I’ve just found out that my husband has slept with someone else. My world has fallen apart and I don’t know what to do.

[MyHeartisinTwo]

Just that really. I can’t believe this is happening. I feel like I’m in a nightmare. We have a 3 year old DD. The OW sent me a message from a private instagram account because H had blocked her actual accounts on my phone without my knowledge. He works with her.

He’d gone to her birthday party which I knew about. Didn’t come home until after 4am which isn’t normal for him so I wasn’t happy and we had plans the next day. He said they’d all gone somewhere after the party. Turns out he was with her in a hotel down the road. This was weeks ago and he hadn’t told me.

When I confronted him he eventually admitted it. Said that he couldn’t explain it at first. Then said that there was distance between us and he was weak and naive. We were arguing a lot. He’s been struggling with his mental health and I’ve been doing my best to support him whilst working full-time in a stressful job. I thought we were just going through a rough patch.

I’m literally shaking. I don’t have a lot of family and I haven’t told anyone IRL yet. He says it doesn’t have to be over. But it does doesn’t it?

Please try to eat little healthy snacks and drink water, you have to keep your strength up to be strong for your DD.
Can you take photos of his bank statement etc as well as any monetary papers you can get your hands on before it all goes missing.

Not sure why strong woman is inverted commas there - implies you don’t think women should decide their own future.

I'm so sorry. Stay strong, OP! You don't deserve to be treated like this.

But why would she want to?

Why should any woman want to scrape from the floor the scraps of a relationship to a man who’s proven that she means nothing to him, that she is worth less than a few minutes of sexual gratification with a girl from work, that she is so meaningless to him that he feels ok lying to her repeatedly for weeks/months and would have inevitably kept shagginng around and lying for as long as he could get away with it?

Your wife should have left you. You treated her with contempt and an utter disregard for your relationship. Not really sure have the nerve to suggest that it’s on OP to “salvage it, if she really wants to” like it would be her fault if the marriage fails. It’s failed, he failed it.

Mocking "strong women", complaining about betrayed wives being "bitter" and putting the onus on OP to do the salvaging doesn't give the impression that you regret anything at all, except perhaps getting caught.

I'd sit this one out if I were you. You didn't have a clue 25 years ago and you don't have a clue now.

Just to clarify, seroconversion which is the name called when someone might (but not always) become poorly after contracting HIV generally happens around 1-3 weeks later.
The window period which is the point at which someone would conclusively know whether they have contracted HIV depending on which test is up to 90 days/3 months. A 4th gen. sample taken from the arm that measures antigens and antibodies is the fastest at 45 days
https://i-base.info/guides/testing/what-is-the-window-period

👏👏👏👏👏

@Peterbyres1 it isn't up to her to fix anything - if there's fixing to be done. It's up to him. He is 100% in the wrong here.

You were very, very, very lucky your wife stayed - but even 25 years ago, women had fewer options than they do now.

Bitter voices ? Catch yourself on mate. You were the one doing the cheating and you’re very lucky your wife agreed to continue with the marriage. That’s your story and it has no bearing on OP’s situation. If you’re here to persuade OP to basically forgive and forget please remember she is the injured party here and she’s being advised by women who have been through the same thing. Have you learned nothing in 25 years ?

You have my absolute sympathy. The same thing happened to me in the summer of last year, and I can say now, more than a year later, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about it with a mixture of anger, sadness, disappointment and frustration. The only thing that has got better is that now I can sleep through the night, something that I couldn’t do immediately after D-day.

I know that he should be the one to leave. But I had plans to see this friend anyway before this all blew up and I need time to think. The friend doesn’t live locally. So might as well stay in a hotel.

I don’t think I’d want to know anymore details as the ones he’s drip fed you is horrific. It’s ironic he’s blaming his MH as a reason for his cheating as he has shattered your feeling of well being and has your mind in pieces.

Blaming you and his mental health - what an absolute wanker. He KNEW he had a toddler at home! Not even the idea of shattering an innocent little kiddie's life stopped that mangy so-and-so from dropping his underpants and dipping his wick! I think it would be HILARIOUS if OP told his parents. He got his dick out and had UNPROTECTED SEX with another woman, after months of flirting, but NOW wants to be forgiven! Vile man deserves to be drummed out of the village.

If you let him get away with it this time, you just gave him
permission to find another woman in work who he can flirt with and lead on and then sleep with.

A night in a nice hotel sounds like just what you need at the moment.

If someone came to me to tell me their DH in his 30's had started giving the chat to get in my 20 year olds knickers, I'd be going to HR. I doubt that they are at the same level at work. There was another thread were he was sacked and the OP ended up financially supporting her cheating H. She's been stupid and possibly fed a story, given that she's asking were she fits in. Her Dad/brother might do the OP a favour and give him a beating. He really needs to keep his hands off 20 year olds. They do unpredictable stuff like tell the wife because they honestly believe that they will leave their wives, or they are in a loveless/sexless marriage.

Maybe different surroundings and the opportunity to relax in a hotel might help. Are you seeing a friend you can trust to tell them what’s happening ?

From this update, it's pretty clear that many of us commenting were right about her intentions... her saying she was telling you "woman to woman" was bullcrap. She wanted to out their affair. Malicious cow.

I truly hope you're ok OP. Such a rubbish thing to go through, but you and your DD deserve so much better than this.

Gosh! That’s all a bit much. Have you never heard of forgiveness or second chances?
As I posted before, I have a family member who reconciled after an affair and they have never been happier. Why throw away a happy marriage because your husband slept with someone else?

I'd ask him what he'd want his daughter to do if a future partner did the same thing to her. Anything short of ending things with him will be mental gymnastics on his end.

Somewhere along the line, with all the flirting and eventual sex, the OW thought your husband wanted a relationship with her. Who knows if he gave her that impression or if she's read far more into the situation than there is. I rather suspect the penny dropped and she realised that she'd been nothing but a 'bit of fun' or his 'bit on the side' and decided to seek revenge by telling you. She may have thought it would force his hand, and he'd go running to her...that hasn't happened (it never usually does).

The OW didn't force your husband at gun point into having sex with her. It doesn't matter if she'd been plotting to ensnare him for herself or not. He didn't have to flirt with her. He didn't have to send nudes. He didn't have to jump into bed with her. Those are all choices that your husband made.

He still lying to you because the whole sorry saga keeps coming out in dribs and drabs. He's lied about having an STI test. He says the OW is clean, he has no idea if that's true or not, especially if he hasn't seen the results for himself. You don't know if it's true either, because your husband is a liar and is trying to save his own ass.

You need to gather as much paperwork as you can and make an appointment with a solicitor. It's better to be forearmed than being on the back foot.

As for blaming his MH, that's just bullshit.

But he was balls-deep in a 21-year-old. Without a condom, too. Those are the facts. It's not Andrew Tate-ish to state facts.

He sounds like a serial lier.

He sounds utterly grubby. They both do. With OW saying 'where do I fit in?' I'd be wondering what exactly he'd told her.

Because 9/10 this isn’t what happens..

Sounds like he promised the world to get her to sleep with him, and the silly woman (girl!?) believed him. Hopefully this teaches her a lesson too, that married men will say literally anything you want to hear to get into your pants.

Sounds like she definitely was under the impression that he was going to leave for her and they would be in a relationship.

Because people in happy marriages don’t sleep with other people.