I want to leave my husband for someone else

[thebighouse]

I've been with my husband for 15 years and we have school aged children. Over the last few months I've become really close to someone at work and we are now in love with each other. He's now left his wife as he says he can't bear to be without me. We haven't had a physical relationship but we are obviously in love with each other.

My husband is a good father and a good man. However, we have had issues in our relationship with him not looking after me when I've been ill ? it makes him angry and he ends up not speaking to me. He barely spoke to me all through my pregnancies and when I was really ill after having one of the children. He is supportive at other times, but not when I need him. During one of these times he also got really drunk and sexually assaulted my best friend. He was very remorseful but I'm not sure I've really got over it. We have been to counselling where he promises to change but I just feel that I am tired of his promises and all the 'effort' that is required on his part to just be nice.

I want to leave to be with this other man. Am I being incredibly selfish? DH says I will mess up the children and it will devastate him. Everyone loves DH and I know people will hate me. I feel so incredibly guilty and I don't know what to do. He is a good man and before I met this other man, I'm sure I would have been content to stay with him. But it's brought everything into focus for me. I worry that I won?t be able to live with myself whatever I decide. Can anyone offer any advice? I'm so miserable.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the OP's husband is angry with the children and the OP has already said that the H does most of the childcare, because he doesn't work as many paid hours as the OP.

The OP wants the marriage to end and she has every right to that decision. But that doesn't mean she has the right to move out with the children, just because she's their mother.

In this situation, someone has got to move out, haven't they? Why shouldn't it be the OP, given that the H is the primary carer?

Once the OP is settled in her own separate home, then shared parenting would be the norm, with no need for school-age children being forced to 'choose' who to live with at all (a particularly ghastly decision for children of any age to be forced to make.)

But in the short term, I can't see a fair or logical alternative to the OP moving out.

I just hope that you're going to live on your own for a while OP and don't intend living with the OM.

Hi all, thank you for your posts which I appreciate a lot.

Yes DH is highly paid so works a few hours a week in school time and earns more than I do full-time in a charity - so he has been doing most of the childcare for the last two years (before that I was a SAHM).

I think I tend to agree with Charbon ("in the short term, I can't see a fair or logical alternative to the OP moving out") to be honest, someone has to move out and I think it would be really unfair for me to expect him to. And I would rather they stay in their home with their pets, so it makes sense for me to move out. I don't want to, but I don't want to continue like this either. And it seems the nicest thing to do for them and DH.

Yes he has anger issues but he doesn't often show them in front of the children. He is starting another anger management course next week (his decision).

I keep getting very frustrated at myself for not asking him to leave after the assault on my friend - I threw him out but he came back after a week. I know I haven't really ever got over it. I explained this to him last night - he seems really upset that I am talking so freely about things. I've never been able to do this before because I was scared of him and had to watch what I said. I don't feel that anymore. In some ways I wished he liked me more now I can speak my mind, but he seems really upset and says I am patronising him. But I am just being honest with him about how I feel.

I am going to live on my own for the time being - in the street behind the house probably in a two-bed flat.

Thanks again all for your honest views.

good luck thebighouse

Yes, good luck. Thinking of you.

Good luck OP and glad you're going to live on your own. It's really important that you spend some time separating your feelings about your marriage from those relating to the OM. Sensible for him to do the same too, because like I said upthread, it's a fairly unlikely coincidence that both of your marriages were in equally bad shape before you became eachother's life rafts.

IMO the OM is irrelevant to your decision to leave the family home. When a marriage breaks down and the parties need to live separately, the determining factor should be continuity of care for the children, so I think you're being wise and fair, putting them first in this decision. I hope that you get support for that and not criticism from people who can't seem to get past this idea that children should always live with their mother.

I wish you well.

OP, if you are still there, I apologise for putting you on the spot somewhat wrt to you leaving the children behind in the family home

I did try to do it gently, at least

However, after a discussion on another thread I have had a re-think and see things a little differently

I still hope you are doing things for the right reasons (and not due to misplaced guilt) but I wish you very well x