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.

Oh

I'm so sorry you are reading his messages to his OW. And that you can return to them again and again. You must be reliving the hurt continually.

Anyfucker is right - why don't you go out fir a walk or company, cry, take deep breaths and try to think your way through this. Are you happy to settle for this weak and selfish man?

So sorry you are going through this OP, what a hideous shock. Truly your DH is a cowardly, weak person. That is obvious from his treatment of you and of the OW.

I think many people would struggle to have empathy for the OW but even if you don't how can his behaviour towards her make you feel anything other than further contempt towards him? She didn't do this to herself, they did it together. He makes a woman pregnant and confesses undying love at the start of the week and a couple of weeks later he is telling her to have an abortion and saying he hates her and wants nothing more to do with her.

He writes/says many unkind things about you and many lovely things about her but now he doesn't feel any of them.....more likely he is terrified by the mess he has made, has nowhere else to live and doesn't want to face the consequences so thinks he can pretend it never happened by hiding behind you. His not wanting to meet her has nothing to do with his "respecting you". It has to do with not facing up to the mess they have created and his true feelings.

Sorry, I don't mean that harshly, I feel horrible for you but he has behaved so despicably I hate to think of him not feeling the consequences of that behaviour and also hate to think that you would waste your life living with someone who has treated you with such contempt. You undoubtably deserve much better. Good luck xx

The things he said to her are not beautiful :o

They are tacky, pedestrian, adolescent guff.

He probably wheels out the same shite for all his mistresses.

And only a silly, vain bitch would believe that shite coming from a man they knew was married.

The only message anyone with any sense could take from those messages is that he is a dishonest, disloyal prick with a bad line in teenage angsty romantic patter.

I mean he actually did the whole "you complete me" bullshit :o

What an embarrassing tool.

Oh Janey this is truly awful behaviour, appalling, hideous.
I don't know what to say you are worth more than this so so much more.

He meant what he said at the time as he wanted in her knickers. He wanted the excitement and thrill.

He doesn't mean it now because he wants his warm comfy bed, house, domestic wife and children.

Nothing to do with you all about him and what he wants.

quietly - she's a grown adult not a little child. It isn't a question of who is worse. They both are. And now both of them are kicking against the consequences of their behaviour.

I really hate this beleif that woman are so doe-eyed and stupid they can be coerced into doing something they don't want to do. So much for feminism eh

agree with Xales 100%. What a horrible piece of work, you're better than this Janey.

Yes, ow is a grown woman of nearly 40 who has royally fucked over her own DH as well as the op. I don't think she's really interested in sisterhood.

I get that it's important that janey doesn't focus on what a bitch she is - she needs to focus on the twat of a h - but I don't get why she needs sympathy. She had plenty of choices.

Oh I know Orm...I totally agree with AThing about the pedestrian bullshit..and the OWs vanity sucked it up...not because she was a naive ickle girl being fed lines by a reckless charmer. It is bullshit from a man who has a black hole where a heart and soul should be. He operates from a position of pure selfishness.

exactly xales.

Some wise mner once said,

'you can't talk your way out of something you have acted yourself into'

Which is exactly what he is trying to do.

Hoping that you are ok, and growing stronger and angrier by the minute janey

Hugs.

"He really went after her, of course she thought he was her future"

:o

This is a married adult woman who knew he was similarly attached.

Just because he "went after her" doesn't mean she was in any way compelled to think he was "her future".

I mean, really.

JaneysbrokenWed 20-Mar-13 13:55:18

He says he didn't mean it/no longer feels it. I suppose that has to mean something

Janey that is the saddest thing. It doesn't mean anything, really.

He's saying it because it's convenient, it sounds good and he knows it's what you want to hear. And you're clinging to it.

After all he's said and done, please don't think that because he's said that it means something, it doesn't.

'you can't talk your way out of something you have acted yourself into'

Wise words!

Reading the emails must have been torture

Be kind to yourself x

Sorry, but any woman who believes that bullshit while thinking highly of a man who writes such insults about his wife is stupid, as well as vain. Did it never occur to her that in the past, he'd probably paid the same nice compliments to the woman he was now so easily denigrating and discarding? Did it not register that one day he'd be saying the same about her, when the next OW came along?

Look at how quickly he turns.

He now 'hates' the OW and probably thinks he can con you OP with insults about the OW, now his need to demonise a woman has shifted from you to her.

Don't be as stupid as her.

Because this now applies in reverse.

Please don't take any notice of posts that appear to be trying to blame you for your husband's affair either. You were not responsible for dealing with the gap in your marriage into which could come another woman. If your husband thought he was vulnerable to an affair, it was his responsibility to address that with you. It is not your responsibility to assume that if there are difficulties in your marriage, an affair will happen. No more than it was your husband's responsibility to worry that you'd have an affair.

You've been brave and courageous enough to tell us about your medical condition that made sex painful. It must have been horrendous feeling you had to share those intimate details with the OW and her husband. Her husband had the right reaction to that - he blamed your husband, not you.

A marriage is worth nothing if the people in it can't trust eachother not to shag around when there is a bad patch or a 'gap'. Your husband had the responsibility to talk to you if he was unhappy and wanted you to do anything to address your part in that. Never, ever forget that.

This is not your fault.

She talked about books and poetry and obscure music. She said all these things about romance and connecting and how living and fighting and fucking up is a better life than being comfortable. How can I compete with that?

Although, my best friend thinks he got caught up in it all and obsessed/infatuated and now is back down to earth. He was totally out of his depth with a woman who is worlds removed from his life. She said he's too simple to want any of that on a full time, permanent basis.

I know I'm obsessing. I can't help it.

He also told her he wouldn't care if I had an affair.

But what do you want janey? Could you trust a man who said all those terrible things about you to his mistress?

Janey - how can you ever forget those awful things he said? Why would you want a man like that? Because of 22 years' marriage? Time means nothing. Behaviour means everything.

Look, it's more a case of you being out of his league and him having lost the right to compete for you.

Someone who reads books, poetry and likes obscure music can still have an ugly soul and no morals or decency. And a bloke who writes things like that about his wife and the mother of his children isn't worth the shit on anybody's shoe.

You're worth 10 times more than either of them.

I write this to you despite supporting various friends who've had ill-judged, infatuation type affairs and have rebuilt their marriages from scratch. I'm not a poster who says 'leave the bastard' if he's had an affair. Not all affairs are the same and not everyone is this cruel and abusive to a partner when they happen.

But this one is so straightforward and the behaviour so awful, there is no doubt in my mind about what should happen, if you are ever to gain any self-respect and the respect of your children.

This man needs to go.

Janey.
He does mean it.
He is a vile excuse for human being.
You are worth so much more than this.
You will never be able to forget those awful things he wrote. He didn't say them in he heat of the moment. He typed them, thought about the, and then sent them.
Please don't waste another minute of your life with this bastard.
You have a future.
Just not one with him in it.

He lied to her. He lied to you. He's still lying to get his own selfish way and save his own reputation and comfortable life. Whatever way you look at it, he lies to women (whether then or now, or more likely, both) and so you can't trust what he tells you.

He has done something terrible to your relationship. He has betrayed you verbally and physically. He's not the man you thought he was (although you seem to have suspected and feared his adultry), he's not the man you love.

You can't go back to when you didn't know this about him. By accepting him back with the only condition that he gives up this affair, makes him realise that you will put up with being cheated on for as long as he doesn't get caught, and then if caught, if he says he's sorry and end the affair.

Do you not think you deserve better than living with a cheat and liar who doesn't love, cherish and respect you? I think you deserve better. So does everyone on here. How dare he make you feel jealous of a woman who cheated on her husband and young family? It doesn't matter how attractive, clever or brave they thought she was being. She was selfish, lying and cheating.

Although I am of the opinion that he ought to leave, at least temporarily and have to change and improve himself and fight for you rather than have you fight for him.... what about marriage counselling? Has he offered to really work on saving your marriage from within it? But I guess if you'd never leave him, he doesn't need to worry about saving it?

I know you're in shock about what he done and that has left you angry, hurt and confused. When you're ready, you'll be angry at him and you'll think 'how dare he?' rather than 'What was wrong with me?' 'How dare he treat me with so little regard when I had health problems and was running about keeping house for him?' Then you might like to think about whether you want him (the real him that he's revealed to you now: the liar, the cheat, the man who thinks women are disposable) in your life anymore.

Please think about what was said up thread about trying to find space (maybe through counselling or with friends) to think about the sort of life you want, the kind of people you want to spend it with. Because you deserve so much more than he's offering.

I hope their are people out there to support you right now OP, i can't imagine how i would feel in your situation or how i would begin to deal with it, you truly are one brave, strong woman, and you are in my thoughts....