My partner of 23 yrs has been meeting one of the mums in the playground for 15 yrs

[olderchildrenhorsesanddogslady]

Just found out my partner of 23 yrs ( actually 40 yrs from our first attempt) has been regularly meeting up with one of the mums from our grown up sons school for nearly 15 yrs. Last time I bumped into her in the supermarket she looked scared and shocked to see me - am I being unreasonable to assume the worst ? I worked fulltime and my partner retired soon after we got together so he mainly did the school run for many years. Our son is now 20. Dad has a history of breaking up marriages - 3 I think at the last count. ( not while we were together). Should I warn her ?

Have you heard of the phrase' having you cake and eating it'?

OP- were you one of his affairs? Did he leave someone for you?

Has he been married 3 times?

If you knew his track record when you got together with him did you think you were going to be any different to the others?

I think it just all built up it didnt hit me at 58 but the cumulative effect of the menopause over the years and the death of my parents, my son going to uni and taking early retirement as i said led me to a crisis. Partly because my partner was horrid during this time and made me feel awful for not being a stepford wife.

Yes it was always a worry for me that this would happen. I hoped that we uad enough connection to keep us together. I know, stupid woman.

No not married at all, just likes other peoples wives apparently. I think its the not being available that attracts him. I heard about it from afar when we werent together in the inervening years before we got back together as we have mutual friends. I was madly in love with him and he convinced me that he felt the same when we did get back together.

You’re not the only one! This post is hard work, starting with a very disjointed and confusing OP followed by a long thread of questions trying to make sense of it.

Pressing Reply just replies to the thread, not individual comments.
You made the thread to ask if you should warn your ex boyfriends other girlfriend/mate about something- no.
What do you want from the thread? Do you have a clear, specific question?

Yes i know, on the face of it it sounds trivial, but it isnt is it when its concealed and the time that is put into that relationship is time out of our relationship, its a symptom.of a wider issue i think - the concealment that is.
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I'd be better off talking to the wall. I'm out.

He wont sell it but has offered it to me by way of payment for the money ge owes me but it isnt half the value of my house. I dont want it anyway.

Is this an AI post? Even the username is unusual.

To be honest its gone much further than i expected its fine i think the answers and questions have been really helpful. My original question was about whether i was being unreasonable being upset about this relationship as this is what my partner has said to me - ie im over sensitive, imagining things, being possesive, not wanting him to have friends etc, that he loves me and dosent want a relationship with anyone else etc. I dont think thats who i am and was asking the community what their view was.

No Im not an AI ! Thats a wierd question there are all sorts or names out there. I dont think AI could manifest this relationship problem and the history ive given if it tried.

@olderchildrenhorsesanddogslady
I think he has always lived his life on a moving on continuum. Your presence never stopped him from doing exactly that. This only became an issue when you made it an issue.

He made friends independently. He purchased property independently. These things were a part of his life that he did not perceive as a part of a joint life.

Do you think that he is overly bothered by your not living with him?

OK, having read all your follow-up posts I think I understand the situation a bit better now!

YANBU to be upset or suspicious about a 15-year 'friendship' that he apparently deliberately concealed from you. I can completely see why that revelation has knocked you for six - whether it was an affair or not, I think it would always be a bit of a shock to find out that a partner was very close to someone for such a long time without ever mentioning it. If it was affair, obviously that's devastating. And if it was just a close friendship, I think it would still make most people wonder why on earth they'd hidden it like that - even if your partner had been spending that time with another man, purely as friends, it would still be pretty weird and vaguely unsettling to suddenly find out that your husband had a best mate you knew nothing about.

However, looking at everything else you've said about your partner, I do think that this latest discovery is actually just a small part of an unhealthy and controlling relationship. It's not remotely normal or OK for someone with whom you live and share a child to buy a house in Spain without telling you and then to expect you to pay for your shared family home because he'd run out of money. Although you co-own the house he currently lives in, you've basically been paying for it. He has been 'retired' pretty much the whole time you've together, which is a bit odd in itself if you were still working full time.

When you moved out, it obviously wasn't a clean split, as although you stopped living together you were still 'loving' towards one another and he didn't seem to want to separate, just to have you as a girlfriend who lives in a different house - but he also didn't want to sell the house you own together. He didn't support you through your difficulties with your parents' dementia, and just left you to deal with it on your own. Basically, he's been calling all the shots for the whole relationship and has been gaslighting you into believe that somehow you are the problem. You are not the problem. He is the problem. He honestly sounds like he has some kind of personality disorder to me.

He has treated you very badly and you are doing the right thing to get a solicitor involved. I also wonder whether you might benefit from some counselling to talk all this stuff through? It might just help you see things a bit more clearly through the fog of emotions you're experiencing right now.

All the best, OP - you deserve better than this man.

This post makes absolutely no sense and the subsequent updates make it harder.

So, your dh was a stay home parent whilst you worked.

You knew he has a female friend but have recently found out he is very close friends with a woman

You have no knowledge or proof of an affair

You have moved out Because he won't choose between you and his friends

I am not so sure your dh is the one being unreasonable here.

I wouldn't pick a partner over my friends. In my eyes the mere question is an attempt to isolate which suggests abuse.

I have some very close male friends, I don't always tell my Fiancé when I am seeing them. If he is at work/away with his son/doing his hobby it is completely inconsequential who I am spending my time with. In the dame way I don't expect a blow by blow analysis of who he spends time with.

I am guessing by the haphazard descriptions, changing facts etc there is more to both sides of this one!

Thankyou for putting it so clearly and apologies to anyone on this thread who I replied to but didn't use the quote option - newbie failure. I will be getting some counselling and am regularly ie most minutes - using a mantra to stop me slipping back into clingy behaviours. This has been so helpful in mirroring back to me what has been going on. I have also wondered for a time if he has personality issues. This was flagged to me as well way back when we got together again by a very close mutual friend. But in throws of a love rediscovered I thought everything would be fine.

Sorry it is complicated and I'm not saying I am a saint- are any of us? I didn't ask him to chose between friends or me - I wanted to move somewhere where we could have some land to keep my horses and his sheep. The house we currently own is very close to the sea and I'm worried about sea level rise over the next few decades and how that will affect our sons inheritance.

We have to drive backwards and forwards twice a day every day 365 days a year to the animals and i wanted to have them at home, stop the driving and make sure that the animals were safe for my lifetime. Ie the land couldnt be taken from us.

It was my ex who said he didn't want to leave because of his friends. Which was a bit wierd given the time we've been together and our history and it was this that made me realise things were amiss along with all the other things I've mentioned. I equally could no longer stay in the house as I felt trapped and barely alive probably due to the other things I've gone into. So we agreed that we would try a new way of living and see if that helped. Why would you say that was abuse ?

@Onceuponaheatache of course there's more than one side , could be several sides if we include the son , the woman who was going for walks etc , her partner and so on.
What facts has the OP changed?

@olderchildrenhorsesanddogslady I think there is more to this than you are letting on.

As many others have said, a lot is missing from your posts and you are choosing not to answer some questions.

That's fine, but it means any advice is not based on the whole story.

I wonder if you were married when you hooked up with him again at 37? Were you single?

It really does beggar belief that an affair , or close friendship, that's gone on for 15 years has escaped your notice, especially when it began at the school gates.
Did no other mums 'have a word with you'? No mutterings behind your backs?

I've questioned what he did when he 'crossed a line' and prompted you to move out.

You've avoided that answering that one!

You seem to have a lot of money around partly to enable you to fund a degree at 60, not work, and also rent another home for yourself, (because you retired early so your pension can't be massive.)

Above all, get yourself tested for STIs. Goodness knows what has gone on for 15 years. This other woman may be in an open marriage, her H may be sleeping around, so you need a health check at the very least.

I don't want a blow by blow account either, but dont you have a 'how was your day etc conversation ' from time to time which would normally involve details of what you've been doing or sharing nubs of info and gossip ? For 15 yrs it was never disclosed.

I havent changed facts or been haphazard apart from not using the quote button more helpfully for which I apologise - because its made the questions and answers separate.

So we agreed that we would try a new way of living and see if that helped. Why would you say that was abuse ?

Every time you post something new, it contradicts what you have said before.
I did flag your thread up to MN as a troll and they said for the moment they are believing you.

However, in your earlier post , you said he had 'crossed a line a few times' and that made you move out.

NOW you're saying it was because you wanted to be near your animals and it was 'new way of living'.

Something isn't right.

I'm out too.

So we agreed that we would try a new way of living and see if that helped. Why would you say that was abuse ?

My post was replying to this ^^

The line crossing was around his absentia during my parents illness and his inability to talk about the menopause or accept it as a real thing causing me distress. He dosent do empathy and this period of my life when my parents had dementia along with every thing else I've mentioned really brought it home to me how tough it was living with him despite how much I felt for him. He shouted at me for being grumpy one morning and said I couldn't talk to him like that just because my mum had died.

Of course there are loads of things I could go on about but I was just trying to understand if other parents meet up regularly after their children grow up and have enduring relationships that their partners don't know about. Why would my income be relevant to that?

@LaughterintheRains my reading of the OP posts was that she wanted to move out of a big empty house in a urban environment to one in the country. She has gone on to further explain that this would give space for her animals.
Why do you think that's contradictory and not just another factor in wanting to move.
You say
Every time you post something new, it contradicts what you have said before.
I think every time the OP posts she provides more detail.
I agree that there is something wrong here but it's not the OP, it's all the posters who are unable to read the OPs posts, who can't cope with something being confusing and who, unless provided with a neat and tidy timeline plus answers to anything that pops into their head ( what's your job , how can you afford to study, etc) cry A1 , troll .
The OP posted with a query about warning her partners female friend . And she has gone on to explain that she was seeking views about the fact that someone she thought was a partner, with whom she has a long history and a child has been socialising with another woman for 15 years without discussing it with her