Could you please give me your opinion on this?

[Llamasarequadrapeds]

6 years ago my DH went away with his volutary group for 2 weeks. When he left DS3 was 5 weeks old. The group is aimed at young people 12-18 and has adults from all walks of life.

Not too many days after he left he started talking about a female adult (I'll call her Jane). He and Jane were both fairly new to the organisation and were both on their first big trip. There were other guys who were also new but it was only Jane that was mentioned.

I was sitting at home with my DS's (older two were 4 & 9)and DH would phone each night raving about the fun he was having and what adventures he and Jane had had each day. This went on for the whole 2 weeks and midway through the 2nd week a huge bunch of flowers arrived for me from him. The first week I was on my own but my mum came for the second. By the time DH came home I had been diagnosed with PND.

Once he came home all I heard about was Jane, she is a mechanic, she is wonderful, Jane said, Jane did. They would text one another and he'd delete the messages. He told me they'd slept together (no sex)in the back of a lorry and neither had wanted to sleep in the tents and on another night they both slept in the toilet block (!) as the tents were wet. The other adult from our area told me she was like a puppy following DH everywhere.

Eventually I asked DH if he realised how all this sounded and he said no. I said it was obvious she had a thing for him and that I thought it may be mutual. He denied this and seemed mortified that he had 'attracted' her. I told him if he didn't put a stop to the texts and phone calls then I would. He agreed and they did seem to stop.

Not long after I intercepted an email from her to him. DH had been supposed to go to another event, this time for a weekend. He didn't go as I was ill and he stayed to look after me and the DS's. Her email said she missed him and that she had photos for him and when could they meet.

I emailed back telling her to back off, that her contacting my DH outside of the organisation was inappropriate and that she hadn't to bother with any photos. There was no reply and I never mentioned it to DH. Whether she has ever told him I don't know.

Since then I have discovered she prays on married men. Moving from one target to the next, if the man gets too involved she backs off.

When DH came home from the 2 weeks and found out about the PND he said "FGS can't I go away for two weeks and not come home to you on happy pills?!" DS was 8 weeks old!!!

Reading this what is your instinct? Do you think anything happened? I know it was 6 years ago and there's not a lot I can do about it now.

I go from doubting him to thinking it would have been impossible. My gut tells me something happened, maybe not full sex, but something. He never mentions Jane now, even when I know she's been to the same event as DH or her name is in paperwork that DH is sent.

Hello Llama, can I ask why you are raising this here 6 years after the event? How is your relationship now?

My instinct would be the same as your instinct - that there was something up.

I also think there is no way in hell my DP would be going anywhere for two weeks if I was at home with a newborn.

does it really matter now whether something happened?

why are you thinking about it now? or has it been festering away all this time?

Sorry for not getting back on sooner, DH came back into the room before I got a chance to reply last night.

I don't dwell on this every day. I don't think it is 'festering' really.

The reason it has come up again is that DS1 is now 15 and is away for the 2 week trip just now and he knows Jane now too. DH isn't on this trip, he has been once (and only for one week)in the last 6 years.

Our relationship is fine, we have our ups and downs but get through the bad times together.

I know I have to let this issue go. It's been 6 years for goodness sake. He's only sees Jane once a year that I know of.

I guess I just wanted the perspective of someone who doesn't know either DH or Jane.

I would say something probably happened between them, but if it did it was nipped in the bud.
How has he been since? Do you think there have been other 'Janes' or has he been the model husband?
That was quite a hurtful comment he made though about your PND, and to go away on his jollies leaving you with a newborn baby is terrible, but as it was 6 years ago now, I think you have to accept its one of those things you will never know for sure and stop dwelling on it.

Ginny you have much the same thoughts as me! The comment really hurt me at the time but we've got passed that and thankfully the PND resolved too.

Other Janes? He had a 'crush' a couple of years ago but thought I didn't know.

It depends what you want from your marriage. There's another thread atm from a poster who seems to have "known" intuitively that there have been affairs in a 28 year marriage and has only just been forced to accept it via concrete evidence.

In your shoes, the things that would bother me would be that unacknowledged truths in a relationship have a terrible effect on intimacy and trust. And evidently, you terminated the relationship with "Jane" and not him - you played the role of enforcer in your marriage, when that should have been his role in that instance. The fidelity was controlled by you and not him, which is the wrong way round.

Likewise, he knows he had a later crush, you know he did too, but this hasn't been acknowledged. It would seem that several fundamental things in the relationship, such as trust and fidelity, are not discussed and acknowledged.

This makes your marriage terribly vulnerable to further infidelity and this is why it matters not that "Jane" happened 6 years ago. She could have been on the scene 20 years ago, but her meaning in life remains much the same, as far as the marriage is concerned. It matters, it matters a great deal, because she is a symbol of infidelity and the threat of it is ever present.

I therefore would approach this from the perspective that you need more shared honesty about your joint attitudes to fidelity, trust and dealing with temptation. An admission of infidelity with Jane wouldn't in itself solve the problem here, although that needs to happen (if true) before you can move on.

What oftens happens in relationships where there is a lack of honesty and truths go unacknowledged is the participants have what I describe as a "veneer" marriage; perfectly functional and reasonably content, but without depth and meaning.

"What oftens happens in relationships where there is a lack of honesty and truths go unacknowledged is the participants have what I describe as a "veneer" marriage; perfectly functional and reasonably content, but without depth and meaning."

I understand exactly what you mean, but in my situation it was more like the swan swimming - everything looks fine on the outside but underneath the surface (ie when nobody is looking) there's a tremendous struggle and effort to appear normal.

I've been in the situation where I've found out that an affair is ongoing (several times, in fact, same husband - makes me appear very dim, doesn't it?) and the thing that always absolutely crushed me was that I didn't know my own history. It was as though there was a veil between me and reality. Quite honestly, I felt like I was going mad at times.

Having said all of that, even though I was right to make my husband leave, now, ten years on, he's remarried and I'm at home with my youngest child about to leave home to go to university. I've been broke for most of those years and have struggled alone with all the typical teenage problems. I have really missed being married, yes, to him, though of course the bad times mean I could never want to go back. But it's so difficult bringing up children alone.

I just don't know what to advise, OP. So much depends on how he is now and whether you think what happened shows character flaws.

I think the way someone behaves during an affair is so often unforgiveable (I don't just mean the sex, but the careless, hurtful remarks). If he's like that when there's no affair, then I'd be off, if I were you. But an affair can make someone literally out of their (normal) mind - there's a thread on this site by a woman who's falling in love - should we blame someone years later for this? At the time you obviously decided it was best to just get on with it - are you finding it impossible to forget it?

Sorry for the rambling - hard to type properly in this little box!

atswimtwolengths I don't under-estimate how difficult it must have been raising a family in reduced circumstances and alone, but what you seemed to have regained in return is your mental health - and never having to feel "crushed" again and as though you were going mad. I agree that affairs induce a kind of temporary insanity, but if your life is one where you have to suffer the effects of that insanity repeatedly, it is surely better to extricate yourself from that kind of torture and start again.

I hope that for you, with your youngest child about to leave home (you must be feeling very sad at the moment and I feel for you) this will actually bring you opportunities. And that you will never have cause to regret anything about the brave decisions you made years ago.

LLAMA, I really dont think this is a good place to get advice on this.
There is a "trust your instincts" line here which I don't happen to think is accurate or helpful. I know my instincts have been very wrong, often!

The point is you will never know whether "something" happened between them, because you were not there. People have even been known to lie that things happened when they did not.

I would be far more conncened about his crass insensitivity to your PND, for which you have face to face evidence, but perhaps he has apologised for this.