Sorry if I waffle a bit, but I think it is only fair I give you the whole story.
I am not sure that anyone is even able to help me, but I am just so confused at the moment.
I am currently married (our 10th anniversary is next week) and we have been together for 17 years.
We have two children and one on the way.
Where do I start?
At the beginning I suppose.
When me and my husband first got together, everything was brilliant (as things always are to start with) and everyone thought we had the perfect relationship.
When we first got together, I was a smoker and this caused great problems between my husband and me as he is asthmatic and very anti-smoking. Anyway, I did manage to give up, we got engaged and then got married.
We bought our first house, our first child was born and then our second child was born. Things were still brilliant between us.
In 1998 we moved house to a larger property but I was still in contact with my friends who lived in my old road.
In October of that year, I started to go off the rails - even I can admit that. My children were 6 and 18 months at the time and one night when I was out with my old friends I had a cigarette. How? and why? I don't know, I just did. Perhaps it was my little bit of rebellion. I stayed a "social" smoker (only smoking when I was out with this particular group of friends - once very 4 to 6 weeks) until May 1999 when, after a particularly stressful day at work, I had a cigarette in the office. Because this broke the "social" habit and it was now a daily habit, before I knew it I was on 10 a day and back to being a full-time smoker.
Also, around that time I started chatting with one of my work colleagues and before I knew it we were having a full blown affair. Obviously, things weren't right at home, otherwise I wouldn't have embarked on this affair but it was exciting and he paid me such compliments, made me feel wonderful (all a ploy to get me into bed I now know, but at the time it felt good).
The affair carried on for about a year before my husband found out, October 1999. The guy I had an affair with was also married (and still is) and has two children, although his are older than mine.
When my husband found out about the affair (by checking phone bills, etc.) I confessed to some of it, but not all. Just made out this guy was a good friend, and that was all.
Me and my husband went through a pretty sticky time but, at the end of the day, we both decided that what we had was worth working at and that we both wanted to stay together.
My husband had also found out about my smoking again by this time, which didn't help matters.
Me and my husband had real heart-to-hearts and laid our feelings on the table and things seemed to improve.
I was never going to confess to everything but after a year (now it is October 2000) things kept cropping up and I decided that I had to come clean and confess everything. My husband was accusing me still of being a lair, deceitful, etc. etc. I thought that, to give our relationship, a real chance of working and of things improving, I had to come clean so my husband could then decide what he wanted to do once he knew all the facts.
We had some really "horrible" conversations and some of the things that were said were not very nice. I told him that he shouldn't stay just because of the kids, he had to stay with me because he wanted to be with me, not because he didn't want to be on his own, etc. etc.
I told him that I loved him (which I still do) and that the affair was the biggest mistake of my life (I call it my mid-life crisis and I would never go down that same route) but he had to decide if he could, one day, forgive me and let us move onwards and upwards. We went through a very sticky patch but things were starting to get better.
Anyway, my husband has always known that I wanted three children, even after having one of each sex. I just felt I needed three to feel complete.
At the beginning of this year, we decided to start trying for a baby and I fell pregnant the first month - baby due next month.
We were still having sticky patches but we seemed to be working through them with not too much difficulty. If he needed to talk or find out something, I would be as honest as I could, as hard as that was sometimes, what with the questions he would ask.
Anyway, I stopped smoking when I fell pregnant but it seemed that every time I was having a bad time with my husband I would have a cigarette, even though I knew I shouldn't, what with being pregnant and everything.
It now seems things are getting worse, not better. When my husband found out I was still smoking, he would come out things like "just because the baby is not running down your legs, i.e. you are not having a miscarriage, it doesn't mean that everything will be okay". It makes me feel so protective of this baby I am carrying (hypocritical of me I know as I am still smoking).
For the last five weeks, my husband has not been talking to me at all. He will talk to me if he has an "every day" question or something to say, i.e. if he is making a coffee, he will ask if I want one, but he is not communicating with me in the true sense of the word.
He sits in the back room watching telly while I sit in the front room (even if we are both watching the same side).
If I get up and walk into the back room to sit with him, he gets up and walks out.
He is out at least once every weekend, either Friday night or Saturday night, and sometimes both nights. He goes out during the week too - it is as though he would rather go out on his own (I presume he is on his own) than sit in with me. When football was on on Wednesday night a fortnight ago, he had forgotten football was on and had actually bought himself a cinema ticket and he tells me he was going to go on his own. When he remembered football was on, he decided to go to a local pub instead to watch the football (again on his own).
This weekend, just gone, he was out on Friday night at a local club with his work mates (male and female). I know the club shuts at 2 am and he didn't get home until 3:50 am - I know what time it was because, since I am 35 weeks pregnant, I need to keep getting up during the night for a wee!
I just don't know what to do.
Obviously, he is not happy being with me and, to be honest, I am not happy either. For the first time, on Saturday, I cried when I spoke to a friend who was supposed to come and visit. Normally I am such a strong person but I think my hormones must have been playing up and, obviously, I am feeling a bit insecure what with being 35 weeks pregnant and not looking the "fittest" of people and knowing he was out at a club Friday night where the females would look "fitter" than me.
I don't feel as upset now - I think I am slowly coming to terms that I have now got to live with the consequences of that affair (and the smoking) and that, inevitably, we are going to split up. I still love him to bits but what is the point of staying when neither of us are happy.
I know that being single, with two children and a newborn baby is not going to be easy but I cannot see any other option.
I now think things have got so bad they can never mend and we can never have a proper relationship again.
Sorry to be graphic, but we have always had a very active sex life (even while pregnant) but now he hasn't come near me for a fortnight (a long time for both of us!). The last time we did make love (if you can call it that) was when we had a heart to heart on a Saturday night (after he had had yet another night out) and we had this lovely "making up" but, when we woke up on Sunday, he, again, was not talking to me. For the first time ever, I felt used and abused, it was as though he only had this heavy conversation so he could "get his end away" (sorry!) and then the next day, it was as though nothing had changed.
It makes me sad to think and say this, but I don't really think my kids would miss him too much if we decided to split up anyway. He doesn't do anything for/with them - any activity they do, I do with them, whether it is going to the park on their bikes, or taking them for their swimming lessons.
I am not up to anything now that I shouldn't be (apart from the fact that I am pregnant, I don't want to go down that road again) and for the last year or so now, the only time I have ever been out is to bingo with my mum (very sad!) when she picks me up and drops me back home.
He is continuously checking up on me (not that it bothers me that much because there is nothing to find out), but he checks my mobile phone, fax machine, normal phone for incoming and outgoing numbers.
He told me that he thinks he can NEVER trust me again and, without trust, you can't have a relationship.
I know I have brought this all on myself and I am thinking that may be it is only fair that I ask for a trial separation so he can (1) either decide that he does want to be with me, or (2) give him a chance to find happiness elsewhere.
I JUST KNOW THAT WE CANNOT GO ON THE WAY WE ARE.