Or is this unforgivable?

[AbominablePloughMan]

I’ve been married a year. Knew my husband for 3 years before we married.

Shortly after we married I found out that when we had met, he was still in a relationship. He had checked out of the relationship with the ex, but had kept her on the hook for almost 2 years while looking for something better. 6 months before we met, he had cancelled her visa (it was a partner visa linked to him) and she had been forced to move back to her home country. He told me they were broken up, but in reality they were still speaking every day and she was very much under the impression that he was looking for a job in her country. He continued this relationship for a year after we met until she got fed up and met someone else.

This came so soon after the wedding that I was knocked for 6. My husband convinced me that he had no feelings for her and was only continuing the relationship because she was mentally fragile and suicidal. It was only on the phone and it meant nothing. I agreed to try to get over it. I’m from a conservative culture and had to face a lot of opposition for marrying a white man. I was ashamed of losing face with my community. I’ve posted about this bit before. Now there’s more.

I have now found out that he had been visiting this ex in her home country and been sleeping with her, and attended weddings with her as a couple. I’ve seen messages sexting and wishing each other happy anniversaries months and months after he started dating me. This was all during covid, I wasn’t really keeping track of his movements, he told me he was attending the weddings alone.

In addition, I have also found out that a year before he met me he rekindled a relationship with a previous ex, also while still with the more recent ex. The ex ex agreed to move her work location and come to the UK. She moved in with him a few months after we met, and lived with him at least 6 months (possibly more as this was during covid, I don’t know for sure). He says he broke up with her before she arrived, but had to let her live in his spare room as she had moved for him and had nowhere else to go (not true, her job would have provided her paid accommodation). Even if it’s true they were broken up while living together, he had cheated on his more recent ex for 2 years with two different girls while stringing her along. He was also in two serious relationships when he met me, and started another relationship with me. He cheated on me for at least one year with at least one girl after we met.

Please be gentle. My head is all over the place and I don’t know what’s real and fake any more. My husband has dismissed the whole thing saying they meant nothing, it was a mistake, he chose me not them etc. etc. It doesn’t feel like nothing, it feels very very cruel and manipulative. He can be kind but is also very conflict avoidant and a people pleaser, and can be quite selfish in his decisions, as this clearly shows. Ever since I found out about the more recent ex, he seems to have checked out of our marriage, but says he wants to work on things.

We’ve been married for a year. No kids no joint assets. AIBU in thinking that this is very very wrong? Or have I lost all perspective and it was early in the relationship so I should let it go? What on earth could possibly justify what he did? What could he have been thinking?

Due to family and cultural stuff, I need to think about what I do very carefully. I’m not saying that I agree with the cultural bullshit, just that my family will make life hell for me if I leave, but I may well be in a hellish marriage, so I’m kind of between a rock and a hard place.

OP, you sound as if you have your head screwed on properly. You’re mature enough to be married, and you have a job in which you make life and death decisions for people, by the sounds of it.

Let this version of you make this decision - not the parentally/culturally conditioned part. I know that won’t be easy, but neither will living your life with a man who will in all likelihood ruin it. How are you ever going to be able to relax and trust him, knowing how he lied to you with such ease?

Do not get pregnant with this man.

Give yourself some time to process how much you trust him.
I suspect that is very little and you'll realise you can't spend the rest of your life with him.

Unless you're financially dependent on your family and will need to live with them, now is the time to show them the strong independent woman they have raised. I think you might be surprised at how supportive they are when you explain what a scumbag you married.

You only get one life, OP. Don't waste it on this man.

And if you want kids, which it sounds like you do, one of the worst things you could do for them would be to give them a father like this.

I know family pressure can be intense but frankly, if they would rather you stayed with a man like this then lose face, screw them.

If they say, "I told you so", just shrug your shoulders and say, "Yes, you did. Is it raining?" Don't rise to it and give them a reaction.

You did not know he was someone who lied repeatedly and thinks so little of women that he believes his behaviour is acceptable. You believed he was honest and trustworthy when you married. He married you under false pretences. This is what you say to the silly bollocks of you made your bed so lie in it.
His behaviour is unacceptable, divorce him and be done. Onwards and upwards.
Hopefully your family will come round but going any further with this man could see you locked in to years of misery and bullshit, you will spend your life second guessing as to whether or not he's having an affair.

I don't think this is a man with good morals or conscience, and I don't believe that it is something you can suddenly develope in your middle age. He hasn't learnt anything because he isn't emotionally intelligent enough to learn. This means he's not marriage or parent material unfortunately. I wish he had been more transparent with you before you got married but at least you have found out before you got pregnant (if that's what you want) and you can get out fairly unscathed. You have also most likely only found the tip of the iceberg, there is no doubt lots more to come if you choose to stay and the longer you stay the harder it will be to get out because you would have invested even more into this poor excuse of a man.

I know it's easy for me to say, but please don't think about what your family will think about you leaving him, they will come around eventually. You have to remember that you are the most important person in your life.

I'm so sorry to hear what he's put you though.

I would cut your losses now. I know that's easy for me to say. Whether you do it now, or in 20 years, you will still have face the attitude of your family, so that's not a reason to delay.

My thoughts are that he won't change. This is long term deception. It's very likely to happen again.

I would contact relate to talk about this further with him and the impact it has on you and makes you feel. You should contact them together.
If he is not prepared to at least talk it through with someone then I think you have your answer. Your family may well give you the "we told you so" speech but that won't last long and a lifetime of misery in an untrusting marriage does. It becomes harder to leave the longer you stay sadly

That’s very true. For OPs sanity alone perhaps this is best to be walked away from.

If you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place it doesn’t sound great whatever you do. However I’d definitely opt for leaving him and face the family backlash. Could you imagine how miserable you would be living with him and spending time with him knowing what sort of a man he is? You wouldn’t get no space and if you can’t forgive it you’d be so miserable

Each time I’ve found something out, he’s reluctantly admitted that and denied anything else. But then there’s been more. There may well be even more that I still don’t know of.

This is what would worry me. If he’s lied this many times, he could well do it all again. And if he can treat more than one woman this badly, he can do the same to you.

I had a not dissimilar situation. I hadn't married him but he moved in with me. The lies just kept coming out slowly over time with him admitting nothing except what became so obvious he had to, and he would say it meant nothing, he chose me, his ex needed to be handled carefully, he wasn't like that any more.

He was still with her for months after we got together despite telling me they'd been separated two years. He went to the other country 'to get his belongings' but it turned out he stayed with the ex as she thought he had moved country for work but they were still together. There were many other lies too, about property and children and work.

I tried to forgive and move on (sunk cost fallacy) but just didn't trust a word he said. We limped on once the discoveries started coming out but it was never the same. I had no respect for him and that filters through every part of the relationship.

I should have ended it at the first revelation, not let it go on for another four years and I really regret that time now. It caused so much heartache, there's no trust and no respect, you can't believe anything they say about the past or their feelings for you now as it's all tainted. The history of how you got together and those early times aren't what you thought they were so your shared history is sad instead of happy memories.

Put yourself first, OP. And don't trust a word that comes out of his mouth. You know you're with a selfish, lying man who says what he needs to get what he wants, so be careful about how he manipulates you.

no matter what he says to you now or in the future, leopards don’t change their spots. Effectively, while you stay with him he knows you accept his behaviour and this gives him permission to continue. If he’s “checked out” of your relationship, him saying he wants to work things out holds as much truth as what he told those other women. It’s a lie.
If that’s how you want the rest of your life, stay. If you want to raise children within a loving relationship, go and find one. This is not a loving and mutually respectful relationship.
Your family may be performatively disappointed, but how can they expect you to stay with someone so disrespectful? Do what is right for you, and look forward to a life with fewer regrets.

So sorry you're going through this OP . The others are right, he lied to you and to them. He'll probably do it again. Is that the kind of marriage you want?

No not my life. Just a lot of ‘I told you sos’ and ‘you’ve made your beds’ etc. but in a quite nasty, dehumanising way.

Im already in a huge amount of mental anguish as a result of my husbands betrayal, so very wary of adding even more pain on top of that.

I can imagine that being difficult and your reluctance to go face the criticism but everyone is allowed to make mistakes OP and I doubt that family's reaction will be worse than spending years of your precious life with a man that has already checked out of your marriage and you can't trust.

I think that we make decisions using the information we have available at the time.

Had you known everything about him and the utterly diabolical way he treats women his previous relationships, I doubt that you would have married him, but you didn't know, he kept that from you.

Know you do know it's time to make the best decision with the new information that you have.

I think you deserve more.

You and any future children deserve better they this despicable man but you are asking the right kind of questions to decide what to do.

The infidelity would be unforgivable for me on its own but the thing that really stands out is that he had a woman move country to be with him and when he got fed up of her he lied to her and cancelled her visa forcing her to leave without him having the backbone to end the relationship in an honourable and honest way. What an utterly vile way to treat another person.

I can't understand the pressure you may receive from your family but I know this man will bring you more misery than you can imagine. I think your choice is between the lesser of two evils. Do you think your family will make your life hell forever? This man will.

I would think of it this way - the pain and embarrassment of dealing with your family will be temporary, they will get over it

the pain of this man continually cheating on you and acting like it's no big deal will be for the rest of your life

it might not feel like it but you're in a good position right now, you don't have kids. You are not tied to this man should you want to divorce. You could leave and meet someone else who will treat you the way you deserve

of course you could also do this way down the line but it's so much harder separating when children are involved.

I would leave. Think, if your best friend came to you and said their partner had cheated on them repeatedly, would you tell them to stay and get over it, or would you tell them they don't deserve to be treated that way?

❤️❤️

Please don’t stay with this man or have children with him. You will have a lifetime of hurt and suspicion about what his is doing. Surely your family wouldn’t want you to stay in such an abusive relationship? Be brave and finish it. The fall out from your family will be temporary.

Completely unforgivable. Completely. I know you must love your family, OP, but anyone who would advocate for you to stay with a person like this is categorically a force for hurt and unhappiness in your life.

Are you supposed to feel grateful that he ‘chose’ you? What a joke. It was his choice to repeatedly cheat on you, it was his choice to stay untruthful about it and it continues to be his choice to not take any responsibility for it. For him to phrase anything as a ‘mistake’ tells you very plainly that he’s a piece of shit human.

You get one shot at life, and he does not deserve to be your one shot. He deserves to be in the gutter.

I think he comes over as cold, selfish and manipulative. That he uses women for his own benefits and doesn't care about them. And I don't see any reason to believe he will be any different with you.

You say you found out things that had happened through information friends let slip. So this implies a lot of people knew he was in relationships with different women at the same time. I would feel very uncomfortable about this.

I honestly think if you stay with him and have children with him you will be setting yourself up for a life of misery. You wouldn't be able to trust him at all.

Even if culturally it's difficult I really think you should extricate yourself from this marriage

I understand the cultural pressures, but given that you are in no physical danger, how can you even be asking for advice on what to do? Your husband has cheated on you multiple times and deceived you from the outset. How could you bear to be in the same room as a man who has done that, let alone let him touch you? I couldn't stay under the same roof as anyone who had betrayed me and shown such contempt for me.

In reality though my head is spinning. My world keeps being turned upside down but he maintains this facade that he is kind and loving and caring and did what he did because he cared too much about hurting all these women. While his actions are of someone unbelievable cold and selfish. I just can’t reconcile the two, the man I thought I knew and what his actions are telling me. It’s a huge mindfuck which is why I’m questioning my very reality, if he’s right and I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I can’t separate the rational from the emotional.

When you say he said he chose you, that's an insult not a compliment.

He's saying he chose you because you're meek and mild with a gentle nature that will allow him to continue his philandering and doing whatever he wants with whoever he wants whilst you sit quietly at home and will forgive him if he's found out.

That's fine if you want to live your life in a constant state of anxiety and be taken for an utter fool.

If you have an ounce of respect for yourself you'd recognise your self worth and split up with this revolting specimen of a man.

I’m not financially dependant on anyone. But my family can be cruel, even for my culture. I suspect strongly that my mother is a narcissist and my father is an enabler. They care only about appearances. I know I need to cut them out, but the thought of basically losing my whole family at once, husband and parents, and the fact that they are all cruel manipulators is just devastating. It’s like the ground has fallen out from beneath me.

We tried counselling immediately after the first lies came out. He was all for it but dragged his heels arranging it. In the sessions he just wasted time sitting in silence not saying anything. After a few sessions he lost interest and I gave up dragging him there. Individual therapy has been much more useful for me.

Thank you for sharing. I can’t believe there’s more than one person out there like this? Do you mind me asking how you ended it at last? And did you ever understand anything more about his motivations, or what made you susceptible to such gaslighting behaviour?