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.

DaveCamoron Agreed. Where do I draw the line between healthy curiosity and straight up paranoid dramatics?

Janecc Good point.

I've read the full thread.

I'm trying to put myself in your shoes and imagine my DP revealing this to me now. It would feel like a lie it's too big a secret to keep from your partner, it's huge. Also the way it came out is a problem- he didn't tell you there's been something playing in his mind it was an accident through a friend. Are his family members keeping this a secret from you too or do they not know?

A big concern here is his reaction. He sounds very blase about the whole thing. I thought he could be trying to skim over it all and minimise but then he didn't have to tell you everything and he did. Of course you're going to see him in a different light knowing this I just couldn't imagine these kind of revelations coming out about my DP. It could be he's ashamed and was scared to tell you and didn't want to ruin what you have.

I think he owes you an evening where you can sit and talk and you ask every single question that's troubling you and he answers honestly. Otherwise things will escalate in your head and you'll be filling in the blanks yourself which is never any good. You also need to know how he kept such a mammoth thing secret and never mentioned it.

I couldn't imagine finding the body of an ex and not having an emotional reaction talking about that years later he could need counselling I don't think he's dealt with it, unless he's just cold hearted. Don't go down the "privilege" route that's a red herring IMO. You've got a negative in your head about him and you're running with it. Keep it all relevant.

OP, when you say beatings, do you mean he beat her?

I'm sorry but I sense detachment in his comments, saying "sad" in all the right places...just means he knows how to put on a front. Mate of mine was married to a psychopath for about ten years without realising, their daughter nearly died and he didn't give a stuff but knew how to appear as if he did.

I realise you're massively shocked right now
As a person with a lot of understanding re drugs, I wouldn't forgive any kind of violence. I'd suggest separating the drug issue from anything else. As you said yourself, if you get beaten up, do you care that the person who did it was on drugs? No.

So I'd forget about the drugs, talk to him about the other stuff, then see how you feel, but sorry there's no way I'd stay with a man who had a history of violence. If you knew that before dating him, you'd not have dated him, I'm guessing.

Well it may have been a long time ago, but it's brand new for you OP.

I don't understand why people don't get that. Your world has shifted.

TradGirl I said he did some grim stuff I thought everyone would catch the drift as someone else has mentioned. What did people think I meant? That he stole a loaf of bread? And call me paranoid but I did not want to talk about a dead girl and rape on MN I mean what if I accidentally out myself?

I definitely dont think all is ok from his behaviour after the big update. Talking to you makes him more real I suppose - that will be the only difference

I am surprised you didn't get a whiff of this when you got together, unless he has totally reinvented himself. Where were 'friends' like Bob? He must have almost totally airbrushed his past.

You are entirely reasonable to be totally freaked out. If I discovered my wife had been a crack using prostitute before I met her I would be absolutely devastated (also amazed as I just couldn't picture a less likely candidate)

Gosh. Having read your recent updates, I am not surprised you're finding it hard. I would also find it hard not to see it as rich kid screws up and gets out by the skin of his teeth. Lack of remorse etc is chilling. There do seem to be quite a few people I know who can put things into boxes like that, though. Tough call op.

WriteforFun1 He admitted beating the shit out of her once.

YABU
Everyone has a past. He hadn't wanted to bring it up, probably because he didn't want to go through the trauma of talking about it. It must have been a horrible time for him to go through.

Well you've talked about it now, so I suppose those risks of discovery stand. And I'm telling you that you would have had a very different first page of responses, instead of worrying that you WBU and were making the situation 'all about you'. People would have been less keen to be understanding of your DH I suspect.

blindsider He seemed so normal. Seriously so normal.

I have a strong anti drug stance, I abhor anything to do with drugs.

But, you haven't discovered he has a secret coke habit now, you haven't discovered he is doing all this horrible things now. He got into a situation with drugs as a very young man, and got out of it, by himself, when he realised it was way out of control. That is to be commended, many aren't so fortunate as to be able to do that.

Sure you don't understand why he didn't tell you but he had his reasons. Sometimes when things have been so hard to get through, opening that box again can be painful. He didn't tell you when you first got together, and as time went on, I can see how it became more awkward to bring it up.

I totally understand why you might need to get your head around it, but why does that need time apart? Surely talking to him about it is far more productive than being at your mum's house with the kids for half term where any questions you might have, can spiral into more suspicion, ill feeling etc. And what about him? It must be difficult for him just now too, to have it all dragged up and you want him to have to deal with that himself?

If the foundations of what you say is a very strong relationship are being threatened by this, maybe there's other things worrying you? I can say, despite my anti drugs stance, if I found this out about my husband, I wouldn't be thinking of leaving him even for a couple of days to "sort my head out", I'd be working out a way to get through it together.

OP, I suspect that it's because a lot of people on MN have a very casual attitude towards drugs, and the ones who responded first are the ones who probably don't consider drugs to be that big a deal.

For me, a revelation like that would have meant he would be out of the door on the night everything came out, and I'd be seeking legal advice re him not having supervised access to my children on the basis I wouldn' be able to trust that he wouldn't turn to drugs as soon as he walked out the door, with the justification that he was going through a hard time...

I believe that everyone deserves a second chance, but also that everyone has the right to their own line in the sand. I also believe that everyone has a responsibility to be honest with those who they feel should be giving them that second chance.

We've all done things we're not proud of, and those things usually have happened on a sliding scale from stealing a bar of chocolate in a shop to committing the most horrific acts imaginable. And in every circumstance there are those for who it would be a deal breaker, and those who could accept remorse and move past it.

But the key here is choice. You weren't given a choicE as to whether or not you could accept his past. You were sold an image of what he wanted you to think he was, not the real picture of where he'd come from and where he was now.

If told this stuff at the beginning of a relationship I suspect I wouldn't have been able to move past it in relationship terms, but I do think that perhaps I could accept that someone had moved on from those things and had now sought to be a better and different person, and in time, who knows. But finding out ten years later would mean my whole image of who he was was a figment of my imagination, and that he was capable of things I would never have thought possible. Violence, crime, prostitution, most of those things would be things I wouldn't seek to engage with, but were things I didn't have a choice over...

I think you've both done well by sending the kids away to sort out this mess. Looking forward, you have time to ask more questions regarding everything that went down and how he feels about it now. With a better picture perhaps you will understand the dark place he was in and you never know, the guilt could be present but some people are very good at hiding it.

Let me tell you OP, as much as this is terrible, a cousin of mine has just found out her fiance and father to her child has around 20 children. He was working all the time and she has to fight for his time and now she knows why, facts have clicked and after a suicide attempt she has realised she is better off without him. Not because he had all those kids, but because he lied about it. The fact he worked all the time (a fact she could trust because he's a colleague of hers) made it easier. OP, currently, he has given himself to you and your family. You are absolutely right, you need to understand how the man you love could have done all those awful things and lied to you, but if you (both) can sort it out and he genuinely make amends for the past, you could salvage your marriage. Don't ever pressure yourself to stay though. If it's too much to ever get over, don't flog a dead horse

Hi Mummymalta

I am so sorry you're going through this.

You know I often wonder about the guy who raped me at college. He is friend of a friend on facebook and seems to have a "nice life" now, and I wonder... and I have thought deeply about what I feel about that, and done a lot of work on it.

On the one hand, I do offer him kindness in my daily meditations - we were very young at that time and he was almost definitely addicted.. and I imagine that he was not very connected to his own humanity when he did what he did, and I have some compassion for that at this point of my life - because doing a heinous thing kills goodness in your life even more than being a victim of a heinous thing.. and it was all so calculated (I was raped because he had a bet with someone else that he could "get me" because I was a virgin... and many years later learned he had actually put a tranquiliser in my drink). For many years, because I had passed out at a party when it happened, I just chalked it up as "one of those things", a product of the lifestyle of this particular group of friends which though I didn't partake in it (I was pretty afraid of drugs) I could use to make sense of how someone could be so brutal and selfish about my body. It took a lot of work to undo that and see that he made choices in what he did - many men do drugs at high levels and will never rape a girl, let alone plan it and carry it out... and yet even writing this, I still always have that doubt.. did I somehow give him the idea of consent? Why did I get in the taxi with him? etc etc..

And so to take the perspective of him now being your husband.. and to imagine if it were he, I just don't know. I don't think I could be with him, because I think that it's a bit like a dog attacking a sheep.. once you have crossed that line, there is always that danger. What if he were suddenly jealous of you smiling with another man? Or he was particularly stressed out at work or something tragic happened in your lives? We all have the underlying propensity to be cruel and selfish and even violent given the right circumstances but thankfully most of us do not know what it is like to cross that line. What you are talking about here is so far over that line it's really in another country. I don't think I could trust him.

I'm also thinking of a terrible case here in Ireland where a "nice family man" was engaged in horrific abuse and eventually murder of a young vulnerable woman he met on a BDSM site, or of the Yorkshire Ripper and his marriage. I would have grave concerns that if he split off to this extent that maybe he is still either doing that or capable of doing that.

Again, I am just so sorry. You don't deserve this in your life xx

Mummymalta

There really isn't much one can add to your updates other than to say you sound a thoroughly decent sort and life has unfortunately served you up a massive dish of shit pie. My thoughts are with you and good luck whatever you decide. You have a mountain to climb whichever route you choose.

And I suspect we're still gettin posters who haven't read the updates.

Not just drugs

Op feel free to correct if I'm wrong but:

Hard drugs inc crack and heroin involved

Major theft and conning people (I'm guessing £1000's if not £10,000's)

Beating the ex now dead girlfriend (who can't conveniently set the record straight)

High possibility of raping the now dead girlfriend

Lack of remorse

Denial/minimising - describing as little mors than 'youthful high jinks'

Saying the right things but not appearing genuine

Not just lying by omission but possibly totally re-inventing himself but possibly his family and friends colluding with this.

I think that is a fair summation.

And this, more than anything else, concerns me:

" I could smell the privilege when he told me a bit of what happened. It bothered me. The DH I know would be ashamed and disgusted. This guy seemed irritated that Bob let his past slip."

I can well imagine this, having a met a lot of very overprivileged frat boy types in university. It's sad but please do trust your deep instincts, your wise self here. You know him and you are sensing this doesn't quite add up, that this is not just a sad part of his past in the way just finding a dead girlfriend might be.

I really feel for you.

fusionconfusion Thanks for your honesty. Much appreciated. And gave me perspective.

OP I think you've had a really hard time on here.

I guessed quite early on in your thread he'd pimped her out.

I work with addiction , and actually a drug addiction is never any excuse for violence.

You've found out that your DH is capable of violence, assault on women , exploiting women , theft.

I have met pimps and the girls who are made to work for them - the trauma that must have been inflicted on this women who was will without a doubt have been raped at some point through your husbands pimping of her.
Girls who were for pimps are often held down injected against their will in order to sedate them for sex.

I would be dragging every single detail from your DH to be able to decide whether you can move on.

Your DH is NOT the victim here.

Addiction does not make you a victim - the people they hurt are the victims - and that's from somebody who works in addiction.

Your moral compass is absolutely right OP.

I can only think the supportive posts for your DH are from young naive women.

Mummy " He admitted beating the shit out of her once"

Hopefully posters who haven't read the whole thread will read that.

I think forgiveness is usually a mistake tbh, but there's no way of be forgiving that. I don't think that drugs can be used to waive personal responsibility.

It sounds to me like he walked away from this with no guilt, no consequences and his irritation that you know is quite telling.

Really feel for you op

Baconyum 100% correct
I shivered reading it all in one place.
Christ

NoMud, woah I didn't pick up that he pimped her out. But he's rich, what was that about?