is there 'always' an ow when a husband just leaves. no explanation given and won't discuss it.

[piratecat]

this was my experience some 5+ yrs ago.

I asked and asked him to tell me.

yes we'd been under pressure, new baby etc, work. He'd started to withdraw about 6 months earlier, but I never doubted that underneath we loved one another.

We were so very close, and very good friends.

After being a member of mn all these yrs, it does make me wonder.

oh, 6 weeks later he told me he had met someone new.

A couple of yrs later we had a disagreement about something, and i said, well of course i feel like that, you left me for someone else.

Still he denied it.

wish i knew for sure. as it was the biggest shock of my life :(

I haven't read the whole of the thread but just wanted to say that my view also was that men (in particular men), do seem to generally leave when there is someone else to go to. Someone earlier in the thread said something about the affair being a sympton of a declining relationship and without generalising I suppose to some extent that could be true.

My daughter left her partner of 10 years last year and there was no one else involved. Just fed up with his meanness and selfishness and continually shouting at the kids.

linerunner the clue is in the word "apparently"

a relationship might seem "good" to an outsider, to the couple's children, even to the other person in the relationship, but to the unhappy person it obviously isn't a good relationship.

i do accept that some affairs are like the one you describe linerunner - that would be my reason #2 on my last post. and i am sure in many cases the man then lives to regret his decision if its based on a fleeting crazy moment.

but some are because the man is genuinely unhappy with the relationship he leaves for OW and some are because of opportunity combined with the man just not being able to, or not wanting to stay faithful (in manner of certain premiership footballers that have recently hit headlines )

Thankfully, shared parenting is becoming a new norm, as long as it is considered best for the children. Now, more than any other era I've lived and worked in, if a couple parts it's with the understanding that neither of them has the entitlement to live with their children every day.

In principle I think that's fair and reasonable for the parents, means that childcare is shared more evenly and both partners have the opportunity to be financially independent and not at the mercies of/weighed-down by 'spousal maintenance' (once a financial adjustment has been made to cater for the lost career and earning potential of the former primary carer.) In practice, it can be hard for children shuttling between two residences and needs extraordinary organisation and goodwill on the part of the separated parents, for the children to remain feeling secure and loved in their respective 'home bases'. It also nearly always means both parents making career sacrifices, but it's only fair that this should be the case.

Because of it though, the excuse of 'losing the children' is becoming rather hollow now and might soon might attract the same scepticism as the usual gems: 'I'm only staying for the kids' or 'my wife doesn't understand me.' There's already evidence too of OW suddenly running for the hills when they realise that having their partner's kids for 4 days a week is part of the package....

hatty i am surprised if you have come across that, as, in every case of a couple with DC splitting (myself included) that i have come across, (and believe me, there has been many) the mother "keeps" their DC for the majority of the time.

Yep. IMHO there is always another woman waiting in wings.

The man doesn't always have had to cheat but there'll always be some woman who's stirred something in him.

Yes, it is much more common now.

Unfortunately, not always with the children's best interests at heart - and it is sometimes suggested by the higher-earning spouse not with the motive of spending more time with the children, but to avoid paying child and spousal maintenance....

When it's being arranged with the children's interests at the forefront, it can work very well. The primary carers get a break to pursue their own interests/careers and of course meet new partners and the partner who was formerly the 'bathtime' parent has the opportunity to develop closer relationships with the children. In gender terms, one of the big pluses is that since proportionately more women have been the primary carers and have often been left 'holding the baby' it affords women much more freedom - and men who've been left by their wives for other men, don't have to lose their children too.

sleepy, i think you are right. mostly.

i think the person my ex was confiding in (this isn't the same one he got together with) turned his ego a little, and the rest followed.

He'd pretty much made his mind up our marriage was shit within a few weeks before he left.

The night before he got together with the ow, he'd come round to me for a meal.
I stupidly thought it was a sign we were going to try and talk.
no. he rang me two days later and said 'i am never coming home again'

thats all good hatty. wish it had happened for my dd like that.

my dd is in counselling now, and has, in the past threatened suicide. she's only 9.

i think this is mainly why i haven't let go very well, because of the repercussions to her, that make it 'in my face' as well as in my heart.

Sorry OP, I feel your thread has gone off into lots of tangents and I'm sorry for my part in that.

Are you still in contact with him? Would he tell you the truth now, if you asked do you think?

And if it turned out that something had happened with the OW before he left, how differently might you feel?

Sorry, haven't read all the thread. My STBEX H left in Sept for an OW. But he had told me 3 weeks previously, when I confronted him with our relationship being 'wrong' that there was no OW, he just didn't like living with me and life was just routine and full of responsibilities. If I hadn't found evidence of the OW, he would have left anyway and 'met' her sometime later. He wanted his cake and eat it. He wanted me to feel like I was in the wrong, he wanted to keep the kids' respect and to come out of it smelling of fucking roses.

he won't talk to me anymore no.

i don't think it would make much difference now of course.

Reading hatty's post, Dickhead wanted the children for 50% of the time, completely to avoid maintenence, IMO. My DS2 has SN and no court was going to agree to such disruption in his life, thank goodness. I did 'sacrifice my career' to be the main carer. Perfectly willingly but on the understanding that Dickhead would continue with his career to support us both.

BeattieBow That's awful that your H thinks he doesn't need to tell you. It's one thing not to give long drawn-out explanations to someone you've been seeing for two months, but really after being married or together for a significant amount of time it's appalling that someone thinks it's OK not to give an explanation.

TheSpreadingChestnutTree & Punkatheart Wanting to leave a relationship doesn't mean the other person is awful or the 'worst partner in the world' though. My relationship with my H was terrible and I didn't want to be with him anymore, but it didn't mean I thought he was terrible.

There is a difference between loving someone and this romantic 'cliche' of being in love. You cannot sustain the latter - the intense feelings - over huge swathes of time. That's what I meant by teenage. I blame romantic fiction in part. Love can also take a knocking with life. Love and the bonds that ensue are deeper, especially when there are children involved. So no - I still assert that ' I am not in love with you' is not entirely a valid reason, without more analysis?
Punkatheart, but do you not think that when people say "I'm not in love with you" what they mean is that the mature love and bonds that should be there (after 10/15/whatever years) aren't there? I don't know of any adult who, when saying that, is talking about the intense first flush of falling in love. Everyone knows that doesn't last, no-one expects it to. I didn't actually say "I'm not in love with you" to my H, although I could've done as it would've been true, but if I had actually said it I would've been referring to the kind of love that was appropriate for a married couple after X years, not whining that I didn't feel the same way as I did 3 months into the relationship.

balia Yes, actually that's very true.

Children are terribly damaged by divorce - not always, and I know many many parents work hard at making it less painful. I was.
Proudnscary Actually, all the recent research shows that it's the conflict of acrimonious divorce that harms children rather than the separation itself. Research about how much harm it causes children for parents to stay in an unhappy marriage is quite mixed when it comes to very low conflict situations (that's the only situation that has evidence to support staying together) but knowing the people I know whose parents who did stay together and how that's damaged them (albeit sometimes in more subtle ways) it's not something I would do to my child.

MistyMountainHop Think it's becoming more common, although still not the norm. I have the setup Hattytown describes and so does a male friend of mine.

OP, I hope you're able to make peace with the fact you may never really know what happened and move forward to a fabulous future.

In my experience ElusiveCamel that's not what is meant by "I love you, but I'm not in love with you".

It seems to mean "I care for you as the mother of my children and I wouldn't want any harm to come to you, but I'm in lust/love with someone else - or would like to be...."

Now, often these musings are completely transitory, caused by the fantasy and temporary insanity of an affair, coupled with the lunatic assumption that having lustful feelings for someone else must mean that all romantic feelings have gone for the old partner, in which case blowing the lid off an affair and shining a light on it often puts a stop to this romantic balderdash, the affair ends and the couple can either move on, or not.

My conclusions are that in non-abusive situations, it is always better to know if there is another party involved and the kindest most honest thing, is to tell the truth. It's a shame you're still wondering OP and awful to read about the effects on your daughter . I do think it sounds likely in your case that one or more women were involved, but it sounds as though your ex will never give up the secret while his situation remains the same. I don't know if it will help at all, but as I said earlier, IME these 'secrets' have a habit of coming out sometimes years down the line and I hope for your sake that you will one day find out for sure. If you're still moved to post about it 5 years on, it seems that it still troubles you and unfortunately along with your daughter's sadness, this is the horrible legacy of such cowardice.

I have read the first page and a bit, but have to go to bed so I just wanted to post this and apologise if it has already been covered.

Alot of people (men and women althought men do seem to do it more) feel that their marriage is over but are afraid of actually saying those words. I remember when my first marriage was really on its arse, I waited 6 months before saying anything because the thought of actually ending the marriage was such a huge thing to do.

And then it becomes the norm to live in an unhappy relationship, until another person comes into the equation. It didnt in my case, I bit the bullet and it wasnt anywhere near as bad as I had thought it would be. But sometimes the affair isnt the reason the marriage is over but it is the reason it ends iykwim. The cheater makes "accidentally on purpose" mistakes because they want to be found out and have the decision made for them, or they allow the OW/OM to push them into leaving, again so they didnt have to make the decision.

Hattytown Fair enough. I was just offering an alternative point of view because that's not what I would've meant if I'd said it. If I had said it, it would've meant "I don't love you like a spouse should and this is not a salvageable situation" Actually, a friend got that exact line and they went to counselling for months only to split up and for her later to find out there had been an OW the whole time.