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.

Tbh, the fact that so many people on MN think that a previous drug history containing violence, crime and potential rape is something to just be dismissed under "everyone has a past," is far more shocking than the fact this could be made up.

I've seen people on here be ripped apart for admitting they were an OW twenty years ago, or that they had an affair themselves, and be told that they deserve no sympathy when the relationship goes wrong decades down the line, for instance. And yet the OP is the one being told she's in the wrong here for wanting to split from someone because she found out he was a junky, pimp, and that he beat up his girlfriend. Some people's sense of right and wrong is seriously screwed, and it ain't the op's.

This is one of those threads that is worth posting on even if it wasn't true because It says a lot more about some of the people replying to it than it does about the OP.

I agree with momamum, research and information from a source other than her husband is going to be vital. The trust is long gone now.

Oh, and for those suggesting that the DH could have murdered his GF, that wasn't the OP. Yes, it's convenient that the GF is dead in that she isn't around to corroborate his story or to have pressed charges in the past, but convenient doesn't equals that he killed her, that's a massive leap there.

I imagine the closest the DH might have got to that might be that he had potentially scored her a hit which might have led to her death, perhaps, or that maybe he saw her a lot closer to her death than he's admitted, but it's not been indicated at all by the OP that she thinks he murdered her GF. It's a fact that drug addicts die. all the time..* They generally do lead wreckless lives before their death, sometimes involving violence and sex and crime, but it can still just be a bad hit which kills them...

OP, when you first met your DH, did he have friends and did you meet them? What about the time lived in NY not long before you met, how did he describe it at the time?

everything Wannabe just said. Seriously can't believe some people think she's being unreasonable to think about having time apart from someone who's admitting beating the shit out of an ex who he may have raped, who has also fucked over some of his closest friends!

Need a cup of tea and a lie down. As a relative newbie, this mumsnet place really isn't exactly what I thought it would be!

What's happening on MN this weekend!!

Well, the responses on here say a lot more about some people's lack of a moral compass than anything else tbh.

It says a lot more about someone who admits that they would consider drug taking, rape and violence to just all be in the past and none of a future partner's business than anyone who may have made something like that up.

Anothertimemaybe it's half term. There are always lots of dodgy threads in school holidays.

I wouldn't be separating, I would be divorcing [hugs]

Exit

No. The half term thing is bollocks. It's more likely that there are people off work with their children who are making this crap up. Most children wouldn't be seen dead posting on MN.

Citizensmith1 I think a lot of people are replying to the OP, and haven't read the subsequent updates so the think they're talking about a long-since recovered coke habit not all the other stuff that has been revealed since.

I hope that's what's happening anyway!

It's more likely that there are people off work with their children who are making this crap up.

Do you think this post is made up, WannaBe?

Enough already with the troll accusations.

You know the drill.

If the Op is a troll you are feeding it.

If the Op is genuine you are further hurting a woman in an awful situation.

NEITHER of those outcomes are helpful are they!?