Is my marriage over

[Willthisgetbetter]

I'm a name changer - can't face anyone in RL knowing yet.

I don't know what I'm looking at, some reassurance that I'm not going mad, or a kick up the arse if it is in fact me...not really sure.

DH and I just can't get along. The big issue for me is that three years ago, when I thought we were at our happiest I caught him "sexting". She was a close friend, not so DH and I were trying for our third DC. We had a party and he kissed her, passionately, in front of everyone we knew. I was livid, he initially didn't see the big deal then blamed it on the drink. Subsequently he was contrite, apologetic.

He'd not done anything like that before so I let it go only to discover 10 weeks later that they had been exchanging 100's of explicit texts. The one I read described actions in the past tense: "I loved it when you...." A mutual friend who discovered what was going on confronted the OW and was told that "they'd agreed they wouldn't have sex in my house".

DH expects me to believe that they never had sex. He clearly thinks I'm an idiot but continues to deny it to this day.

We tried to move on, I discovered I was pregnant and we wanted it to work. He stopped contact with her and I am virtually certain that had been maintained. Our DC3 went on to be stillborn and tbh for a long time my energies were focused on my grief over that followed by a desperation to fall pregnant again.

Our DC4 is now a year and I think we hate each other. I still feel hurt and humiliated and that he doesn't care. He thinks my expectations are too high and that I need to stop being angry. I try but it resurfaces whenever we argue. I cannot get over the fact he was so ready to throw our life away.

We have had a series of huge rows over the last weeks and I don't know how we move on, or whether even I want to. I know I don't if it means that I have to spend the next 40 years swallowing my pain for the sake of keeping the peace. But we have a beautiful young family. We don't live in our home country and so a split would be hugely disruptive to the DC. I don't know what to do.

Your Dc4 could still see plenty of him if you separate. You're not doing them, or yourself, any favours staying in an unhappy marriage.

Hmm he sounds awful

You have tried to make it work, but Once a mirrors shattered it can't bf fixed!

I think you can leave with pride knowing you tried, and your DC will respect you for that too.

There's nothing to stop him doing it again

AnyFucker's post of 16.16 is quite simply awesome.

I'm going to show it to my friend whose 'wonderful, popular, loyal and moralistic' dh left her for another woman. There was months of denial that anything was going on after the initial 'I don't think I ever loved you' bombsell. And during that time he annihilated her personality, blamed her for the breakdown of their marriage. He had to completely deconstruct their 11 year relationship in order to retain his Mr Good Guy image to himself and the outside world - hell, even she still partly believes he is the person and this was totally out of character!!

Cunt.

Willthis - I get where you are coming from. I'm all about taking marriage seriously and staying together for children if the relationship hasn't become destructive and untenable. I understand you wanting to make it work. I am sure I would feel the same.

But what most women who have been in your shoes say on this board is, if he doesn't really, really get the damage he's done and if he's not truly sorry and ashamed, then how can he and you as a couple start to repair that damage?

that is very, very sad and unfair for your friend, proud

I hope your friend can stop absorbing the damaging shite he is dishing out to her and start looking at his words/actions with a true and unclouded eye (easier said than done of course, when you are in the middle of it)

gosh, OP, that's some rationalisation you are dealing out to yourself there

the alcohol made him do it ?

yeah

Yes this AA thing is him placating you whilst not taking responsibility. What does he think he is going to AA for? Has he acknowledged anything at all about the lying?

Just wonder if it is really just a "well you are pissed off with me" script.

Oh god neither of us believe the alcohol "made him do it". And to be fair to him after the protestations in the immediate aftermath of the kiss he has never tried to claim that.

The alcohol does however make him a twat. If he doesnt drink we don't argue. I am torn because on the one hand it does feel like a "script" said to placate me but equally I do believe he wants to stop drinking and maybe my telling him I'm ready to leave is a wake up call.

Either way, and regardless of the future for us as a couple he is the father of my children and I want him to be well and happy, for them as much as anything so I feel i owe him at least a little support there.

offred I don't know what he expects of AA. He has tried to give up drinking before but then there is always a dinner, or a party and he has a few and is fine and then the cycle starts again and he gets drunk and we row. His mother was an alcoholic and died in her 40's. I know he wants better for our DC.

As for the lies nope not acknowledged. He maintains they didn't have sex. He apologises and claims he regrets hurting me and realises that he behaved appallingly but equally he gets fed up with me being so angry with him. Says eventually I need to forgive. If I ask what exactly that entails he cannot articulate it. I have made it clear to him that forgiveness whatever that is will never equal me undertaking not to mention it.

Again thank you all. If I was reading this in your position I would be banging my head against the keyboard at my weakness. It's very hard hearing others talk negatively about your life, and by extension you, when it's impossible to condense a relationship onto a page. Believe it or not he does have a few good points...but I also know how all this sounds

OP, I think I get what you mean completely.
A few years ago my DH did something that literally left our marriage in tatters. It wasn't infidelity, but it knocked me for six and I have carried the anger with regards to it ever since.
If my DH turned to me and said "I know what I did/said was wrong and how sad/angry it has made you. I understand why you no longer feel the same way about me and I only have myself to blame. I am truly sorry for behaving this way and want to do all I can to make things better". Strangely that is all he would have to do as it would be a recognition from him that he had hurt me badly.
Unfortunately, my DH sounds like your DH.....he does not 'get' how much he hurt me.
You are obviously not on the same wavelength and do not share the same values, if you did he would understand how you feel.
Sorry, but unless you want to continue feeling this angry you need to leave and move on.

"Says eventually I need to forgive."

Arrogant cunt. I'd leave him for that alone.

He just thinks that if he stonewalls you for long enough, he'll get away with it.

He doesn't give a fuck about how you feel, or he'd realise that you don't have to do anything, and that forgiveness is something that comes after contrition.

You can't forgive him until he takes responsibility and stops denying. My xp only admitted cheating (I found naked pics on his phone with the message "here are the pics you asked for", he had been going missing for days at a time and when he left he moved in with her right away) about 3 1/2 years later and only begrudgingly when the mediator said "come on now there's no other explanation for this is there?" now I have been able to move past this but he was at the time expecting to bring the children into his home with her and have her actually do all the caring work for them.

He was citing the length of their relationship, ignoring that he hadn't bothered to see the dcs etc. your h sounds like he is in a similar state of complete denial to himself.

I don't think you are weak OP, not at all. I really really hope he is taking you seriously and taking steps to sort himself out.

AF - oh god that's not the half of it (never is is it ?). She begged him on her knees to tell her if there was OW. He told her to get up and look in the mirror as there was the woman who caused the end of their marriage . About 2 weeks later she found proof of his affair. But by then he'd done such a good job on her she still believed she'd driven him into arms and would have taken him back.

OP I understand your reluctance to call time on this relationship especially for your children's sake. But, there have to be 2 people working on fixing it and maintaining it.
Your 'D'H was the one who damaged it; it sounds to me like he is looking for any excuse for his behaviour- 'oooh it was the drink made me do it' 'you made me do it' 'it meant nothing' 'you cant let it go' 'she seduced me'.......anything in fact other than accept responsibility for his actions. Diminishing you is part of that pattern.
If he genuinely wants this marriage to go on, then he has to accept what he did, tell the truth, accept that he caused immense hurt, that he continues to hurt, and change how he relates.
While you are waiting for him to do that (hell will probably freeze first) work on yourself.....build yourself up, and formulate a plan for how you would cope in the future without him, in case that happens.

Yes and you seem to be saying it is the lying and denying that has broken it so he is still actively breaking it by the sounds of it.

If he has a problem with alcohol he needs to take himself off and fight that particular demon alone.

Anything less will be denial by both of you that his abuse of alcohol has been, and is, a major factor in the breakdown of your marriage.

The alternative scenario is that he is simply a lying lowdown turd by nature and he's using his abuse of alcohol as a handy hook on which to hang his low moral standards.

Either way you're going to be on a hiding to nothing if you remain living with him. More worryingly, your 'beautiful young' dc will endure continuing and lasting emotional damage if you fail to act decisively in this matter.

Give him his marching orders and make it clear that there will be no way back for him unless and until he has addressed and resolved his issues and is fit to be a partner and a parent.

how can you "forgive" something he won't even acknowledge ?

how can you "forgive" something you know in your heart of hearts you are being lied to about

that isn't "forgiveness" that is shutting the fuck up to keep the peace

proud your poor friend

that man is a fucking piece of work

AF is completely correct, he wants you to shut up.
And not bother him.
And let him do what he likes.
And not bother him.
And carry on doing all the laundry and housework as he doesn't want to do that.
All the talk about you needing to forgive is just a way of saying "go away and shut up"
Notice there is no need for him to do anything...what a git.

And no-one made him do anything, he did it himself, all by himself...and he doesn't care, and it is all someone else's fault.

He doesn't care about you at all.

If you think people in RL will think you are stupid, well first of all it doesn't matter, and second, you are entitled to say "you may find him a good friend, but he was horrible to live with as he made me feel like a non person that he couldn't be bothered with."