I don't f***ing believe it

[Neeliethere]

OH has met someone else. I get that. It hurts. He's taking her away for the week next week. I am at the marital home with my daughter. The marital home has a large drive. She lives 50 miles east of here and they are travelling a long way west.

They are going on holiday to an apartment we have rented as a family for the last six years that I found through a friend of mine and I have personally booked every year since then. Normally me and my daughter and her friend go but a few times with him as well. I am now feeling that I can never go there again because I will be thinking about how they were there having a lovely romantic time. I feel sick just writing this. Tell me I'm not mad.

As if that isn't bad enough he informs me that she is planning to drive to our house and leave her car on our drive while they are away. Am I going mad again? Is that just beyond the pale. The other woman's car on my drive whilst he takes her to our special holiday place shagging her senseless.

God the pain of it. How on earth do people manage to conduct themselves in such a heartless way????

smash the bitches car up

i guess as far as the NW is concerned she is parking on her BF drive. who she got together with after his wife left.

she is stupid. but not the villan

From all you say OP he sounds a real shit, but this is a situation where I would reserve judgement until I had heard the other side.

Someone close to me had her husband up and leave for another woman.

Devastating at the time but afterwards she realised just how unhappy this man had been making her.

I agree with you she is probably after his money and, once upon a time, I was a single mum on benefits myself.

Get good legal advice and take everything you can from the bastard.

she is not the ow.

You had separated and moved out, sounds like it was a mutually destructive relationship tbh.

He had every right to go on a dating site three months after you had moved out of the marital home, and had every right to bring someone back too what was now his home. It was you who shifted the goalposts back again by insisting on moving back in.

If this situation was reversed and you were posting about your ex having moved out and now insisting he move back in you would be being advised to change the locks (regardless of whether that is legal or not).

I wouldn't necessarily take a new partner to a holiday location I had been to before as a family but not everyone attaches that level of sentimentality to places.

You need to sort out your financial arrangements in terms of your dd etc but other than that he isn't actually doing anything wrong. And introducing a sixteen year old to a woman is vastly different to introducing two much younger children.

Stop projecting your bitterness and resentment and move on with your own life.

OP I can understand that it might be tempting to do something to her car.

But don't. Leave it sitting on the drive and use it as yet another unreasonable thing he has done when it comes to fighting through the divorce.

Damage it or have it towed and you look like the vindictive one. Leave it be and they are making themselves look bad.

I think you should get this thread moved to relationships OP.

You need proper calm advice about what to do next. You need to look after your and your DDs interests- financial and emotional. You'll get lots of good advice on the Relationships board on how to do this.

Slightly confused.

You say you didn't have any children until you were in your 40s, and your dh is now 46. So he was in his 20s when you married? So you are some years older than him?

That shouldn't matter, but may explain why he is now haring off after a young woman. It's a cliche, but men often want to grasp at lost youth and think that a hot young bird on their arm (and in their bed) gives them a new lease of life.

Although your marriage was clearly going very wrong, your dh did not leave you for this woman, even if he found someone pretty sharpish.

I just think you need to find a good lawyer. A friend of mine found herself in very similar circs to you, ie she brought more to the marriage in the first place than her dh did, even though he became the breadwinner, and her solicitor got her a very favourable deal indeed.

"Leave it sitting on the drive and use it as yet another unreasonable thing he has done when it comes to fighting through the divorce." but it's not unreasonable. The op had moved out. She may well be able to file for divorce on the grounds of unreasonable behaviour but fact is they are separated. He has every right to move on.

Sorry, bit confused. You had your children in your 40's (who are practically adults and your husbands in his 40's?

I am 57 and he is 48. Yes he is younger than me and decided about 12 years into our marriage that it wasn't what he wanted. Moved out, came back. Moved overseas to work. Came back and then the shouting abuse started about 6 years ago in between his being overseas or living elsewhere.

I gave him ample opportunities to go and stay gone, but he kept coming back. The only reason he didn't want to make up again this time is because he met someone else quickly. That has never happened before.

I can't see what the new girlfriend has done wrong.

There's lots of stuff about money, lifestyle, bills and possessions here but not enough about what actually happened.

As for smash the bitches car up... that's just bizarre and hateful.

Neelie it's ok to be angry and judgmental about your STBXH. He's the one who made promises he didn't keep and the one who has betrayed you in every way possible. Rant away about him as much as you like on here. As long as you're directing the anger at him, and not being distracted by the NW, your anger is part of the healing process and something you have to let out.

If you let yourself concentrate on the NW though, it tends to lose direction and ends up turning inwards. That is highly damaging to you. The best revenge is always a life well lived, and bitterness actively prevents that.

I know it's far from easy, but when it comes to new partners of STBX spouses, the only way to treat them (assuming they are not being nasty and bullying) is with graceful non-reaction. You don't need to be warm, but polite, decent behaviour means you retain the moral high-ground, don't lose authority and respect and keep your options open for taking control when you need to. Most importantly, if there are children involved, behaving well means you don't run the risk of creating such a hostile environment with someone who could potentially play an active part in your child's life that you ruin all family occasions for years to come and destroy any ability to discuss your DCs welfare and future with everyone involved in their lives.

And, bastards like your STBXH hate it when you behave well because it contrasts starkly to their own behaviour and makes them appear all the worse.

While he is away, do everything you can to document the real financial situation of your marriage, including his recent spending. It will be useful when it comes to court.

you said earlier he was 46.

mn hq can we have a rat emoticon please?

This is crap for you but I am finding I a bit irritating about how you keep going on about her being a single Mum of two young children, on benefits etc, lives in South London. These things do not make her a bad person and are irrelevant.

Your ex is an abusive twat. You knew this that's why you left him. She's not the OW, he met her after you left.

The car thing, yes I would be irritated about that but I would tell him he parks it there at his own risk and it will not be there when he gets back. The End.

Very odd. Fifty foot drive, hmmm.

I'm with wannabe.

dh seems to be two different ages.

I think you hate the NW because you feel both superior to her and are jealous of her youth. This is not going to help you in your divorce. Get smart and quickly.

You're in pain, you're angry about the double-standards, etc. I get that.

But from an outside perspective, the new girlfriend has been fed an entirely different viewpoint. She's poor- she's just been left homeless.

She would not be risking leaving her car, which she probably very much needs, and certainly cannot afford to replace, on your driveway, if he'd told her the house was a joint house and his wife was still living there!

He sounds truly horrible. You could pack up his belongings while he is away and leave those on the drive, and change all of the locks on the house. Nice surprise for when he gets back.

Ah. So essentially you assumed that he would come back again and your mutually destructive relationship would carry on? It seems that your marriage has been dead for years, but neither of you were prepared to admit it. Now he has, and you are raging.

He's being insensitive, clearly, but it's not as if you were living a happy hearts and flowers life was it? Your poor daughter, in the middle of all of this for years. I'm not surprised she chose to stay in her home - she is just holding on to something stable in her life. It's no reflection on her relationship with you, I'm sure, just she needs something to cling onto. Is she doing exams this year?

Honestly it sounds like you are both better off for the breakup of the relationship. You seem to have assumed he would stay single (pining for you?) as he has done historically, but he hasn't, and you need to deal with that. His girlfriend is presumably some 20 years younger than you, and maybe part of the attraction is his perceived wealth - but that's his problem. For now you need to be the bigger person and put in train measures to separate yourself from him both emotionally and financially.

If you are both living in the marital home, that clearly needs to change asap!

If you're the poor, innocent party in all of this I will eat my own dirty laundry pile.

OP, what is happening wrt the separation. Have you filed for divorce? Is the house for sale?

Or have you been hoping that this, like previous separations would end with the two of you getting back together?

I can see that the situation is upsetting for you. However it sounds like you and STBXH have always had a tempestuous relationship and are better off apart. Try to move on.

The NW has done nothing wrong - she has met a man living on his own and is going away with him. Absolutely it is insensitive and unimaginative of your STBXH to take her to a place with memories for you as a family. If it's any comfort, perhaps the NW will find it a bit too. However it is not crime of the century (and you have long known he is insensitive so that's no surprise) and you should concentrate on the future; on a formal separation/divorce with a fair split of assets, with as little acrimony as possible and a secure, loving home for your DD throughout. The car is neither here nor there. Don't give it a moment's more thought.

wow there's a lot of projecting going on on this thread. if an xh moved out of the marital home and then insisted on moving back in he would be branded all sorts of bastards under the sun. I rather suspect that the op moved back in because she found out her ex had met someone else (which he is perfectly entitled to do) and didn't like it so thought she'd make his life difficult.

I don't believe for a second the op is an innocent victim in any of this, and her judgements of the gf are just bloody nasty and don't show her as a very nice person at all. Perhaps that's why the xh feels he is better off with someone else.