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 His neck chain broke,and I found a supply of his out of date Viagra in his coat pocket, and so I began to wonder....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

I came home from work today for lunch and hadn't been in for 5 minutes when a friend rang to say that she had just seen my ex walking down my road towards my house. I called upstairs to warn my kids as they were in that he might be coming. At that moment the doorbell rang and it was him. He asked if he could pick something up and as it sounded innocuous , I let him in. My daughter was furious and said she didn't want to see him.
Anyway......I said to him that I had heard through friends that his sordid affair had started last year and that I had spoken to her ex ( I haven't) who told me that my husband was responsible for the break up of their relationship last Summer....well he didn't protest or deny it and just mumbled that I had got my dates wrong!
I said that he was a fraud and a cheat leading me to believe that our marriage was happy and that he had been cruel to me which I didn't deserve. He agreed that I didn't deserve what he had done........I STILL don't get it!

He has smashed it to bits. You don't need to 'get it'; that will come in its own time. Try and reach an agreement about him letting you know in advance that he is coming, if nothing else, so you can be ready for it.

If i found out somebody was fucking my husband, posting their sordid emails on FB would be the least of her worries let me tell you As for him - hes a twunt, move on, better off without

So we were right then? Their affair obviously pre-dated her split from her husband and that might explain why he's got residence of the kids.

What is it you're struggling to get Mrs. Gorgeous? Have you tried re-reading this thread from the top? Keep posting and give vent to how you're feeling.

I don't get why he was so cruel and unkind. I don't understand that even though he was telling me he loved me and was making plans for our future he was leading this double life.
I don't understand that he wanted to destroy our family when he seemed from the outside a loving husband and father.
And we are all up now, crying arguing...all because of his actions.
Life feels like a mess at the moment

HI MrsG

Im glad you have a good holiday, at least.

Im not sure what happened last night? I suppose it was the heightened tension and emotion of seeing him for everyone.

I do think that it is a good idea to negotiate that he plans any visits to the house, giving you time to prepare. You dont just turn up at his, do you?

I think it must be the hardest thing for a couple where an unfaithful person moves out, has their separate life and home, and still tries to treat the family home as though it is theirs. It just doesnt permit you to make it the safe haven from stress which you need it to be.

I wonder if you are trying to over think his motivations for doing this?

He did it because he was cowardly and selfish, and he thought the OW could help him mend the hole in himself. Of course, he is right to the extent that she was a temporary distraction, as all new relationships are, but it is just that. His misery is still there, below the surface. The OW cant fill that hole, you couldnt, and alcohol couldnt.

It is extra hard in some ways, as he pretended all was normal at home whilst he started it up. But you can explain this. I am willing to bet that you have provided so much care and emotional support for him over the years that he did not, on any account, want to lose it. You finding out has wrong footed him, as he wanted different things from both of you, and was getting them until then.

What he wasnt of course thinking about was what he was or should be giving back, because he wasnt, it isnt in him.

He was cruel and unkind because he knew they were behaviours guaranteed to drive a wedge between you so that he could avoid closeness and intimacy. If he ever dropped his guard and sex looked like a possibility, he had to invent a physical excuse for not having it. The reasons for this could be guilt towards you, more rarely guilt towards the OW or because he's one of those men who just cannot fancy more than one woman at a time and have sex with both.

I know it's bizarre for you on the receiving end of this, but the making plans while leading a double-life is typical of someone who thinks he's compartmentalising. He didn't want your relationship to end and for him to lose everything. He just thought you'd never find out and he could have the two lives co-existing. He wasn't lying about those plans, he genuinely wanted them to happen, but he was selfish enough to think that he could have it all.

Five is right about him being a taker and not a giver.

Put some boundaries in now. He mustn't be allowed to turn up like this and upset everyone.

He only became unkind and snappy just after Christmas. Before then he was his usual self. The moment his character changed I suspected that he was either ill,(because as I said in an earlier post he was hurting down below),that he was drinking again or that he was seeing someone.
I said that I hadn't been with him for 24 years and to not know when something was wrong.
If this affair did start physically just after Christmas then this would tie in but I think that the intent was there long before. And as I said when I told him that her partner had said that he (my husband) was responsible for the break in their relationship, he didn't protest his innocence or deny it.
Yesterday was very hard for all of us and we are still smarting from the backlash.
Trying to move on but finding it so difficult

My post has disappeared?

Wow Hattytown you've just described my ex
MrsG I've been in a similar situation (twice) I'm always amazed at our (my) capacity to ignore what's going on right under my nose. It will take time but I can tell you from personal experience that I wasn't as happy in my relationship as I thought I was and 3 years down the line I'm single and actually much happier than I've been for years

Just wanted to update and ask some advice because I am as confused as ever!
He still hasn't spoken to our daughter and it has been 3 months now. They were always so close.
He dropped off the rent money yesterday,posted it through the letterbox and I rang him shortly afterwards to tell him that he had post here to be picked up. At this point he turned really nasty and said" well I need an appointment to come there don't I?"
I said no he didn't need an appointment but he did need to ring me to let me know he was coming so that all the upset caused by his last unannounced visit could be avoided. He still carried on being nasty and I told him that quite frankly, I didn't want anything to do with him anymore, to which he replied "I know"
He asked if he could come today and I said no because I was going out and he said well when then. (still snarling) I said whenever he wasnt with her,bye bye and hung up.
So why now has he turned so unpleasant? He has done the damage not me!

Because "feel sorry for me" wasnt working. He probably thought that if he gave you time to "get over it" then you would have him back. He said all the right things in order to try and get you to feel that he really did regret his actions. But it didnt work. So now he is faced with the harsh reality that he fucked up a 24 year relationship for a few shags with someone he probably doesnt actually like that much. And he is taking it out on the person who has hurt him, YOU! It is your fault that he is feeling like this because you wont have him back therefore he is justified in being vile to you.

Thats all bollocks of course, but thats whats in his head.

He didnt want her, he didnt want to leave you or lose you and be with her. She was a bit of fluff, a distraction, something to make him feel good on a bad day. He loved (and probably still loves) you, wants you, misses you. And now he is where you were the day you found the emails, so in a weird way, although you were in the dark about his affair, you are actually way ahead of him in terms of healing.

He is finally accepting that your marriage is over, after convincing himself that he would be able to sort it all out. And he has to accept that it is all his own fault. He will lash out, as people in a corner tend to do, and he will be vile.

Disengage. He fucked up, he needs to deal with it. YOu dont need to discuss ANYTHING with him. The kids are old enough so you dont have to sort out contact, he is keeping up his share of the money (shoving it through the door is good, let him do that), so there is no need for ANY contact.

Dont ring him, dont answer his calls or texts. DISENGAGE. It is the only way you will be able to move on.

I have been reading"Not just friends" . I bought it a couple of weeks ago but found it too close to the truth at first to read it comfortably, if you know what I mean. But now I have read half way through and find it extraordinary that these affairs follow such a similar pattern, even down to the conversations and excuses made by the adulterer.
I am due to go for my first counselling session this week but I am not sure if I should go. I don't want to dredge up emotions that I have laid to rest. I do find that at times it does become an obsession, going over and over events and trying to analyse when/why it happened/started.

I think you should go and tell the counsellor what you have said about obsessing. That way they can focus on you letting of of thenegativity rather than getting you deeper into the whys and wherefores.

Good luck, you have come so far and done so well x

Mrsg - please go to your counselling. If you have a half decent counsellor, you will get good support and they can help you create a path forward.

I know what it feel like to keep wondering 'how could he do this?', but ultimately it will bring you no comfort. He did this, because he could and he wanted to. In his world, the morality of the situation, the effect on is wife and kid weren't worth the pleasure of an affair. That's hard to bear, i know, but it's all about him and says nothing about you. This is about his sadness and inadequacy as a partner and parent.

I wonder when did it start? When did my life become a lie?
I remember being in tkmaxx last year with him and a tall dark haired woman was looking at the jackets on the same rail as me. She said hello to my husband but ignored a comment I made. I asked him who she was and he said ..oh someone from school. I thought she didn't seem very nice then....and now I'm wondering was this her because she matches the description!
And then to make it worse, I can't remember when this was last year,like a lot of things. I suppose it's because I didn't lend any importance to them then but it's so frustrating trying to remember .

Mrs I can relate completely to that! I remember incidents that I didnt ascribe much importance to at the time, that suddenly have far more relevance now. Encouraging me to have an afternoon alone shopping when we were away for a week (without the kids), where normally he would want to come with me (and drive me mad!). I realise now that gave him a whole afternoon sexting time! But that doesnt tally with when he claims it started (when he does give it a date, 90% of the time he "cant remember") so I, like you, am left asking "SO WHEN?!!!!!How much of my life has been rewritten? How much of my history is a fiction? Exactly how long were you making a fucking fool of me?!"

But it has got me nowhere. I will never know. And that has been one of the hardest things to come to terms with. I have to accept that I will never know the whole truth. We will never know who Jack the Ripper was, whether the Holy Grail is real and what really happened when our husbands cheated on us. Partly because they lie to us and partly because they lie to themselves. They convince themselves it wasnt that bad, it was a friendship that went too far a couple of times. Deep down they know it wasnt, but they have to do this so that they dont have to face the kind of people they are, usually the kind of person that they would be disgusted with if it was someone else cheating. They lie to themselves so well that they can look you in the eye and lie to you too without flinching because they almost believe that what they are saying is true.

What I have come to realise (and hopefully you will too) is that it actually doesnt matter if I know everything. It wont change what he did and it wont change how I feel about it. I have been betrayed and hurt in a way I never expected, and knowing that it happened from X date wont make it feel better and wont make it easier to deal with.

I am sure that counselling will really help you with this. Take care xx

Thank you,
Yes I know you're right, I will never know the truth and it won't make any difference about the future, but it would give me a bit of closure.
All he says is "you've got your dates wrong" .
So I'm not sure if this affair of his started last summer but didn't get sexual until this year, or if it had been physical from the start. All I do know for certain is that he changed rapidly in January being snappy and argumentative. Looking back he was more irritable towards the end of last year and I think that this is when the relationship and the need for sex was becoming intense....bastard.
And that's a big time difference to have got my dates wrong!

Possibly its also the definition of "affair" that is causing him to say that. I would define it as an inappropriate relationship, whether sexual or not (hence the term "emotional affair"), whereas he (and my H) would define it as having sex with someone else. So for you it started earlier but for him, it didnt start until they had sex.

Him being a tosser at the end of last year was probably him finding the justification for the affair. By niggling and causing arguments he could tell himself that your marriage was shit and you were being horrible to him (!) so that justified him subsequently having sex with her. It is part of the script, they all do it. They cant just jump into bed (well, most cant) as they know that is wrong, but if the marriage is bad then it is ok. in their heads.

The dates thing is kind of beside the point. You need to draw a line under this to move on and i am sure that with the counselling you will be able to do that.

Also don't forget that some men might define "sex" differently from you, it's not just Bill Clinton.

True Mummy. To a cheating man if he hasnt had PIV sex then it wasnt sex, so in his mind it was "proper" cheating, whereas to his wife it counts as sex so most definitely is "proper" cheating.

I think Dr Phil gets it right when he says if you wouldn't it with your partner looking over your shoulder then it is cheating - it helped my DH understand that the build up texts, chats etc were cheating because he certainly wouldn't have done it with me standing on his shoulder . DH had to acknowledge that so therefore the affair started weeks (months) before and was therefore most definitely an affair and was as sordid, cliched, etc as all affairs are.

Best wishes for the future.

I have just joined this site and am fascinated to see how similar other women's experiences are to my own. My partner of 25 years started an affair a year and a half ago with a colleague of his. Started out with him 'comforting' her and helping her through her painful divorce. An irony that's not lost on me. To cut a long story short, the sequence of events is: I challenge him about being different towards me - I 'find' explicit texts about what they'd like to do to each other - he tells me that a wiser woman than I would have turned a blind eye and put it down to mid-life madness - the texts continue - I feel that I'm becoming unhinged and marginally deranged, so obsessive have I become - he keeps telling me there's nothing going on - the texts become more explicit than ever - he moves out to give us 'space' - they start having sex - I feel destroyed and suicidal with grief - he starts seeing a Relate counsellor - he moves back in, says it's all over with her - we start going to counselling together, but I can't hack it - all going well between us, but he's still texting her regularly telling her how amazing she is etc etc. So, that's where I am at. Living with a very happy man whom I love very much. Sex life crap but otherwise we get on well. I don't think he has any plans to stop the texts any time soon and just tells me that it's got nothing to do with 'us'. I think if I read this about another woman I would feel so sorry for her, but suspect that she might be a bit of a doormat. But I really don't think of myself like that at all. I think I'm ballsy and tough. I'm not sure if I should start a new thread or post this here. I don't want to steal anyone else's thunder. Please advise.

Why did you stop the joint counselling Neezy? and no, I don't think you should be putting up with the texts. As a prerequisite for recovery from any affair, emotional/physical, all contact with ow should ceased even if that means changing jobs after all, what price a marriage and family?

I would also start your own thread and all the wise, no nonsense ladies will be along soon.

The affair hasn't really stopped has it either