Has he had a mid life crisis or is he just an idiot?

[Mrsgorgeous]

I am new to this site but have "arrived" here on the suggestion of a friend who said I would find similar stories to mine here.
I have been with my husband for 24 years but we only married in 2004. I thought that we were happy and trusted him completely. We had been through so much together, I had breast cancer in 2002 and he had alcoholism in 1997 and many other traumatic life events. All my family, his family, friends and neighbours considered ours to be a strong solid marriage.
He started to do odd jobs for people at work which wasn't that unusual as he is generally a helpful person.Then his mood changed and he became snappy, not only towards me but towards our children too. We thought that he was ill because he said that he was in pain "down below" and had been to the doctors who had ruled out testicular and prostrate cancer. He even told me that maybe he had ruptured himself hmmm he probably had......
He started to pop out round the workshop or to meet a "friend" who it turned out had been dead for over a year (found that out later). His neck chain broke,and I found a supply of his out of date Viagra in his coat pocket, and so I began to wonder....
He came home one night and said that his friends wife had dropped him off and I jokingly said to my friend that his fancy bit had given him a lift,little did I know that this was the truth. A couple of days later after a bit of a tiff my son asked him if he was seeing someone else. He said no it was me ,I was driving him mad and that I had changed. ( I had just been diagnosed with stress)
Anyway things carried on. He went out on valentines night all dressed up to a recital and came back fairly early so no suspicions then. On 25 th Feb , he said he was doing some private work and would be out for the day. I tried to ring him during the day but he didn't answer. He came home late afternoon and looked awful.thats when I wondered if he had started to drink again. He went upstairs for a lay down but before he left the room he said that he couldn't get over my accusation that he had been seeing someone else and that it had cut him in half. We argued a bit and I told him to p@@s off.....which is all he wanted to hear I suppose. He said he was going out for a decent drink!

Anyway he didn't come back and on the Monday I hacked into his hotmail. There was a message sent on 25 feb saying thank you for spending the whole day with me etc etc and then lots more from this person sexually explicit describing what she was going to do to him and what they had been doing. I felt sick and angry and posted some of the emails on Facebook and forwarded another to the head teacher where she works.
I can't believe what has happened. He is like a stranger. He hasn't rang our daughter to see how she is knowing that she is in bits. Our son isn't coping very well either. People say that he will soon realise what he has lost, but it's too late, I could never have him back. WHY has he done this to his family? I feel emotionally a complete mess

Thank you for that. I do feel better today. I think the thing I am finding it hard to come to terms with is that I didn't see it coming and I was in my own little bubble of happiness whilst he was leading a double life behind my back. I have decided that later on today I am going to make a list of all the pros and cons of our marriage and see if that helps.
I do think that he had wanted to stay, he did say so yesterday,and I do think he wanted this whore on the side. I will never ever learn the truth.
I was going to email her to ask did she realise he was sleeping with me at the same time as he was sleeping with her and telling me that he loved me and "we" were "ok" but have decided not to. Let her have him!

I think there are folk on here who always assume that women need to be lied to about the state of a married man's marriage before they will have an affair. Reality doesn't bear this out however and the assumption is very old-fashioned and somewhat sexist.

In all probability she did know that he was still sleeping with you and had a functioning relationship, but it's likely that he exaggerated his feelings for her and she thought she meant more to him than she does in actuality.

Much depends on how long ago this affair really started and whether what possibly started out as a 'bit of fun' changed for one or both of them. As her marriage is over and her husband's got residence of the children, it sounds like her feelings deepened first. It's possible that she has been putting pressure on your H to leave you and this is why he was so stressed and behaving strangely. You've interpreted that as happening because the relationship had become sexual whereas I'd be more inclined to think it was long after that and was your husband's response to her raising the stakes and making demands.

He won't be honest with you about any of this right now, so it's best to stop talking to him about it and try to detach, having minimal or no contact with him - and definitely her.

he said that he shouldn't have done what he did and will regret it for the rest of his life.....but does he mean it

Yes, he does. Like Hatty said (and my H said) he wasn't looking for a replacement. What he was looking for was a nice fantasy and was 'new'.

Time is on your side. He is facing what he has lost and he is facing the shock of his life falling apart, and he is facing the shock of YOUR pain and rage. That is very shocking for him.

Believe me, he will start blaming... yes, nice fantasy has 'caused' all this.

I agree, switch your mobile off, don't look at it for a week.

So sorry for your pain, the agony will be in your life for at least TWO YEARS if not more.
I am slowly starting to get over it, over 3 years later. Nobody can explain how much this hurts. Affairs are such bad ideas.

If you were tempted to take him back, please may I advise you not to put his name back on the lease etc.

I think you have to protect yourself, in a practical sense, because he's proven that he cannot be trusted. If you took him back and it all went wrong, you might find it harder next time to get him out of the house - he seems very conscious of all the trappings of his old life that he no longer has access to.

Thank you, I am having a much better day thanks to my daughters. ( and all of you of course) Why are they so level headed and so realistic? LOL someone must have taught them well!
What a stupid silly man he is.
We will go on holiday on Weds and come back refreshed and ready to start rebuilding our lives.......please be aware that my views may change again within hours doh

They definately will mrsg One minute you will be all positive and the next all angry or sad.Its normal and you know what?The positives eventually join up and leave no room for anything but pity.
Someone once said to me.You are the one who has done nothing wrong,things will be ok for you.
I cannot tell you how true that is in my case.
The holiday will be a good thing.I took mine to spain for 2 weeks and felt very independent and proud and told anyone who would listen that i was a single parent

I disagree ledkr, that may be in your case. The reality is life is unfair, the one's who have wronged you could work out better for them and it could all work out rubbish for the victim, I know instances of it all working out for the two that had the affair and not for the victim and the other way around. Some people who have affairs fizzel out or implode, some carry on and have very long happy marriages, and spend their lives persecuting the victim as long as there are children and financial obligations that shoukd have been made to the victims (first wife and first children), it is partly why they stay together and are so happy, finding ways years later to unite and harm. The very nature of people who cheat, cheater and ow, is they have little empathy for others and they are happy to harm others.

Anyone who has an affair for any reason in my book, is not the sort of friend I would want.

I dont think he will have an easy time of it. His family are all disgusted with him and he has very few friends. The ones he does have are new friends who have probably set him on the slippery road telling him about their exploits in Thailand and sending him pornagraphic videos.
Deep down, believe it or not, my husband has high moral values and it will be those that will eat away at him. He was brought up to be a practising Catholic and the deep beliefs all that entails I know are still with him.....somewhere.
I think he has been swept up in all this and it has all got out of hand. His own doing,he is to blame.
We shared friends and so much more and no one can believe or understand why he has done this. That's why my title of this thread is about having a mid life crisis.
I don't think he will live happily ever after with her but I may be wrong. And if she was making ultimatums for him to leave me, why isn't he living with her?

There could be lots of reasons for that.

She might be trying to get 50-50 residence or an even greater proportion and doesn't want her children to meet or know about an OM.

She might have lost interest in him now that the affair is no longer secret and she has 'won'.

He doesn't want to live with her full-time, or neither of them does.

One or both of them wants to pretend to everyone that they are 'just friends' now and the affair is over.

Of course there's an outside chance that the affair really is over but they are still eachother's emotional prop when the rest of the world is against them, but I think that's unlikely.

OP if he will eat himself up and everyone knows and is disgusted at him, then he will be the victim of this affair in the end. It is the ones who don't eat them selves up, lie about it and their victim and are surrounded by people who don't believe the victims and ostracise the dc etc that end up being double victims. I hope you have peace soon.

MrsG, mine did the same he moved in with his sister, but within a month he had moved in with OW although he wouldnt admit it to me, he carried on his lies. Try not to second guess the whys and whats going on with him and her it just eats you up and makes you even more low. You will get through this, I never thought I would, but I have. Come on MrsG onwards and upwards.

MrsG a break away sounds perfect , being in a different environment may help you take stock more clearly

Prepare to have your feelings change dramatically from one moment to the next without even understanding why but it does subside in time

Thinking...still thinking.....
This hours thought is....I really hate them both and would like to do as much damage as possible to them for what they have done to my family.
I will never have him back, he has lied so much and I really would like to know if he was the reason her relationship finished last year.
I think that castration with a rusty pair of secateurs might be the answer!
I might just go to sainsburys instead :o

Completely normal thoughts, just don't actually do anything about them - obviously!

He (they) will get what they deserve, I know that doesn't really help you much now though.

This is so frustrating! I've been reading through other posts and it all seems to be the same thing, same scenario different people .
I know I shouldn't have but I re read the email she sent him the day after valentines day declaring her undying love for him. So all his lies about not starting until later are just an insult. You don't fall madly in love with someone after a couple of weeks unless you're 16 do you ? Saying she's going to get a t shirt made saying aap 4 jph 4eva.....is that normal for a 40+ year old?

No but it's normal for an affair.

Affairs are about intense feelgood, excitement, feeling on top of the world.

Affairs are NOT about love. Affairs are not about knowing someone long and deeply, and they are not about dealing with reality.

Your husband is going to miss you SO much. But, because he is lazy, and feels damned anyway, he will probably stick with OW even though he doesn't really care about her, and use her.

Which is what an affair is.

I talk to a guy who deals with men like your H. He said to me, 'you know, I talk to guys who are 2, 3 years in with their OW who still love their wives but who can't go back or fix the mistake they made, or the wife has moved on.

You have to be REALLY stupid to be an OW IMO.

Good luck MrsG. So sorry for your pain.

So here I am now packing for my holiday and crying my eyes out because my best friend , my husband, is not coming. No he is too wrapped up in this other woman and even though he says he didn't want our marriage to end and that he wishes this affair had never happened, he's still seeing her.
I want to make this a lovely holiday for my daughter who is coming in his place because she is so low. All her mouth is ulcerated and she can barely speak.

Actually he's not my best friend....he was but not now.
So maybe I'm thinking too much about the "good times" and the sentimentality of the situation and not of what he has actually done

Not really connected to your thread, but my sister used to get a lot of mouth ulceration and it turned out she was allergic to sodium benzoate. It took my mum ages to find out what was causing the problem and it's in loads of things that you don't even think of. Anyway, just a thought.

Your holiday will give you enforced distance from him, which will be a good thing.

I was wondering whether he will have access to the house while you are away. I would change the locks just in case (if you haven't already done so) - he's a weak man, being influenced by a person who has no morals. Best be on the safe side imo.

The locks were changed the first week he was gone and I have told my Son that under no circumstances in he to come in. There is barely anything belonging to him here now, just a couple of ornaments.
Hopefully he will stay away.
Thank you for the advice re my daughters ulcerated mouth.

Back from holiday and we had a great time. Odd how you can stand back from a situation and see things more clearly. Also to see other couples bickering and thinking there but for the grace of god go I!
Haven't see the idiot since we've come home and don't particularly want to anymore.
My house is so much calmer without him here and apart from the loneliness I feel good,although I have had a couple of moments of thoughts of revenge for what he's done to us. He still hasn't contacted my youngest daughter .
So, I will keep following threads on here and may need some support if I have a wobbly..........but a huge thank you for all the advice given to date x

So glad you had a good holiday Mrs G. I was wondering how you were doing.

Try and just feel the grief and don't get distracted by thoughts of revenge. Grief involves letting go on many levels. Though you may feel you are losing something when you start to let him go emotionally without having the chance to hear him grovel or feel the joy of getting your own back, you will eventually find that you feel freer.

(That being said, it's very hard not to feel terrible for the sake of the children. I still can't get over how exH could have been so utterly selfish when we had the children to think about. I hope there is a special place in hell waiting for him just because of what he did to their lives.)

Time helps, but so does limiting severely the amount of contact he has with you and what that can consist of. You are not there for him to weep on your shoulder any more. You can put the phone down if he starts dumping any emotion whatsoever on you. You don't have to deal with his loneliness or regret or anger. You can get a new phone just for him and look at it once week or whatever suits you. You don't have to keep on engaging with him. Going cold turkey can make you feel you are at sea for a bit but you will find your new normal faster if you do it that way.

Thank you, her mouth is better now but she has lost lots of weight. She is very angry with him and says that it is as if she has never known him. My Son has had texts from him but only things like the money is round at your Nans and hope you're ok. The worry now is that he won't keep up with the rent, we are already short this week because he says he only had one days work last week .
But, I do feel better and I know we can sort the money issues out .
As I said, it's the loneliness at the moment, the kids are out with their friends and I am left to my own devices.