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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To expect my boyfriend to realise his wife is a gold digger and vindictive person?

409 replies

NMC89 · 24/11/2013 20:15

Background: my boyfriend and I have been together for 2 years, having been friends for some time before that. We have a large age difference but have an incredible bond and are best friends. He has been separated from his wife for 4 years but they still live in the same house (they don't have sex). I live in London and she lives in Italy - he commutes, spending the week with me in the UK and the weekends with his children.

She has had multiple affairs openly and manipulates him unbearably (she has threatened to stop him seeing his children). He financially supports her (as well as her sister and brother). I find her behaviour disgusting, she only speaks to him when she wants money or a new car and refuses to do anything for him or the household (she is a sahm) - including disciplining the children, cooking, cleaning or food shopping. He does all these when he gets back after a week working in the UK. I try hard not to constantly be horrible about her, but it is hard to see the man I love being taken advantage of so viciously. I know they are not going to divorce (for the sake of their children) but I really can't see how this is a good alternative. He admits that she is awful and has got very angry about some of the things she has done (notably bringing her boyfriend to their family home to spend the night when his children were there), but he is incapable of doing anything about it and has aided her boyfriend's business and bought her property. Am I being unreasonable to expect him to tell her about me, stand up for himself and stop being a coward as well as getting divorce proceedings under way?

OP posts:
SantaIKnowHimIKnowHim · 24/11/2013 23:38

Not read all the replies, but everything hissy said.
You're being made a mug of.

Alisvolatpropiis · 24/11/2013 23:40

madame

Look back to my previous posts - I think the same as everybody else here.

No need for the "life experience" jibe. Ever so slightly condescending.

I simply don't think his age is relevant. His actions are certainly, the man is clearly lying.

Maryz · 24/11/2013 23:43

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MadameDefarge · 24/11/2013 23:43

it wasn't a jibe. It was a statement of fact. Not aimed at you at all.

thistlelicker · 24/11/2013 23:46

Is this thread even real or is it reverse aibu ?!

thistlelicker · 24/11/2013 23:47

I bet you are really the wife in Italy !!!

Alisvolatpropiis · 24/11/2013 23:47

Okay, apologies madame (that reads as if I'm a servant in a period drama!), as your post came hot on the heels of mine I presumed it was all in response to me.

MadameDefarge · 24/11/2013 23:48

no, I should have been clearer.

Now, away and scrub the pantry!

Umpire · 24/11/2013 23:51

Nmc89
To answer a question u asked, men will end a marriage if they r unhappy becauae of it. Many do.

Wrt not wanting to lose the kids, he's away all week anyway and my kids arent quite teenagers and yet chat to their dad on viber etc.

If he spends christmas day with her then they r still together.

I also dont understand why he would b discussing not having sex with an x. That never came up in the emails my x and i exchanged after we split up.

If he loves u for real he'll spend christmas day with u and tell his mother he's met somebody.

WhereYouLeftIt · 24/11/2013 23:51

OP, please, do try and read what you have written, but as if it were written by a stranger. What would you see? The tale of a married man who works away from home during the week, but thankfully gets home to his family at the weekend. And who, to make his week away from home and hearth more bearable, has found himself the comfort of an undemanding sexual partner to while away the hours until he can be home again. His life is compartmentalised. Home and family in Italy in one box, work and his little friend in London in another. Separate, never overlapping, never meeting. All very satisfactory.

Please, consider that EVERYTHING you know about his wife has been filtered to you through him. And that he has every reason to manipulate you. He's happy for you to stay in his London/work box, but absolutely does not want you in his Italy/home box.

Email addresses? I've got four, each for a different purpose. Easy as pie to set up a fresh account. The emails you've seen mean absolutely nothing, emails are the easiest things in the world to fabricate.

I have a picture in my head of a smug man in his forties, thinking he's a Master of the Universe with his jet-setting lifestyle, commuting to work by air and with homes in two countries; his bilingual wife and teenaged children and his naive mistress in her twenties Sad.

TheDoctrineOfWho · 24/11/2013 23:52

OP

She doesn't have another place in which she can see her boyfriend, on account of having to be home with the teenagers cos your DP in in the UK...

NMC89 · 24/11/2013 23:57

To everyone who has posted: thank you I really appreciate your comments but I think it is time for me to bow out, mainly because I have work tomorrow and need to be a massive loser and sleep Smile but also because this has rather taken on a life of its own and many of the things being brought up have not actually been things I've said (e.g. They've been married for twenty years, that he's Italian, that he slags her off). I also, don't really want to read any more comments that involve 'you are stupid/dim/moronic', luckily, I'm secure in my intellectual capabilities! But before I go, I just want to say:

Every relationship is different and I firmly believe that you can't apply blanket rules to them, just because some men make up email addresses etc, it doesn't mean that all do. I also think that you can't choose who you love and when you meet someone and they make you feel safe, secure and happy then that's great, no matter whether you feel you have a future with them or not. In my situation, I know we won't have a Disney ending, but for now, he is the person who makes me laugh hysterically, takes care of me when I'm sick and makes me really happy and quite frankly, that's enough for me. This relationship has taught me how complex marriage is and has quite frankly scared me about it if I'm honest, but also that there are two sides to every story. You're right that I only have her side from emails, her Facebook posts and snippets of conversation and perhaps I judge her harshly but whilst I think it's fine that she has a boyfriend, I won't ever agree about flaunting it in their children's faces, I just don't see why it's necessary.

I find it really interesting that everyone automatically sides with the 'wife' and I do understand why. I'm genuinely sorry for everyone who has posted on here who has had awful cheating experiences, but some wives are horrid too and break up homes by having affairs first etc (like this one did), I just don't think it's related to gender regarding who's the baddie! In this day and age, I find it astounding that so many people have messaged to tell me I'm an awful person, mug etc and that he is a liar, cheat, manipulator, but very few have actually tackled the question I first posed, which was whether I should tell him how vile I think she is. It just seems like a lot of ladies with grievances want to shout at me (which is obviously fine!) but I wasn't here to have my relationship validated, rather ask for advice on how to speak to him.

As I said, I appreciate your comments and they have certainly been interesting, I might even show him this thread, but as for going further than that, I don't think it's my place to turn up in Italy or make demands like so many people have suggested! As many of you have said, teenagers are old enough to deal with the trauma and complexities of divorce and I agree that I should push him about me having visibility in his life, so thank you for that - I definitely will talk to him about it.

Thanks again, and I wish all of you the best for the future,

T xx

P.s just because you're dating some older, it doesn't mean you have daddy-issues. To the lady who posted that - my dad is great and has been there for me my whole life, including during this.

OP posts:
Umpire · 24/11/2013 23:57

And it is not your age that makes me think u need a reality check, but calling a wife of 20 years (mother of his two kids) a gold digger is hilarious. U r twenty plus years younger than him. What is it u see in him?

Calling the "same-age" wife of two decades a gold digger is nonsense and makes u sound very young and silly.

Umpire · 24/11/2013 23:59

Just so long as u dont get sick at the weekend. :-/

monicalewinski · 25/11/2013 00:01

Loving the European blow-dries MadameDefarge Grin
(and I only got to read the first instalment of the story earlier due to deletion - I've been left hanging!)

Nothing extra to add for the OP really (as sm said, you are the 'fancy piece'), get rid and live your 20s - they go too quickly for this sort of crap.

Umpire · 25/11/2013 00:01

Im not married. Im not "automatically" siding with the wife out of insecurity. I am single, indepwndent, have a shorter fling with a mm under my belt. He strung me a staggering work of grwat fiction too!

Umpire · 25/11/2013 00:04

Ps that was pre kids that fling. Wised up years ago.
Let us know how it pans out!

Umpire · 25/11/2013 00:08

I feel sad for u now reading your last post. The result of thecsocial experiment is that love is blind.

You write off the wisdom of people decades older on the grounds that they have grievances and are wives.
Cognitive dissonance there for sure.

MistAllChuckingFrighty · 25/11/2013 00:09

I have never been cheated on in my marriage, so please don't assume everyone on this thread is projecting their own hurt.

Does the pretty unanimous verdict that your boyfriend is a liar and a manipulator not make you have any doubts in your head at all ?

Still sticking to your entrenched naivety ? You will eat your confident and immaturely arrogant words one day. It's all part of growing up though. I hope it happens for you very soon. In the meantime, make sure your birth control is really triple fucking watertight.

MadameDefarge · 25/11/2013 00:12

It is sad that you don't get that we are actually on YOUR side in this, not his, not his wife's.

SauceForTheGander · 25/11/2013 00:15

Sending abusive PMs is not good though - OP shouldn't have to go through those.

QuintessentialShadows · 25/11/2013 00:15

I dont think anybody is siding with the wife. Why would we? She is not posting here. You are, and you are losing out on so much when investing your love and emotions on a man who is

  1. Much older than you
  2. A liar and a cheat

As long as you have placed your emotions with him, you will never be open to experience real love and companionship with a man who is not only free to love you, but have moral codes above that of an alley cat.

MistAllChuckingFrighty · 25/11/2013 00:16

Has Op had abusive pm's ? Or does she call all these posts putting a downer on her Big Romance on the thread "abusive" ?

Hissy · 25/11/2013 00:18

You can't choose who you love?

Yes you can! It's called standards!

Please love, going along with this car crash will get you nothing and nowhere.

End it. Perhaps then he'll miss you. Atm, he doesn't have time to do that.

Perhaps it'll give you the time to work out how you're worth so much more than a monday to Friday man. You're worth thw whole 7 days! The christmas and holidays too.

You do realise he'll probably never want more kids either too, don't you? Another thing you'll lose if you waste more time on him.

differentnameforthis · 25/11/2013 00:18

I don't expect or want him to spend Christmas with me as I firmly believe he should be with his kids

the two don't have to be mutually exclusive, op. They could come to his London place for Christmas surely? And then you could all spend it together. Only I bet he doesn't want that, because it would be too hard to explain that to his wife!!

You aren't seeing the wood for the trees!

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