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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

For those of you who have had affairs and others with WS insight

34 replies

lostinthejungle · 12/03/2011 02:47

Dear mums, I think this will be the first of a few threads for me. I am having a lot of trouble sorting things out in my mind, and I hope you can help.

I have been with my husband for 11 years and we have a 5 year old only son who we are both totally devoted (to put it mildly). Yet I found out last Wednesday that my husband had had an affair over a period of about 5-6 weeks at Christmas while my son and I were back home (we are currently living in South America, where my husband is from). Even though our relationship had been problematic for many years, not least since our son was born, I have been totally devastated by this news. I KNOW that both of us desperately hoped that we were close to a solution for our problems. Now I don't know what to do, honestly.

I want to believe, and honestly harbour only the tiniest doubt, that this man loves me deeply, despite what he did. His pain has been just as great as mine since I found out. He's wandering around weeping as I write. He's doing everything right along the lines of what the wonderful WWIFN has set out elsewhere in this forum. He wants to know what he can do to set things right, but there's only time and comprehension, isn't there?

So here's what I can't comprehend:

  1. How can you deeply love your partner and your child, and then betray them multiple times? I CAN understand a vulnerability that makes you do it once and regret it desperately for ever after. But please, someone, help me to understand how you can not do it the first time because you don't have a condom, then go out another day and buy condoms, and then drive to someone's house and back to screw them once or twice a week over a period of several weeks, without stopping to think about what it could do to your family, how you could lose your child over it and ruin 3 people's lives.

I understand that my husband was very vulnerable because of the state of our relationship, because of some really bad things that were going on in relation to a business he is setting up. I can understand that this woman jumped him, that it was a meaningless affair, involving sex alone. But I still can't understand how, where you have the time and space to think about your actions, you can still so profoundly damage the ones you love. He says it was like a drug, he felt bad but had to go back for more. But seriously, is the drug metaphor really accurate? Please help me to understand because I feel like I can't get past it until I do.

  1. This is small in comparison, but I only found out because crazy bitch called to tell me. She told me (I believe him on this) a bunch of lies designed to maximise my hurt and the damage to him. She was livid because he had ended it a week or two before we returned. And YET, when I confronted him, he acted all shocked and denied everything - until I got her on the phone and he heard her voice.

Okay, he was shocked, and scared of losing us. But apparently she had been threatening to do just what she did, so why such a surprise? Why no game plan? And he tells me he had even considered telling me right after I got back, but just couldn't do it/saw some stupid TV programme that said if it didn't mean anything then don't open the Pandora's Box (welcome to South America). At the beginning I actually told him that it didn't make any difference how I found out, the hurt was the same. But I was wrong. I can't forget her opening line, and I can't forget that he tried to hide what he did, for however brief a period. So the question is, how can you love someone so deeply, regret what you did, and still try to hide it, acting innocent in the face of their extreme pain?

Am I grasping at straws here? I want to believe that there are answers to these questions that mean that my husband is not a cynical bastard and that it can be true that he really loves me and will never do this again. Right now I 99.99% believe those things but am terrified in that 0.01% of being a complete fool.

I think I am going to need so much more help from the many obviously wise women on this forum, but for the time being I would appreciate it a lot if people could tell me about their reactions to these questions, no grudges held. Thanks so much!

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WhenwillIfeelnormal · 13/03/2011 18:25

Lost in the Jungle there's a lot to assimilate in your posts but my first impression is that the gender politics are hugely relevant here, as they are in many affairs.

If we can deal with the affair first, let me tell you what I think. I don't doubt for a moment that the OW pursued a relationship with your H. The notion that women don't pursue affairs with men is archaic and from a feminist perspective, there is no reason why we should expect better behaviour from women than men. I don't disbelieve that she pursued very hard either. What I disagree with however is that your H didn't notice that she was interested and in a short space of time, did nothing to actively encourage her interest.

Even if she physically jumped on him and tried to kiss him, a man who was not interested in having an affair and who was truly shocked by her actions would have recoiled on the spot and told her to get off. I think you also need to see that when he described that phone call with you and the joke you made about not missing him, he is effectively telling you that his next actions were punitive. He decided to buy condoms and sleep with the OW. I doubt that there is any link at all between the two events, but I've heard more versions than I could shake a stick at, of this "you made me do it" story.

I profoundly disagree that men and women have different morals or sex drives, although I regret that some men never grow out of the socialisation to accept sex more or less whenever it is offered. I also profoundly disagree with the adage that men need sex to feel loved and women need love to want sex, but agree that this is how men and women are conditioned in our society, until they grow up and start to challenge those very confining roles.

Thankfully, lots of women don't need to feel loved and adored to enjoy sex and lots of men don't need lots of sex to feel loved and adored, either.

I do think that sex and fidelity are often used as a means of enacting power and control in a relationship, by both genders.

From how you've described your relationship, it seems you have very strong ideas about male and female roles and have a tendency to make very sweeping generalisations about "male and female" traits and skills.

From the way you describe your relationship, it sounds as though your H as a person is a procrastinator with big ideas but a lack of motivation and hard work. You describe him as a great Dad and perhaps he came into his own as a SAHP. The fact that you disliked your job isn't his fault, but like many men who work while their spouse is a SAHP, you wished that you could spend more time with your child. You say you resented that and by inference, blamed your H for that.

When you moved to your current country, it seems that this parenting arrangement was reversed more to what you appeared to want; you as a SAHP and your H working and providing. But yet again, it sounds like his individual traits of being very passive, lazy and de-motivated came to the fore again and no work was forthcoming. This then led to your renewed resentment.

When there is huge simmering resentment in a relationship, it often manifests itself in the sexual relationship. It sounds as though your lack of respect for your H led to you not wanting sex and moreover, to you not wanting any physical affection at all or to offer expressions of love. This was perhaps an area of life you felt you could control and you used it to punish your H for his shortcomings.

This is where it matters not a jot whether you are male and female. If a man was feeling resentful of his partner for any reason, lost respect for her and stopped telling her he loved her, said he found her unattractive and stopped being affectionate and sexual, it would hurt - it would hurt terribly. Your H wasn't feeling hurt because he was a man, but because he was a human being.

Meanwhile, by using your romantic and sexual relationship to punish your H, you ended up punishing yourself, since I can't imagine you wanted a life without affection and good sex?

When this happens, both parties end up being punished when the answer is often to come to the table and speak honestly about their expectations of eachother. Perhaps your H didn't want to be the breadwinner and a businessman? Perhaps he just didn't tell you that? Perhaps you could have brokered a compromise whereby you both worked and shared the parenting? Perhaps he could have stopped being like a rebellious child and you could have stopped being the critical parent?

As for the affair, I think this has got nothing to do with his gender and everything to do with his personality and state of mind prior to his infidelity. I suspect part of his motive for this was punitive, but that will probably take him a long while to admit. The clues are all there though and especially in his reference to the phone call you had.

I completely disbelieve the idea that he wasn't aware of this woman's intentions until she "jumped him" but can see what the pay-off for him of not admitting prior knowledge. If he admitted that, he would also have had to admit that he didn't swerve the temptation and instead chose to feed it (see my earlier post). I also think he would have had sex regardless of your phone call and I think the reason he kept going back for more was because he was, like millions of people before him, caught up and captivated by a sexual and romantic adventure.

If you wouldn't have done the same, it's got nothing to do with you being a woman. It's because of your personal barriers to infidelity and nothing else. Women do not behave better than men and we shouldn't expect ourselves to.

Not all men will be unfaithful and not all men will take up the opportunity of unexpected sex. It's doing an enormous disservice to men to imply that they would.

Better I think to bring this back to the personal and realise that people make these kinds of mistakes. Infidelity is practised by all sorts of men and women. All that separates them is their personal vulnerability to infidelity and opportunity.

The challenge you have is to see this as simply an extension of what was already there in your H. A childish man who resented taking responsibility for much in life, a man who chose an affair to stick his tongue out at you and punish you, a man who lied like a child does when found out for a misdemeanour and a man who I've got no doubt is lying still.

I cannot stress enough to you that it matters not about the state of your relationship, you are not responsible for his infidelity. You were jointly responsible for the problems in your marriage and the pernicious parent-child dynamic that pervaded it, but were not responsible for your H's behaviour.

If he regrets this and most importantly starts telling the truth and owning his own behaviour and responsibility for every action and faces up to the other behaviours that we can see here so obviously and are like a blueprint for future infidelity (lack of responsibility, childishness, passive-aggressive ways of dealing with grievances) then there is hope.

Equally, you need perhaps to reflect on your own views and behaviours and the expectations you seem to have about men, their roles and their "inabilities" and expect more in some areas and less in others.

elliott · 13/03/2011 18:46

Wow wwifn - v insightful post. But I wonder if too little love and respect left now to rebuild - even if both parties can recognize and change their expectations.
The affair I think has served to bring you to a crisis point inthe relationship.

WhenwillIfeelnormal · 13/03/2011 18:56

Thanks elliot.

I think in the wake of an affair, for both parties, it is absolutely essential to focus on what's keeping them there and wanting to build a new relationship. It's often hard for some people to separate out the other ties that bind, such as children, money, houses, living circumstances and even the prospect of failure.

IMO, it is only possible to recover from an affair if one simple truth transcends all the others - that you love eachother deeply and wouldn't want to be without eachother. If that's there, it still might not work if the affair isn't used as a catalyst of change, with full emotional honesty and massive behaviour changes that take time to effect.

But good people do bad things for a time. Infidelity is a very human failing and crisis, not helped by some of the societal and gender politics we've been discussing on this thread.

WhenwillIfeelnormal · 13/03/2011 21:44

Incidentally, what you're aiming for in a romantic relationship is an adult-adult one, not a brother/sister asexual friendship.

lostinthejungle · 15/03/2011 05:00

Dear ladies, sorry, not been able to post recently as feeling like complete crap. Very much appreciate all your feedback, however hard to assimilate. There is a lot to learn. I want to answer many of your posts individually, hopefully tomorrow.

Right now, it's the middle of the night here and a some specific issues are keeping me from sleeping. I'm going to post about them separately and hope you can help me over there also!

Again, thank you.

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lostinthejungle · 29/03/2011 19:32

Hello there, I'm back. I'm sorry that I have been offline for such a long time after you all put in so much time and effort to help. As I mentioned in my last post, I have really not been in a good place and have been very low on energy. I've also been trying to give support to a friend who is in an even worse situation than me (at least it was a bit of a distraction!).

So, it's now 27 days since the phone call, and it's probably fair to say that - despite many ups and downs - I am feeling worse and worse. There is so much to talk about coming from your last set of posts (gender politics for a start, ouch! I think I made my own bed there but hope you will take my word for it when I say I?m not some kind of 1950s throwback). But what I?d really like to ask at this stage of the game is about whether it is normal for things still to be getting worse.

Like I said before, my initial reaction after finding out about the affair was somewhat accepting, though accompanied of course by a lot of grief and rage. But over this period (and helped perhaps in small part to LittleMissHissyFit?s posts here and elsewhere! Tx LMHF), I feel like it has gradually been boiling down to ?my GOD, I supported him for almost 11 years and he STILL goes and does something THAT vulgar?? In other words, I understand how depressed and vulnerable he was feeling, I accept that our marriage was pretty dire, but still ? how can I get over the fact that he would do this to a woman who had supported him for so long? Sorry, just to be clear, what I?m wondering about here is whether it?s still normal after almost a month to feel less and less accepting of what has been done, rather than separate issue of whether I should ultimately get over it or not. In other words, does it not bode well if after a month things are still on a downward slope?

Also, WWIFN, you are so right on this: ?I think in the wake of an affair, for both parties, it is absolutely essential to focus on what's keeping them there and wanting to build a new relationship. It's often hard for some people to separate out the other ties that bind, such as children, money, houses, living circumstances and even the prospect of failure.

IMO, it is only possible to recover from an affair if one simple truth transcends all the others - that you love eachother deeply and wouldn't want to be without eachother.?

My problem is that I don?t know the answer. Probably until about a week or so ago my feeling was ?but I do love him despite everything?, and I still have no doubt that he feels that way, passionately. But with the growing pain and anger, I now feel like I just don?t know. I can?t find that quiet part in me that some posters refer to. I know that I would leave him if it were not for my son right now. Is that conclusive proof that I don?t love him? Because I think that it?s probably possible to leave someone that you still love. I still feel like I want him to be around, that I don?t want to throw him out of the house (not just for my son, but don?t tell him I said that). I feel that my uncertainty over my feelings for him, added to the extreme importance of my son?s emotional health for both of us, is still enough to keep me here to see how things develop (no clear idea of ultimate result). I?m just not sure how well-behaved/constructive I can be given what I feel is a betrayal of massive proportions, which could of course become a major problem.

In anticipation of one of your possible questions, H has hardly slipped up since D-day. Understanding, patient, affectionate in the extreme. I have given him an extraordinarily hard time, including over the details of his story, and he has stuck through it at all times, stuck completely to his story. (I will never know for sure, but I really don?t think he is lying.) Occasionally when I am in the midst of a massive rage he will start to fight back and say smtg like ?but our marriage was in complete shit?. Just the briefest reference to that will do my head in because I am more certain than ever that what he did was completely unjustified. But I?m not sure that I wouldn?t blurt out the same thing if I was in his shoes (which of course I never would be, but anyway).

Very much looking forward to hearing back from you all again, thanks so much for your time and patience.

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lostinthejungle · 29/03/2011 19:34

ps. meeting with counsellor for first time tomorrow. Still not sure whether it will be just me or both of us - any advice on that? I was reading that it was important for both in couple to be comfortable with the counsellor, even if it's just for individual counselling initially.

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amicable · 31/03/2011 21:22

Hi lostinthejungle

I don't think that a month is any time at all really, even though I know it feels like a lifetime. Given that you are about to meet the counsellor, I would try and be a bit patient and just think 'what will be will be'.

Ha! If only I could take my own advice! But I am 3 months in now, and as time goes on I'm starting to realise that whatever the outcome we are in for the long haul, that all paths are long and painful and will not necessarily have any sense of resolution. I think that feeling of resolution/closure or whatever is something that you can't decide to get, you just have to wait things out.

Sorry you are in this place, it is awful. I am finding things so much easier to deal with now that H no longer lives here. Even though separating actually has NOT given me a sense of emotional separation, at least I am physically with him less, and so only obsess about our problems 80% of the day instead of 100%!

Just noticed the date of your last post, how did the counsellor go?

lostinthejungle · 01/04/2011 18:10

Dear amicable, (I think I just reported your post by mistake, sorry!) thanks so much for following up on my last post here. At this point I am really struggling to be patient - not in the sense that I would otherwise be straight out of the door, but rather in that I am still very very volatile, suffering a lot. Ideally I would put all that on hold I think while the counselling is going on, because it's totally unproductive, but I just can't do it.

Counselling went well to the extent that we both went and liked the woman concerned (I had a lot of doubts as to whether we would find someone appropriate here in South America). But I started a thread yesterday about the significance of the kind of affair that occurs because at the beginning she seemed to devalue the importance of a purely physical affair and it began to niggle at me. Something I will have to thrash out in detail with her next week - the cultural issue may just be one I can't overcome here, and if so I will have to drop counselling.

Amicable, I'm sorry I can't remember the details of your situation - are you aand H definitively separated, or you just needed space? I do envy you. I would love to be able to throw my husband out to see if the dust in my mind clears. I have actually tried a few times half-heartedly. But I am in a foreign country with no support, he has no income yet and I am not at all in the mood to pay for accomodation for him. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and do it, though. Do you have kids? If so, how old? How have they handled the separation? Obviously, the welfare of my 5 year old is paramount in both our minds.

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