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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Original poster

Please help. I've had an affair and told my husband - I now realise I want to work things out

114 replies

onanightlikethis · 06/09/2012 11:08

We have been married for 11 years, together 15. I'm 40, he's 42. We have 2 kids 7 and 8.
I love my husband but as is probably normal we have got stuck in a rut, taken each other for granted and fallen out of love bit. He's not the most demostative person.but I know that he loves me and our family.
Stupidly, I let my head be turned by someone else, who gave me the things my husband did not. I told my husband 8 weeks ago that I needed him to change - be more affectionate, do more to help me, interact with the kids more. He has tried to change and I can see that. On Sunday a conversation eviolved around buying furntiture and spending money on the house. That led to me saying I didn't want to stay. We didn't argue or fight- he said it's clear I can't be who u need. We discussed separation. He has now run with this, taking practical steps to make this happen. He's moved into the spare room. I confessed to an emotional affair with someone else- he knew this person and could pinpoint the night it happened.
I know I have hurt him terribly. I have apologised. My difficulty is that I can't stop crying and I wonder if this means I have got it all wrong.
I spoke to him last night saying I can't reconcile why I am so upset if this is what I wanted, and I had been blaming him, but maybe a lot of it was in my head and I had issues I needed to work out. I asked him if it was saveable- with counselling- even if the outcome of counselling was that we would separate, at least we would be able to say we had tried everything. I feel massive guilt.he said I had broken him.
Has anyone been through this and how do I know if I'm sad at the loss of our marriage and the guilt, or if I'm sad because I want him and our marriage to work?
I know if I commit to stay I have to be over 100% sure it's for the right reasons.
Any advice appreciated.

OP posts:

Offred · 07/09/2012 15:19

Olive - I think the point is that a child is no longer "legitimate" or "illegitimate" based on whether it's parents are married or not but that all children are legitimate people in their own right. The correct term is simply "child".

OliveandJim · 07/09/2012 15:36

but i was referring to a man having fathered a child with another woman than his wife whilst being married ....isn't that an illegitimate child? Anyway it happened before 1986 and the daughter was portrayed in the French Press as the Illegitimate daughter of the French President and still is I think. I have a son with DP and we're not married, i would never dream of calling my son illegitimate but the previous example strikes me as different.

Offred · 07/09/2012 15:40

It wouldn't be. If given to using those words then your child is as illegitimate ad the French president's.

Offred · 07/09/2012 15:45

And I might add if you wouldn't dream of calling your son illegitimate then you probably already know why Paralympia would point out that it isn't a great thing to say so your snippiness is a bit undeserved.

Lueji · 07/09/2012 15:53

And back to the thread...

Have you told him what the affair consisted of?

It seemed more like infatuation to me. And little more than texts and a coffee date.

From your H's point of view, your coming and going is not healthy.
At some point I did tell my ex that the next time he mentioned divorce I would just accept it (should have ages before, really). He used it more like a weapon to make me back off from my "complaints".

Your reaction to your H's accepting that you wanted to separate seems natural. It's very hard to live with someone who is not actually committed to the relationship, nor wants to end it.

Original poster

onanightlikethis · 07/09/2012 16:05

Yes I have told him.

OP posts:

OliveandJim · 07/09/2012 16:21

I'm sorry Lueji, but I find Offred answers quite insulting, the french President did not recognise his illegitimate daughter my DP has given his name to my son how is that the same thing u s c?

Offred · 07/09/2012 16:38

It doesn't matter olive that's not what illegitimate means. An illegitimate child is one born out of wedlock. It doesn't matter if the parents recognise it, it doesn't matter if the parents subsequently marry it is synonymous with "bastard" and people are offended by its use. here if you didn't know that then fair enough but now you do.

Offred · 07/09/2012 16:40

It is about the us but their legal system is based on the English common law system and the important point is the defining of legitimacy.

OliveandJim · 07/09/2012 16:47

Offred, English is my Third Language so no I didn't know it but I still don't understand the big dela and why I can't refer to the elligitimate daughter of the ex French President as such when she was born out of wedlock. She seems to fall into the definition. How would you refer to her. She's not his child solely as he had several children with his wife whom he never divorced so how do you call children had outside of marriages?

Offred · 07/09/2012 16:54

I think it is because the idea of "illegitimacy" is what is causing offence. It is really irrelevant to anything that a child was born out of wedlock. The only reason it would be relevant is to pass a moral judgement which negatively affects the child's life and expectations. I can understand what you mean but the relevant part as far as the child and the story is concerned is that the child is conceived with another woman not that the child is the result of an affair or born out of wedlock which really are moral judgements which are expressed as discrimination against the child by the term "illegitimate" or "bastard".

Offred · 07/09/2012 16:55

They are all his children basically. None of them should be seen as anymore "legitimate" than any of the others. It is a very hurtful thing for the child.

Paralympia · 07/09/2012 17:17

OliveandJim, Offred already explained it really well. The whole point of the status of the child act is that all children are born equal (in theory). iT IS no reflection on the child whether or not his/her parents are married or married to each other. All children are born equal, and even though you will encounter this language still used in America (as they have not ratified the hague's Act) it is generally regarded to be offensive and unnecessary. Do you need a special word for a child because its parents weren't married? As offred pointed out, the correct term is 'child'.

prh47bridge · 07/09/2012 18:11

Would you care to refer to an act that actually exists? There is no Status of the Child Act 1986. There is a Family Law Act 1986 which contains a section on declarations of status. Amongst other provisions it allows a person to apply for a declaration that they are the legitimate child of their parents or that they have been legitimated, usually by the marriage of their parents. It did not abolish the legal definition of illegitimate.

I must admit I have never come across the idea that illegitimate is offensive. Bastard yes, illegitimate no. The BBC don't seem to have got the message as the term was used repeatedly on "Who do you think you are" this week.

prh47bridge · 07/09/2012 18:15

And Offred's statement that it doesn't matter if the parents subsequently marry is simply untrue in English law. If the parents marry the child becomes legitimate under the Legitimacy Act 1976 (and the parents are required to re-register the birth).

OneMoreChap · 07/09/2012 18:21

Basically the advice you get here will be "It's your fault, you should move out..."

He will certainly take awhile to trust you, and expect this to be thrown at you. For years.

And no, whatever he did, he didn't make you do this.

Offred · 07/09/2012 18:28

The child doesn't become legitimate, the child can be legitimised. Like the presumption that a child born in marriage is legitimate but this may be rebutted.

MissBoPeep · 07/09/2012 20:52

OP I'm sorry but am going to be harsh :(

If all that happened was you had a crush on a man, and your DH saw him "looking" at you in a lovey-dovey way- really- that is not an "affair" of any sort. It's a crush, a flirtation, whatever.

An affair to me is penetrative sex. I don't care that other people move the boundaries so that it means a bit of this, or that, or whatever. The legal definition of an affair is full sex with a person who is married.

You came nowhere near this.

I think you and your DH are making a molehill out of something and using it as a scapegoat for dissatisfactions that were thre already. being very cynical it's looking as if your DH wanted out and this had given him a " reason".

Sorry.

Paralympia · 07/09/2012 20:58

I'd hardly think that its usage on Have I got news for you proves that the term is acceptable. (The term has been removed from the Irish Constitution.)

The Hague does not consider it acceptable. You don't have to have an awful lot of common decency or sensitivity to acknowledge that a term that suggest that one child is less valid than another child is offensive. Or so I would have thought. Iwoudln't have imagined that somebody would defend its usage.

Ormiriathomimus · 07/09/2012 21:06

Thanks for the apology lurking x I don't usually refer to it as an emotional affair just an affair. And i don't say 'just'. But to a large extent that is what it was - sex isn't essential for it to be betrayal. Dh was emotionally AWOL if not hostile during it because someone else became his focus, his passion.

MissBoPeep · 07/09/2012 22:20

This has gone off-topic...

but the meaning of illegitimate, as everyone surely knows, comes from the legal position of the man and woman not being lawfully married- it's their relationship that is not " legitimate"- not the child.

Offred · 07/09/2012 22:41

Except that it isn't, it is the child which is illegitimate. It is about inheritance.

skyebluesapphire · 07/09/2012 22:54

Everybody shouted OW when I first came on here and said that my H had just walked out. I discovered after he left that he was texting his best mates wife well over 100 times a day, secretly emailing her through a secret email account, talking about her all the time. He was supporting her emotionally.

Everybody shouted Emotional Affair.

Contact that was hidden from me and her H, discussing our marriage problems with her without making me aware that we had any problems!

If you are hiding something and talking about things you wouldn't say in front of your spouse, it's an emotional affair. The difference is that people kid themselves they are not having an affair as they haven't had sex.

MissBoPeep · 07/09/2012 23:18

The meaning of "il" is a latin ( I think) prefix which means "without". It means " without a legitimate union- between man and woman."

Easier just to stick with bastard :)

MissBoPeep · 07/09/2012 23:20

If you are hiding something and talking about things you wouldn't say in front of your spouse, it's an emotional affair.

This is nonsense as a definition.

Women can talk to women and men about all sorts which they would not say in front of their spouses.

It's about emotional connection- not about what is said. And it's not an affair unless there is sex. It might be an inappropriate liaison, but it's not an affair.

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