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

[mummymalta]

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.

I made one assumption. Which is that it's revealing that the dh could have said he just did coke with Bob, but chose to reveal a lot more. The only assumption I've made is that he is likely to be innocent of anything worse, since no one forced him to admit all those allegations and actual admissions of violence.

I picked up on this as well. I think it is good that he has chosen to let it all out no matter how terrible. He may be disconnected from it right now as he is pretending it's someone else's story. He has told it though and I do think that is important.

Counterract not contact

Addiction doesn't remove people's moral compass altogether.

Having dealt with a lot of addicts and former addicts in my time and my work I would contest that. For some it does and you see a truly different person emerge from the other side with no clues as to their former life.

For some it doesn't but in my experience these are the people who tend to relapse quickly as it's not in their nature to live a normal, clean, non violent, non dramatic life.

Judge the person in front of you, not the person they were.

...but the good news is...

The Grands, who are always welcoming, will be there baking cookies and even.making a tree house or a swing between two conveniently positioned apple trees in the yard, while the parents Sort This Out?

Fair warms the cockles of your heart, doesn't it?

This is all fresh for you, and you and your Dh have got lots and lots of talking to do. And while this is all brand new news to you, your DH is also dealing with it all dredged up, and yes probably having to deal with something he hoped you would never ever find out. You are both probably in shock. I think the fact that he has "confessed" to so much, as opposed to as a pp said, just saying "yeah we used to do coke" could suggest it has played on his mind and deep down he wanted to tell the truth.

Only you can decide if you can reconcile the man you know and have lived with and have had children with, with the man you have found out he used to be. Only you know how he is now as a husband and father, and if you think it is the real him, or at least the real new him. People can change.

He was young and got into drugs, and made bad choices. As did his ex girlfriend. I will not condone the violence he has admitted to, and it is going to be hard to look at your Dh as you did before with this new knowledge.

But there is only you, who has the lived experience of being with this man, seeing him as a partner, husband, father....he may come across as unemotional as he has distanced himself from that time period and the man he was so much, he could be in shock and terrified of losing you and his life as he knows it over something that happened a long time ago and has no bearing on who he is now, or he may just be totally unemotional about it and not give it a second thought in his day to day life.

Unfortunately this is going to change things, and it may well be a long road before you have any peace again, whichever way that road takes you, be it separation or giving it a go, you are never going to be able to erase this knowledge you have, and you have a perfect right to react angrily or in any way you feel tbh, as YOUR life as you knew it has changed. BUT, as I say, it will be a lot of talking and deciding if he is now, the man you thought he was, and the man he appears to have been throughout your relationship.

OP at almost 60 I'm a bit of a fuddy fuddy when it comes to drugs and the people who use them but I think it's obvious that your husband got himself and his life back on track after a very dark time in his life. He deserves to see that eventually having the guts to tell you what went on was the right thing to do and I'm worried that you're going to throw your marriage away. I'm also concerned that after turning his life around you might just teach him that hiding the past is always going to be the answer because when he told you the truth it was the worst thing to have done.

Everyone deserves a second chance and as the mother of a load of kids who've not always chosen the easy path to walk through life I would say people learn from mistakes and go on to make good lives for themselves. It's the person he is now. Not who he was during a year or so in his late teens or early twenties.

Don't throw your family life away and please don't feel that you have to make a fuss or examine this close up because you think it's the right thing to do as it just sounds so awful. I think it's ok for you to have listened to him and kept it in the past. A strong reaction isn't always necessary.

WTF Momamum?

I think you need to step away, people are winding you up and getting esconced in the drama. You need some breathing space.

mummymalta if you're still reading... I don't want to say too much too out myself either, but please believe me when I say that very few women cry rape (official stats say less than 2% of reported rapes are classed as false, and I work in this field and think it's even lower)

No-one knows if he raped his ex gf as she is now dead and can't say. The fact you say he's so blase about it all and is a jealous man sends alarm bells ringing to me. From personal experience I think he should have told you and you aren't being unreasonable.

I don't think you're being unreasonable at all to want to have some time apart. It might be a very, very good idea.

I know everyone has a past but having a drug addiction and a dead girlfriend who said he's raped her is stuff I'd want to know about. Just because she was on drugs doesn't mean he didn't rape her and just because she said it when she did doesn't mean she was making it up.

I can't tell you about my own experience because I don't want to out myself but please ,please just be very, very careful. Maybe have some time apart to think about what you want to do. He kept some really, really important stuff from you and the fact he's so blase about it chills me (from my own experience, some of it is very similar).

I'm sorry you've found this out but now you have you can think about if you want to be with someone that's not exactly showing remorse from beating his ex who said he'd raped her. Please, please be very careful.

I reported this thread a few hours ago.

Remember the old 'don't give too much of yourself' and I certainly wouldn't post deeply personal stories on this thread. I know some people already have.

OP on the off chance this is real - step away from MN. You are getting such an array of responses and so many people loving the drama and seemingly hoping your dh is a murderer. Talk to him in depth and trust your instinct.

But as a concept, I am frankly astonished that people are still piling on to say the OP should just let this go as it was 12 years ago. The guy - if it were true - 'beat the shit out of' his ex, stole, lied, possibly raped, used coke and heroin and ran up huge debts. Anyone who did let this go with a merry shrug and a 'oh we all have a past' is incredibly stupid.

Let him off.

I've also just read some other posters saying cos he admitted to the rape allegations he probably isn't guilty of raping her.

That's a really dangerous assumption, believe me. From personal experience an ex told me he'd been accused of rape before but he'd never done and appeared devastated. I learn the hard way he was lying.

Another who reported it

And another

Yes, it looks like the op isn't the only one smelling rats...

VocationalGoat I take it you haven't read the OP's updates either then?

I read the OPs initial post and was thinking well drugs aren't the end of the world and he wouldn't be the first person to get carried away with the party lifestyle, at least he got out.

Then I read that he raped and beat his girlfriend. That kind of behaviour really changes things.

OP, writing as an Anglo-American., and given that your DP has concealed so much of his past from you, I'd urge you to do a search of his dead partners name in the NY papers and follow links from there, to give yourself a true account of what had happened to her during her lifetime(and death) ? She was obviously log term user and her tragic death alone would have been mentioned. Good to get full disclosure, no?

I hope this is not true, but if it half way is, then it would be deal breaker territory for me.

He simply could be very good at hiding his guilt about the whole episode(s). At risk of losing his wife and children, it's about to get seriously emotional for him indeed. I think we won't really know anything until OP has spoken to him. The last time she approached him, he wasn't expecting it, and he literally seemed to pour out the entire story as it happened (elaborating more than he was accused of, as someone has mentioned). This time he's had time to think, and it could go either way for the OP. Her marriage and family is on the line, I really feel awful for her (if this all is real since some of you are doubtful). If any one person could punish this man for his past, it's the OP, but I would also hope she doesn't sacrifice her own happiness.