Husband's affair - I'm completely broken, please help

[Janeysbroken]

I found out last week that my DH of 22 years has been having an affair. It was with a woman he met online who is also married and ten years younger than me. I found out when her husband knocked on our door at midnight and told me, in a rage. Our 20 year old son heard everything and is inconsolable. When the husband had gone my DH told me he'd already finished the affair a few weeks earlier, he was drunk and it meant nothing. I was shocked and angry and unbelievably sad but he works away a lot and it's something I'd always feared. He swore it was the first time he'd been unfaithful in the 24 years we've been together.

The next morning I was burning up with anger and asked him to leave. I went out. He then phones me to tell me the OW has turned up at our house wanting to apologise and is demanding to speak to me. I was so livid I went home and grabbed his phone and called her. I told her he wasn't leaving, neither was I and he was drunk and she meant nothing to him. What followed has broken me.

She was obviously enraged by this. And told me the truth. He loved her, he hasn't finished it, had been meeting at hotels for four months, he said she was love of his life. Thousands and thousands of FB messages. To cut a long story short me and DH ended up driving down to their house that night as both me and OW needed answers from DH.

We all talked for almost two hours. He admitted he loved her, had told her she was love of his life, best friend and soulmate. He'd told her that morning that he loved her but couldn't leave because he has nowhere to go. He'd bought her presents. Talked to her almost constantly on FB for months. Said he was unhappy, I'm boring, our sex life is rubbish. But because i now knew he told her it had to stop and he's staying with me. She was crying and devastated. He'd told her we were just friends now and he hasn't felt anything more than friendship for me for over a decade. He was clearly besotted with her. And she with him.

I was having panic attacks. Can't eat. Want to kill her, him, myself. She showed me a FB message where he called me a boring twat. I thought we'd had a lovely day that day - we'd even had sex. He took her to a hotel the day after.

She refused to stop contacting him. Threatening to tell our 19 year old daughter (who still doesn't know) and his boss, which would get him sacked as he took her to hotels on fake business trips on expenses. I made it clear he couldn't ever speak to her again and was feeling physically like I might die. She then texts to say she's pregnant. Her husband phoned going mad as he says it's impossible it's his, it's my DH's.

My DH is, to his credit refusing to speak to her and has told her to have an abortion and never contact us again. Her husband phoned pleading for him to speak to her as she's slashed all her arms with a razor over the guilt of having to face an abortion. But I've told him I'll kill myself if he speaks to her again. Our son hates him. Our life is shattered and I'm destroyed.

I can't bear to think he loved her so much. It was plainly obvious. He claims not to now and I know he isn't in contact with her. Could he really have fallen out of love with her in the space of 24 hours? They'd just come back from a hotel when her husband found out and came to our house. I don't know what to do or think. I'm grieving and love him. I'm 48 and don't work or drive. I have nothing without him. He's my life. Please, please help me.

'Well I knew someone would point that out Hoping...and yes of course that is potentially so...but speaking from my own experience...nearly 4 years down the line...that is unlikely. But worth pointing out Hoping. '

I dont have experience of an OW with a pregnancy, but I do have experience with 'coming out of the other side' of a relationship breakdown due to infidelity and I do know that when you look at the bigger picture when you are 'ok' again, the last thing you need it regrets.

The best thing for the OP to be able to do is hold her head high and KNOW that she has done nothing wrong. I fear that this could hurt her deeply in the long run. She will never have to question her own actions :-)

I hope that you can find some peace soon ike :-)

Bloody phone...

... I am not sure the OP is ready to walk yet. She needs to make that choice for herself, not be shouted into it.

And I am not trying to defend his despicable behaviour either as I am pretty sure my marriage would not survive infidelity on either side.

Totally agree with Midwife and AF.

The OW can't go through it alone as after a GA you can't drive, so I agree it's not happening, or she wasn't pregnant to begin with.

Why are you protecting your H? Why are you not angry at him? So all he has to do is waltz back in, tell you he hates her, you force him to stop all contact and everything is fine again? Do you think after Thursday everything will go back to normal?

Your H knows that he can get away with anything. After all he doesnt have to take responsibility for his actions when all your anger is directed at the OW and you just let him back, no consequences. he knows he can do it again.

Your hysterectomy isn't an excuse, your children can help.

You may think you love him but your dignity is worth so much more.

Ok I've just talked to him and he isn't going to reply. He's deleted the text.

When her DH phoned last Monday he was distraught. He said he'd made her take a test and there was no way it could be his. He also said he'd driven up to Flamborough Head at 3am and was wanting to give up. He did say because she had a history of serious depression and PND and had spent time in a Mother and Baby Unit, there were serious concerns that she should have an earliest abortion as possible due to mental health reasons and she was paying privately. I do think she's lying about going alone though, to rub it in. I think he'll go with her. He said he would.

I have no idea if any of it is true I suppose but he didn't seem to be lying and I don't see why he would. I do feel sorry for him and he has been better than any of us through this. It must have taken a lot to beg DH to speak to her.

I'm going to re-read all the replies and reflect now. Thank you all again. It has been so hard to read but I needed honesty. My friend directed me here and I'm glad she did.

Sound like a big horrible mess for everyone.
And you sound in shock. Not surprising but its a bad time to decide anything about your marriage until you can gather yourself and speak to your DH in a calmer way. TBH - and sorry to say it - but sounds like your marriage had problems and you both knew it. Hes responsible for the affair but you are both responsible for not addressing those problems before this.
Also to treat the other lady so callously is not justified. She sounds in a terrible state too and to treat suicide threats lightly is very stupid. I feel strongly about this as exactly the same happened to a woman in my office who had an affair and got pregnant by another man there who then cruelly dumped her & went home to his DW. Some people responded like the ones here on MN with a lot of vindicativeness and hatred directed at her. She parked herself outside his house and gassed herself and the unborn child.
Some people on MN are going to tell you "she deserved it" but actually she was just an ordinary person and the responsibility for her death has lingered over the marriage of that couple ever since and has destroyed their family even though they stayed together.
Have a little more compassion and forgiveness for yourself but also for everyone else please. Sounds like everyone has made some big mistakes and needs some human kindness.
Once you have better frame of mind and are through the shock you can think more clearly about whether to divorce or try to mend your marriage. I hope to try to save it.
Good luck and Gods love xxx

Thanks for that Hoping, and most of the time I am ok...but it takes major major work and self control. Even nearly 4 years down the line, when I see threads like this it bring all the emotions back...which is why I usually avoid them like the plague.

janey A while back you asked if he could possibly still love her. you pointed out that you couldn't believe that he still does, because of the way she has treated him since.

This is how he has treated you:

Lied to your face about the seriousness of the affair,
Called you a boring twat
Told her that he doesn't miss you 'in the slightest'
Said the sex is boring
Had sex with another woman
Had unprotected sex with another woman

and you still love him

So why do you think it impossible that he still loves her?

For what it's worth i don't think he does love her. I also don't think he loves you. sorry.

If you've ever seen an animal trapped, you'll know that they spend almost all their time trying to escape.

You can't police him for ever. He will move from not loving you, to hating and despising you for it. It won't be long either.

Do you think he respects how much appalling behaviour you are willing to put up with??

If you think you're being weak or a doormat- don't you think he does too?

The only way to get your self respect/esteem back, and to get him to respect you again is to ask him to leave. Whether that's temporary or permanent doesn't need to be decided now.

If he goes back to ow, how much respect would you have for her- being treated by your dh like she is a worthless specimen, who he just happened to want sex with- and then taking him back. Wouldn't you think she is being a mug? Think about it.

Big hugs in the meantime.

I am so sorry to hear of your heartbreak. I know you feel as if you want to die, but your children need you. As so many others have said, you need to think of you. You need to be kind to yourself and that means eating and looking after your health. It is too early to say whether your marriage can, will or should survive. You may be able to forgive your husband - that is a decision only you can make. It may be a good idea to take initial advice from a solicitor, but be careful of moving things along too quickly. You need to be able to make decisions and a shattered heart makes that difficult to do. This is your marriage and it may be your divorce but the key word is "YOURS", not mine or your best friend's or your solicitor's. Yours. My advice is to consider counselling and to continue doing what you took the brave step of doing yesterday, you reached out. Look at how many strangers have been supportive - you can rely on that support at time day or night. You will survive this and you will be stronger for it.

AfricanSue - how awful! What a sad story. I could never take back someone who could be so cruel and callous to another person, especially not someone he'd claimed to love.

OP, the OW's dh seems to have more integrity, dignity, strength and empathy in his left bollock than your H will ever have. He is showing him up to be an even bigger cunt that he already is. He must really love her, to put his own pain aside and support her through this mess they created. Your H on the other hand, has treated you contemptuously. World of difference.

You so do not deserve the way he has behaved towards you.

janey, my heart goes out to you, its such a terrible thing to have to go through. can only add to what others say, please listen to what AF said - it makes so much sense!

you may not feel like it as your self-esteem will be at an all-time low but you DO hold all the cards here, you're not powerless. you've got a lot more than you think you do, your children for starters, your cleaning job (good on you, there's nothing wrong with that btw, far from it in fact), you as a decent person.

my ex-dp eventually left me (I should've left him but I too clung on to the relationship as it was all I ever knew and like you, I was afraid I'd never meet anyone else/couldn't envisage life without him/didn't think I'd cope etc etc. if only there had been mumsnet to turn to for advice back then!)

I shouldn't have tried to 'make him stay' with me (which I did). I shouldn't have ignored the signs (that I didn't want to see) about the various OW nor made excuses for him.

I wish I could have seen it the way others were telling me sooner. Instead I wasted another 2+ years before it suddenly hit me in the face - the realisation that what friends had been saying was true all along "that he'd done me a favour by leaving me/cheating on me". I could get my life back, a better one.

I ignored all his attempts to get back with me after that day the penny dropped and I didn't see that him 'choosing' me was a good thing anymore.

You will get to that place too I am sure, the one thats right for you I mean.
Please put yourself (and your DCs) first! It's what you deserve after this shitty treatment.

Im not sure I've ever gone into all the hideous detail surrounding my partner's affair. Some of it will remain buried forever...Anyway, the ow in my case also announced a pregnancy after mine became common knowledge, with several of her "close friends" vouching for the authentencity of it. She then arranged a speedy abortion, demanding my dp's attention blah blah.

The point being that these situations drive just about everyone to despair and to do some really insane things. I felt for her, she had been badly used and abused by my dp, although I also saw her for what she was, and that was a very unpleasant attention seeker who would do pretty much anything to get her own way.

I think this ow probably is making it up, it wouldn't be that difficult to fool someone else about it. Maybe her dh has never seen a preg test before.

The thing is, all the flak that is passing between you and the ow, well it seems as if none of it is hitting your husband. I am sorry that you feel so so desperate. I tried (and often failed) to detach detach detach, and little by little I got my dignity back (you are not alone in losing it big time, believe me).

My courage returned day by day, my self esteem too, until a strange thing happened-I didn't want him any more, I didn't need him any more. Don't be frightened by this-you can't go back to how things were anyway, so change is coming long term, hopefully for the better.

I couldn't have done it without support in RL. I'm sure this has been said-but please please lean on your friends, they will give you strength.

It isn't necessarily a given that she isn't pregnant. OP just said it would be a private one & if she doesn't have anyone to go with, they could give her the option of staying in (I know someone who did exactly this, was single mum, father disappeared as soon as she announced she was preg, arranged for her child to sleepover at a friends, and they kept her in overnight).

So I don't think telling op that she isn't pregnant is helpful. None of us know the facts surrounding that.

If it's an early abortion it's a pills job -- no GA required, surely?

Sorry but if he works away a lot this probably isn't his first affair. The others may not have been full blown 'soul mates', maybe one night stands. But men who claim their wives are boring will consider themselves entitled to go elsewhere when the opportunity arrives.

He may be working from home at the moment but when he goes back to his regular work patterns are you going to go with him when he is away? Sit and look at his computer and phone every minute, sit in the hotel all night making sure he does not have a drink or go out anywhere that he might meet someone?

You are keeping him locked up. He is not staying because he loves you, he is there now because you are policing him and his alternative is to walk out the door - which he is not ready for yet.

Very soon you will have an argument about how you won't let him breathe. he will expect you to be 'over this' in a few days and he'll expect that life will go back to how it used to be. He'll be telling you to stop picking over it like a scab and forget about it.

I used to work in an industry where a lot of the men worked away a lot, oh the tales I could tell about the men claiming they worked away as they were 'practically separated' but this was easier for the kids. When in most cases the wife was 'happily married' with a husband she thought was working away for the good of the family.

Janey you are far better than him. Look back over your years together. Is there a reason you never learned to drive? Did he like you to be dependent on him? Does he make you feel like an important thing in his life or just someone there to run the home? Your posts are well written and you sound like a very intelligent lady. Its never too late to go back to college as a mature student. When you've booted him out and the children are grown and left home you might want to investigate doing something for yourself and go to college.

I don't think anyone is "telling" OP anything.

What people are trying to say is that relying solely on what her husband says and does is a mistake. In fact, OP should be working on the premise that if his mouth is moving, he is lying right now. Same for the OW.

OP needs to make her own decisions, and that includes not being swayed by those that have no role in supporting her. The only person that has acted with any integrity here is the OW's H.

I dont think it even matters whether the OW is pregnant or not, she is obviously in a state of shock/anxiety/depression and the OP's H is part of the reason for it.

Janey, please ask yourself the question, is your H not contacting her because he thinks that is what you want?

Whatever his reasoning, he is being very very cruel.

Be the bigger person here, not for the OW, for YOU, come out of this with more dignity than the rest of them put together, encourage him to contact her.

My point is really that these situations drive people to do desperate and stupidly cruel things. I was giving my opinion about the truth or otherwise of the pregnancy, to illustrate that. And the fact that while all this is going on, I suspect the heat largely remains off the man who has caused all this.

Flibberty - totally agree with you, my H worked away from home for 10 years and during that time according to him he only had one affair (the one I found out about) I know of at least 3 more that I have found out since, but I have doubled that for realities sake and would probably add a '0' to the end too if I am honest with myself.

ike1 I apologise for directing my anger at you, that wasn't right of me. You've obviously been through hell and I sympathise hugely.

I just think OP needs to read all our different perspectives, because she must be very confused. I felt like you were trying to stop others from posting views that disagreed with yours. My response to what OP's dh has done is very different from yours, and would be if my dh did it to me.

I think what is wonderful about MN is that when you ask for advice, you get a whole rainbow of viewpoints which helps to broaden your thinking and put your own gut reactions into perspectives. Really all any of us want is for OP to be able to get the best possible outcome for her and her children out of this horrible situation, which is not of her own making

'Thanks for that Hoping, and most of the time I am ok...but it takes major major work and self control. Even nearly 4 years down the line, when I see threads like this it bring all the emotions back...which is why I usually avoid them like the plague'

I kind of did the opposite - buried my head for years so by the time I 'woke up' the anger wasnt really there any more and I was able to see it from his side, the OW's side and my own.

I hope that you can get there eventually, because it makes life a lot easier for everyone, honestly :-)

The net result of all this mess is that OW is bearing the brunt of it all. OP hates her (not entirely reasonable, but understndable) OP's H is being pretty awful to her and her own husband is also upsetting her. The woman always pays the price.

i also doubt she is pregnant but people do go for abortions on public transport - if you are unlucky enough to be in prison and need one they give you the bus fare and send you on your own.

Oh OP, what a horrible shock for you. But You will come out the other side stronger and knowing you deserve better.

You are getting tied up in all the drama and details.

Bare facts are your husband betrayed you, your relationship was broken and he dealt with it by going off and shagging someone else. Not only did he shag her, he made love to her, got her pregnant, lied to you over and over.

All the he said she said, you let him, he worked away etc etc is just set dressing, extras the minutiae.

You need to get you big girl pants on, pack his bags and tell him the moment shagging her crossed his mind your relationship was I over. Go get yourself a haircut and a big dose of self respect and start living.

What would you say to a daughter if she came to you in your position? Get rid, I expect.

And just to finish my sadly unsympathetic post, your last thought every time he leaves the house for the rest of your life probably is if he is actually going where he has told you he is going? What about when you have your operation, sadly the last thing you will think when going under is if he is going to be contacting her whilst you are incommunicado!! Nice thought eh????

I'm so sorry this is happening to you.

You are clearly in shock and running on adrenalin.

Personally, I wouldn't believe anything he says, full stop.

I wouldn't "believe" the clip of phone call you heard.

I wouldn't believe the abortion.

Everything will seem different in a week or so, when the shock and denial wears off.

The OW and her husband see your husband more clearly right now than you do, Janey. The moment you disclosed your gynae condition to them caused the scales to fall from the OW's eyes and made her realise that she was just another doozy who had been believing a man's lies about why he rarely had sex with his wife. This, together with your husband's despicable treatment towards her and the child they conceived would have made her see your husband objectively for the first time. There's no way she'd take your husband back even if he promised the earth to her. But at some level, she'll be angry with herself for believing what he said and for thinking that your husband was better than the man who despite his pain and torment, can still have humanitarian compassion for not just her, but you as well. She might have lost that man for good and that, together with the loss of an unborn child is a terrible price to pay.

I understand why you have no sympathy for her and it would be too much to expect you to. But in time you will see this differently I should think. You might never have any sympathy for her but I hope you'll see the unfairness that the person who committed the equal wrong has been allowed to get off so lightly. Despite defrauding his firm, he's even managed to hang on to his job as well as his marriage.

The OW is learning a very painful lesson, but only because the consequences of her actions have led to losses. If she'd got away with it, she would never have learnt that behaviour means consequences and so it's likely that she would have continued in the same vein.

Which is the same for your husband. No consequences mean no change.