To confess or not to confess?

[dadinapickle]

I'm a new boy here and have read a number of useful threads, but i can't find one that quite answers my dilemma.
Before you start judging i am trying to do the right thing, and so far have yet had a female perspective.

Right I have fallen in love with OW (plenty here on that, and most of you will call this an affair which i accept )
OW's marriage is over as she was caught texting etc. she has an undiagnosed chronic fatigue like illness, and 2 dc's.
her dh said he will stay with them until she is better.
I told her i wanted to come and live with her and look after her and her dc's.

but i am married and 2 dcs myself. She rightly said, no way, go and sort your own situation out before bringing all of that drama into her life. While we have very strong feelings for each other we have agreed not to communicate with each other to allow me to sort out my stuff.

Due to all of the above i nearly walked out on my dw. I told her i was v unhappy I wanted out etc, but not about ow.

I'm trying to do the right thing and work at my marriage, however much it hurts me to have left ow but here is my issue.

Having agreed to try and work through this not because DW wants me to, which she does but because i know it is the right thing to do. DW wants to fully understand how i got myself into the pickle i'm in, and i'm keen to give it my all.

i also know my dw has vry strong views about such things and i know her view has alway been "by all means fall for someone else but then you're out and don't you dare come back"

So here am i trying to explain why i have got myself to where i am.
the answer is very simple the OW. but if i say that then everything will collapse

or do i try and work it out and bury this secret deep, which also makes coming up with truthful answers very hard for me, plus the guilt etc But this will give us a shot at saving our marriage, being a unit for the dcs etc etc.

Many threads seem to say fess up and talk it through, equally if i do that then i know i'm finishing it, and there will be nothing to work out.

I'm no saint and i've done wrong but i'm trying to do the right thing.

I welcome your wise words and your abuse and probably some in between

Okay, the facts.

The OW's H knows about her affair and is apparently only staying until she recovers from her undiagnosed illness. If true, that decision buys him some time and gives him back some control over events.

On the other hand, she might want him to stay, never wanted to be discovered and despite what she is telling you, never wanted to leave her marriage after all. But she can't say this to you, because that would blow a hole in this soulmate saga you've been co-creating and this neat little vignette about her marriage being over all bar the shouting paints her as a victim, who will one day be left in the lurch.

I very much doubt her husband is going anywhere.

Friends and your own mother know you've been having an affair.

You told your wife you were leaving because you were unhappy, but you only stayed when the OW wouldn't commit to you.

Most women in your wife's situation know full well that the main explanation for a man's departure, his tales of lost love and unhappiness - is an affair. This website alone is full of threads from bewildered women being spun this yarn and their respondents telling them to wise up and uncover the interloper in their marriages.

What you have to tell your wife won't be a surprise, but it will be a shock.

But tell her you must. There is a strong chance that either she will find out anyway by her own means, or that someone will tell her. The H seems as likely a candidate as anyone.

Before you do so though, think very hard about why you had this affair and what it means. You seem to have got yourself locked into some tragic soulmate epic with its atrocious sequel "The Man Who Fell on his Sword and Did The Right Thing".

It will cut no mustard with your wife if you persist with this tragic love story fantasy, so wise up and face some hard facts. Dig deep and ask yourself what propelled you to have an affair - and I mean really, not the justifications you've no doubt been finding and manufacturing for however many months.

Then see yours and the OW's actions a little more clearly. You were both willing to hurt two families. You've had to tell a lot of lies and have both become accomplished in the art of deception. You might not want to admit it, but you've also no doubt been deceiving eachother to an extent and certainly your own selves.

Then think about your true feelings for your wife. When did they start to change for her, beyond the usual complacency? When did you last feel fully active and present in your marriage? When did you last show her an act of cherishment and adoration? When did you last feel that she was the woman with whom you wanted to spend the rest of your life? In summary, think about what you have been doing to fall out of love with your wife - and when. Don't focus on your wife's actions towards you right now - just concentrate on your own sabotage.

Then answer honestly when this really started. Before the OW and the prospect of an affair? After?

When you confess, take full responsibility for what you've done and be honest with your wife about why you want to stay and for her to forgive you. With any luck, you'll have had a dawning reality that your feelings for your wife sailed when the OW's boat came in - and with her now allegedly shipwrecked, they will return, with superhuman effort and commitment on your part and a willingness to forgive on your wife's.

What no woman with any dignity will accept however is that she is second best - and you would respect her even less if she could. Restore her to being the real prize to be fought for and you just might make this work, but you need to see this affair for what it really was first, stop playing the victim role and start being hard on yourself and your motives.

You won't be the first adulterous couple to convince themselves they are romantic heroes and you certainly won't be the last - and people will continue to be incredibly stupid and cruel for the duration of their ill-fated affairs. Doesn't make either of you evil people, but you do need to get real and face the consequences now - and fight for what you truly want.

I've got a feeling that in actuality, it's not eachother, but your spouses.....

You are not entitled to be happy.

And I doubt you will be when this shitpile you have created explodes in your face.

The mother of your children deserves the truth, including the fact that you want to abandon your own children to "take on" the children of another woman.

Your marriage is over. The only honourable thing left to do here is end it.

You're not "working through" anything at the moment. That would take more courage and honesty than you possess. And would be a damn sight harder than sticking around wallowing in your own misery while you torture the woman you once promised to love with your indifference.

Let her go. Once she's over you she'll find another man who will be happy to love her and your children. "Take them on", as it were.

Take a look at this thread if you want to see the different reaction you'd get if you were female [sigh]

fortyplus there is a difference between sleeping with someone twice (I would still not have given the advice on that thread BTW) and being in love with someone else, wanting to live with her and look after her and her children.

dadinapickle you made your decision. Your wife told you that your marriage would be over if you fell in love with someone else. Respect that she has made her feelings plain and you are choosing to cheat her of her right to choose her own life by lying. You chose to do what you did, even though you were forewarned. Stop kidding yourself that you can make the decision now. You already made it. And, if you told your mother and three friends (rather than them finding out) shame on you.

Have you had an affair with this OW in the biblical sense?

I'm intrigued as to how anyone who suffers from chronic fatigue is able to find the energy for extra-marital dalliance, but that's by the by.

The OW has rejected your kind offer to act as her nurse and carer for her dc which leads me to suspect that she was merely dallying with you, possibly to relieve the monotony of her fatigue-restricted life - there's nothing like playing star-crossed lovers to relieve the boredom of an unrewarding life.

In which case, instead of riding to her rescue like a knight on a white charger, you've been taken for a ride.

One day you may laugh about your naivety, but first you have to work out why you looked outside of your marriage for whatever was/is lacking inside it.

How long have you been married, how old are your dc, has the intimacy that you and your dw once shared disappeared somewhere along the line, has it been overwhelmed by everyday demands on your time?

Are you prepared to concede that the idol you have created in the OW may have clay feet? Are you able to see that if you idealise what you had with her (which seems to be based more on fantasy than fact), you will stand no chance of rediscovering the love you once felt for your wife or of falling in love with any other woman, for that matter?

You sound like a classic "rescuer" type . If you get a chance try and read "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass and check out the Beyond Affairs website. Your affair is not reality, do you not realise you will take all your issues, mundane life problems etc with you when you go to this OW. Different person, home etc, same problems. The one thing I said to DH when he ran off with OW was "what are you doing with this woman and her DC, when you should be with your DC?"

You need to get over yourself, see this affair for the little fantasy it is, realise your affair is no different from any other sordid affair, involving lies, deceit, selfishness, arrogance - take a very good look in the mirror. Cut all contact with OW, everything, facebook, email, texts, do not respond to anything she sends, book yourself into counselling.

If you are so in love with OW, start thinking about your DC above all else, I cannot tell you the trauma my DC went through (and the continuing ramifications) because of what my DH did. TBH that has been the hardest thing for me to forgive, the pain he put the kids though.

You may be surprised about your DW's forgiveness, there are many of us on here who thought we would never get over our DH's affair but nothing is black and white when it happens to you....

My DH would also be saying the same as me - he was in love with the feelings of being in love, the way it made him feel, an escape from all our problems (but he chose an affair partner with even more issues ).

This might be useful to you.

Don't stay unless you are willing to recommit to your wife, not just your children I strongly suspect my 'h' did this, but then decided to stay with our family. Unfortunately, he withdrew emotionally (and physically) from me completely. So, while everything looked 'fine' to outsiders, I went through 6 years of slowly dropping self-esteem after continual rejections. Eventually I left him.
Maybe, if he had had the courage to talk about it, we would have been able to fix what was wrong, or at least move forward to a better place. As it was, the lack of honesty meant we never had a chance.

It always amuses me when people complain about a gender imbalance in replies on MUMSnet.

How many thousands of heartbroken women have posted about their cheating spouses here?

How many women have no eyebrows left after a flaming of towering inferno like proportions for admitting to being OW?

Lots.

Such great advice on here. Not entirely sure what fortyplus thinks he\she has been reading.

Your wife has the right to make her own decisions about your marriage and part of being able to do that is knowing the truth. You have done something that she has previously said she draws the line at. She needs to know about it so SHE has the chance to walk away if she wants to. She may very well want to stay and work at your marriage, but on the other hand- maybe she won't want to be with someone who cheated on her and was willing to go off and look after a woman and her children while leaving his behind. I can't imagine that would be easy to get past.

I also think it's cruel that your mother and friends know and she doesn't. Are you going to let your wife carry on seeing her MIL for years and years while she knows that you almost walked away from your wife? Can you imagine how humiliating that would be to find out? I know you may feel that your secret is safe now, but the chances are your wife has realised there has been changes in your behaviour (it's usually pretty obvious) and could work out why, and it could all come tumbling out anyway.

"Due to all of the above i nearly walked out on my dw. I told her i was v unhappy I wanted out etc, but not about ow." I'm afraid in many ways this was a very cruel thing to do. She's likely gone over her behaviour and your marriage over and over again in her mind, felt guilt, fear and wondered what she had done and what hadn't been done enough. But the root of your unhappiness was the affair and the feelings stirred up by it: you should have told her this.

I know this sounds like a rant but it isn't meant to be, it's just advice. I don't know if you're doing this or not but you need to start focusing on your wife as a person with her own thoughts and feelings who deserves to know about how she has been treated. She shouldn't have things hidden from her.

Great post by Charbon

You want to be cowardly and not deal with this now. It will rear it's ugly head in the future.

Deal with it. Get some counselling and do the right thing NOT the easy thing which is what you want to do

If the OW was suddenly free you'd go....... don't kid yourself this is about doing the right thing. It's about doing the selfish thing for you in the situation

The first thing you have to do is decide if you want to stay with your wife. Not settle, not because it easier but because that's where you want to be. Anything less is just delaying the pain.

Your wife deserves better than that.

You should not stay just because the other woman doesn't want you/ stays with her dh.

If you decide to stay with your wife then decide what you are going to say. She may know you too well for you to lie. Regardless of what she may have said before it might not bevthe end. For many couples it isn't.

I have always said that if dh decides he doesn't want me anymore, fine just have the guts to tell me!

Trying to put myself in your wife's position I think that I would want you to leave. Not to run straight to the ow but to have some time by yourself to think about what you really want.

Not saying I'd have you back either but you could be building a decent relationship with children in the mean time. Your own children that is, not the ow's.

thanks everyone, i expected the rough with the smooth and so far i have certainly got it.

I'm not proud of what has happened but it has happened.

I guess what interests me most is that the advice i have recieved face to face, seems to at complete odds with overwhelming view here,

i think the message coming through is 2 fold:

if it is not right for me then i should do the decent thing and leave, equally if i veiw this in the context of everything do i find myself not on proper footings, so forget OW and put all my energies into rebuilding:

BUT
i owe it to DW to tell all to let her make a decision, regardless of what my decision is above.

then i'll just have to let her decide and i'll take whatever bollock kicking, shit in face etc that some of you are keen to perscribe!

many of you have asked what i want to do, and while i have thrown a romantic notion out there, in reality i'm not sure.

thank you for all the links and recommended reading, i'm getting stuck in.

Face to face your mum/friends are thinking of keeping the status quo for you. Papering over the cracks may seem easy but is just a delay tactic.

^This is not rough

I think you have got off lightly. I'd drop you like a stone if you were a friend/acquaintance of mine

Is what you feel for the OW real- or infatuation?
Have you had your head turned and are you living in some fantasy land - where whatever life you thought possible with OW is better than what you have now?

How long did the affair last- and did you go looking for it?

Is there any guarantee it will work out if you and your wife split- is that what you want?

Was it over before you met your OW?

How did you feel about your marriage before the OW came along? Why did you look for her in the first place?

You see, it is possible to love more than one person. Life is long and modern marriages are long compared to when we all died by fifty. It's not unlikely that many of us will be tempted along the way, or fall for someone else, even though we love our primary partner.

The real issue is though do we act on it? Is your marriage well and truly over or are you just infatuated with someone else?

Have you given yourself a really hard slap to make sure you understand what life would be like as a step parent to her children- and the strains of looking after someone with chronic fatigue?

You need to try and imagine that the OW never happened, and does not exist nor can you have any life with her. THEN you will be able to decide what to do about your marriage.

Face to face, most people tell you what you want to hear. DH only had one person who pulled no punches and told him exactly what he didn't want to hear - that he was married with 4 DC period, nothing else mattered, stop the navel gazing, hand wringing etc and get on with it (this person had been married for a long time with 4DCs too).

Don't forget too that you probably have given these RL people the limited truth as you see it (most people who have affairs lie to themselves more than anybody else). My DH painted me as the devil incarnate to other people so they would sympathise with him first so that when he left they wouldn't blame him . Obviously they realised when the OW appeared that it was all bulls**t.

Also if I had found out my MIL knew about it all and I didn't then I really don't think I could have repaired my marriage as that is another betrayal. As it was, she was as disgusted with his behaviour as much as the next person (I had her on the phone in the early hours in tears, apologising and feeling ashamed because he was her son )and his father refused to speak to him for a while.

think very carefully before you decide to rip 2 families apart

and believe me, your children will not take lightly the fact that you have left them to create another ready made family elsewhere

I think Charbon made an excellent post above.

My opinion on this is that your DW deserves someone to love and cherish her above all others, if that's not you then by staying in the marriage you are effectively stopping her from being with someone who will.

You may think that you are "doing the right thing" by sticking around when you don't want to, but you'll resent her for that and she'll feel that resentment, but not understand why it's there, and you'll both be miserable.

Please do not think I am giving you a get out of jail card here to walk away guilt-free, because what you have done is truly horrible, and a terrible betrayal of your wife's love; I am saying do not continue to believe that you are some wonderful H worth fighting for, tell your DW exactly the type of man you are and let her realise (as I'm sure she will given time) that she is worth so much more.

Lastly, and I could be way off the mark here, but your posts made me think that your wife is a very capable woman, strong, sure of herself and independent; are you sure this affair isn't just an expression of your desire to be the strong hero for once?

The OW clearly needs some assistance in her life (be it from you or her existing DH), is your "love" for her actually just a love of feeling needed?

Does is make you feel manly to look after a sick woman, and if so how do you imagine your feelings for the OW will change if she gets better and returns to independence? Will you look for someone else to save then?

If you enjoy feeling needed and believe (rightly or wrongly) that your wife doesn't fulfil this within you, look to your children. I guarantee that they need you, and all the times you've been meeting/texting/calling/thinking about the OW, you could have been engaging with them and making them feel loved and cherished and adored rather than her - why don't you try being their hero?

dad I think that eventually your marriage will end purely because, as far as I can see, you are staying in it for the wrong reasons. You appear to have strayed from your marriage, had an affair and then went back to it when the affair didnt work out for you. Im not judging or flaming you.

I have been on the other side of an affair, ie my first husband cheated on me, it hurt me gratefully but woke us both up. The marriage wasnt working whatsoever, for loads of different reasons.

Im saying this to you as honesty and sometimes going your separate ways is not always the worst thing that can happen. Sometimes staying in something which is ruined is worse. Kind of like putting a band aid over a cut which isnt clean.

My gut feeling is that you will leave at some stage, whether for an ow or just because its no longer viable to be there. Your dw I agree should be told as others in her circle/world know of it and believe me it will be worse coming from someone else. Plus you dc may get wind of it at some stage, not fair on them at all as im sure you will agree.

I once had a very good piece of advice given to me regarding confidentiality "everyones best friend has a best friend". Best way to keep a secret - dont tell anybody!

I hope you are able to see things a bit more clearly today, its certainly a dilemma for you.

Deb

Ps with regard to the flaming, par for the course, alot of women on here have, like myself, been on the receiving end of an affair and are still incredibly hurt by it. Some have been the ow also. Its only words on a screen so if I were you I would take what I need from the advice on here and ignore the haters. I hope you find peace no matter what your decision.

the word should have been "greatly"! honestly I need to have more caffeine in the morning!!

deburca,
thank you for your message, and many others,
This is my first experience of MN and it has been veryu useful, even the haters, as it helps to remind me it is almost impossible to guess how people will react.
I need to go to work now, what ever happens bills need to be paid.

I appreciate everything you have all offered me, even the kick in the nuts!