Separate rooms, separate lives?

[blondie74]

DH has been sleeping in guest bedroom for some months, due he said to the problems I've been having with symptoms of going through the change. This has seen our sex life dwindle to practically nothing, something I have tried to improve but with little success. He has now decided that he wants this arrangement to be permanent.

I really miss the intimacies of sharing a bed (not just the sex) and he is well aware of that. It feels like we have become housemates and are no longer really a married couple. One of my biggest pleasures was having DC join us in bed at the weekends which felt to me what being a family was all about and I had always thought he shared that view but apparently that's not the case. Our DC is still young and of an age where they love being in the big bed and pretending it's a pirate ship or whatever but just doing that with mum isn't quite the same and it saddens me that DC has lost that.

DH has been on ADs for a couple of years and it has changed him. DH is happy just to bumble along like this and doesn't want to split up. Neither of us wants to subject DC to a divorce. Has anyone else been in a similar situation and how do you make it work?

Sorry, I hope my post wasn't I told you so-y. I don't feel like that. I just feel so sorry for you :(

And yes, what are you planning to do? Make sure you take your time so a. you make the right decision for you and b. make him squirm :(

Just read your thread from the beginning

So sorry, love

Exactly what anyfucker said.

So sorry - I have been there with the I am not in love with you speech and it was MN who told me there must be OW, I really didn't think he was having an affair so it came as a shock.

So sorry that he has been cheating Blondie.

Right now, it might feel that it's the end of your world, but one of the reasons I think it's best to find out if an affair is the cause of difficulties is because relationships often recover once all the secrets are out - that is, if you want it to.

It's horrible that you had to find out this way and the OW's actions are despicable and cowardly. Certainly the hallmark of a woman spurned, I would say. I expect you are still in shock after such a terrible revelation and your husband must take the blame for not coming clean before the OW had a chance to do this. How did she get your mobile number?

O jeez, blondie. What a deceitful, lying, twunt he his, and made infinitely worse by despicably trying to put the 'blame' for your lack of sex life on your menopausal symptoms and his ADs.

And how dignified are you!!! Way to go seeing the OW off like that - not what she was expecting, I'm sure.

There's very efinitely no gloating here; I'm just rooting for you all the way. The anger will kick in big time but try to keep an outward cool as that's the best way to keep him on his toes.

I prescribe a trip to the hairdressers and a dramatic wardrobe overhaul for you, plus the adoption of a few outside interests that will get him thinking that the gander is about to douse his goose in well-deserved sauce.

You will deal with this and you will get through it, but whether he will is an entirely different matter - and his outcome is in your hands.

Why are these adulterous cheating fuckers so predicatable? Do they really think women are as thick as they are? Get your pound of flesh from him - and then some, honey.

So very, very sorry, Blondie. What a dreadful experience for you! MNs will look after you and give you good, constructive advice if you need it; helped me enormously and I am extremely grateful. Best wishes.

Continuing the calm and collected despite voicemail from the OWs mate trying to put all the blame on DH and painting the OW as a poor misguided angel. This will be the PMA who spent months bringing her husband and kids round for meals and family days out before shagging my DH in a neighbour's garden apparently. My heart bleeds. not.

At my insistence DH has got appt with GP about his meds as he is all over the shop. I've not mentioned anything about the future so he is somewhat on the backfoot.

Oddly izzy I had a prearranged hairdresser's appointment yesterday and had a radical change.

Charbon - she had my number because we had been organising some activities for both families and she had been trying to get me to go out for the night with her and her mates (Didn't know then that she was already sleeping with DH). I'd turned down the offer as it seemed to revolve around going to nightclubs with some blokes and getting them to pay for everything and then returning home to DH and kids in the early hours totally ratfaced. Should have known then that she wasn't to be trusted.

I'm at the stage where I am looking back at our relationship and doubting all my memories of it. All that lying makes me wonder whether he has ever loved me or whether (as he says) this has only happened over the last year. Has everyone been through this? What conclusions did you come to? He says he has always wanted me but then again he swore categorically only a few weeks ago that he'd never been unfaithful.

Sorry Blondie but first things is if you have had any sex with your H recently l would get yourself an STI check.

Take a step back --you H now must be competly honest with you -he seems not to have been honest for quite some time.
Is she the only OW? what extent have the lies got to.
What is his reaction now and how is he behaving.

You don't have to decide anything right away. Gather your support around you from family and friends.

Oh and l see the OW is married with kids.. does her DH know she was shagging their neighbour..

Doha. The OWs DH has been suspicious of my DH and his DW for sometime but I don't know whether he now knows or not. DH at my insistence is being checked at the GUM clinic and providing me with proof of his status.

He's very apologetic and says he will do anything to preserve our marriage. He admits what a twunt he has been and that he has had his head up his *rse for months. He is worrying about hearing voices in his head and what the GP will say when he goes to discuss his AD medication shortly.

I would make your H contact the OW's H. Arse.

I really feel for you xx

Glad to hear that he is being checked out Blondie make sure you see the written proof of results and remember HIV can take 3 months to sero convert do if tested he needs another test 3/12 after last sex with OW...

Of course he didn't want the marriage to break up, he was in an ideal set up, all his domestic needs/family life met at home and the thrill of sex on tap with this OW, who was also cheating on her H.

I am suspicious of "voices in the head" seems a very convenient excuse for his behaviour... that is not symptoms of depression and his GP will know this.

What are your thoughts just now Blondie? Can you see a way forward from this.
Total transparency needed right now from him.

Had a bit of thinking time (mainly through not sleeping though so thought processes may be muddled). I think it comes down to 3 options:

1. Chuck him out and get divorced. This would devastate DC and I would have to face the humiliation of everyone knowing what a fool I'd been. Not sure either about how I would cope with access visits as DH not the most organised person when it comes to meals and looking after DC generally.
2. End our relationship but remain living under same roof but in separate bedrooms. Effectively we have been doing this all year without coming to blows. Maintains stable environment for DC. Agree rules about DH seeing other women (i.e. not introducing them to DC, not having them in the house, not embarrassing me and keeping me fully up to date with situation)
3. Try and rebuild marriage. I was so happy 2 weeks ago when I thought things were getting back on track and then came the OWs texts. Now I don't trust anything he tells me and I just feel numb. I don't want him right now but I don't know whether that is just due to finding out about his infidelity or whether it is a permanent thing.

I don't want to make a snap decision and later regret it. Equally I'm scared that I might try to let him back in to my life and be humiliated again at a later point although he swears it would never happen again (and the voice in my head reminds me that he swore there wasn't an OW). I'm just so confused. DH has been insistent that he wants to save our marriage but....

What a mess.

Here are a few of my thoughts re your options:

1. People won't think you have been a fool if you chuck him out, but they will if you put up with his philandering.
2. I think you will find coping with this very hard, now that you know what is really happening and also your DC may not find the strained/tense atmosphere easy to live with. Also remember that your DC will model their future relationships on you both.
3. You can only rebuild your marriage if your H is prepared to work his socks off and does everything he can to help repair the damage, and go to counselling etc. There are several affair recovery threads that you can read on here. I would also recommend reading Shirley Glass's Not Just Friends.

My advice is not to make any long term decisions for a few months - and remember with your H, its actions not words that you need to watch out for as proof that he really wants to save your marriage.

Mad I read a quote at our wedding which extolled all the virtues I wholeheartedly believed my DH had and now only a couple of years down the road I'm questioning everything I believed in. I know so many people who've been in the same position (although they did manage to keep their DHs interested for somewhat longer than I have) and have just come to accept that this is just the way men are, and having worked in male dominated environments I have few illusions about men's ability to remember their marriage vows when the opportunity arises. Stupidly I thought my relationship was different from all the rest.

I can't rush a decision that's all I do know.

DH always used to tell me that I had no idea just how much he loved me. Now I know that I have no idea how much he loves me, just that it's less than I thought

Sorry, I'm feeling crap and rambling.

It is depressing how some men do forget their vows.

Are you doing anything like counselling, reading etc to help you through this? Hope you have real life friends and family that you can talk to.

I was reading a book called something like "I love you but I'm not in love with you" whilst we had our brief couple of weeks of togetherness and that was making a lot of sense about how you can lose your way in a relationship and the ideas for getting it back on track were good and I was planning on getting DH to read it once I had finished it. Since getting the texts from the OW I haven't picked it back up although I really should as I think it might make my feelings a bit clearer.

I'm not close enough to my family to discuss it with them, if I told them what was going on it would be very difficult for them to rebuild a relationship with DH if that is what I try to do. I've only got acquaintances where we live, nobody I would be comfortable talking to about all of this. My real friends are dealing with some other issues and we're all focussing on them right now, which is actually helping me cope as it takes me away from dwelling on the crap state of my marriage.

How about option 4, get him to move out while you decide what it is you want to do, and in that time he needs to cut all contact with OW and get himself some councilling.
Remember that if you have worked in a male orientated environment, it may be the kind of place where 'those type' of men flourish, but it doesnt necesarily mean that all men are like that. Even looking at the statistics, they still show that more men and women DONT cheat than do.

I like option 4...

Nettle I'm pretty sure he has ceased contact with the OW - and that it was that lack of contact that made the OW text me in the first place. He gets the results of the STI check this weekend and then sees the GP next week so things will be clearer by this time next week. With him here at least I get to see the effort he is making so I can judge how much he wants our relationship to work. If he wasn't here I wouldn't have that. I don't want to rush a decision and our family finances wouldn't cope with him in a B&B (his only mate locally is the OWs DH so that's a non-starter and family are too far away to enable him to hold onto his job). Above all it would upset DC terribly, who wouldn't understand and then I'd have that to deal with on top of everything else.

I think you need to take your time coming to a decision, but I also think you need to challenge your thinking now that the initial shock has worn off.

This isn't any failing of yours that you 'didn't manage to keep your DH interested' and not all men will be unfaithful. Selfish men who are in the habit of lying to their partners, will though. I think it would be much more productive if you recalled examples of selfishness and self-absorption in your earlier relationship and concluded that this is just another example of it.

As you post more, it's clear that it's not just you whose feelings he has trampled on, to get what he wants. He also betrayed the only male friend he seems to have nearby.

Rather than admit the truth to you about why he had left your bed and wasn't in love with you, he garnered sympathy from you about his depressive illness. You don't say much about what he is actually doing about his own behaviour now, but I predict that he will be wallowing in his own misery to an extent and appearing to be on the verge of a breakdown. If so, this is just more self-absorption and avoidance from dealing with his own core selfishness. It might look to you like genuine sorrow and contrition, but it's not. It's sorrow for the mess that is now his life, not yours or your DCs.

I think you also need to step out of what looks like a protector role. If you haven't told OW's DH what has been happening and you won't tell the people in your life what you're dealing with, you are shielding your husband from the consequences of his actions, which further enables his failure to take responsibility.

Regarding your options, it seems the only one you're realistically willing to pursue is one where you try to forgive. The sham marriage one is not realistic because you still have feelings for him and this would hamper your recovery and ability to make a new life without him. It's also a bad model of a relationship for children.

There is a middle way, where you make some stringent conditions about what change is expected on his part - and as suggested by others, where you carve out your own life independent of him while you watch what he does to save his marriage. This can be a slower process because all the while he's still there and no-one knows what's happened, the shock and motivational properties of loss aren't truly felt. If you decide on this option, you've got to find a way of convincing him that he might still lose you - and mean it.