Help - Why can't he look me in the eye and y do I feel like this???? Long - sorry :-(

[kerbear]

A brief outline...met my husband 12 years ago-we were both married at the time, had an affair, left our partners and moved in together (yes I know it was wrong but you can't help who you fall in love with). He had no kids and I had 1. within a few weeks he had gone back to his wife and I was living with my mum. He then left his wife again and we started to live together. After a few months I found out that he was still seeing and sleeping with his wife. My son and I moved back out to live with my mum. After long discussions and alot of promises, my husband said it was me and my son he wanted and we moved back in together.

Unfortunately there were lots of arguments as I didn't fully trust him and he was also a very heavy drinker. However, a few years later I got pregnant and we had a son and, 18 months after his birth, we got married. all was well, good self employed job, I was a SAHM, then a bad business deal led him into bankruptcy-of which I knew nothing about. I then had another child and when she was 5 months old I found out he had been having an affair which had lasted 1 month. We separated, went to relate n then after a few months I forgave him and got back together. He gave up drinking

All was well until last Feb when I found out he'd been in contact with a female colleague he used to work with on facebook. My world fell apart all over again. Upon looking at his phone bills, he'd been txting her for a week, as well as emailing her and had phoned her 3 or 4 times :-(

He told me that there was nothing in the text messages or mails, just general chat and he thought it would be easier to phone her than text her. He said he realised that after 1 week he was doing wrong and stopped contacting her. His bills shows this was true. However, I couldn't believe it was general chat - he deleted all the evidence and I couldn't see what had been said.

We seperated, sold our house and me and the children moved into rented accommodation. Over the past year of our seperation, we have slept together on a nuumber of occasions. What i didn't know at the time was that he was seeing someone else as well as sleeping with me. I told the OW what he was doing and a few days later he told me that they were over. I beleived him. I hadn't stopped loving my husband even after all he had put me through. When the children were at his for the weekend, he would constantly text and email me, and when we were together in the same room he would always ask for a hug and try to kiss me. Unfortunately, I responded. We ended up in bed together the last time in February this year, and then a week later our son came home and told me he was still seeing the OW. I blew my top at him and ended up writing the OW a letter telling her all that he had done....again. He has remained angry at me and very rarely acknowledges that I exist now - even when it has something to do with the children :(

However, 2 weeks after his OW ended their relationship and after last sleeping with me, he now has a new OW and has already intoduced the kids to her as his "friend". When they told me I blew my top at him as this was not we had agreed for our kids as 3 weeks is too soon to intoduce someone new into their lives. He has been playing happy families with her and her kids and I am so consumed with jealousy that he can give that to someone else and not me and my children.

He has never told me why he kept contacting me and sleeping with me when he was involved with someone else, but he has agreed to talk this over with me this week. He knew that I still loved him and he also new that I hoped one day we would be able to sort things out and get back together. He KNEW all that yet still he went on to lie and hurt me all over again.

The problem is though, I still want him - I still love him and I spend most of my time in tears and finding it a struggle to come to terms what is happeneing. I loved this man with all my heart and all he could do was hurt me, so why do I feel like I wish i wasn't on this earth anymore? He came round this morning to help DC1 out, but when we were talking he couldn't look me in the eye and I don't know why he does that.....why wouldn't he be able to look me in the eye?

I am so confused by it all and am an emotional wreck from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to sleep. Does this feeling ever go away?

I know you probably are reading this and think what a complete fool I have been, but I truly love the man. I married him for life, but his wrong choices made me have to make a choice I NEVER asked to have to make.

Hope this all makes sense and would appreciate your feedback :(

What is there to be confused about? Does it surprise you what sort of man he is?

What is it about him that you find it so difficult to move on? You know he is a liar and a cheat, you know he cant provide, he has been messing with you and your child, and you have gone to have more children with him.

Why are you available to him sexually when he has left you?

What possible positive outcome are you hoping for? Stop behaving like a doormat, and he might stop treating you like one.

You love him, but you dont love yourself. If you did, you would not keep putting yourself through this.

I will be blunt. He doesnt love you. He is using you.

I feel for you, we all make mistakes.

You were both selfish, he's still putting himself 1st. You shouldn't really be that surprised?

You need to re-gain some self respect, only way to do that is to close the door and move on.

He can't look you in the eye because he doesn't respect you. He has treated every woman in this saga like shit.

But you say you are separated and not living together? In which case he is a free agent and the fact that you still have sex with him is your problem.

I do realise that you are upset but now perhaps you have some understanding of how his first wife felt when you were the other woman.

He obviously likes shagging other women and that is his choice. Your choice is to continue having sex with him whilst you are separated and he is seeing other women or to start divorce proceedings and never let him into your house again.

I know which I would choose.

I understand all that you have said and I do appreciate your replies. And I also know that if it was someone I knew that was going through it that I would be saying the same. I was always the believer that if anyone ever cheated on me that that was it - over and done with - but when it actually came to it and I was put in that position I couldn't actually do it. Until the 3rd time. And now I feel like shit most days because I still love the man that has done this to me and I sooooooo want to be able to stop that but I really don't know how. And I know that he will go on to do it to someone else as he hasn't changed at all but I still love him. I know that makes me a very sad person and yes you're right, I don't like myself let alone love myself - it is something that has been carried around by me all my life - I have always been made to feel that there was someone better than me out there - by both my father and my husband it would seem :(

His first wife had a lucky escape, didn't she?

There is no big shock here. He was a cheat and liar from the second he met you and he has not changed one bit.

Have you thought of counselling? Your last post suggests that you had a poor male role model in your dad. Explore this, and you might start to understand why you made the poor choice you did in taking a cheat for a husband... and you will learn how to stop that destructive behaviour from ruining your life.

And - you will learn to see him for what he is, and as a result you will stop hurting because you will be glad this has happened, glad he has shown his colours again and again and that now you, like his first wife, have ESCAPED. You'll be free. You and your children can move forward into a happier, more honest, more settled life.

He's the loser here, and he always will be. You don't have to join him.

Loving someone doesn't mean you have to be their doormat.

Cut off contact with him as much as possible. Have a phone which is just for contact with the kids, if possible and necessary have someone else be an intermediary for contact with the kids. Do not be alone with him, do not let him in your house, do not be friends with him. Having sex with someone like any habit is hard to break, so don't put yourself in a situation where it is possible.
If you can't do this for yourself and yourself respect, then do it to stop giving mixed signals to the kids.

Get a hobby, go out with friends, make a new life for yourself without him.

Good luck!

IMO love and respect are vitally linked. You cannot have one without the other and once one element fades, the other soon follows.

I think the problem here is that you're nowhere near as angry as you should be about the way in which you've been treated. If you were, you would find your respect for this man crucially diminished, which would make the hurt easier to deal with. What you need to ask yourself is why you're not feeling that anger. It could be guilt because your relationship started as the product of an affair and therefore you feel you can't judge him. It could be because you've been conditioned from your childhood to accept that this is just the way men behave. It could be because you have low self-esteem and believe subconsciously that you're not worth being faithful to. Whatever, the reason (and there may be more than one), I think you need to stop looking for explanations from your H about his behaviour and start concentrating on yourself.

The thing is, your H may not even be able to explain his behaviour. He may not possess the self-awareness to understand why he behaves the way he does, and whatever explanation he comes up with is likely to blame you in some way because that's generally what unfaithful men do when caught out. If you break something on purpose or on accident, it doesn't alter the fact that it's broken. Why your H did what he did is unimportant. The point is he did it. And he did in full possession of the knowledge that you would be hurt and upset because that's exactly what you were when he did it before. The reason he doesn't want to look you in the eye is because you is not guilt; it's because you are an uncomfortable reminder that he doesn't live up to the perfect image he has of himself. He wants you to permit or forgive, so that he can go back to his world view where he is a fine, upstanding guy who just happens to like sex with other people.

It's time to cut all contact with him down to the minium required to sort out the practicalities and arrange contact. Once he is out of your headspace, you will start seeing his disrespectful behaviour for what it is. Hopefully anger will soon follow and give you the drive you need to move past this and build a new life for yourself. While he's planting doubt, guilt and pain in your head though, you will find it an awful lot harder.

It's a cliche, but time is a healer, and what you need now is time away from this fuckwit to nurse your wounds, gather your strength and fight back by building a new life for yourself that isn't dependent on a serial cheater. The best revenge is a life well-lived.

Hope you feel better soon.

Yes I am reading it and thinking what a fool you've been.

As for your glib 'you can't help who you fall in love with' - how dismissive of the partners you both cast aside to get together.

Unfortunatley your 'd'h 'couldn't help falling in love' with pretty much everyone with a vagina that has ever shown him any interest.

If I sound angry it's because one of my closest friend's husband's told her he was in love with someone else this week and she is the throes of a full on nervous breakdown.

That said I hope you can find the strength to put him behind you and have a happy life with your dc without him. And I do wish you good luck with that.

Please seek some counselling as you need support to break away from this destructive relationship. For your children's sake you need to see the reality of this relationship. I suspect that somewhere in your past you have been made to feel that you don't deserved to be loved and respected.

Your feelings of love for him are unlikely to be true love (no one can really love someone who acts like he he does) but a high level of dependency on him.

You need to know that you are not dependant on him, you will survive and maybe even thrive without him through counselling. He can't look you in the eye because he knows he is treating you badly and he knows he should not take advantage of you but you make it really easy for him to treat you as a doormat.

It isn't love, you are hurting yourself through this relationship

I tried counselling and had a number of sessions but it only put more questions in my head :(.

"You can't help who you fall in love with" Well, not sure about that - seems to be a reason wheeled out by lots of people to excuse bad behaviour - but you certainly can help not sleeping with someone else's husband whilst cheating on your own while you were at it.

I mean, did you seriously think you were different? That he wouldn't find someone else to fill the "mistress" vacancy you'd vacated?

I'm afraid you're reaping what you sowed, sorry.

That's the thing with counselling - you're supposed to start questioning why you behave the way you do. I agree with squeaky - you need to work on liking/loving yourself and stop giving this waste of space emotionally incontinent asshat another second of your time. Life goes by very quickly you know - will you lie on your death bed thinking "Damn I'm glad I wasted it on him". No. You won't.

What do you actually want Kerbear? Would you be happy if you went grovelling to him to take you and the children back so he truly knew how pathetic and desperate you were? Let him know he'd have all the control over you, give him a free pass to have as many women on the side as he likes. Right now, that would be the reality of 'being with the man you love.'

He does not love you. He has moved on and will continue moving on with numerous other women.

You need to stop and concentrate on you and your children. Self esteem isn't something you can rely on others to provide for you, you have to work on that yourself. But if you can't move forward for your own sake, then please do for your children. What sort of turmoil have you put them through already for the sake of this big drama? How many times did you uproot your son for this man?

I don't think you love him.
Instead, I think you want him to love you.

I'd say go to counselling, but to start loving yourself.

You also need to put some distance in relation to this man.
No visits at home. Pick up and drop off children and that it. Contact by txt only.

I suspect your love will die because he will stop controlling you.

The lack of eye contact is meant to keep you on your toes and do your best to deserve his eye contact.
You must see him for the manipulator he is.

Do you want some one to tell you what to do ?

ok

Tell this sexually-incontinent dickhead to fuck off once and for all, and mean it this time.

Otherwise, you will get more of the same. Yes, you have been very foolish. Now you can stop. Just stop. No man is worth this.

My take on this: you want someone to tell you that the lack of eye contact signifies that he loves you underneath the fuckwittage.
The truth: you knew from day 1 that he was a cheat. He has continued to treat you disrespectfully. You won't change him. HE is the problem.

You can waste your life focussing on ways to make him see what he has lost or get rid of the cocklodger and start respecting yourself. Get some help to figure out why you have no boundaries. Then you have the opportunity to find a relationship that gives you happiness.

I speak from experience and wish you well.

So let's just get this straight:

you are looking for help and sympathy among people who are the receivers of your choices, which was to actively and knowingly assist a selfish fuckwit wreck their precious family unit and permanently hurt their children?
Sorry, I am not that big.

You 'fell in love and couldn't help it' with someone YOU KNEW was lying, cheating, running away from his problems and betraying.

Why didn't you think 1. he was telling you who he really is, an ungenuine person who uses women as objects and alcohol to avoid himself,
and what is so special about you and your 'love' that he wouldn't do it to you?

You cannot miss the karma bus.

Get in touch with the wife, and give her a HUGE apology for helping inflict so much pain. Sit there and take it whilst she laughs at you and asks you how you like it. She might tell you her life is so much better without him and give you advice on how to move forward. Your children might get to know eachother.

Get back to counselling. Were the more questions it put in your head, things you don't want to think about? The harder counselling is, the more you need to face what it brings up.

Leopards. Spots.