Rebuilding without a confession

[dogearedtooth]

Is it possible to move on from an affair if the DH does not confess to having had a physical relationship with OW, even in the face of some pretty damning evidence?

I am asking for advice to enable me to help a friend in this situation and would appreciate some anecdotes from people in similar situations who have or have not been able to do this.

Thanks .

He will leave her at some point in the future, probably when the kids being old "enough" in his eyes for a spilt to be acceptable and an OW comes along who is worth the hassle of divorce. Your friend is deluding herself if she imagines otherwise. He sounds like a vile bully and I couldn't share air with him, let alone my life.

PPIMT, she has snooped and uncovered lots of evidence of duplicity - mobile phone records showing hundreds of calls although not content, rooms booked with four poster beds etc and the OW's DH saw one text saying something along the lines of 'I can't wait to feel your lovely lips on mine again'. When confronted with that her DH did actually admit that OK, they had kissed, once .

higgle, I think she will do OK in terms of a settlement, but there is no denying that she has expensive tastes and is used to indulging herself and her DC.

orange, I am pleased to hear that you are in a better place now, thank you for sharing your story. I don't think you could have insisted that he came clean in the same way that my friend can't.

Chub, I have to agree that I think my friend is deluding herself. It would be different I think if he was apologising and saying he wanted to try and make it right/better - or would it?

You often hear the cry of 'kick him out' on MN but how would my friend even go about doing this. He is very clever as I said before; I should add that my friend is not stupid - she did manage to intercept the post (containing mobile phone records) by flagging the postman down in the street and the first thing she did was photocopy them all. She is now painstakingly working her way through them in an attempt to unravel the huge lie that has been the last year of her life .

So on these nights they booked hotel rooms together, can she check her diary and see if he came home that night? Can the other husband do the same? If they were both away that night then surely they can't deny it.

How long has your friend known?

Deny they had sex i mean.

"You often hear the cry of 'kick him out' on MN but how would my friend even go about doing this. "

Solicitors are very good at this kind of thing. Start divorce proceedings and all kinds of balls get rolling. If everyone stays civil with each other it can be relatively easy, quick and cheap. Kick up a fuss or try to be clever and the outcome is pretty much the same but it takes a bit longer and costs more.

The hotel rooms were checked into early in the morning (9.00am, after the school run) but he never stayed out overnight. The hotel has become very cagey and are refusing to hand over anymore details to my friend. I'm surprised that she has managed to find out what she has. Mobile phone communication between them (her and DH but also DH and OW) stops for some hours corresponding to hotel bookings.

He said that he just needed some space (their house was having work done on it at the time) and that he was on his own in the hotel room .

You don't need to spend all night in a hotel room to have sex in it. It doesn't even need to be night time.

People who need 'space' during the day to escape the builders might sit in coffee-shops, the library or hotel lounges at a pinch. They don't book a room with four-posters. :) If the girlfriend is married, daytime dates had to be on the cards.

Yes, my H and OW used hotel rooms but only used these for a few hours before coming home at his usual time pretending to have been at work all day.

I don't think she is ready to start divorce proceedings but I do think a separation would be a step forward for both of them except that he is unwilling to leave just yet although he keeps saying that he is leaving.

She has suspected that something might be going on with OW for about 9 months as OW was weird around her and she caught him looking at OW in a certain way etc but she has only been dealing with the reality of it (the fact that something was definitely going on with someone) for a month or so and with the fact of who it was for just a few weeks.

There really isn't any debate here, your friend has the truth. The only point of a confession is for him to acknowledge what he has done with a view to reconciling. But since he has said that he doesn't love her and would only stay for the kids (by which he means he doesn't want a formal divorce that would require him to hand over the house and pay her 50% of his paycheck every month), he is clearly not interested in actual reconciliation.

Of course children are important but unless she is going to be happy with him seeing who he pleases when he pleases (rest assured, this won't be the only affair), she needs to tell him to leave HER house.

schmarn, but it's not HER house. It is most likely in both their names but he has always been fairly secretive about bank statements etc.

She has noticed that a large amount of money (enough for a rental deposit) has gone out of their account this month so she suspects that he is in the process of renting somewhere.

He says that it is HIS house and that he is not leaving. Although he has previously said that he was leaving and she begged him to stay but that was before she knew about OW.

Sorry, what I meant is that in any divorce proceedings where children are involved and the husband is a high earner, the woman will get the matrimonial home. He knows this full well. She needs to speak to a lawyer. He is already trying to intimidate her about her rights so she needs some proper advice. Much as MN is great, it can't substitute for proper legal advice. I had a friend in this very situation (he was the cheat and the breadwinner) and his wife got the house and a large slug of his monthly pay.

This is ultimately why divorce is often the best solution. In informal separations it's too easy for the more powerful partner i.e. the one with all the money, to dominate the other, refuse to cooperate, refuse to move out, hide earnings and all the rest. Once it's formalised, all kinds of rules come into play.

It is slightly complicated by the fact that she wouldn't want to stay in the matrimonial home as it would be too much to look after on her own and it needs finishing off work done to the grounds after an extension. So, if it ended she would have to leave it which would further disrupt the DC's lives.

Speaking to a Solicitor has put her mind at ease somewhat.

Thanks again for the continued discussion .

Would you tell DC that things weren't working out so you decided to divorce - is that what people do? I haven't even mentioned divorce to her, it seems too final. Her eldest has already started asking questions along these lines which she has side-stepped by saying that 'Daddy is just being a bit silly atm".

I'm in a similar position (although no DCs). I don't want to stay in the matrimonial home either as I couldn't afford to run it (it's huge). My solicitor has advised me that I will be entitled to 50% of all assets, so either H will have to buy me out or sell it.

Moving house is not as disruptive to DCs as living in a home where their father is treating their mother appallingly. That would leave life long scars.

I'm sorry to hear that you are in a similar position hiding.

Is there any evidence that compares the outcomes for DC in both situations?

Having spent most of today thinking about this I have come to the conclusion that there really isn't a lot that I can do to help.

I wish my friend would find the strength to tell him to leave and come to the realisation that both she and the DC are better off away from this lying cheating excuse for a DH. Except that you can't really walk away, can you? Not without making the decision to spend less time with your DC.

I wouldn't like to make that decision, the one where you hand your DC over for half of the week - heart-breaking .

I wouldn't like to make that decision either.

Sounds as if your friend has got more than sufficient evidence to divorce him for adultery. Rooms booked that he didn't stay in? Yeah, tell it to the Marines. If he wants to contest adultery he'll have to prove he didn't make good on the bookings.

She doesn't want to leave him free to see the ow while she and the dc are on holiday? In that case she'll be spending her holiday watching him like a hawk because, sure as eggs is eggs, he'll be in touch with the ow and it'll only be a matter of time before he leaves your friend for her, or another ow.

Why do women demean themselves for deceiving twunts men who can't keep their flies zipped?

She's still sharing a bed with him? It'd need a brick wall built down the middle before I got in a bed with him again.

There's nothing you can do to help her except be around to pick up the pieces when she realises she's been deluding herself that 'daddy's just being silly'.

What makes you think that she'd be handing over her dc for the half the week? Sex self-absorbed twunts like him rarely do their fair share of child care either before or after divorce.

Is this the kind of relationship that she wants to role model for her daughter? Does she want her daughter to know that women are worthy of men who don't cheat and lie and bully their way through relationships? Then she needs to value herself and her children more than a half-life being bullied by this man.

He sounds controlling and emotionally abusive if he is trying to frighten her off from leaving by threatening her with the loss of her home and children. He is acting as if he has done nothing wrong and her lack of action is only confirming that for him.

That said, I totally understand why she is reacting the way she is. She has spent her married life thinking of them all as a family unit, thinking of their well being together. It must be a shock to realise that her H has been a selfish git and hasn't been considering her and their children for at least as long as this affair. It's an emotional leap to see herself and her children as the ones she has to care for, not him, particuarly if he's been a bully who tells her it is all about him and what he thinks is best for the children.

Obviously, as an outsider there's not much you can do. Three things: be there for her to talk to even if she isn't ready to do anything right away, affirm that she and her children deserve better and make sure that his comments about what she'd be entitled to don't go unchallenged and advise her to get legal advice about the finances/home/residency of children/getting him to leave etc.

I wonder whether if her children were in relationships like this as adults whether she would expect/want them to stay with a partner who treated them like rubbish just for the same reasons, and if not, why is she not worthy of the same respect? Why let her children see that its 'okay' to be treated/treat someone the way she is being treated.

As for the fear of him turning more towards the OW, he isn't some prize to be won, he's an unfaithful, bullying liar. Your friend would be well rid.

It might take her a while to realise that her H and marriage aren't what she thought they were, that she can't make them back to what she thought they were by staying. I guess you just have to be there for her.