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Relationships

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

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

445 replies

Janeysbroken · 18/03/2013 20:16

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.

OP posts:
Hopingtobehappy · 19/03/2013 18:34

Ive had a termination myself so I could hardly be called a pro-lifer.

ike1 · 19/03/2013 18:35

Oh the rage will kick in soon Bad...and I suspect it will have Tsunami proportions...that's when arse will bopefully be out on his arse!

AThingInYourLife · 19/03/2013 18:36

She'll transfer her rage where it belongs in good time.

It's much easier and quicker to hate a stranger who has done you great harm than it is to accept that your partner of two decades is a worthless shit who treated you with no respect.

Demanding that she feel anger with him now, now, now is unfair and unrealistic.

And expecting her to feel anything but fury with the woman whose only contribution to her life has been utter devastation is deeply unfair.

AThingInYourLife · 19/03/2013 18:39

Plenty of pro-lifers have had terminations. They are called hypocrites.

But if you really are pro-life, maybe you want to rethink giving advice to a devastated woman that she needs to consider the feelings of a (possibly soon to be aborted) embryo.

Janeysbroken · 19/03/2013 18:43

Ok I just tested it out. I said he could see her or talk to her on the phone on his own. He's refused. Wants nothing to do with her.

So even being the bigger person hasn't tested him.

OP posts:
ike1 · 19/03/2013 18:45

Absolutely Thing ...what happens is that your brain just cannot seem to compute everything that is happening and your feelings towards the philandering partner are still stuck in the before crisis mode...but they do catch up..eventually.

ike1 · 19/03/2013 18:46

Well you have done what is required Janey well done! Now concentrate on you.

Badvoc · 19/03/2013 18:57

Well done Janey.
Now.
Concentrate on you.

sulkygirl · 19/03/2013 19:04

Janey I have been in your situation. The years and years together. The OW abortion. The OW misscarriage. Reading the ludicrous lies he told her about me.
People like your husband and mine smile, nod and say exactly what you want to hear but it's all for their benefit. They don't love anyone. They use people.
He's not the person you thought he was, please seek legal advice and get rid. He's not worth spitting on.

Midwife99 · 19/03/2013 19:23

Why do you want him?!!!!!

Chislemum · 19/03/2013 19:27

please seek legal advice - please, do something constructive for your own future

ike1 · 19/03/2013 19:32

It takes a while for all this stuff to perolate though...I remember going to the solicitors on autopiolot ..not because I wanted to but because I was told I should go and somehow I knew it was the right thing to do to preserve my future.

Uppatreecuppatea · 19/03/2013 19:39

I think it's pretty cowardly of your DH to not meet or talk to OW for a final time.

If I were you, I would encourage it. If you're scared it might make him leave you for her, then at least you will know.

I feel so sorry for you. I also feel so sorry for the OW. What a wretched situation.

All I know for sure is that you can't make your DH do want you want him to do long term and you can't police him. Let him face her and see the consequences from there.

AThingInYourLife · 19/03/2013 19:43

"Why do you want him?!!!!!"

She just found out about all of this.

She's been loving this man for approximately half her life.

She's probably still be bargaining to stay with him if she'd just found out he was a murderer.

It will take a while for her to really believe the new facts.

Don't be so hard on her.

Figgygal · 19/03/2013 19:50

Sorry I don't think your husband not talking to her is a good thing or good sign he's made a baby with her ffs he should face up to it!! Now all that'll happen is he now won't have to face up to all the shit he's told her

Janeysbroken · 19/03/2013 19:59

For years I've been saying to our son I bet your dad's having an affair. Because he works away a lot. Now I've been proven right.

After Thursday there's no need for DH to think about her again.

I think my posts are going round in circles now. Need to take a break.

OP posts:
Chubfuddler · 19/03/2013 20:07

Really? Um, is that really an appropriate thing to have said to a teenager, do you think?

I think you need a break from your DH being in your face with his dramas. Time for him to check into that travel lodge I reckon.

ike1 · 19/03/2013 20:09

Ok Janey ..you take care now..come back when you are ready.

Thank goodness you have the patience and insight to explain the emotional processes of someone recovering from shock and devestation AThing.

Uppatreecuppatea · 19/03/2013 20:10

If she is really having an abortion on Thursday, what are you going to do on that day? Watch him all day to make sure he doesn't contact her?

You need to let him go. If he wants to come to you, he will (if you still want him). If he doesn't, there is no way you can make him.

Let him go.

PoppyField · 19/03/2013 20:26

Hi Janey - what an awful thing to go through, but you will come out the other side.

I'm with Chub - he HAS got somewhere to go - the nearest Travelodge!

It's really, really time for him to check in there.

Go on, you know you can do it. Kick. Him. Out.

All the best of luck.

MaryZeZJezuzIzntZombiedYet · 19/03/2013 20:28

"I said he could see her or talk to her on the phone on his own. He's refused. Wants nothing to do with her.

So even being the bigger person hasn't tested him."

That was a good test. He is even more of a twat than I already thought.

He is scared to face up to what he has done. He is hiding behind you - don't for one minute think he is not seeing her out of loyalty to you. He is avoiding her to avoid a nasty scene, because he is a pathetic coward.

I do hope you realise this sooner rather than later.

ike1 · 19/03/2013 20:29

The Travelodge will be there for when the time comes I m sure

AnyFucker · 19/03/2013 20:30

I think everyone's posts are going round in circles, tbh

I don't think any respondent here deserves their attempts to help OP to be picked up quite so outspokenly, by anyone

OP hasn't done it, so respondents shouldn't either

Good luck, OP x

MadAboutHotChoc · 19/03/2013 20:35

(AF - I agree)

Good luck from me too x

ike1 · 19/03/2013 20:45

As long as everyone sees themselves as being part of that rule AF (headbangers et al included) that would be a fair point.