WWIFN will you come and talk to me please?

[howdiditcometothis]

OK - I recognise that you probably despise someone like me. There is a back story on here but I won't bore you with the full details except to say I have had an emotional affair. I'm trying hard to get to the other side of it and fix things. I am interested in your view that the problem is with the person who had the affair. I know it isn't my DH and it is me that is the problem. But I don't know how to fix myself. I'm such a fuck up, I don't know where to start. I want to fix things.

I read all these threads for clues. I've never done anything immoral before - people would be so shocked and disgusted by my betrayal.

How do I flush out the problems? How can I make it up to him and make it right?

Just from an outsiders viewpoint, do you think your husband is ever going to give you what you want, I can see this in afew years time, you will be sick of taking respoinsibility for him financially and emotionally. I have friends that moan about their partners lack financial savvy or willingness to push themselves career wise or to take the kid to school and its very draining to listen to, it must be exhausting to be in it!!! Im wondering how long are you going to work at it for? I appreciate he had some kind of breakdown but has he always left you to run the show?

I do think you should go and see a counsellor but I also think you should stop beating your self up over OM although, I suspect, afew more years down the line there will be another OM in your life. Its just a feeling I have.

Kittya, I'm not sure DH will change or suddenly become what I want but he has a lot of good points and I married him.

What you say about another OM is exactly why I want to understand it so I never end up in this situation again.

but my goodness, if your husband is so lethargic about things, is that not going to eventually drive you mad or, away again? I think you are putting far too much blame on yourself here.

Howdi- I know that WWIFN has given you advice but she is not your counsellor- so she is not impartial.

I had a few counselling sessions a while back about my marriage; no matter what my friends had said about my situation, none of their words had the same impact as when the counsellor referred to- in a real life conversation- my "fantasy" (which was a life outside my marriage which I was dreaming about.)

The reason I am saying this is that for all your desire to get yourself out of this nightmare, you are not as they say "owning" the problem, really.

If you were, you would seek RL help and not that of virtual strangers.

I can't explain it really, but it is only once you have made the effort to chose a counsellor, driven etc to the appt and sat and poured out your heart that it becomes "real". At the moment you are still in a fantasy world, inhabited by you, your DH and the OM.

I do think that your reluctance to seek help is a way of avoiding making changes and you ar e in danger of wallowing in all of this and, in a masochistic way, enjoying the drama on one level.

www.bacp.co.uk is the place to look and you can find out what each person specialises in.

Good luck.

I have to take issue with what you've said purplepeony. I think howdi really is taking responsibility for her behaviour here and the consequences which is why she has stopped this becoming sexual.

She is also 'talking' with real people here! WWIFN is offering very compassionate non-judgemental words and is asking her to think about the underlying issues that led her to this place. NOT offering advice. This is what a counsellor would do.

I agree that counselling may help but only in that it may help howdi to do the same as WWIFN is doing.

Howdi like others, I have also said upthread that I think you would find a therapist really helpful in RL - your H too, for that matter.

But actually, a counsellor won't give you advice - or shouldn't, if they are sticking to their code of ethics. They will however ask you lots of questions and ask you to draw your own conclusions. If you can't, they will suggest you think about things that have struck them, in terms of what you have said.

Contrary to what PP says, I haven't offered you a single piece of advice and I have no vested interest either. I just want to help you, because you had the courage to ask and you're clearly in a bad place.

Have another read through this thread then - and let me know if anything leaps out for you. Some things do for me and I can steer you to think of them, but it's always better if you can own this yourself right from the start.

I know that counsellors don't give advice- 4 of my friends are counsellors.

Virtual counselling is still not the same as the real thing.

I think a better question would be "Why NOT counselling?"

The OP seemed to say a while back that she was afraid of it and wouldn't know where to start. Well, Op, just the same as you have here! They don't bite!

Actually a practical thing howdi about counselling- is your reluctance to go anything to do with worry over how much time it will take each week in an already too-busy schedule? I just wondered because I find working with young children tough in terms of having time for anything else- it feels too indulgent as though when you're not working, you should be with your child and when you're not with your child, you should be working. I wonder if a worry over it consuming 2 hours/half a day each week (with travel and recovery time factored in) is putting you off?

I have phone counselling through Relate - sometimes on my own and sometimes with my H. I work from home 1 day a week so do it then but my husband takes his calls in his office and he seems to be able to switch into personal issues well enough despite being in work. The lack of travel time helps and our counsellor is fantastic at digging deep into the underlying reasons for our behaviour or expectations etc. It helps enormously.

You are getting reallly supportive insightful posts here from WWIFN in particular which must be giving you lots of prompts for your own thoughts. Well done howdi.

Also echo the general vibe, wwifn isstarting to counsel you howdi! And you seem to like it! This is what'll happen in a theraputic relationship. You'll be asked lots of questions, given plenty space to answer them and have your replys floated back at you for more thought and questioning. It's not scarey, it's not self indulgent, it's exactly the proccess you've stArted here except for it has more benefits, that folk have talked about already, in real life.

Are you still scared it'll be like the bereavement counselling you had prematurely? Are you worried that asking for help will make you less capable and your life less perfect than you want to be? Do you think needing counselling willmake you as self indulgent as your husband?

You do seem a bit dissociative. Able to take control in practical and work situations, but scared and cut off from your emotions, and wanting to defer them to others. Needing rescued in relationships. Wanting someone else to come along and advise you what to do. Unable to use to power you display in other areas. In your emotional life. Why do you think that is?

I stil think you're doing amazingly well, breaking contact with Om, seeking answers to why you behave like you do. Trying to future proof yourself so you don't feel like the time bomb I said you might be.do keep it up, keep thinking about what you're being asked here, keep considering getting help IRL . You're doing so well.

I'd also like to echo what pp says, that a big big difference is that a counsellor will be impartial and non judgemental. Everyone advising you here does so from their own experience and with their own agenda, regardless of how impartial they are trying to be. It's unavoidable in this situation, we're all here talking to you of our own free will and have chosen to do so for our own reasons. Those reasons are bound to colour our responses to you. But a real counsellor is a proffessional that is doing a job, that comes to you with no baggage colouring their interations with you.

If you had a problem with your physical health, you wouldn't entrust it to an Internet forum would you? (regardless of how amazing it is. Why treat your mental health any different ?

What are your opinions on mental health anyway howdi? Seems to me you've had a very negative experience of it and think of people with mental health problems as selfish and self indulgent. Can't really blame you if that's the message that you're upbringing gave you, that you're boyfriend who killed himself reinforced and that your husband has shown to you in your marriage. Is your opinion that people who can't cope mentally are weak and selfish to those around them? Are you subconsciously labelling yourself as this, because you're finding life hard to cope with, and won't allow yourself to seek help to punish yourself?

Maybe that's enough cod pyschology from me. Please get some real help before I prattle on at you more missus!

Xx love from insomiac me x

Howdi going back to your very first post here:

You say the ptoblem is you.
Maybe it's really a whole lot more simple than you are believing.
As I see it, your DH doesn't tick all the boxes. You met another man who apparantly did. You fell for him and vice versa.

The options you have are:
1.stick at your marriage and accept it is not 100% what you want, but have counselling perhaps to help it work.
2.leave your DH and face being on your own for a while anyway.
3.Leave your DH for the OM.

I think in order to decide you need professional help.

I sat up last night and made a list of counsellors nearby so will try and ring round over lunch tomorrow.

But despite that, I think WWIFN and in fact everybody's observations are giving me food for thought and helping me work through the fog.

A few people have said and I think it's fair that I am avoiding making changes and I think that is true. I am very frightened of disrupting the very fine balance that allows our lives to work on a practical level. We don't have family nearby to help us.

WWIFN - in terms of what jumps out at me from the observations - I don't know. That my marriage is in crisis. That me and DH are not giving what the other person needs. That I miss my daughter and carry the guilt around that she is being cared for by a third party. That I can't be seen to be anything other than doing the right/perfect thing.

Digggers - you make a valid point as always - I have very mixed up feelings about mental health issues. I suppose I think that sometimes you have to sacrifice your own stuff to keep going and be strong for those around you and see through adversity - not a very helpful opinion I suppose.

Proffessional help doesn't mean you've given in, doesn't mean you'll fall apart. It means that the capable woman that you are so proud of being is looking after herself too, aswell as everyone else.

Something it might mean too is that you are given space and time to get to know the you that wants to be looked after, that increasingly is realising that things aren't always perfect, that marriages don't always work, that things are sometimes out with her control. At the moment you're scared of her, call her nasty names like "fuck up" and such. But she's you too. And she's trying really hard to exist, because the capable run the show full time job, perfect mum and perfect wife is breaking down.

You can reconcile the two, but it'll need work. And I don't think you'll truly know where you want to be romantically till you do. Cliche and all, but you can't love others until you love yourself.

Do you think the existance of the OM, especially an older, capable, look after you and kiss you on the head rather than shag you OM, could be a call for help from the part of you that wants to stop running the show and have a husband that looks after her rather than vice versa?

Oh and just to say too, I think wwifn is amazing, amazing good questions and such a warm lovely person. Sorry for butting in on your conversation.

Howdi- I am getting dragged into psychoanalysing you which I don't approve of on MN- however, you do perhaps come over as someone who is a perfectionist and a control freak. You seem to want to keep up appearances and always be in control.

Your life appears to be a very fine balancing act with no room for manoevre when anything comes along which might disrupt that balance- such as this other man.

Rather than you seeing yourself as immovable and strong, compensating for your DH's issues, bear in mind that anything brittle breaks easily. Things that can bend in the wind and adapt to change, survive.

I suppose this begs the question- who are you trying to please and who has set these standards you are trying to live up to? You or your parents?

Rather than seeing change and instability as a threat, maybe you would find it helps to think of it as pa process by which people become stronger and grow. This might mean leaving behind relationships and people who are not right for you, but it's better than being stuck and ending up having a complete breakdown.

Good for you for seeking out some counsellors- they will be able to help you understand yourself and what you need to do next.

yes pp, i'm pyschoanalysing poor howdi too. Sorry, will stop!

That's why it's best to get some proper help howdi dear, we're not qualified and aren't trained to help you like a counsellor/therapist will be.

Just to say, I indentify hugely with the issues you're facing and understand where you are coming from. i do care, not just spouting cod pyschology for the sake of it. x

much love x

Thanks Howdi. I'm glad you've got a list of counsellors, but I must reiterate, please screen them carefully - and don't be afraid to change therapists if the first one is a bad fit. Like any profession, there are good and bad practitioners within it - and IMO, remarkably few counsellors equipped to deal with some of the myths about infidelity.

The balance we must strike here, I think, is to get you to the point whereby you can hit the ground running with the counselling, having done a bit of work on yourself before you get there - and reaching conclusions that will be too entrenched for the therapist to challenge. So what ever conclusions you reach from this thread, don't set them in stone and continue to challenge yourself.

We haven't even gone into your H's story yet and how he might tell it, were he on this thread. We don't yet know what lessons he learned as a child, that have caused him to behave as he does, how much his illness affected him and how he is coping with his fears. That needs to be explored on this thread, but perhaps later.

Okay, some more questions for you based on what you've said:

You agreed that you felt you had no choice other than to return to work and pay the large mortgage and feel terrible guilt and loss that your DD is being cared for by a third party. You have attributed that to your H's inability to "step up", both because of his illness, his lack of self-help and your doubt in his ability to retain his job and level of earnings.

Yet you also say that you drove the house purchase and felt a loss of status - and the very things that had previously defined you - when you were on maternity leave. And it sounds as though your H has retained his job, despite your fears.

Now, rather than having "no choice", what other choices could you have made as a couple, so that you could have stayed at home with your DD more?
Is it possible that you have been blaming your H for your enforced return to work, when in fact some of the decision-making was connected to your reluctance to give up your career and getting the "forever house"?
Would you have recoiled from giving yourself permission to realise your career aspirations, if that meant putting your DD into childcare?
What worries would you have had, telling people that you really didn't want to give up your career and had therefore decided on day-care?
What discussions did you and your DH have about who might be the most appropriate one to downshift and stay at home with your DD? How did it get agreed that this was definitely going to be you? How much do you think you were either singularly or as a couple, influenced by the gender politics of who stays at home, regardless of their earning power and job stability?

What I want you to do is to challenge some of your thinking on this. You might tell us that nothing could be further from the truth and that you really did think this was an enforced choice, but this whole thread is about challenging your thinking and the scripts that might have become locked.

And lest there is any misunderstanding, all I want you to do is to see if you'd have had real difficulty giving yourself permission to go back to such a demanding full-time job, a job you spent 6 years of your life at university to train for - and became the main source of your self-esteem - for full or part-time motherhood.

And if that permission-giving process would have been impossible, why was that?

Now this is a big challenge for you. There are other things you've written about that I also want to ask questions about, but to me, this could be the biggest elephant in the room, so once we deal with it, the rest might follow.

Howdi and WWIFN
Everyone has a choice. To pretend otherwise is self-delusion. What people mean when they say they have no choice is that they don't want the other option.

This is especially so when it comes to money and houses and material goods.

Yes.

Tough questions.

Attempting to answer them.

I probably misdescribed the house - I felt we had to move because we were in a small flat with a baby and felt really claustrophobic. Our plan had always been more kids and I felt that if we didn't move after DD we wouldn't be in a position financially to do it if I fell pregnant again. I described it as a forever house and I do think it's lovely but it was bought with the intention of having a few kids so it is a forever house in the sense it has three good sized bedrooms and a smallish back garden so technically with a few kids we could stay. Don't get me wrong - I love it and it's amazing having a house after a small flat.

But yes, I drove the house purchase. And yes I felt a loss of status.

DH is still in his job on a staged return but also with a pending perforance management process once staged return complete. The fears about his inability stems from him lsing two good jobs previously, one when I was well into my pregnancy with DD. He spent 4 months out of work and started at his job a few weeks before she was born. I was going out of my mind as to what we would do with me getting SMP unenhanced for most of the mat leave. That might clarify why I was worried he wouldn't step up.

When DD was born and I went on mat leave - I naiveley hoped that DH would take to his job and although he had taken a big hit in salary that we would find a way to cope. It became obvious that to move from the flat I would need to return at least PT.

I was refused PT from previous work (not family friendly industry) so decided to leave and find a position that might be slightly better hours which I did. I did not find one PT position to apply for in the whole time I was looking. As it turns out new role v demanding. This in itself makes me very angry - I seemed to have a stark choice of throwing all my training away or taking a non family friendly position.

I suspect that I would have regrets either way but I genuinely didn't feel I had a choice as by the time I went back, DH was off sick long term and we had moved house.

Perhaps PP is right and there is always a choice. It didn't feel that way at the time.

Before DH's latest job problems we had agreed to both try and get 4 day weeks so that we would need childcare for 3 days. I always felt that would be a better balance. was earning a bit more but not lots more when we initially discussed it. Since then though the job market went into meltdown and as we currently stand I earn more than double DH's salary. We could not afford to pay the mortgage on DH's salary alone anymore.

I feel let down by him even though perhaps that isn't fair. I feel like he has made certain choices that have limited mine. BUT - I see where you're going, I'm not sure I could have given up my carer completely or been completely happy as a full time SAHM. I do enjoy being challenged in the workplace.

I have cried in the toilets at work out of sheer frustration when I realise that my peers in the workplace mainly men and a couple of child free single women have no comprehension of what it is like trying to juggle things. And the guys with my exact job description and title are comfortable supporting stay at home wives who look after their children. I feel judged that I am a bad parent.

Howdi, have read your previous thread but felt unable to comment on it at the time.

This thread, however, is really focusing on the real issues and is the one that will offer you the most help and insight. Previously it was all about how you were missing OM, how he made you feel, how you missed him etc. etc. Not the real issue.

This one is, quite rightly, making you address the issues that lead you to the emotional affair in the first place and it will give you the best guidance on how to move on, whichever way that may be.

There is no credance to the fact that people on here are not trained counsellors. What they are offering you is the benefit of their experience and knowledge.

howdi that all makes a lot more sense. What I assumed was that you were working all hours just to live in a 5 bedroom/4 bathroom, 2-acre mansion. A 3 bed house with a small garden is "normal"!

Guessing, I'd say that the real issue is you feel your DH has opted out- not in a premeditated way- of his role as a provider. This puts a huge responsibility on you. If, in addition, you have emotional issues between you, then it's very easy to see why you were attracted to another man.

I think counselling would allow you to explore how much of your love for your DH is tied in with your notion that a man should be an equal/main provider and you feel yours doesn't hit the mark.

Longer term, maybe you both need to decide what you want next; can you re-train for example? Can he re-train and find better work? Has he got control of his mental health issues? Could you downsize to a smaller 2 bed house or another 3 bed in a cheaper area?

These are choices that you can control.

Overall though, it sounds as if you have lost respect for him and you maybe need to be honest over whether you can ever get it back.

Howdi- just one more thought. I'd like to add that no one ever gets it all right!

I only ever worked P/T after my kids were born. Now I am in my 50s, I resent my loss of earning power and how, although we have a good 6-figure salary between us it is nowhere near what it could have been had I not only ever worked P/T. The reason I did so was that I just could not put my DCs into child care. 20 years back there was very little anyway where I live. I take pride in my kids' achievements- they both have excellent degrees from top unis and I was the driving force behind their education, but it doesn't stop me hankering over what we could have had, if I had worked- 2nd home, flash holidays, new car every couple of years etc. Oh, and status for myself in my career!

This is what you 8won't* get in counselling- the counsellor's own experience, but i thought it might help you to know that we all make choices and they are not always 100% what we would do again, with hindsight.

This is such an interesting thread raising so many points that resonate with me as a working mum struggling along trying to be taken seriously while working P/T, raise kids, keep it all together.

My DH and I have also struggled with the juggling act over the years with regards to working/looking after kids. My DD has autism and since relocating to the UK 5 years ago, we have had no family support. I was the main bread-winner for a couple of years, but now he has a very demanding job and I have worked P/T for the past 2 years. I have felt tremendous resentment towards my DH over the years - when I was working F/T he didn't pull his weight at all with the housework, arranging child-care, or taking care of household finances etc. Now I'm in a not very satisfying, stressful P/T job with no prospects, still having to arrange the houshold and kids while his career is progressing.

IME, if you are in a P/T job, you are either not seen as being a "proper" employee and can be given all the rubbish work that others don't want to take on, OR you will be expected to somehow squeeze a full days work into the P/T hours. This latter situation is the one in which I find myself.

I have been for counselling which I found very helpful. With the correct guidance I was able to get things straight in my head, and to clearly see what my options are. As a result of the counselling and discussions with my DH I have decided to stop working for a while. This may not be a solution that is going to work for you. From my experience, resentment is a real marriage killer, and you will need to get this sorted in order to feel that your marriage can be healed. I feel that this time-out will give me some breathing space, time to consider what I really want and for my DH to realise that he can't have it both ways i.e. me contributing financially, and him contributing nothing whatsoever to other aspects of our marriage. I have been working for 20+ years in my field, so a year long sabbatical isn't going to make me unemployable.

On a practical note, if you can afford to, get a cleaning service in a couple of times a month this will help. Maybe also an au pair/reliable babysitter to help out? Anything to lessen the burden you are feeling. I know that awful feeling where you feel as if everything is riding on you and you can't let up for a minute..I ended up depressed and on the point of burning out.