’d be fucking furious with that news. He didn’t leave because he was in love with someone else, or simply not in love with you anymore. He left because he wanted to fuck around with both men and women. All the while pretending he had mental health problems and couldn’t even parent his children.

I’d be contacting the CSA and getting the ball rolling on that and sorting out proper contact with the children which doesn’t happen under your roof. I’d also encourage him to be more truthful with the children (not about the sex, obviously, but that the split wasn’t in any way your fault).

Ereyraa · 12/05/2024 10:40

Duckydoop · 12/05/2024 10:37

I feel that now I want to focus on moving on and setting boundaries and getting my CM in order.

My only thing now is knowing what to tell my 2 older children. It’s really confusing but I don’t want to be the one continuously taking the blame and burden of everything emotionally, financially and physically.

It’s his job to tell them, not yours.

Original poster
Duckydoop · 12/05/2024 10:37

I feel that now I want to focus on moving on and setting boundaries and getting my CM in order.

My only thing now is knowing what to tell my 2 older children. It’s really confusing but I don’t want to be the one continuously taking the blame and burden of everything emotionally, financially and physically.

OP posts:
GrumpyOldCrone · 12/05/2024 10:33

Thanks for the update, OP. Glad you got some answers, but sorry they weren’t very helpful.

It sounds like you do have some clarity about his intention to have sex with other people when he left you. I hope it helps you to move on.

DelphiniumBlue · 12/05/2024 10:25

You haven't properly separated from him. Stop the telephone conversations, stop having him randomly staying over at weekends or any other time, tell him he'll need to start seeing the kids on a regular scheduled basis away from hour home.
At the moment it's all lovely for him, you do all the work, looking after the kids, maintaining their routine, even being there for long supportive chats ( probably all about him and his feelings, and he drops in when he feels like it. He's not even having to do the difficult conversations with the kids! Maybe he is having an affair or affairs, maybe he's seeing people on a casual basis, maybe he isn't. But that's not the problem. It wouldn't matter to you if you had separated properly. You are too involved in each other's lives.

Original poster
Duckydoop · 12/05/2024 10:15

UPDATE:

I just want to say thank you for all the posts. I feel like a lot of people understood where I was coming from and understood why I felt so desperate to know.

This has literally consumed me since my ex h told me he was leaving. After all the advice on this page I felt like moving on, setting boundaries and looking into counselling is the best approach. But, before I did that I really wanted the opportunity to sit down with my exh in a last ditch attempt to calmly ask him to just tell me the truth.

So, last night I reached out to him and asked to see him in person. Because up to this point most of our deep conversations had been over the phone and if we ever tried to have an in-depth conversation about anything in person we’d end up arguing.

So, we met outside of the home away from the kids overhearing. I told him what all this was doing to me and that if he cared then I needed to know and that we couldn’t continue like this. We talked for over 2 hours and it’s hard to summarise and write everything thing that was talked about.

But he cracked and told me that he left because he was confused and didn’t know if he liked men or women. So, he initially started dating women to see what it was like to be with women other than myself. And apparently that hasn’t helped and he’d like to now explore dating men.

All this information has kind of helped and kind of hasn’t. I’m glad I have some of the truth (I’m sure there’s a lot he’s not telling me). But also makes me feel like my 20 year marriage, my feelings and the kids feelings were worth less than sexual exploitation. I know people will complain about that statement but it’s how I feel. I also feel that every time things didn’t go right in his dating life he’d run to me for nostalgia and comfort. So, I guess I feel used and stupid for thinking we could maybe rekindle something one day.

OP posts:
Confusedmeanderings · 11/05/2024 23:15

F

Unexpectedlysinglemum · 11/05/2024 20:23

Duckydoop · 11/05/2024 09:18

Thank you for your responses so far, you’ve made some very valid points. I really want to move on but, I’m just confused and I guess part of me wants to have my marriage back. I just think it’s been very hard not having closure and I’m not sure why this is so important to me but it was such a shock when he left that I like I’m emotionally crumbling and just want to know why.

Have you gone to marriage counseling?

Copperkryten · 11/05/2024 17:34

Yes do a PI.
But equally, he's messing you completely around, you haven't moved on, and you need courage to ditch him emotionally and tell your 15 year old why.

MsMuffinWalloper · 11/05/2024 16:00

What on earth would you gain? You'd spend loads and get a yes or no which makes no difference to your current situation.

He's gone for whatever reason - it's always another woman or they're gay IME - and you acting like a psycho is going to make him pretty glad of that decision. Maybe that is why he was looking elsewhere (is what everyone will say). No one will care if he cheated or not but they will care if you've been obsessively trying to find out. Sorry, but you should have used the allotted time of "crazy" to dig when you just broke up, not stored it up for over a year. Them's the breaks. As your friends have said you now have to move on.

tara66 · 11/05/2024 15:54

If you can set a financial limit for the investigation that guarantees proof he has another woman then do it. However it is more difficult to prove that he has not taken up with another woman. How do you prove someone is not having an affair? You may want to continue investigation for many months until at last he is having a relationship.

tiredandabitfat · 11/05/2024 13:07

Duckydoop · 11/05/2024 10:17

@potatowine The divorce is finalised and it was with a clean break. We owned no property together and he earns roughly the same as me, but I was a housewife for many years and didn’t progress on the career ladder. So, I’m not sure if I’d have been entitled to spousal support. We have a private CM agreement because he says CSA would take away an admin fee. But has refused to show me his P60s to confirm his exact earnings and I’m worried about using CSA as this may make things worse as I haven’t heard very positive things about the CSA. Our children are 19, 15, 8 and 5.

My oldest child believes he left for someone else and is angry but doesn’t say anything to his dad. The younger ones have had some trauma due to the separation but are doing much better now. But my 15 year will get angry with me if I don’t let Ex H come to our home. Ex H has a studio apartment and not much room. So won’t see the children if I don’t let him come to our home and 15 year old will blame me saying that I’m stopping them from seeing their dad. I tried to explain that I need time away from their dad but my 15 year old doesn’t understand why.

My ex h will not take the children out as he says he cannot afford it. This does and I’m ashamed to say add fuel to the fire as I wonder if he is spending money on a woman rather than invest in spending time with his children. I know it’s now none of business as pp have pointed out but it does impact me on a daily basis.

15 year old finds it hard as they were very close to dad before the separation.

Apart from anything else, the money side of it would anger me.

How much does he earn? And how much does he give you?

Not showing P60 suggests he is earning more than he tells you though.

What is his profession? And did he continue to work full time whilst doing his masters degree? Did this get him a promotion?

SwingTheMonkey · 11/05/2024 12:58

A PI will only tell op what her husband is doing now, now what he was doing 18 months ago. It won’t help her to understand why he left. Only he can tell her that, if he ever has the guts.

Jinglesomeoftheway · 11/05/2024 12:27

The sensible option would be to not, but in all honesty, personally I'd very much want to get one in this case. Save you wondering for years and years.

Left field suggestion, but if he's still in love with you and wants contact, but there's no sex - could there be a question around his sexuality being a reason for leaving?

sunflowrsngunpowdr · 11/05/2024 11:25

I would absolutely do this. It will be money well spent, go for it.