to have not forgiven DH for cheating on me - 6 years ago

[NeverForgiveYou]

it was around this time of year - well, over the christmas period 2007. we had been together about 6 months and were inseparable. he had already moved in with me and we were head over heels, already talking marriage, more babies etc. sorry for cringey description. we were both divorced and i had a toddler son who lived (and still does) with me, and he had a DS who was 8, (who lived with his exW) who he saw at weekends. we were eachothers first relationships since being divorced and both couldn't believe our luck in finding eachother.

but then we had a big row one day just before christmas, about nothing really. then the next day, he packed his stuff and left me while i was at work. i came back to find his stuff gone and my spare key through the door. he was completely uncontactable, phone off etc. he could have been dead for all i knew.

i was in absolute hell and tbh i do not know how i got through it. in fact typing about it now is making my heart race and tears come to my eyes.

he then came back after about 2 weeks. saying how sorry he was etc and that he had been staying with his mum but he had realised how much he loved me and please could he come back? i was still in love with him and after a lot of grovelling from him we started seeing eachother again after a few weeks. and it was amazing, even better than before and we were really happy and relieved to be back together.

then a few months after we had got back together, i found out that, during the time he left me, he had gone back to his XW. i had to hear it from her, which was not fun. trouble was, i was then already newly pregnant with our dd who is now 4.

his "explanation" was that his ex had decided she wanted him back and when he said no she said he couldn't see DS anymore. so he went back to her, but that it was only for the sake of his son and because he was scared of losing him. but that he wanted to be with me and knew it was a big mistake and wanted me back. but said if he told me where he had really been, i would not have wanted him back,. which is probably true tbh, but at least i would have been able to make the decision to take him back or not with all the information.

i decided to stay with him. and in the nearly 6 years since we have been back together, the rest of our relationship has been great. there have been no problems, other than this thing which still stays in my head, we are still in love and best friends and he has been nothing but a fantastic, caring, loving husband and dad, to all his children. i am also 5 months pregnant. but i can't forgive him for what he did, and, every so often, particularly around christmas, i remember what happened, and feel such anger towards him.

and today is one of the days.

so why can't i "get over it" ?? why did he have to do such a spineless, low down thing, not just to me but to his son and ex wife, they didn't deserve it either. but at the same time i can't split my family over something that happened such a long time ago.

sorry its long but i wanted to avoid the dreaded drip feed.

i'm sorry to hear you went through that clawdy and glad you are through it now

blondes - i don't want to split, we do have a good life together, he is a really good dad and the dcs adore him. and i love him, i really love him. i can't imagine life without him. but i need to find away to let go of this, i know i do.

farewellfigure thank you for that link. i will take a look. although i have actually had CBT, in the counselling i have mentioned and it hasn't really worked. its like i need to have counselling specifically to discuss and work through this one incident, i know it probably sounds melodramatic.

and crapbag i honestly don't know if i would have taken him back or not. but as i said earlier in the thread it would have been much fairer of him to give me the true facts so i could make the decision based on that rather than a load of bullshit.

i honestly have been head over heels in love with him since the day we met. and genuinely never felt like this about anyone before. but what hurts is i feel that the bottom line is, to do what he did, he just didn't love me enough .....and that kills me.

I'm not sure working on yourself only will be enough. You are hurting in secret, essentially.
I do think the way forward is for you to deal with this with him.

but what hurts is i feel that the bottom line is, to do what he did, he just didn't love me enough .....and that kills me.

I understand your thought process but I think it may be quite a naive and idealistic view of it (sorry).

Let's say that you accept his explanation that his ex was prepared to refuse him access to his child unless he did what she said (left you, moved back, whatever), well, you end up with a very different scenario, don't you? One where a man is being forced, under emotional duress to choose between a new love and his own child. Had he not left you, would you be wondering how a man can give up his child to stay with a six-monther girlfriend? (I'm not saying that this is what happened, it's just looking at it from a different - and possible - POV).

I think you need to let this go as many others have said - it has been 6 years.

I also think you need to talk it through properly with him - have you ever told him how you felt? Spending that Xmas on your own? It will be difficult, but a frank & honest discussion - with no agenda other than to "clear the air" seems to be the only thing you can do here. Other than this it sounds like you have a loving & happy relationship - I'm sure he would be devastated to know that you still feel like this.

Left unresolved though, it will always be there at the back of your mind.

Hope you do sort this out.

It is because it is the anniversary of when it happened that you are feeling this way. As the years go by it will become less and less of an issue. He has proved himself to be a good man these last 6 years. I know what happened still hurts when you think of it but it is in the past. Accept that it hurt but what you have now is all that matters. In a couple of days these feelings will blow over. Also, because you are pregnant your hormones will be causing you to feel much more sensitive to the anniversary as well.

Also, he is with you cause he wanted to be. He could have stayed with her but he didn't. He chose you because he loves you.

hi all, thanks for the replies

lweji and misshallott yes i am hurting in secret. as yes i have spoken to him about it in the past, and he just seems to get annoyed as i think he thinks i should be over it by now. and he has been over and over it with me in the past. and whenever i bring it up it ends in days of sulking and upset (mine). so i daren't bring it up anymore.

maidofstars you are probably right with what you said in your last post. they way you describe it is exactly how he described it. he also says he panicked about not seeing his DS at christmas when he had spent christmas with him every year of his life.

tiggykins that is absolutely awful. but well done you for forgiving him, it sounds like in your case it was a temporary thing and he clearly loves you very much.

and milly it definitely gets worse around this time of year. as its the anniversary. i used to love christmas. but now i don't, i just grit my teeth and endure it, and somehow get through it, (usually with the help of alcohol tbh but obvs cant do that this year :/ ) and i feel like he has stolen christmas from me in a way.

another thing which i was not even going to go there about. i asked him if he was sleeping with her, he says he didn't as he didn't feel that way about her anymore. but i just don't believe him, how can i? the thought
of him sleeping with her after months of sleeping with me where he had said it was the best sex he had ever had etc it makes me feel sick :(

i guess i always wanted the fairytale, as i had had shit relationships prior to DH. and when in the first 6 months we were together it really was a whirlwind fairytale crazy romance. and if this incident didn't happen, then it would still have been a fairytale. i know that probably sounds silly of me. :(

Another thought or two (not to go on at you, just to maybe throw up something that you might be able to use to feel better)...

Fairytales are unrealistic, I'm sure you know this. Had this incident not happened, there would have been something else that took the shine off it all, because when you set up for perfect, there will always be something. I think my husband and I are pretty fairytale, but it's a real fairytale, with the odd row and occasional cross word. The fairytale includes all that!

And the cynic in me says that if every single detail was perfect for so many years, that would make me uneasy. Perhaps I'd imagine he didn't care enough to show true feelings, that he was too scared to disagree, whatever. Perfection is often more interesting - perhaps more perfect - with the odd flaw.

You have a fairytale.

Here's something you might not have thought of. You might actually have a very clear boundary set in your relationship. For many, imagining what would happen in an incident of cheating is theoretical - neither party truly knows, until you face an issue that you feel involves cheating. You both know exactly what would happen if any such incident occurs/reoccurs. That might be spun as a positive?

Maid is right.....you do have a fairytale already......he came back to you. He has been this good man and proved himself all these years.

YOU have to let go and move on or else you will destroy this relationship. You are not doing yourself any good holding onto it all.
Acknowledge that "O its this time of the year again" but let it go. He is with YOU. He could have stayed with her but he didn't, he loved you and came back to YOU.

The thing is that you together don't seem to have been able to resolve it.
It feels to me as you need something from him regarding what happened that you haven't got yet.
This is one case I can see couples counselling really helping, in mediating a resolution, as counselling for yourself hasn't helped so far.

Another thing....you had only been together for 6 months and it was full on by then. 6 months....not much in the great scheme of things. If it happened now and he had an affair, that would be much harder to deal with wouldn't it? You have already forgiven him so you just now need to stop allowing this to spoil the life you have. It will get easier and easier each year until it wont bother you at all.

It feels to me as you need something from him regarding what happened that you haven't got yet.
Agree. The only problem is: what if there isn't anything else he can give? If the OP is assuming that the worst-case scenario must be the truth, then he can't say or do anything else that won't be treated as a lie. Anything short of 'Actually, you were boring me so I thought I'd engineer a row and bugger off back to her for some decent sex' will be regarded as incomplete or withholding. Rather dangerously, constantly undermining someone's honesty can lead to unfortunate episodes of loose talk, 'there, I said it, happy now?'. OP, what DO you want him to say?

OP's assumed 'truth' just flat out doesn't fit with everything she's said here about him before/since and regarding his ex/child. If OP had reeled off a series of incidents apart from this - sometimes he scares me shouting, he expects me to all the housework, he looks at my phone, he hates me going out with my mates - I'd have no qualms in suggesting that he was a bit of a shit. But, apart from the event in question, there isn't a single word, sentence or even nuance that belies anything other than complete happiness and general loved-up-ness.

Did you believe his apologies? Think they were sincere? Is that what you need from him?

I actually believe that it was because his ex was being difficult about future access, given that she withheld it when he went back to you.

It was only two weeks when he realised, he could have stayed with her for far longer if it had been something else. I think he truly did/does love you as it didn't take him very long at all to come back. Imagine it the other way around, you had split with someone and they had custody of your DC and was threatening to withhold access because you were seeing someone else. What would you do?

For me, one of the big issues would be the lies when he came back.

You thought he'd taken time out to think about your relationship and had decided he wanted to be with you. On that basis you made your decision to get back together and later became pregnant.

If you had known the truth you might have made a different decision or you might have made the same one. The problem is that you weren't given all the information that would have allowed you to make an informed decision.

You poor mite, I think I would feel the same.

But.

You know your DP, so only you know whether to believe the story about his XW banning him for seeing his son, but what struck me from your posts is your mental images of them sitting around as a happy family, oblivious to your pain.

Think about it properly...

IF the story is true, his XW would know he was there in part under duress
She probably knew he had been living with someone else
She would have seen that he was hurting and he was not 100% 'there'
If she did, she probably knew it wouldn't work and the pain of that, coupled with the guilt of raising the hopes of her son...

He would have been in pain, missing you, feeling the guilt over you AND his son, maybe even over lying to her, wildly conflicted...

etc.

Does that sound like a happy dinner table on Christmas Day?

Try and move forward OP, although I understand why it is hard.

this is OP

i had NC'd for my OP and subsequent replies as was embarassed and was worried people would have not very nice things to say, but this is my usual name so sod it now :o

i was scared to return to the thread for the last day or so, as i was worried what i might read. but i just wanted to say, thank you ALL for the lovely constructive, kind replies

i can honestly say that your kind words have helped me feel better about it all, for the first time in 6 years, your words and advice have done far more for me than what 6 years (on and off) talking it through in counselling has done, and talking it through with RL friends

for the first christmas since it happened, i think i can get through it, and feel ok about it. i am going to save this thread somewhere (if i can, not sure how to ) and if i wobble again then i will come back and read it again

it has cleared things in my head so much. it is honestly like a sort of fog has lifted. and i am so grateful for my lovely, gorgeous DH, yes he made a mistake a long time ago, but no one is perfect and now more than ever am confident i made the right decision staying with him.

i love mumsnet sometimes. sorry for all the soppiness of this post. x thank you all again

That's so nice, good for you OP.. I hope you have a long and happy life together x

As you are 5 months pg, your hormones are raging. I'm not sure you can trust your emotions over this, wait till this baby is over 1 and if you still feel the same way, you should go for counselling.

Sometimes it just takes a long time to completely break the ties in a marriage and 6 months isn't really long and it is possible that maybe he didn't love you enough then - but he came back and you are still together and that is the real relationship. We all know what it's like at the beginning when you're all loved up etc and maybe it is love, but maybe it's just lust. I know it's a cliche, but it's true. What you have now is real love so don't throw it away.

My DH and I had an affair when he was still married and I was newly divorced. That was incredibly intense, exciting, terrifying (we worked together at the time) and he swore he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Didn't stop him taking 6 months to leave his wife and then returning to her 3 times in a year - I'm sure it was a mixture of guilt (he had an affair), nostalgia (they had been together since they were 16) and missing his DCs (at that time 5 and 3). But he came back to me and we've been together 12 years and married for 10. We are incredibly happy and he is amazing and we have a fantastic family.

Whilst those awful days were a long time ago, I still remember them - but then, for a long time, there was a part of me that missed my ExH and felt guilty at leaving him.

People are complicated. Sorry. But be happy and enjoy your new LO.

Poor you. I bet you are just waiting for next time he fancies a shag, and he will just engineer and argument and storm out and disappear while he "gets it out of the system".

Do you think it is likely to happen?

OP, I think it's actually good that this happened.

Fairy tales are for books.

You are married to a human being. One who clearly really loves you, but who also loves his ds.

If you look at it from the perspective of a man who felt he had to choose between a new relationship and his son, it is actually reassuring that his son came into the equation. It also says loads about how he feels about you that you were important enough that he felt he had to fight to have both.

I would read it as a good sign in the father of my children.

But then I guess I come at it a bit from the point of view of the child who always came second to the new relationship, so maybe I'm biased.

Quintessential it was 6 years ago that it happened and things have been wonderful since. OP just has wobbles on the anniversary.

Apple Good for you. He has proved himself over the last 6 years. You know he is a good man and what he did can be understood. Just turn the page and begin your new relationship with this man that you love .

But you weren't together.