This is long so apologies in advance, I am just spectacularly low today as it’s the first birthday in 23 where I have not been loved my this man. Here is my story.
I have been with my husband for 23 years in September, since we were 20. We were so in love, so affectionate and adored one another, or so I thought. We had built a life and a family we were proud of.
On 31st March I received a letter from the husband of a colleague of my DH’s asking if I had any concerns over now much they were messaging and meeting up when he travelled down to London for work (we live in the North West). I did have a gut feeling (I never have before, I had always been so proud of how well DH got on with women, he was kind, had good morals and was just an all round good guy) but ignored it as he was such a decent guy and we were so obviously in love….
Everything was denied when I showed him the letter, they were just really good friends, chat about work and random stuff, nothing to be suspicious of….He refused to show me their messages.
I wasn’t convinced and he knew it. He deleted her messages as they had “her personal information in them” yet he knew I could be reassured easily by showing them to me, if there really was nothing to hide.
I sat on his home office floor and broke down in tears telling him nothing he had done over the past few days had felt honest or reassuring. He sat there, acting shirty that I had disturbed him from work. Not a word of comfort, a hug, nothing. I asked him that out of respect for me, please step back from contacting this woman outside the parameters of work. He agreed he would do this.
We were due to go on holiday for 2 weeks within a matter of days and this nagging feeling wasn’t dissipating.
I took it up with him again the following evening. He then told me he had deleted her messages as he had talked to her about things he hadn’t talked to me about-he was unhappy and didn’t know why, he wanted to do different things in his life, didn’t know what, but he didn’t think it fit with us. He was thinking of moving out for 6 months to get time and space to sort his head out. I was blindsided. We went on that holiday and it was a living hell.
Over the course of the holiday, more things came out about this “unhappiness”. He wanted control over his time and money, we do everything together since I started wfh during Covid, he has major self esteem issues and no one should have to put up with him. I had many suggestions on how to help alleviate these issues, let’s get some plans in place for him to go off on his running weekends, hiking holiday he mentioned he wanted to do etc. We can change the way finances are run so he felt more in control (he had just never been interested in anything like that before so I did all the research/setting up of accounts etc), I will go and work in the office again and so on. I tried so hard to reassure him over his self esteem issues but nothing was listened to. He refused to try any of my suggestions, wouldn’t come up with his own, didn’t want to talk about it. Our 13 year old daughter could tell something was wrong as despite him acting completely normally, I was clearly distressed.
Several times over the course of that holiday from hell I found out they were still in contact. I saw he had deleted a message he sent to her which he first claimed was him telling her not to contact him. He then said he couldn’t remember what it had said (it was 3 hours earlier!). Our daughter saw them messaging I love you to one another. I had left the restaurant at that point as I was upset. Our daughter asked him why they were sending things like that, was it a romantic love? He looked her in the eye and said no, it’s a friend love, I would never lie to you. She subsequently told me she had been convinced he was cheating, but his frank and seemingly very honest conversation changed her mind.
I found evidence of the most soul destroying, heartbreaking affair the day after we returned from holiday. I knew I was being lied to. He had been lovebombed continually by this woman, showered with compliments, she had been throwing herself at him, knocking on his hotel room door whilst away on business together way back in January and it just got worse from there on, after he eventually bit. I am haunted by the things I have read, they both seemed to be delusional in saying they hadn’t done anything wrong, she insisted she respected his marriage (then in the next message she sends him photos of her in her underwear). Countless declarations of love, hundreds of underwear photos, flattery, her telling him how amazing he is and she is so lucky to have him in her life, him telling her that he sees her kids as part of his extended family (he had met them once). Plus all the message sex, honestly, it was utterly horrifying.
I told him that I wanted to work on moving past the affair as I genuinely believed his mental health required support, with all these issues he had come up with recently. I pledged to try as hard as I could to respect his request for time and space and supported him with beginning counselling, encouraged him to talk to me (he wouldn’t), told him I wanted to help him. He continued to tell me he loved me and that he wouldn’t do anything stupid on the impending business trip which she would also be attending and his intention was to have a conversation with her telling her they both needed to step back. I told him she had clearly displayed that she wouldn’t respect that anyway, due to the countless times they had broken that promise.
Since then, there have been dozens more lies, further betrayals which were found out quite innocently, but were met with anger and a complete privacy lockdown, refusal to talk, anger at me having gone onto our family iPad finding his emails open and looking to find the proof (he had sent himself the WhatsApp chat before deleting it). Not a shred of effort made to try and resolve his issues. Told me he will talk when he is ready. That he loved me as much as he ever did and that will never change.
5 more weeks this went on. He hadn’t done anything about moving out, I didn’t know what was going on, I felt as if I was living in some kind of perverse limbo, completely at his mercy with no control or agency within my own life any more.
I snapped. Another suspected meeting with this woman which when questioned, was met with more anger and took 2 days to come up with a reason for why he was at this particular location. It is still denied, but the circumstantial evidence is too strong to refute. At this point, I told him I thought it was best that he did move out as he was turning me into someone I didn’t want to be. Living on edge, constantly suspicious, hurt at the lack of conversation, effort and no support for my emotional distress caused by his affair.
He couldn’t commit to anything permanent, he needed to work on himself and sort his head out and he didn’t know if this was a permanent separation or not. I was effectively put on the bench.
Since that conversation, he emotionally shut off. There were no more I love yous, no attempt to reassure, arguments again when I tried to discuss things. I took our daughter to stay with my brother over half term week as it would have been too distressing for us to watch him move out. My poor girl has been so damaged by him lying to her face, they had the best relationship you could ever imagine and she has had to watch her dad systematically break her mum over the course of 8 weeks of emotional torture.
Just prior to him leaving we had a conversation about the other woman, who was already in the process of separating from her husband although they still live together with their 11 and 9 year old daughters. She had asked her husband for an open marriage as she wanted to “go as far physically with my husband as he was comfortable with”. Every single detail of my reaction to the affair was relayed to her, my thoughts, feelings, emotional reactions, everything. I was torn to shreds. She told him I was only after him for his money, it’s a shame I can’t see him for the truly amazing person he is (this is a man I have loved, supported and been proud of for nearly 23 years and I constantly told him that). I was told I was controlling because I had asked them to cease non-work contact. I was berated for “not forgiving anything yet” 36 hours after I found out about the affair. She said she would step back “but only if he asked, she would do nothing on my say so”
Bearing all this in mind and that the vicious, unfounded comments she made towards me only started after I discovered the affair, I suggested to my DH she had an agenda. He told me yes, he could see that, but I also had an agenda. I wanted to help him work through his issues, try to make positive changes to our lifestyle which would make him happier and reconcile. He asked me why my agenda should be more important than hers. He had known her 6 months at the time.
At the point of moving out I was still being told he doesn’t know what he wants. Within 2 weeks I get unceremoniously dumped by email (as he had a lot to say, didn’t want to mis-speak and knew I would need time to process it - not hiding behind his cowardice at all…) and told he is in a relationship with her. Long distance of course. He never intended it, they struck up an incredible friendship early in the year and were trying to help each other sort out their marriages. The marriage I never knew had any problems, the marriage he never talked about being unhappy within and the marriage that when all this came out, he set aside to rot.
He has repeatedly ignored any reports of our daughter being affected by this. I have raised concerns, his parents have raised concerns, a teacher has raised concerns. But she tells him she is ok so that’s fine. According to him, she is struggling because of having to deal with me dealing with it.
He tells mutual friends he is surprised I pushed the divorce button so fast and he thinks it’s because I’m after his pension etc. he tells me I am projecting onto our daughter and she is ok. Every single thing I have said to him has been due to comments our daughter has made to me, or things I know he has done which have put her in incredibly difficult positions (an example of this is before he moved out whilst it was still not necessarily permanent, he asked her not to tell me, but he is saving to take her to New York next Easter).
I “pushed the divorce button” before he dumped me, well, I had been doing the application for a few weeks as I knew his treatment of me was diabolical. Yet this appears to have angered him. The final straw was upon having a discussion to sort out practical things about a week after he moved out, I happened to mention that I was frightened about a hospital procedure I was having the following week (he knew about it). His response? Silence. He never even asked me if I had someone going with me for support. I ruminated on that for a day or so, then concluded the cruelty in that silence was unforgivable and enough was enough.
I suspected he would take the fireproof safe containing all our important documents, so I squirrelled away the marriage certificate knowing I may well reach that point and I wanted to be able to do it if I did. Annoyingly I received his email about 5 minutes before I got to the final stage of the online firm but hey ho.
I have been broken to pieces and stamped on. Thrown aside like a piece of rubbish. Lied to, betrayed, emotionally manipulated. Had my character decimated. Been hurt beyond measure, not just because of the affair, but the subsequent treatment which still continues with the denial of the effect this is having on our daughter. Who I am desperately trying to protect. Her trauma and anger are solely focused on this woman, it’s caused her to zone out at school (as noticed by a teacher who contacted me about it) due to intrusive thoughts.
I told my husband this as I knew he was intending to tell her he was now in a relationship with his affair partner. I told him I wasn’t telling him what to do, because I didn’t know what to do myself, but he needed to know what was happening with our daughter so he can make an informed judgment. He told her that weekend, on her first sleepover at his where he also found it appropriate to pass on a letter and a gift from this woman to our daughter. She came home that Sunday night and cut her hair because she had thoughts going round her head and needed to distract herself.
His new girlfriend messaged me the day after I was dumped, to tell me how amazing my husband is, how she is so so sorry for the hurt and damage to me and my marriage that the letter her husband sent has caused. She hopes that for my daughter’s sake, we can find a kind and respectful way forwards. It seems the pair of them have affair amnesia. She knows I am fully aware of what she has said about me.
I know this is a mess, but I needed to get it out. I have so much real life support, an army of it, but I’m sitting on my own in bed, crying my eyes out on my birthday. His birthday card to me said he is sorry for how this turned out, he never meant to cause hurt or harm. Yet I am irreparably destroyed.
Thank you so much for reading.