Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Husband left after affair but want him back

958 replies

solost · 14/11/2010 21:57

Hi, am new to mumsnet have never done anything like this before so here goes. In mid August I found out my husband of 17 years has been having an affair for 5 months with a 'work colleague'. He left me and our 3DC's within a couple of days. Since then he has visited us often, is attentive and caring towards me, and when he is working away - which is quite often, calls or texts frequently to talk to the dcs but inevitably ends up speaking for hours to me. He maintains he loves me as much as he did before the affair, that I did nothing wrong, that he was not disastisfied with any aspect of our marriage - I was the perfect wife? But the feelings he has for the OW are 'deeper'. Is there any hope for us? I feel that he is living a fantasy and that one day he will realise this and what he has thrown away - am I deluding myself? Please help, I miss him so much, have been with him since I was 15 and really don't want to give up on everything we had.

OP posts:
gettingeasier · 02/12/2010 23:19

Aids confidence and gets you through some hard times

Yes and what will aid Solosts confidence is knowing she did the right thing in giving out info about her childrens concert and didnt use stuff about her children to make some one upmanship on a clearly revolting ow and a booked hotel room. As I said this is not a game and ultimately she will gain NO pleasure from this and would be better served by thinking about the bigger picture and focusing on recovery from her h because all this engaging with the drama is a distraction from whats really important.

AnyFuckerForAMincePie · 02/12/2010 23:20

yes, GE, that too

after the concert Xmas Wink

AnyFuckerForAMincePie · 02/12/2010 23:21

Solost is an intelligent woman. She will make her own mind up, I think.

thumbplumpuddingwitch · 02/12/2010 23:25

but the hotel room isn't booked for the concert, it is booked for a shopping trip! The concert is purely coincidental, so they only need a couple of hours notice that it has been cancelled. The cancellation of the concert should have no bearing on their shopping trip, now should it?

I agree - this is a gift-wrapped opportunity to hoist the BB by her own petard (assuming that the shopping trip was a put-up job) - Solost is merely demonstrating that she believes in it.

msboogie · 02/12/2010 23:30

I really don't see why solost should have any concern for the convenience of a woman who has made off with her husband and is trying to make off with her children!

and the hotel is booked for a shopping trip, not the concert, anyway.

ScaredOfCows · 02/12/2010 23:32

Solost, the really positive thing is that if their relationship does go belly up and he tries to come back to you, you now appear to be in a much stronger position to consider it fully, from a distance, and to take your time making your decision. That's obvious to anyone following this, and it would be obvious to him too, probably already is. It's only just over 2 weeks since this thread started, but what a long way you have come.

KangarooCaught · 02/12/2010 23:44

Solost, texting about cancelled concert is thoughtful; hardly your responsibility to think about their 'shopping trip' [shrugs shoulders], innocent Xmas Wink

Think I might have suggested, what feels like ages ago, about watching out for an 'accidental' OW meeting with the dcs, and am glad wintry events are conspiring against that, as it should be v much in your own time. Depends on the ages of dcs, but often they are brighter and more aware than we give them credit for, and at Christmas when they might expect to see a lot of their Dad, is his absence going to be thrown in sharp relief? - unless of course he is usually absent with work over Christmas?

Just wanted to add, am loving your inferred busy/having too much fun to respond texts!

TheBeefyDwt · 02/12/2010 23:47

It would be very wrong of solost to attempt to undermine the validity of the shopping trip by harassing him with texts about the concert, as if that's the most important thing on the calendar...oh sorry, I meant The Calendar.

It is time that solost learned that such constant texting has been RUMBLED by BB as a sneaky attempt to push her way in where she's not wanted...that's why they don't read her texts... yes?

It's nice to see that she is finally respecting their boundaries.

Ahahahaha :o

thelittlestkiwi · 02/12/2010 23:58

Solost, it sounds like your H is a bit of a mess. If he asks to come home, is he in a fit state to be round your kids? Would it be better for him to be on his own for a while and sort himself out? You would need to decide if you can forgive him and he would need to prove he is worthy of you Hmm and rebuild some sort of trust. Him moving from her back to you could be hard on you and the kids.

Btw, can I join the fan club?

LittleMissHoHoHoFit · 03/12/2010 00:09
thumbplumpuddingwitch · 03/12/2010 00:47

Sorry, I know this is wildly inappropriate for this thread but just thought it might cheer anyone who needs it up: naked man sliding in snow on teatrayXmas Grin
Sorry again!

PollyAnnaCreep · 03/12/2010 09:44

Absolutely loved it. It made my whole household laugh!!

aim4u2b · 03/12/2010 09:49

Your husband may be "living a fantasy" & you say you "don't want to give up on everything you had with him" the question I want to ask is what do you really, really want? Perhaps you are enjoying the part you are playing in someone else's "game"? In this kind of situation I advise that you work out what your real values are, do you know what your husbands real values in life are? If you do & you agree to accept those values you have a great basis for a relationship, if not, this could be a sign that you are to move in a different direction. I think it's time to find out what is really important to you this is the one & only thing that you can ever truly conrol, so take that time right now to really focus on what matters most to you in life, and don't forget to work out what you really, really want, not what you don't want - there is a huge difference!

WhenwillIfeelnormal · 03/12/2010 11:00

Solost now that the prospect of your H coming back has re-entered the thread, can I suggest you read the thread in its entirety today? You might recall from my early posts that I said that once you had detached and were showing signs of independence, this might happen.

As you know, I think your H is a romantic idiot who couldn't tell the difference between a perfectly normal crush and True Love. This is because he is a pompous prig who takes himself Far Too Seriously and imagined that if he was tempted by another woman, it must mean that she was his soul-mate and that this was Some Grand Love Affair That Was Bigger than Both of Them. The cliches are astonishing and worthy of utter contempt.

Since you will also have seen me say that affairs happen when the unfaithful party starts under-investing in the relationship and stops giving to it, once a man like this leaves, giving more to him won't ever cause him to come back. This is because it was never about whay you gave, it was all about what he was giving to you. The only thing that works in this situation is giving him nothing, therefore.

He will only want to return when he starts under-investing and giving to his relationship with the OW. At that point, and with you behaving as though you are magnificently detached, he will want you back.

However, what often happens is that the person whom he so casually threw away for a romantic fantasy has changed. I think you've got some way to go, Solost because I sense you still think that he was a great man who was captured by aliens over the past year and that the person you're seeing now isn't him.

Which is why downthread many of us urged you to recall the aspects of his character and behaviour that no doubt you were bargaining away for years. He has always been the man you're seeing now. What you are seeing is just an extreme manifestation of what's always been there.

In the past, you might have tolerated his priggishness, his pomposity, his selfishness, his inability to laugh at himself. His intolerance for human frailty. I bet this is a very judgemental man who could be regularly heard blaming people for their misfortunes and perhaps wouldn't have been out of place as a columnist in the Daily Mail?

I bet that a year or so ago, if he heard about a friend of yours who had buggered off with a younger affair-partner, he would have been excoriating in his blame?

I agree with everyone last night, be prepared for him to want to return, but here is the rub. Do you really want a man like that now? You well know that I believe you can mend a marriage after an affair and my H and I have done so ourselves, but not until we both realised that unless my H changed the behaviours that were always there we didn't stand a chance. I also have a theory which is the worse the behaviour in an affair, the worse the character faults. If someone actually leaves and behaves badly to their children, the more character flaws there are, to overcome.

Hence, go back to what I said downthread. If you do get a plea to return, say no. Insist that he moves somewhere on his own and doesn't get to move back to the family home. If this happens before Christmas, let him spend a miserable one in a bedsit, or with his disapproving parents. Do not let him walk back in. Then take your time and watch his behaviour and his actions.

MissClavel · 03/12/2010 11:37

This thread has moved on since I was last here, but going back a little way, LittleMissHoHoHo, I was 6 and my brother 4 at the time, so yes, a lot younger than you were. I can just imagine if we'd been older, how we would have kept an eye out for our mum like you did. That's very poignant.

Funnily enough the woman in question now wants to be my best friend and keeps trying to invite herself to stay. She changed towards us once she had a. successfully buggered up our relationship with him, and b. had a baby of her own - by that point we were handy teenage babysitters.

Anyway, none of that is in the least bit relevant to you, Solost. As LittleMissH says further up, all you can do is be there for your children so they've got one solid dependable parent. It makes all the difference in the world and you are obviously and instinctively doing a wonderful job. It sounds as though H and BB are very rocky anyway, so perhaps if and when that ends, he will wake up to himself as a father.

I'm really in awe of how strong you are. Pass the pom poms, someone :)

KangarooCaught · 03/12/2010 12:21

Christmas/the New Year brings all kinds of pressures - if H & OW's relationship buggers up it'll probably be then as "romantic idiots" to use WWIFN's words have expectations about how magical it's going to be but the reality of being excluded/on the periphery of family starts to bite. If I remember rightly, my father's relationship with the 'grand passion' went tits up at that point. Of course H might grimly hang on in, but this is often a time of rude awakening.

msboogie · 03/12/2010 14:18

BB will know, on Christmas morning, that he will be thinking of last Christmas and the Christmasses before with his wife and children, and what his children are doing now, unwarapping their presents etc, with him not there. The wrongness of their situation will be a big trumpeting elephant in the room, with her no doubt sat around drinking and moaning with dissatisfaction at not being the centre of things, and coming up with crazy schemes fruitless to consolidate her position while he sits and wonders why he gave up his family life for her.

How romantic!

Of course if he does try to come back, it is the man who left, the idiot man he is now, that will be asking to return, not the man you thought he was before he left - that man never really existed.

abedelia · 03/12/2010 14:41

Adding to wwifn's romantic idiot diagnosis - this definitely applied to the type of affair my H had.

Because, in order to give himself the excuse to go ahead and indulge a reciprocated crush - namely, that this must be the love of his life that outshone what he'd previously thought was the love of his life ie dcs and I - he had to imagine she was actually perfect, despite, with hindsight, MANY signs she was totally barking and had made loads of stuff up to - badly - mirror his interests.

Solost: you may be thinking 'why can't the idiot SEE she is a BB?? There are bright neon signs hovering over her??' But sadly, he has too much invested in the myth at present. He is losing too much and is paying far too high a price for this escapade to bear to admit she's not all he has built her up to be. Once reality starts to intrude, if he's anything like my H he will start to almost have a breakdown when he sees the full reality of what he has created. Be prepared for anything on that score... But don't feel sorry for him. He chose this.

solost · 03/12/2010 17:10

CONCERT UPDATE: Got a breezy text from H about 12:00 today, 'r u ok, whats the weather like over there? Replied 'Don't you know, thought you were Xmas shopping? Xmas concert cancelled btw. Rescheduled next Friday'. Sent it about 1.30pm.

He texted back 'U serious???'

Have just spoken briefly to him after he rang to speak to DC's. They are not even at the hotel yet - proof that the 'shopping trip' was a lie.

Will answer all posts when DC's are in bed. But thanks for your support. X

OP posts:
abedelia · 03/12/2010 17:25

Ha ha. Well done. Bet it wasn't even a nice hotel, just a scabby Alan Partridge job...

ScaredOfCows · 03/12/2010 17:28

Brilliant - pissed on her fireworks!!

Doha · 03/12/2010 17:37

hee hee high five Solost--loving the new you

AnyFuckerForAMincePie · 03/12/2010 18:37
Xmas Smile
LittleMissHoHoHoFit · 03/12/2010 18:46

Looks for update... Ah!!! LOL!

Team Solo 1,000,000 v BB 0

.. because she is SO awesome

..Just because...

Sneaks off to read WWIFN awesome wisdom.

msboogie · 03/12/2010 18:47

Haha! That's a late starting "shopping trip"

Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

This thread is closed and is no longer accepting replies. Click here to start a new thread.

Swipe left for the next trending thread