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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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DH has hidden some heavy stuff...AIBU to want to separate?

829 replies

mummymalta · 29/05/2016 22:53

3 weeks ago DH revealed some very personal things which I feel I should have known before we got married. To be honest, we are all entitled to secrets and personal experiences I suppose, but where do you draw the line?

DH and I have been together for 10 years and married for 7. He's my best friend, I feel like I knew and loved him so much. Affirming these things is very strange to me. We were solid.

A "friend" of DH from the country he used to live in came to a party of a mutual friend of ours. Lets call him Bob. I don't know Bob, DH has only mentioned him briefly and my friend knows him but not well. He came with my friends brother who he is sort of close to. DH didn't want to come to the party (long day) and didn't know Bob would be there. I kissed the kids and ran out the house desperate for freedom on a friday night went to the party.

Get to the party and was enjoying child free time when my friends brother came over to say hi with Bob. "Bob you haven't met DH's wife have you? it's been about 12 years right? "
Bob: "Holy shit - you know I barely remember those days"
He then made a slick comment about him and DH being on coke half the time. I really cant remember what he said verbatim but I sort of nervously laughed (was shocked and he was drunk) and excused myself.

Naturally went home and curiously prodded DH the next morning in bed who waffled about trying it a couple of times and said Bob was a royal prick with a big bouth. I was uneasy that he didn't tell me but nothing divorce worthy. I ask why he didn't tell me and prodded as you do (smelled a rat, wife spidey sense) and then he told me:

He had a coke habit when he went to live abroad in his early twenties right before I met him. He said it was just a bit of fun and just when it started getting a bit out of control he met a girl who he really loved. They had a real relationship and spent a year getting high. Only god knows how he kept his job, but of course drug addiction doesn't necessarily have a face. Anyway she had previously had a heroin addiction and they started doing heavier stuff. He freaked out and ended it. She stopped picking up her mobile and he went to check on her she's dead in flat. Huge drama with her family/ police / drug debt I wont get into it but its fucking insane. He comes home tells no one traumatised. We meet about a year and a half later.

I didnt sense one thing - he spoke of his couple of years abroad quite normally but rarely looking back. I thought nothing of it why would I?

I'm still in shock, not just from the incident, but of the fact that he didn't tell me. I was so shocked that I just said he needs to give me time to digest it. We haven't spoken about it since because I've just shut down. I don't know what's wrong with me - I feel nothing. It's like he's a stranger now. We had a very happy and passionate marriage. Such a great banter affection. Even the kids sense something is off. He keeps trying to talk about it but i don't even hear a word he's saying. I just keep on thinking who are you?

AIBU to want to separate for a bit? I have had no time to digest this?! He said lets send the kids to their nans for half term and deal with this so off they go tomorrow.

OP posts:
Clareoo223 · 30/05/2016 09:43

He was on drugs, not the man that you are married to.

Wineandpopcorn · 30/05/2016 09:43

Does he know that you are struggling with his revelations? How is he being with you?

NoMudNoLotus · 30/05/2016 09:43

Lots of people are reformed addicts - they do not act how op's DH has.

randomer · 30/05/2016 09:44

find a good counsellor and talk.

NoMudNoLotus · 30/05/2016 09:45

You didn't answer my question Clare - if it were your daughter sister or friend would you give the same answer ?

mummymalta · 30/05/2016 09:45

Wineandpopcorn He is being lovely to me but so bloody cold about what happened

OP posts:
WannaBe · 30/05/2016 09:46

Clareoo223 he beat up his girlfriend, pimped out women, was involved in prostitution and violent crime, and then he found his girlfriend dead. Not exactly minor stuff is it? In fact those are all things worthy of a prison term which because he conveniently glossed over it all he's never had to serve.

But yeah, OP is clearly mad to have issue with being lied to about all this stuff for ten years. Hmm.

mummymalta · 30/05/2016 09:47

Clareoo223 WTF?????????????????????????? He beat her. Let her prostitute herself and used the money for coke. Allegedly raped her.

OP posts:
mummymalta · 30/05/2016 09:48

WannaBe hence my rich kid comments.

OP posts:
ClashCityRocker · 30/05/2016 09:48

Go get some space op.

This is so much more than 'being a bit of a cokehead in my youth' but it sounds like he views it as this, or something equally frivolous.

It brings to mind a time when I was living in a homeless hostel. We used to spend a lot of time at a nearby squat and there used to be a crowd of well-off young men playing at being in dire straights who used to join us in taking drugs. They would buy drugs in exchange for sex. Of course, if they walked past us in the street they wouldn't give us the time of day - we were there dirty little secret. I know one girl was raped by four of them one night. We encouraged her to go to the police. It was a joke - we were drug-addled tramps and these well-educated, white young men were from good families (who could afford lawyers and nice new suits for court) with their whole future ahead of them...we couldn't even afford the bus fare to get to court. We were stupid to even encourage our friend to report.

gingergenie · 30/05/2016 09:51

What Randomer said. This IS a big deal, and even if the drugs thing is not so important, the DV stuff is. He may be being cold so as to detach from his past because it is so shaming. People do that so as dissociate with part of themselves that they cannot recognise. I think proper counselling is essential to both of you. He needs to confront and accept his past, which he has avoided thus far. And you need to understand the 'mr Hyde' part of his personality and see whether it's still there or poses any kind of threat. People do change, but you need to know that his change is genuine and not just a shameful memory that he's locked away because it is to awful to acknowledge. I wish you well x

NoMudNoLotus · 30/05/2016 09:51

Clash exactly.

Too many people on here live in bubbles.

I don't know if I could recover from knowing that my DH had caused someone such suffering .

mummymalta · 30/05/2016 09:54

ClashCityRocker Holy shit

OP posts:
mummymalta · 30/05/2016 09:56

NoMudNoLotus
I don't know if I could recover from knowing that my DH had caused someone such suffering

Yes.

OP posts:
Boomingmarvellous · 30/05/2016 09:59

I can understand your sense of shock but I can also understand your dh wanting to forget the whole business. Because you have just found this out its all fresh to you and you just need time to process it and put it back in the past where it belongs.

He hasn't lied to you, just not elaborated on a painful experience.

Sorry to generalise, but men are very good at compartmentalising experiences, and I think he has just locked this dreadful time in his life away from himself and everyone. And frankly, who wouldn't?

Your dh was young and stupid at the time of this incident and like everyone has grown and developed into the person you know today. Don't reject the person he is now and the one you've always known because of the person he was then.

mummymalta · 30/05/2016 10:02

boomingmarvellous what about the rape

OP posts:
WannaBe · 30/05/2016 10:03

But it's not just a lie. It's wreckless behaviour which has put the op and potentially even her children at risk.

If he was using needles then he could have contracted hepatitis, HIV, both of which he could have passed on to the OP, and OP could have passed HIV to her children.

CauliflowerBalti · 30/05/2016 10:04

YANBU at all. I would be rocked and I think it would end my marriage.

MerryMarigold · 30/05/2016 10:05

I don't think your Dh caused all that girl's suffering. If he's not a victim then neither is she. I think the stuff about your different backgrounds is interesting. Is some of him attracted to your past and what you've seen on the estate because of his past? I do think he needs counselling and you need couple therapy too. In a way Bob did him a favour because this kind of thing had a habit of catching up up with you, even if it's just a long term effect on mental health. God luck OP. I really feel for all of you.

NoMudNoLotus · 30/05/2016 10:10

Blooming we are talking 12 ish years.

That's not a terribly long time.

It had happened not long before they met. It's not as though OP met DH and the incidents had happened ten years before that.

OP went into a relationship with her DH believing him to have a recent history that didn't involve anything like this - and tbh what about the threat that DH posed to OP?

If he didn't use IV himself ( which I would be surprised if he didn't having used heroin & crack) his girlfriend at the time will have been at risk of HIV, Hep C etc ....

DH therefore was putting OP at risk when they met of blood borne diseases.

The thought that someone you love could expose you to this risk is a lot to process.

Gazelda · 30/05/2016 10:11

If I had been through what your DH has, I'd be haunted every day. Which makes it not in the past.
He's hidden a big part of who he is. I don't think separation is an over-reaction.

MaudGonneMad · 30/05/2016 10:12

I don't think your Dh caused all that girl's suffering. If he's not a victim then neither is she.

Except that he beat her up and pimped her out. Not to mention the rape allegation. I think that makes her a victim of a violent and abusive man, don't you?

ThisisMrsNicolaHicklin · 30/05/2016 10:12

OP, I'm really sorry to drop this in here but I can't see that any of the PPs or you have mentioned blood borne viruses. From your posts it sounds as though he has a higher than average risk. Even if he didn't inject himself he was having sex with an addicted sex worker. If he beat her there is also a good chance he was in contact with her blood.

Do you know if he had tested for HIV, Hep B and Hep
C? Can you trust him if he says he has?

ClashCityRocker · 30/05/2016 10:12

mummy I just wanted to say I totally understand the rich kid entitlement thing Flowers

its not even a failure to elaborate. It's lying about something which dramatically changed the lives of and caused a lot of suffering for people, which ops husband was party to. Sweeping it under the rug like a dirty little secret when out there, this is a family of a dead young woman who he was in a relationship with and physically and sexually abused. How can something like that not haunt you? would he ever have told op about it?

It's the high-handed arrogance that because he escaped the situation, it no longer matters.

ThisisMrsNicolaHicklin · 30/05/2016 10:14

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