How to unravel 10 years and make it better? Long.

[theonlysaneinthevillage]

DP and I have been together for 10 years. We have 3 dc's under school age.

I have recently been feeling extremely stressed out and either having fits of rage or just crying at a drop of a hat. I've lost all interest in, well everything. I don't want to go out (even with dp) i can't be bothered to go to friends' houses, i was a gym bunny and now i'm 5 stone over weight and i can't fit into any of my old clothes. (i was a size 12) I look horrendous, not just the weight, but the personal grooming, eyebrows, legs, moustache, you name it, i've got hair everywhere.

I'm still wearing maternity wear despite it being 8 months since i had dc3. I know i should do something but i don't seem to care.

Had a big chat with DP 2 nights ago and depression was mentioned by him. I still get up in the morning and get the dc's dressed and myself and i'm not unhappy with the dc's, I love them like crazy, so don't think it's postnatal depression. And up until that point, i didn't think i was depressed either, more that i was too tired and life is hard having 3 lo's.

Anyway, i looked up depression. As i was reading i came across the expression "depression is anger turned in" and that totally struck a cord with me. I ended up on a website called moodgym and i ticked all but 2 boxes on depression and every box for anxiety.

I know who i'm angry at; my dp. He knows i am angry at him, it has dominated a lot of our relationship due to the sheer shitty things he has done in the past, that i can't seem to let go of it.

He was very young when i met him, almost 21. I was 27. I was recently out of a violent relationship, with lots of porn issues and i was vulnerable and a total mess to be truthful.

Despite his age, he would listen to me, hold me and tell me how beautiful, lovely etc i was.

Unfortunately though his shitty behaviour is all i see when i look back.

Examples include:
Girls texting his phone after a night out. He says his mate use to give out his number.
Staying out all night and ringing the next morning to say he had fell asleep at a mates.
I later found out he had gone back to a girls house, with his best mate, so his best mate could sleep with her friend. He swears blind, he slept on the floor in her room.
Went through a really rough time at the 4 year mark, he went away with his job for 6 months and came back with a condom in his wallet. Explained that he had come off the phone after another argument with me and asked his friend for one in anger?!
A few weeks later he did the whole ' i don't know if i love you shit' and I caught him texting a girl he had obviously lined up as my replacement and chucked him out. But I was devastated and tried to cling on, but after 10 days realised that i wasn't going to keep trying. He then realised how much he actually did love me and did all the running to come back. Found out later that he had took her to the pub for a drink, in those 10 days.

Saw a hell of a lot of texts to one particular number 3 years after this incident and all hell broke lose. He showed me some of the texts, there was no relationship going on, but i'd hazard a guess his ego was being stroked and there was some excitement on his part. They were over one particular month and only on 12 days of that month, and there was over 100 texts. My suspicion was aroused by the fact that they were only during the week (he works away) and would end on fri afternoon (when he would come home) and start again on sun (when he was in his rented accommodation for his job.)
When i asked if he was sleeping with her, he said he would show me her picture to prove he wasn't, ie, she isn't attractive.

I really went through hell over this. I wrote him a very long email explaining that i had had enough. That i was no longer prepared to put up with all this stupid shit and that unless he could get his act together, it was over. He sent me one back saying i was 100% right, that he was not a good boyfriend and that he could do better.

I sort of separate this bit with the next few years. He has changed a helluva a lot. He use to go out a lot with his mates drinking and i use to feel that i wasn't his partner but just someone he was dating iyswim.
He stopped going out all the time, did more things together and we became closer, it was like he grew up.
My body clock was deafening me and we made the decision to try for a baby. We now have 3.

The problem is, i can't let it go. I can't honestly believe (esp after reading all the relationship threads that he didn't get up to anything) I don't believe it. I 99.9% believe he did.

I've told him this and i have told him that i'm ok if he admits it. I think he did it anyway, so to me it's actually better if he did admit it, it would make me think our relationship is based on something better than it was years ago, that we have trust and honesty now.

He doesnt get mad or defensive like you would expect liars too. He says it sounds like i would be happier if i knew that something went on, but the only way he could do that for me, is if he were to make something up.

It's not the cheating or not cheating that bothers me, or the stupidness of all his stupid actions. It's the thought that he could still be that dp that lies and goes behind my back. So, by admitting something went on would be like saying that we are in a different place, one were we are close and best friends etc. iyswim.

I have told him that i don't love him like i should. That all the past things have made it so i hold back in case he is this person and hurts me again ( i found out a few months ago that he had befriended the stroking ego girl on fb) and i feel like i can't be affectionate because he doesn't deserve it. He did the whole, i don't know if i love you anymore when i was pregnant!
I told him to fuck off, he back pedalled.

I told him 2 nights ago that i feel like i am at a cross roads with one path that leads to staying together and one path leads to splitting up and both are awful. If he told me this, i would leave. He just hugged me and said we can work on it. He says i'm the love of his life and he wouldn't swap me for anyone. Everytime we have arguments, i end up screaming at him to piss off, but he never goes. I'm glad after, but i 100% mean it at the time.

Sorry for the big ramble. Am i horrible? Is he a pig or was he just young?
I can't think straight or sleep. I'm just, well i don't even know what i am. Fed up? Over reacting. Analysing way too much???

If i come across as pathetic, mean, i don't mean too. And it's not how people would describe me.

You sound very anxious and no doubt it is because of this whirlwind of emotion inside which is unresolved and has been for years.

It sounds as though the major problem is that you are basing your ability to make choices about him and the relationship on getting objective information. "Has he cheated?" "Is he a pig?" These things are rarely black and white. You sound on the edge, he sounds like he has done some silly and disrespectful things. I think to solve it you need to give up the quest for objective truth, which you will not get.

What you need to do, I think, is decide how you feel. Do you feel he is a pig? If you feel he was young but the things you feel he did you cant get over then how does that make you feel about the relationship now?

Would some counselling help? Maybe at first just for you on your own? That way, it could help you sort through all your turbulent feelings, and which way is up. Perhaps a visit to the gp, too?

A heck of a lot what you have written reminds me of me a few years back and first of all sends you hugs (i know thats what I needed sometimes)

You don't mention if you've family or friends you can talk this through with and if you have please talk to them, don't feel embarrassed or that they'll be judging you, I'm sure they'll just want to help you.

One thing that I wish i'd have insisted on though was for him to move out for a while. I simply couldn't work out what was best for me (or the kids) whilst he was there. Please consider spending some time apart, it may not be permanent but just so you can work out what YOU want and not just be railroaded

It occurs to me that there may a physical cause such as a hormonal imbalance that may be the reason for your low mood, weight gain, and hirsuteness.

I would suggest that you make an appointment with your GP and ask for a blood test to rule out any problem with your thyroid or similar. While you're there, I would also suggest you ask to be referred for counselling which may help you work through your current feelings.

by admitting something went on would be like saying that we are in a different place

It seems to me that you are in a very different place as, by your own admission, your dh has changed a helluva a lot.

I know it's easier said than done but you are best advised not to let the past cast a blight on the present or the future.

I'm sorry to hear you are feeling this way. I just wanted to mention that it is a coming misconception that mums with PND do t bond with their dc. Although that's one scenario it's not the only one. In my case I adore my 3 DS and my 7 month old baby is everything to me. But I feel anger at myself and despair that my dc deserve a better mum.

I think you could have PND and/or a thyroid problem -please go see a
GP.

Good luck

I think you need to go to your GP and explain how you feel and your appearance, weight, anxiety issues. Secondly, if he has changed and grown up in the past few years, and he was as young as you say he was when he met, I think you need to make a decision either to split up if it is eating you up this much, or to just let it go and get on with your lives together. Knowing will not solve anything. Thirdly, couples counselling to try and fix the here and now.

In a way, you decided after a few 'bad' years to stay with him and have children, and having made that decision it seems unfair for you to have used him and dump him (assumption made that he is now a good supportive partner, and a permanently changed man). In a way I feel a bit sorry for him, a bit damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. You cannot move on with your lives unless you can forgive and forget, and I don't think knowing details is part of that. The question is do you trust him now? Or are your own insecurities taking over and destroying your life? It is not normal to scream in fits of rage, and tell people you don't love them .

offred I think you have hit the nail on the head tbt. I think i feel like i need some absolute concrete evidence that i'm not choosing a path that will waste more years of my life. And deep down i know that's not possible.

tb I think counselling might be a good idea. I have mentioned it to dp, not sure if he would come to couples counselling though.

actuallyshocked thanks for the hug.

izzy Sorry, i meant that i don't bother waxing or shaving, not that i am excessively hairy. I think the weight gain is having 3 children so close together. I'm hoping it will just fall off once i summon the energy to get back in the gym.

Yes he has changed but there are still flashes of the old him. Telling me he didn't know if he loved me when i was pregnant, befriended the girl that caused so much heartache before. It just makes me doubt my decision to spend my life with him

jnice So sorry you feel this way. I don't feel that way, and if it's any consulation, i think really that bad mothers whose children really don't deserve them, would never think they were underserving. Hope you come through it soon.

lifechanger you are probably right, but it's a left over affect from my previous violent relationship, that i just can't stand thinking someone has walked all over me. I don't think i would be devastated to know he had done it, as i have spent years thinking he did. I do think though that i am the biggest bitch on earth, if he never did anything.

daffy You are right, i did panic when i reached my late thirities about having children. If i was younger, i may have made a different decision. I'm not proud of that fact, but i wouldn't change my dc's for anything.
And for the record, i have never ever told dp that i don't love him. He has told me twice in our relationship.
I have told him that i don't love him like i should be doing, and by that i mean, i can't allow him to keep hurting me. I have said to him that i'm in such a state that even a little thing like being moody with me, makes me think i've had enough.

I really do want to let this go. I don't want to feel like this. I do love him. I don't stay just for the kids. I can see us having just as good a relationship when the kids are grown up. He makes me laugh, he's a good person, i just feel like im ruining it and i can't stop. Making me cry. can't see keyboard properly.

Thanks for all your replies.

Forgot to add, that he told me (to piss me off) when we were drunk, that he had got another girl pregnant! who does that? he has apologised profusely as i was heartbroke at the time and just couldn't get my head around the fact that it wasn't true.

I told him recently that i still half expect a knock at the door and a woman saying, this is your dp's dc. He just says, awh i'm sorry about doing that.

I once told him that you can't create a monster and then complain when it reacts.

He thinks or thought that i'm out of his league and has admitted that he likes me heavier as he says i'm less confident. I think he purposely did this to make me insecure.

He doesn't do or say this anymore, but he has said in a jokey way, that he's trapped me now with the kids.

The thing is, i've worked hard these last few years (since that email) to change. I wasn't a jealous insecure person before and i think he made me into one. I use to check is phone all the time, but i stopped over a year ago. I don't like what i'd turned into. If i find anything out, it's over. I don't feel the need to be reduced to this insecure paranoid person who has to constantly check he's not up to anything- what was that about!

Yuck at the comments about trapping you with the kids. I know it is easy to say but that would make me run for the hills.

Go to gp and get your depression sorted - you will think more clearly and have more confidence = more resources to deal with this situation. Good luck.

Go and see your GP, explain how you are feeling and see what they can do, join a gym and start feeling good about yourself again, get time to yourself and work on your self-esteem, perhaps see a therapist to work on your issues and build yourself up again. Go out and see friends, get yourself pampered!!

For what it is worth, it doesn't sound like this is all you. It is not nice that he wants you less confident, or trapped with kids. His insecurities and feelings are his to deal with, you need to work on you and get that confidence and self-worth back.

You aren't the only woman here to wonder whether they made the correct decision about who to have as a father to their children, or to ignore red flags in a relationship, those hormones make us do strange things, but you do have the power to decide how you want your life to be now! And you have three gorgeous kids in your life, that is amazing!

doggie i can see why you would think that, but it is taken out of context. I think one of his friends made a jokey comment that i'd trapped him now and dp said, no i've trapped her.

We have a jokey, take the gentle piss out of each other and ourselves relationship- it's quite normal in the region i'm from.

daffy You are right i need to take action instead of analysing. I'm quite scared in a way that getting my self esteem up and losing all this anxiety will actually make me make my mind up to leave.

Which ( i forgot to say actually ) that when ive talked this out with my mum, she says, well that must tell you something. I came from a broken home and i don't think she wants me to go throught it.

She knows what he has done but she see's more than i can put down in here. Like how he's used his life savings to get us a bigger house, worked all week and then travelled 100's of miles to come home and work on that house, from absolute gutting it to completion etc.

Plus she compares him very favourably in comparison to exdp. Who was a violent abuser.

Thanks for all the replies, it really is making me see the wood for the trees. And it definately does help to write it all down.

Hello. Your back history with your dp is similar to mine. I'm 14 years older than my dp, met him and got together when he was just 18 and I was 31.

All the hideous things you list that he has done or said to you I can relate to, and I am sure there's a lot more there too.

The thing that strikes me as different, and helped me with the process of sorting it all, and moving on, was the admission of guilt on my dp's part. He fessed up to cheating, to being a duplicitous entitled slag, and looking back, this will have helped me enormously.

During the "crisis" peiod, if I can call it that, ie my period of self doubt/thinking I was going mad/his crazy denials of any wrongdoing, I think I would have exploded if I hadn't had the (eventual) admissions.

-Though in our case he was so blatant that he could hardly deny them

Reading between the lines in your posts, I feel that he did cheat on you, probably repeatedly, and in different ways ie either emotionally or physically, or both. But as people have said, if he's a changed man now, then it's the old thing about trying not to let the past blight the present and the future.

That's easier said than done of course. I had counselling. So did he. Then we had some more together. And so on.

Perhaps he would benefit from talking to someone too? He may think it's not about him, but if he is in denial about the past in any way, then it's not going to help you.

And just a question, sorry if I missed this-does he still say stupid things like the getting another girl pregnant comment? If he does, at all, then he definitely needs some work, if I can put it like that!

pepper
god it's awful isn't it. i wish he would admit it. You have made me more resolute about getting to the bottom of it. He comes home today, so i will try tonight or tomorrow night.

No, he doesnt say things to make me jealous and in secure, but he did say only in sept, about a week before i had dc3 that he wasnt sure he wanted another baby

I think you are right about the need for him to see it as not just my problem. He just probably thinks that if he admits it, it's over, so i'll keep denying. What made your dp see sense? if you dont mind me asking and how long have you been together now?

Well, my dp saw sense as a result of an enforced period of loneliness after I chucked him out! That may not be what you want to hear but it did the trick.

It took a very long time indeed to get back to some sort of stability/happiness. He was an utter utter shitbag of the highest order and tbh, sometimes I look back and am AMAZED at myself for putting up with what I put up with. To cut myself some slack though,-at first, and for a long time, I had no clue at all that he was doing the dirty. I am the original Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By and I would no more think of cheating than I would of gouging out my eye with a rusty nail. I thought he felt the same.

Bluntly, he realised he would lose it all. We live in a very small rural community, so he faced a stark choice-either sort his shit out away from me or spend the rest of his days being "that" man sitting in the corner of the pub pissed up bumming rollies off people, never seeing his children (I was pg by the time it exploded with our first dc), shunned by everyone.....

....haha I paint a nice picture don't I

I had to be prepared to follow through though, and I did. I exiled him out of my life for a long time, and little by little he sorted himself out. I had no intention at that point of letting him back either.

That was 6 or 7 years ago now. We are actually happy! I just realised that! We now have a dd as well as our ds. Been together (inc. crap years, ie as a whole) over 12.

How are you doing, ok I hope?

thanks pepper for enquiring and sharing your story- i really appreciate it.

well, a lot of things have changed in 3 days!

tried to talk to dp on fri night, but we just went around in circles like usual. ended up not speaking. was in a high anxiety state by sat afternoon and walked out leaving him with the kids. just went for a few hours around town centre, shopping.

came home and felt myself getting into a state as i turned onto our road.

decided to have another go at talking. it occured to me whilst walking around town that i talk/shout/scream about my feelings but dp never discloses his. so i didn't shout or lose my temper, i just said my peace and after every comment asked him how he feels, or i would ask him a question and still silent till i got an answer.

it wasnt pretty. we got to the bottom of it all though. we systematically went through all the things on my original post (and more) he had some of his own about me too.

he still vehmentley (sp) denies cheating and i have chosen to believe him. his behaviour stems from something i did and said before we were even in a relationship- so it turns out, it wasnt just me who was angry and resentful. some things were more a wrong interpretation than an actually truth-iyswim. i told him how my head was a mess and how i felt like i couldnt get out, and he responded with a hug and said he would help me get out.

it took over 2 hours of talking and i cant tell you how better it feels. its like someone switched a switch. i even did my hair twice today. the second time cos i went the gym!
we have hugged and kissed and said i love you in texting like we used to do. i dont feel bitter anymore either or angry.

thank you so much for your admissions pepper i feel i may not have taken this route without them- i was almost certain i was going for anti d's and counselling as soon as monday morning came.