Separating after 30 years - HELP!

[scarletts]

This is a long story, but I need to get it all out ? and if anyone has the time to read, I would be VERY grateful for some support and virtual hugs.......

I have known my husband for over 30 years, and been married for 27 years. We have 3 teenage daughters (18, 16 and 13) and have enjoyed a happy, comfortable family life.

Fourteen years ago we relocated from the UK to Ireland due to his work. It was tough leaving my friends and family, but we have made a good life for ourselves here. Cracks began to appear in our marriage after he started a new job (with the same company) which necessitated him being away from home during the week. I missed him terribly and struggled with my role as a "single mum" during the week. Things became harder after his recently widowed mother came to live with us. She was an amazing lady and I got on very well with her, but a series of strokes and poor health rendered me a full time carer and it was tough. I couldn't help but feel a bit of resentment towards my husband as he gave me so little thanks or emotional support and expected me to just get on with caring for our daughters, his mum ? and continue to work part time, while he worked away all week. His mother eventually moved in to a nursing home and it did make life easier. Sadly, she passed away 6 months ago.

About 4 years ago I started to become suspicious of my husband. His trips away became longer, sometimes staying away all weekend, He started spending a ridiculous amount of time on his laptop at home in his office at home on his new genealogy hobby and his mobile phone was always bleeping with texts which he would instantly reply to ? not something he was ever quick to do with work related messages. Eventually, in October 2009 the truth came out ? he was having an affair and was going to leave. We talked, we cried, and talked some more. He had it in his head that I wanted out of our marriage because I was always complaining, and he accused me of being unfaithful to him as I had, understandably due to the time we spent apart, developed new friendships with people he did not know. The OW was an old girlfriend from his past, before he and I were married and it got me wondering exactly how long it had been going on. All our married life? Did they have kids together? He was very economical with the truth, so I had to play detective, hack his computer and get all the sordid grisly details of their affair.

After much heartfelt discussion and soul searching, he agreed to end the affair and we decided to concentrate our efforts in fixing the marriage. I set up counselling for us, but he only attended one session with me, as his work schedule made it difficult for him to attend. In hindsight I think he only stayed because he was too weak to tell his daughters or his mother the ugly truth. We muddled along and seemed to be making progress, but I always had a nagging doubt and the trust was never restored. More importantly, he never showed any remorse for what he had done and it made it so hard for me to love and respect him as I had before. At that time I also wrote to the OW a couple of times, just so I could get her side of the story. I did not want a screaming match and I was, under the circumstances, very controlled. I figured women were better at talking. She eventually replied confirming their affair was over and she did not want anything more to do with him as he had let her down so badly.

Last summer he confessed to me they had been seeing each other again, but it was definitely over. But I was more sceptical than ever. When a Valentines card arrived from her to him at the house this year I confronted him again and he swore blind he was not seeing her. However, a few weeks later, just before Easter, he announced to me that our marriage was over and he wanted a ?proper? relationship with her.

Since Easter I have gone through the emotional see-saw of begging him to stay, feeling utterly broken and suicidal, white rage and anger about just how much of an idiot I have been to cling to the hope we can ever have a happy ever after, and outrage and disbelief at him for doing this to me, and or daughters. Throughout all this I have spoken to nobody until recently. I figured that I had to protect our daughters and our friends and family?s perception of our marriage. I guess it was a case of once everyone knew, there would be no going back. So I have kept the entire trauma and upset to myself for all these years. I became withdrawn from everyone, a shadow of my former bubbly self and very, very lonely. But finally, I have spoken to my mum, my sisters and a couple of friends. I am also seeing a counsellor and I am now only beginning to realise just what psychological damage has been done by keeping this secret to myself for so long.

I do not want him back. I am sure of that. Even if he grovelled on his belly, I could never trust or respect him again. If I could I would throw him out of the house tomorrow and say ?good riddance?. But I can?t. We have to work out a separation agreement and a way of co-parenting. Our daughters still do not know and we have not ?gone public? with our separation as we have agreed to wait until after our daughter finishes her exams later this month. And the agony of keeping up this ?happy families? pantomime is agony. Ageist this backdrop we are trying to work out the best way to separate.
His proposal is that rather than come home every weekend, as he has been doing by and large for the last few years, he will come home every other weekend, thus spending one weekend with the OW in the UK and one with his family in Ireland. It is made all the more complicated because we live Ireland and his work and OW are both in the UK. My initial reaction was that he could not come back to the family home, but how else can he see his daughters (assuming they will want to see him) if I don?t allow him back to the home to visit them?
I am still in a very bad place. However, it is becoming very apparent that the decision to end our marriage is one he made a very long time ago. However, I am struggling to process the enormity of it all. They say the deeper the emotional attachment, the deeper the pain. His emotional attachment and resulting pain are negligible. However, my emotion attachment to him is profound and the pain is overbearing. He represented my hopes, my dreams and the rest of my life. All the struggles of recent years, the forced time apart, the darker days of caring for his mother - it all seemed worth it as I was clinging to the hope we were working together towards a brighter future and happy ever after in our life together ? taking pride in our daughters growing in to young adults, grandchildren, travelling together to all the places we talked about, entertaining, enjoying life and each other. And now that future is gone and I am facing a deep black hole. I won't be fobbed off with all the clichés of "time is a healer", "you will meet someone better", etc. I know I will get through this but right now it is fucking hard to see how. He accuses me of being too emotional, of acting the victim and he does not seem to want to comprehend, let alone care about the effect this is having on me. I do accept a certain degree of responsibility for the position in which we now find ourselves and I wish I had acted sooner to fix things rather than talking about it every so often and then ignoring it and hoping it would go away. But there is no future in the past ? it is all ancient history now.

He does not seem willing to take any responsibility or show any remorse for what he is doing to me. He simply expects me to willingly sign up to his ?I want my cake and I want to eat it" agenda, care for our children (and God knows they are going to need that in HUGE doses), maintain an enormous house and continue to live in a foreign country (which we only moved to because of his job), launch myself in to a new career because our finances will not support his new agenda - all this against a backdrop of having me future hopes and dreams smashed and coasting off in to a blissful sunset annihilated. I am totally broken and the person whom I would always turn to and rely on is the engineer of my situation.

So that is my story. Why have I written it all down here? I guess I need a few friends right now and advice as I negotiate the terms of the separation agreement.

I have painted my husband as a total bastard ? which is exactly what he has been to me. However, he does have a strong sense of duty and I know that he in spite of what he has done to me, he adores his children and he shares my wish that their pain be minimal and their lives be destabilised as little as possible.

I am sorry this is so long. Writing it has been very therapeutic though.
Thank you for reading :)

Read this too, it seems to be a pattern that they all follow... it shows how you feel and how he feels...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/a1527705-Midlife-crisis-this-is-the-script

Scarletts! You are obviously a very brave, very intelligent, very perceptive and very lovely woman and mother.

I know you don't believe it right now - why would you - but from all those of us who have come out of hell (and I'm not in the position you are, I instigated our divorce - but it was still hell) YOU WILL COME OUT OF IT STRONGER, MORE CONFIDENT, AND THEREFORE MORE CONTENT.

I echo everyone else - do not let him back into the house! It's his problem to sort - not yours.

Divorce, IMHO is just about the worst thing in the world. I lost both my mother and stepfather in autumn last year and divorce is far worse, so you need to be ready for that. It has so many consequences that only you and STBX will experience. BUT IT IS NOT THE END, we all have different chapters in our lives and you will soon embark on the next one in yourse. When you are ready for it, you will embrace it and be happy again.

I think your instincts to tell the truth to your DCs is absolutely correct. Mine now know that I can be relied on to tell them the truth, their father imagines the reality he wants and tells them that. They understand that.

One thing I would urge you (and others will differ on this - but I suspect we have had similar upbringings and are of a similar attitude to marriage, it was for life for me too) is that you do not let anyone reinterpret your marriage - you carry on acknowledging the good times and the good that came out of it. It sounds like you had a good marriage for many years and the children are the result of that - celebrate that and make sure they know it's OK to talk about the good times. I killed my ex off in my head so that I could talk about him with the easy affection you have for someone you loved who is no longer here. I have accepted that the man I loved is dead and was dead for some years before he left.

We had a very quick divorce and he married the OW within a few months.

The huge bonus of a quick divorce is that it freed me to move on. The boil was lanced. The negative side is that I let all sorts of financial assets just go with him as I wanted to keep my relationships with his family and 'be reasonable'. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do - after a few years away from him, and with a clearer head, I realise I was a fool. Having said that, as things have panned out, I would probably do the same thing again - I have the most important things in life, family and friends, and he has pretty much sacrificed all of them for a bunny boiler "soulmate".

This next few months will be the most difficult but you will get through it and come out stronger.

catrus ...your penultimate paragraph could be my story.

There is wisdom here, scarletts

I doubt we're the only ones eh mumngran ? My exH would be mortified if he realised just how common his little life changing exercise is - they turn into a cliché of selfish entitlement while we pick up the pieces of our DCs lives and rebuild our own. And rebuild we do .

Oh my, he is a controlling one!

I agree with everyone who has said that it is a bad idea for him to stay at your house for contact weekends afterwards. Why should he? You need your own sanctuary to lick your wounds, rebuild your life, to just be you. He should not be allowed to come and invade that for a couple of days every two or three weeks.

I would suggest that it might be kinder to tell your children all together, whether or not he is there. They will gain support from each other. It would be a huge burden for the one that knows to have to keep it from her siblings until they know.

It is not down to him what you tell them, or even when or how. He has made his choices. He has given up the family life with them and you that he had. He no longer has the right to dictate discussions.

Please consider moving to a smaller or more manageable house, whether in Ireland or England. Again, it is your decision to make, allowing for your children's input. Not his decision. He will feel that he still has ownership of your family home though for as long as you remain in it. It may be better for both you and the children to create a new family home now, one that you can cope easily with and don't have to rely on his DIY skills etc.

What he essentially wants, it seems, is to 'run' two families. His family with your and your DC and his new family with the OW. That must not be allowed to happen.

scarletts I hope you are OK this evening, have managed to wind down from this mornings' upset, and can enjoy having the house back to yourself again with a more relaxed atmosphere?

Please do keep posting here. I think sometimes the responses can be a little 'straight from the shoulder' - I know I am guilty of that - but it is genuinely meant with concern and kindness. Those of us who have walked the road tend to see the "same old,same old" fences looming ahead and are just hoping to help by pointing out the possibilities.......but they are never ever "same old" to the woman in the midst of marital meltdown. We have all moved forward at our own pace.

Anyway - enough rabbiting. Just wanted to let you know that people are thinking of you; and hoping you manage a good nights sleep & a much more positive start to tomorrow.

Oh goodness just saw your update. As MumnGran says they are teenagers - does he really believe he can tell them the bare minimum and then walk away again. How does he propose you answer the question that will come up once he's left - or perhaps they could just call him with them all? Utter idiot that he is for not realizing that this is not a one time conversation that you can script write.
However pick your battles - you are your daughters sound close and I'm sure over time and in your own way you'll help them understand. Your main battle is on the financials - don't accept compromise here. There is some benefit from walking away but equally you need to make sure you and your daughters have the best settlement.
Please do keep popping back.

Hi scarletts .....saw you had posted elsewhere so not worrying quite so much about you, , but thought I would pop back here to ask how you are doing?
How was it with the girls yesterday?

sorry didn't read all thread but this statement says it all

in spite of what he has done to me, he adores his children and he shares my wish that their pain be minimal and their lives be destabilised as little as possible.

he wants the break up on his terms including wanting to be a perfect dad

I would not tell your elder daughter before other 2 - you would be putting too much burden on her - it's not fair!

I want them to know that ending the marriage is his choice, not mine, but he has said that if i tell them that, then he will tell them my behaviour drove him away.

let him do that - they will hate him for criticizing you as you are their rock and main carer (you may warn him that if he starts saying those things they will despise him - that what happened with mu kids)

say NO to him staying in your place, too much for you to cope with

as to But that takes a huge deal of imagination from where i am sat right now. - it will happen, trust me - I was like you and after 4 years feel like a new born woman

you will need first to get back to who you really are and enjoy your own company before you can move on.