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.

Do you work?

Yes, I work and have quite a well-paid job so I would be able to afford a smaller house for me and the children just not the one we are in at the moment. It's not a luxury mansion just a nice house in a nice village where I love living and have some great neighbours and wouldn't want to move and have to start putting down roots somewhere else on top of all this. Don't know how it all works with dp paying maintenance - like I said this is all a total shock so not something I have really thought about previously.

Does imagining a future without your DH have any appeal for you at all? Like, can you imagine it would be better in any way, from what you have currently?

Apart from not having to worry about our relationship I can't see any appeal. The children will be devastated, I will have lost someone I thought was with me for life and was my best friend, I will have lost my home and my local friends in the village as I won't be able to afford to stay in the same area, I will have to take on all the housework and childcare/taxi service, I will not have anyone to look after the children if I want to go out, I will be very lonely, my relationship with the in laws will become difficult. Can't really think of any positives here.

I am so sorry this is happening to you

You really need to talk to him and take it from there. Can you get a babysitter and go out for dinner and talk it over? It is better to do this away from the house as you are less likely to argue in public.

Thanks MM.

I am hoping he is getting in touch with a counsellor today, he said he would but I have not heard anything from him. I would like to talk in front of a counsellor next time but don't know if it will be possible to keep a lid on it at home until the appointment. I just want all this not to have happened, not a very mature attitude I know but I don't want to deal with any of this at all. I never thought it would all come to this.

So, house, kids and practicalities aside, how do you feel towards DH?

At the moment my feelings towards him are very confused.

Generally, I really like him, want to spend time with him, think he is funny and good company, get frustrated about him not pulling his weight around the house and the sex life issue (see previous post about his health issues), feel proud of him for sticking with his weight loss and exercise, but all this has got bogged down in the daily domesticity/childcare so I am not sure how much of it shows through.

It sounds like you really like him. You speak very positively about him, which is not usually the case in this situations.

What do you think he would say about you, if asked?

I do really like him, I think he is a great bloke.

If you had asked me before today, I would have thought he liked me too, liked my sense of humour, thought I was a good mother, valued my support, got on well with me, thinks I am honest and straightforward, valued our shared past and experiences, thought I was a bit sarcastic and get on at him too much for doing jobs and playing on his phone. Today, I'd still go with the good mother bit but the rest of it I don't know.

You need to ask him. I remember my DH absolutely blowing up at me once because I always speak for him when he is quite capable of speaking for himself. I had no idea I did this. Apparently, it had been driving him mad for years but he'd never said anything. He said by doing this, I was treating him like a child (I am a few years older than him). After that, I stopped doing it.

Communication is the key. And men are generally crap at this. So, ask him. Ask him everything that is getting him down about your relationship and take it from there. I would say to him that you appreciate that this may be the end of the line, but you would at least like to explore what is going 'wrong' in the relationship first.

Best way to get a phone off someone is to turn the ringer off on your phone and stash it somewhere in your bedroom. Then tell your H you have lost your phone, can you borrow his quickly to ring it? Ring your phone, listen carefully for the non-existant ring tone then say "I don't think it's in here, I'll go and check in the bedroom" and off you go, phone in hand. If he tries to follow you, ask him to go into the kitchen and see if you can hear it there while you check the bedroom. If you need some more time with it, nip into the loo upstairs first once you've "found" your phone. All totally innocent actions and if he freaks he has something to hide, and you can call him on it.

I'm not hyper-manipulative, I just lose my phone at least twice a day so am constantly chasing around the house with someone elses phone listening for it!

That's a good idea, Clytaemnestra. Ask him to ring your phone for you, take the phone, then run away and lock yourself in the bathroom. At least that way you are not being sneaky!

I would give yourself more time to process the emotions you are going through at the moment. Even if he has got something going on with someone else (and there is no reason to suppose it is necessarily a full-blown affair, for instance could be a crush or close friendship/cyber flirting for instance) it sounds as though you will need longer to process what he has just said to you.

Maybe take some control now. He has said some quite unkind things to you so I would take a step back and maybe assert a little independence - change sleeping arrangements for instance. This could give you some breathing space and, in time, you might have a clearer picture of what is going on and then be able to respond in a more considered way.

Just my thoughts. Even if you were to discover any kind of infidelity, you would still have to sort out all the things you have already mentioned - they will not automatically disappear in a puff of smoke.

I do think men can be so hurtful sometimes, I would prefer to be told a white lie than the brutally honest truth, but that is just me.

Op I don't like the sound of him being surgically attached to his phone. That rings big alarm bells, plus the recent dramatic weight loss. They both have indicated affairs in the past. I think you really need to get a hold of his phone, the above suggestion is good.

I know you can't see any positives to a future without him yet, but that's because I don't think you are in full possesion of the facts, and who your dh may have become.

Even if it's not an affair, do you think the children living with a dad who has such little love and respect for their mum is good?

Not every bad behaviour can be excused by depression.

Some people just get so caught up in the mundane, rigmarole of life. wake up, go to work, come back eat dinner, have a shower then go to bed. That they loose sight of what's important! They think that they are missing out on something, they think there must be more to life than this but they don't see what they have already and they take everything for granted!

Sometime apart maybe the best thing. When your at home with the children and he is alone in bed, he'll soon realize what he's lost.

Maybe let him move out and try taking the relationship back to the dating stage? How often do you guys go out now? When your dating everything always seems so much more exciting he's just probably bored as you probably are too.

I wouldn't snoop on him, no stable relationship has ever been built on miss trust and deviance. (crazy women) even if he is having an affair he has nothing to gain lying to you as it's he who wishes to end the relationship and if he isn't, and he catches you snooping then he can't trust you and that would be the end of the relationship anyway.

I think you need to sit down, be calm and rational, talk to him, let everything be said without bursting into tears or being over defensive and emotional and at the end, tell him that if he needs to move out then he can. (you can't stop him anyway, but at least you got it in first) just saying that he can go, may shock him enough to have second thoughts. But you remind him, that if he goes he has an obligation to his children! He just doesn't get off Scot free, he has to maintain them and help with the upkeep of the house. It's only fair, if you are going to do all the parenting then he contributes financially. (so he may not be able to afford to move out in the end)

17 years is a lot to walk out on, I think he just needs to be reminded of what went on in those 17 years. And you tell him that he is the one who is going to tell the children! See if he can look them in the eye and tell them.

Good luck and take care.

I am sorry to hear this. I don't know why people say such brutal things at times like this, but it seems quite common.

One friend was told by her ex that he had 'never' fancied her. This was quite clearly untrue but she (unsurprisingly) was absolutely devastated. I would try not to set too much store by what he says now, although I know that is easy for me to say.

He may be lashing out to try to justify his behaviour to himself, he may mean it at the time but not generally etc, etc....

Anyway. Speculation is unlkely to help you here.

I think you need to find an environment where you can both talk honestly and calmly; probably only with a counsellor will work now. I have tried that talking in a public place so you don't row idea, and all that happened was that I ended up crying hysterically in a public place, which was really crap. But if you think you could make it work, it doesn't matter where or with who you talk, only that you do.

You both need to sort out whether you do want to split up, whether he needs some time alone to process what he is thinking or if he is adamant that you are going to split you need to get the practicalities and finances sorted out.

You will also need some time to grieve if the relationship really is going to end, so some counselling just for you could be helpful. I found it quite good when I was at my lowest and crying a lot; friends, understandably, are not so good at coping with that.

Thank you one and all for your replies. They have really helped me.

I have bitten the bullet and confided in some friends at work, that has helped too.

Spero and Paternal, thank you in particular for your posts and for understanding where I am with all this.

I'm going to be away from the PC now for a while so won't be on the thread for a bit but I will catch up again as soon as I can. Thanks again.

Dp didn't come back last night until v late when I was in bed, so haven't been able to talk.

I am starting to feel very angry. How can he do this when he knows he will hurt the children so much? Selfish selfish man.

Dropping a bombshell like that on Sunday and then avoiding you last night is cowardly. I really feel for you. Where was he supposed to be last night?

Also, I don't think I gave due thought to the fact that you were in shock yesterday and for that I apologise. I can quite see why you would have needed more than 24 hours to cope with even more shock revelations.

I understand too why the prospect right now of infidelity, seems worse than other causes, such as depression or love diminished by wear and tear. However, there are so many posters on here who will tell you that once it emerged that there was an affair, amidst all the pain and shock, there was a sense of relief too.

Relief that they weren't going mad after all, that they hadn't suddenly become unloveable and unfanciable without noticing it and relief that they were finally able to make some decisions about their lives with all the information to hand.

It is hugely naive to presume that since he appears to want to leave the relationship, there is no reason for him to withhold the truth, because it is commonplace for departing spouses to insist that there is no OW/OM, mainly because they don't want to take the blame for infidelity. People don't get such a hard time from others if they have simply fallen out of love, but they will often come in for a lot of flak if they've been unfaithful.

Advising you to benignly sit back and trust that you are being told the truth is also bad advice for you personally, because I suspect you feel powerless and out of control right now, as well as devastated.

Regardless of what happens now, you will need to make some decisions of your own moving forward. I want you to regard this situation just like any other big decisions we all have to make, in life. You wouldn't make them without having all the information to hand, would you? You would do your research and verify all the information you were being given. Don't treat this any differently.

If this is an affair, it is better that it is out in the open so that you can deal with it. That information will liberate you one way or another and you can make decisions and choices from a sighted position. I can think of no-one who would rather make decisions blindly and I imagine you are no different.

Thinking of you.

Had just written a great long reply which somehow I have deleted!

Thank you Whenwill for your reply and your thoughtfulness.

He has just phoned me and said he is moving out to his mum's. Should I tell his mum what is going on?

I am guilty of dripfeeding info here but this is something I have not told anyone previously. He did have an affair a couple of years ago and (foolishly) I took him back for the sake of keeping the family together and in the light of various promises he made. I am a complete tit.

He has also done other stuff like stealing money from school, trying to hang himself, chatting to dubious escort-type women on line, running off for four days to ostensibly find his birth mother and leaving the children distraught etc.

Why oh why do I still want to carry on with this man? Is is just I am too frightened to be alone? How can I cope by myself?

Ah, I understand now why infidelity would be the deal-breaker. As it should, of course. A second known infidelity should never be forgiven. I expect you have been praying that this wasn't the case, because then you'd have to give up? I understand now why you appeared to be putting your head in the sand, but I guess you can recognise all the familiar signs now can't you?

Yes, you should talk to his Mum. Take control of this situation now too and realise one absolute truth. This has got nothing to do with you.

Also, don't beat yourself up for forgiving the first time around, although if he was subsequently found on sex-chat sites, it doesn't sound as though as a couple, you got to the bottom of his infidelity last time, which also never works and it means it is likely to happen again.

You might be frightened of being alone and sadly, you cannot turn love off like a tap, but you will destroy yourself and your DCs' lives if you stay with someone this selfish.

In this situation incidentally, I would take control and tell him that you know he is involved with someone else and that this has helped you to make a decision too - no more.

From your posts, I can tell that you are a kind, considerate, loving woman who cares deeply for others. I believe that you deserve a man who respects and cares for you and repays your love with kindness.

None of us are perfect all the time and the fact that you gave DP a chance after his first affair, shows that you have a forgiving nature and put others first, but I wonder really what you are getting from this man - no sex, no companionship and a heap of misery.

That you stuck by him after an affair, and through his morbid obesity and inability to have sex speaks volumes for you and not very much for him.

I have given the same advice on another thread. Please go and see a solictor and find out your financial situation, it may not be a bleak as you think.

I know you are probably reeling now, but doing something about your future, taking some control will help, I promise you. And yes, be honest with his Mum, I think the time for keeping up appearances is long over.

Wishing you all the best

i think trying to build a relationship up from this level is probably hopeless and definitely soul destroying.

i can't imagine it was an easy thing for him to say and i can't imagine why he would say it if it were not true - cruel as the reality of it is.