Help huge relationship crisis/end

[OhWesternWind]

I don't know if dp has come to the end with me. We have been together 17 years and have two wonderful children age 8 and 5, who would be absolutely devastated if we split up. Dd was only telling me on Sunday about a boy in her class whose parents are separating and I told her no of course that wouldn't happen to me and daddy.

Anyway, although things haven't been great for a while, I hadn't realised that dp thought they were so bad until late last night when he was mooning about looking fed up and I asked him what was up, and he ended up saying that our relationship was horrible, he doesn't love me or fancy me and we are only together because of the children.

I was absolutely reeling from this and I still feel sick and ill. I hardly slept last night at all.

I don't want to be a single parent, I still love dp and I think that we can work things out if we both want to and really try. But I don't think he wants to, although he has said he will try relate.

I feel so alone and sad and literally ill, I can't see how things are going to work out. I don't want to lose dp and our lovely home and have the children living apart from their dad, it will kill them and me (not literally of course but you know what I mean).

Please help.

Sorry to hear that, it sounds like this has been quite a shock to you.
It sounds like your dp feels the relationship has become stale, and maybe it has been neglected by one or both of you as it is so easy to do when life goes on and time passes. Have you set aside some time for a good talk to discuss how you both feel? If he has agreed to go to relate then there must be some hope inside him.
What you need to focus on now is just both your feelings, not the lovely home and what might happen or how the children might feel if you seperated.
You are not alone as long as you have mn, have you anyone on rl you can confide in?

Oh I am so sorry, I know that horrible sick feeling all too well. Someone with more wisdom than me will be along with good advice. Give Relate a try and look after yourself - you need to eat and get some rest even if you don't sleep.

If you have to cope alone, you will. You won't want to, and you won't think you can, but you will be ok, I promise. And people here will help.

Thank you both so much for your replies. I had written a reply and somehow managed to delete it duh.

I need to hold on to there being a bit of hope I think from relate. I have told dp that I am not happy with our relationship but that I think we can save it and make it really good again if we both want to and both put the effort in. But I don't know if he will.

I haven't talked to anyone in rl as I feel ashamed and embarrassed, such a failure. I don't have a lot of friends as I am very shy and I find it hard to make friends, so I don't really have a support network in rl or anyone to help me out emotionally or if it comes to it practically.

I am so alone.

Op I am so sorry. It sounds like he was very brutal when he told you, not loving or fancying. Do you think there is a possibility of another woman? Can you estimate how long he has seemed like this?

OWW

I would go to Relate on my own; you cannot save a relationship if the other person is not interested. He gave you some very low verbal blows.

He can still be a father to his children; staying with someone else purely for the sake of the children is never a good idea. It teaches the children that the parents relationship was a sham.

Do you think he could have met someone else?.

It was very brutal how he said it. I was in pieces, I don't know why he had to be so hurtful. I asked him why not, what was wrong with me and he did the old nothing, it's not you it's me.

I did ask him if there was anyone else as of course that comes to mind straight away but he said no. I am not sure if I believe him but he is not admitting to anything.

It is difficult to say how long he has been like this as he has suffered from depression in the past (and might be doing now) which makes him cold and distant, so I am not sure what is depression and what is relationship trouble iyswim. Also, until last summer he was very overweight, morbidly obese, which meant that he had problems with having a sex life, which I put up with for his sake, but since then he has lost a lot of weight but the sex life has not come back. I wonder if it is just being out of the habit that makes it feel very awkward?

You are not the failure here, he is. He is acting unfairly and I think there is more to this.

If he was unhappy he should have told you long before now. It sounds like he wants out of this relationship completely now hence me suggesting Relate solely for you.

I can't offer any advice but just wanted to say that you will get through this, one way or another, and you will be ok again. Of course now you are in complete shock and torn up with worry and fear - but do try to remember that a time will come when this is a memory. I hope this doesn't seem insensitive, but it's a way of thinking which has seen me through a few crises over the years. I hope you can find a way through this together.

It sounds like he may also be feeling a failure, but directing his feelings and blame towards you. He may feel like the unattractive one also and his feelings of unhappiness in the relationship are rather more an indication of how he feels about himself.
Either way it doesn't give him the right to make you feel that way. You musn't be too ashamed to talk to others or go to someone for support. This is a lot to deal with alone and, although your friends won't necessarily have the answers, sharing a problem is an important part of how you cope in a more positive way.
As another poster said, you will cope, you will get through this and whatever unfolds it will be for the best.

When you say that things haven't been good between you for a while, can you say what has been happening? What behaviour are you noticing?

If he is having an affair, what could you be doing to find out?

Hi Whenwill - I guess that I mean things have slipped a bit and we have stopped making time for each other. It's become more of a "practical" relationship as I think they can tend to do when you have young children and all the sorting out that a family and a house entail. We have some arguments but it is mainly just "normal" stuff about doing chorse, not end-of-relationship type stuff. I think we are both guilty of not prioritising our relationship enough and letting it get swamped under all the baggage of children and daily life. I suppose this has been goiing on for a long time but it is difficult to pinpoint.

Since dp got his iPhone last year he has been spending a lot of time on that and is very secretive with it. That has caused a lot of arguments as he is always on his phone and would rather do that than talk to me or the children. Sometimes he is texting but he also spends a lot of time looking at music sites and playing online games. Any time he is left alone, even if he is supposed to be doing something like cooking tea, he will be on his phone. He is obsessed with it. I can't look at his phone as he never leaves go of it and also has a password on it - I think this is suspicious but he says it is so the kids at work can't get on it if they find it. Apart from that, no idea how I could find out if anything is/has been going on.

Phone bills?

The clues are mounting up you know. There's no reason why you can't know the password, is there?

Can you invent a reason to borrow his phone for 5 minutes, so that you can disappear off and look at it? If he looks panic stricken at the prospect, it won't be because he can't be parted from it, I assure you.

While he's in the shower? Or asleep?

He even takes it in the bathroom with him!

Bills are in his name only as it is his mobile contract, so I don't see them. Wouldn't know half the numbers for his friends.

I have asked him what is the password and he told me but I suspect he has changed it again since then. He never lets me borrow his phone . . . But I don't know when he would have time to be seeing someone else tbh although I suppose it could be possible at work or something, don't think so though, my gut feeling says no but I could be wrong.

Do the bills come to the house? If so, intercept one and hide it. Or find an old one and register him for online billing.

People often say they are at work when they are not and people always find the time, I'm afraid.

If you've ever seen a thread about signs of cheating, your H is currently ticking several of the top ten signs.

Don't know what to say now. If he was cheating that would have to be the end.

I honestly think that when he says he is at work then he is - he's a teacher and gets home early most nights unless he has a parents' evening or something which I know is right because it is on the school calender. But of course he does go out sometimes, goes shopping etc like everyone does.

Can't bring myself to snoop around, wouldn't work anyway due to the password. Might just ask him straight out again and see what he says.

For him to say what he did means he has detached himself quite considerably from your relationship. If this is out of the blue for you, I really think that there might be someone else on the scene.

I don't know, it is all complicated by it possibly being depression again, typical mid-life crisis stuff I guess, he has had a lot of issues with depression in the past and if it is that it could be what is going on here. I just don't know which is making it worse.

I didn't think he was up to anything before people on here were saying! I did believe him what he said. I can't see any point lying about it tbh.

There have been several threads on here about teachers having affairs - usually with their TAs or a fellow teacher.

You've already asked him straight out and he denied it. Asking again without any further evidence is going to produce the same response, except he will get better at avoiding detection.

You don't need to know the phone password to do online billing. All you need is his contract number.

Given what he said to you, that he doesn't fancy or love you, why would infidelity be the end and that's not? When someone is having an affair, a proportion of those people don't think they still love and fancy their partner, but that erosion of feelings has happened entirely because of the affair. Bringing the affair out into the open sometimes stops it in its tracks and the loss of feelings for the spouse was an illusion all along.

Because I think we can still have a chance of mending things, that maybe his depression is getting caught up in all of this and clouding the issue, that we can if we both try maybe (not definitely) get the spark back and make things work.

If there is someone else, then I am not going to try. That would be the end, I don't think I would be able to forget or forgive.

Okay, but if he is having an affair, I promise you that no amount of trying on your part is going to produce results. You could become a paragon of virtue overnight and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference, except you'll look back later and beat yourself up that you were treating him so nicely when he was deceiving you all along.

I can't empathise with a "head-in-the-sand" approach to infidelity, because I know it just stores up more problems and further infidelity, so I'll leave your thread unless you want some specific advice about that issue.

Don't leave my thread, it's all valuable to get different points of view.

I think I am just in such a muddle it is difficult to think clearly. Already this is too much for me to deal with so the suggestion of an affair is making it even harder, although you might be spot on that that is what is happening. I am having a huge amount of difficulty coming to terms with what happened last night and to be honest I am just in a spin and my thoughts are all over the place.

I am sorry to be blunt, but if he says he doesn't fancy you anymore, then I don't see much hope of things working themselves out.

I don't see why you should lose your lovely home, however.

Do you really think so? I have gone through phases of fancying and not fancying dp, probably as my libido has gone up and down over the years. I know I keep harking on about depression but of course that can have a dramatic effect on the sex drive. Oh well, we will see.

The reason I'm worried about losing the house is that I can't afford the mortgage by myself and I can't afford to buy dp out either. So the only upshot I can see is that we have to sell up and we will only get a crap price in the market at the moment, things are very slow here, and not sure how I will keep up payments on the house and bills and food if we have to wait for it to sell.

Because my sisters ex was a teacher snd kept regular hours she had no idea of what he was up to.The scumbag had been at it for a year with another teacher from the same school.Don't be fooled by that.Realy hope that it's not happening to you.