Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

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

Am I paranoid or could he be cheating?

289 replies

amijustparanoid · 21/07/2013 18:57

DH and I went to his works summer party on Friday night and something that I witnessed with him and a female colleague has been bothering me ever since. When we got there he seemed to make a big effort to sit us on the same table as her - throughout the meal she seemed ok, they were friendly but not overly friendly but later on when I was away from the table I saw him get up and move seats to sit next to her (it was late and people had started to move around/leave so at that time it was only those two at the table) and as he sat down he squeezed her thigh. It was very quick but it definitely happened. Then as I was watching they sat and chatted and while chatting he was helping himself to her drink. She didn't seem to react to either and didn't look surprised at what he was doing.

When I asked him about it on the way home he denied it had happened and when I brought it up again yesterday and said I'd definitely seen him do it and I thought it was inappropariate, he made light of it and said he was drunk and would just have been being friendly. I said I wasn't comfortable with him being that 'friendly' with another woman - especially one that he spends all day at work with but now he says I'm being ridiculous.

What do you think? Would you do something like this if drunk even if there was nothing going on with the person? He says the drink thing is nothing but I wouldn't help myself to someone elses drink unless we were close and used to sharing.

My friend thinks he was being a drunken idiot and says that if there was something going on with her then he would have tried to keep us apart and not sit us with her but I can't shake how uneasy it's made me feel. Before that night I had no suspicions anything was wrong, I'd never even heard of her before but now I'm sitting here dreading tomorrow knowing that he'll be with her all day at work.

Am I being silly over a couple of minor things or would this bother you?

OP posts:
MadAboutHotChoc · 28/07/2013 16:26

deb - no wonder Victoria looks miserable Hmm Playing games is NOT to be recommended if you want honesty and openness in your relationship.

OP - you are getting really good advice from everyone else, if you haven't done so already, get Shirley Glass's Not Just Friends.

Thisisaeuphemism · 28/07/2013 16:48

Sorry to hear you are going through this.

Your intuition has proved amazing. You knew something wasn't right, and when you confronted him you knew he was lying. Keep trusting yourself.

I would ask him (temporarily) to leave the family home. He sounds very cavalier about what he's done - and I would want to show him that I mean business, and get some thinking space for yourself. He is showing a side to you that you didn't know he had. It must be a horrible shock.

I don't think his story adds up. You know that too, with the kissing bit added now. What else is he going to reveal? You know that he was pursuing her up until last Weds/Thurs eve. 20 messages is in no way backing off. Telling you that she wasn't really interested doesn't really help, does it? He certainly was...

Mixxy · 28/07/2013 16:59

Sorry things have gone this way OP. Just a thought- your DH seems to spend an inordinate amount of time drinking, drunk, shit-faced etc. Does he have a problem?

ChipsNKetchup · 28/07/2013 17:01

That's what gets to me too euphemism he knew that AIBP was suspicious and upset by what she'd seen but he still carried it on.

SawofftheOW · 28/07/2013 17:20

OP, totally agree with everyone who says that he must disclose totally now - now, not in the future, not death by a thousand cuts, but now. As already mentioned, if you discover more down the line - and you will, trust me, as you have already found since your initial suspicions -it will mean that any attempts to rebuild your relationship will have been on foundations of sand.

My DH only admitted to his numerous sexual encounters with his OW some weeks after first confirming an 'EA' (after I had been warned by a phone call from a female colleague of his, bless her), and then only because the OW had threatened to tell me about them, some of which took place in my own home, in a bid to put pressure on him to leave me.

It not only put us back to square one, but it made me realise that virtually everything he had said to me thus far had been only about 20% of the truth. He lied and minimised because he suddenly realised that the entire terrible truth may well lead me to end our marriage; ironically he was still besotted with the OW at the time but was beginning to suspect that what he thought he had with her really was just an illusion and therefore he didn't want to burn his bridges. The problem for me, and for him, was that I had almost driven myself mad with the certainty that it HAD been physical and that they had had much more of a relationship and social life together than he was prepared to admit.

The truth when it came was beyond awful but in a sense it was also a relief because I knew, finally, that I wasn't 'paranoid, obsessed with her, unforgiving' in the way I had claimed up until that point.

And it still goes on - only a couple of weeks ago I came across a note from her in an old work jacket of his I was taking to charity which confirmed that my suspicions I had had about their very last meeting, what they did and where it took place, were totally accurate, despite his vehement denials to that day (nearly three years on). The pain was raw when I read it and I was catapulted back to the early, agonising days post-discovery. When I rang him at work to rage about it (yes, I know, I know - but I am impetuous and hot-tempered), he said that he hadn't wanted to tell me because he had lied about it for so long and he felt it would be humiliating for me, and make me doubt him once again. Arrgghh , even after all we have been through, and he has worked so hard to be transparent, he still had to dissemble over that one because to do otherwise would have meant confirming that the OW's claims to me about that day, which he had strenuously denied, were in fact true.

But please do remember that none of us, no one, would want to admit the sort of behaviour indulged in during affairs to one's DW or DH unless you really wanted to ensure it was an 'exit affair' and that maximum hurt would cause maximum effect. Put yourself in his shoes - if it had been YOU, would you want to say, 'yes, the OM put his cock in me and gave me a great orgasm and it was just fantastic and I didn't for one moment feel a shred of guilt about you'? Think of the words of Roberta Flack's song, 'I felt he'd found my love letters, and read each one out loud'. When you are in affair bubble world you deliberately choose to ignore the massive likelihood that it will be discovered, because, hey it's not going to happen to you, is it?

But it was discovered, by your female instincts and now it's like the personal version of a kiss and tell story - totally humiliating because he has to admit to doing truly awful things. It doesn't mean that he shouldn't put his cards on the table, but people stand in court on a daily basis and swear blind they didn't rape or murder someone, even when their DNA is all over the victim.

Believe me, I have not a shred of pity for him, but I know that had it been ME that had had the affair and not my DH, I probably would have minimised the truth from my DH, in order to protect my own skin, save my marriage and not have to admit what a total bitch, tart and thoroughly dishonest person I had been. My DH's OW told her DH everything, pulling no punches, even down to the sexual positions and acts she and my H had performed on each other, in order to maximise his devastation and try and prompt him to throw her out so she could 'legitimately' turn up on our doorstep. When her H and I discussed it some months later he said that although it was like being burned with acid, it hurt so much, in a sense it got all the shit on the table so he knew precisely what he was facing and the fight he had on his hands.

You don't have that clarity, yet, OP, but somehow you have to impress upon him that no matter how humiliating it is, he must tell you everything. If he doesn't then he and she still have secrets between them and that is unacceptable. And yes, yes, yes to not going away to the course and getting another job. In the end my DH leaving his job - he worked with the OW - was the real catalyst to us beginning the long haul to staying together. Thinking of you.

amijustparanoid · 28/07/2013 18:03

"Telling you that she wasn't really interested doesn't really help, does it? He certainly was..."

That's the bit that makes me think I may not be able to get over it. He's sorry now he thinks they'll be consequences but it's not that he made a mistake and regretted it/stopped it happening again. He carried on pursuing her trying to take it further. And he's only now stopped because I know.

He can't claim that he didn't know he had gone too far after that night.

OP posts:
Apileofballyhoo · 28/07/2013 18:16

You are right and until/unless he takes responsibility I don't think you can have a real relationship with him again. It has nothing to do with her and everything to do with him - she wasn't in a relationship with you, he was. I just don't know if he is seeing anything in a realistic way. I find that selfish people seem to only think of how their actions affect themselves, not anyone else. So action - affair = leads to losing my family (sorry for myself), not affair = breaking my wife's heart (not sorry for causing her terrible anguish/pain). Incredibly selfish people then blame the other party for 'not forgiving them' or 'refusing to move on' or 'breaking up the marriage'.

MadAboutHotChoc · 28/07/2013 18:26

The other thing that occurred to me about him is that he seems to be protective of OW - how nice that he is prioritising her ahead of his marriage and you.

ageofgrandillusion · 28/07/2013 18:47

LTB. Forget the full disclosure, go to couples counselling bollocks, he's taking the piss of you OP. Find yourself somebody with a bit of honesty and integrity.

SawofftheOW · 28/07/2013 19:01

I know that he only stopped when you found out, but sadly that is the nature of affairs. A few stop because they end naturally, run out of steam, the affair partners move job or whatever, and this is generally before the betrayed partner finds out, but I am afraid it is clear that his affair with her came to an abrupt(ish) end only because you found out. If you hadn't then, yes, I think it would have carried on and you may have found yourself faced with an even more profound crisis in that he had got himself in so deep that he decided to leave you and your DC and there would be no room in the issue for your opinion about it as he would be off.

No, sadly, he didn't think, 'I've gone too far' because in his view he hadn't gone far enough. I am so, so sorry to write that as I know how painful it is, but if you are hoping that he might have had an outbreak of conscience at that point, then he would have been one of the very, very few that did. As I've heard so many men say, 'a hard cock has no conscience'.

You can't even begin to think about forgiving him at this juncture, it is still far too early. And yes, he is protecting her above you because emotionally he is still in her camp and he has not yet come back to your side. That's where it is so hard. In a perfect world he would say, oh god, I've been such a fool, it's you I adore and worship and I can't bear the thought of losing you'. In my personal experience and in the painful experience of most of my friends this has happened to, their DH didn't say that. One of the most profound shocks to me was that on discovery, my H didn't renounce the OW immediately and throw himself prostrate at my feet. I struggled to take in what he said when he told me that he didn't think he could give her up. This wasn't how he was 'supposed' to react.

Like you, I had to rewrite the script of my marriage and my understanding of it which I realised I hadn't understood at all. This man I had adored for over half my life, the father of my DC, was not the person I thought him to be at all. It is something that all betrayed partners have to live with. I know it sounds impossible to believe but please trust me when I say that eventually it doesn't feel as raw and you can cope with it more, although that sense of dislocation remains and I think indefinitely to a greater or lesser extent,

NanaNina · 28/07/2013 19:09

SawofftheOW I was very interested in your illuminating and honest post and I wonder OP if you found any parts of it that "fitted" for you. However you must have a myriad of emotions going around in your head at the moment and I feel for you, having "been there" myself in the past.

You don't say very much about your marriage before this happened and whether you were happy or not. I agree that he should accept full responsibility but I'm not sure that he is going to. Sometimes the truth is so hurtful we project our feelings on to others (and this isn't necessarily a conscious thought) and he has already done that by accusing you of "making his week hell." What sort of man is your H - is he someone who is emotionally secure and able to talk about his feelings (as many men aren't) and what about you OP, you did say earlier on today that you are not "calm and collected" and it would be very surprising if you were. You must feel hurt, betrayal, anger, etc but you come over as very rational, which isn't a bad thing at a time like this.

Your feelings are going to be raw and I think you did the right thing to tell your H to move out for a few days but sooner or later you are both going to have to decide IF there is a future for you. I mentioned before that the main problem will be one of trust, and I have never managed to overcome that if I'm honest even after 30 years!

IF you decide there might be a future together I really think as someone else has suggested that you need couple-counselling. You need someone right outside of the situation to help you both to take stock of what happened and the resulting trauma for you and issues of trust on your side of things. It may be that the marriage has to end, but you would still benefit from counselling, as you could well carry this mistrust into another relationship and you deserve better than that.

NanaNina · 28/07/2013 19:10

SawofftheOW I was very interested in your illuminating and honest post and I wonder OP if you found any parts of it that "fitted" for you. However you must have a myriad of emotions going around in your head at the moment and I feel for you, having "been there" myself in the past.

You don't say very much about your marriage before this happened and whether you were happy or not. I agree that he should accept full responsibility but I'm not sure that he is going to. Sometimes the truth is so hurtful we project our feelings on to others (and this isn't necessarily a conscious thought) and he has already done that by accusing you of "making his week hell." What sort of man is your H - is he someone who is emotionally secure and able to talk about his feelings (as many men aren't) and what about you OP, you did say earlier on today that you are not "calm and collected" and it would be very surprising if you were. You must feel hurt, betrayal, anger, etc but you come over as very rational, which isn't a bad thing at a time like this.

Your feelings are going to be raw and I think you did the right thing to tell your H to move out for a few days but sooner or later you are both going to have to decide IF there is a future for you. I mentioned before that the main problem will be one of trust, and I have never managed to overcome that if I'm honest even after 30 years!

IF you decide there might be a future together I really think as someone else has suggested that you need couple-counselling. You need someone right outside of the situation to help you both to take stock of what happened and the resulting trauma for you and issues of trust on your side of things. It may be that the marriage has to end, but you would still benefit from counselling, as you could well carry this mistrust into another relationship and you deserve better than that.

NanaNina · 28/07/2013 19:11

Oh sorry for the double post!

SawofftheOW · 28/07/2013 19:27

NanaNina, thank you for your generous comment and your remarks about trust. It has been three years, rather than your thirty, but I sense that I will feel the same as you if/when we ever reach the thirty year point. It is the pain that just keeps giving, isn't it, no matter how much you want it to disappear.

OP, metaphorically holding your hand and thinking of you. Have you been to your GP? Seeing mine was, literally, a life saver. I was so devastated that I didn't care if I lived or died, couldn't eat and started to find the thought of the nearby railway line very enticing, and I have young DC. Anti-depressants, which I resisted taking initially, gave me the emotional space to cope with the physical and mental pain of the situation a little better.

It won't make it go away but it enabled me, certainly, to hang very tenuously onto my sanity. Interestingly, when the OW found out from my DH (the disloyal shit) that I was on them, she was triumphant as she thought it meant she had managed to 'break' me and it would only be a matter of time before my H could not longer bear to live with his 'demented' wife. Truly, affairs bring out the worst in people and the only people who proved themselves gold-plated, endlessly patient, kind and loving were my three close girlfriends who I clung on to for emotional and practical support. God knows how they tolerated hours and hours of my soul-searching, devastation and and my gallons of tears. And they have all been gracious to my DH subsequently whilst making quite clear where their loyalties lie and how angered they were by his behaviour.

Do you have a good friend in RL you can lean on? Please do as they are a god-send.

ageofgrandillusion · 28/07/2013 19:38

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by Mumsnet for breaking our Talk Guidelines. Replies may also be deleted.

MadAboutHotChoc · 28/07/2013 19:43

Relate is a waste of time.

Individual counselling at this stage is more appropriate - he needs to look into himself to find out what issues, traits etc led to him justifying having an ego boosting affair a way of resolving his problems.

Marriage counselling is only appropriate should both parties agree to try again.

itwillgetbettersoon · 28/07/2013 19:48

Even if you forgive and do move on I think it must be very difficult to ever trust.your husband 100%. It must eat away at you all the time. It is difficult to break up a marriage because of an affair but you know what it does get better, slowly and in very small steps but it is better than being with someone who at some stage treated you with no respect.

AnyFucker · 28/07/2013 20:18

ageof I am a fully paid-up member of the LTB club, but even I find your input on this thread distasteful

NanaNina · 28/07/2013 20:24

ageofgrandillusion (interesting name - could be disillusion maybe? ) Why is it so important to you that people agree with your views? You know absolutely nothing about me, my "bloke" or the situation I referred to, but see fit to call me a mug. Ah well I don't intent to defend myself to someone who seems a tad immature in my view.

SaswofftheOw another very interesting post - you write so well and your emotions come through.....yes I'm sure ADs could help to ease the depression and anxiety that often occurs after such a life crisis and glad they helped you, not as you say with the underlying cause but with the symptoms. Loss (not necessarily bereavement) is almost always the root cause of depression. And friends yes, I so agree, I too could never have got by without my women friends, one especially who listened till her ears must have hurt! Time does heal, when I say I still don't trust after 30 years, that wasn't strictly true, it's just the memory never goes away, but like other traumatic things in life, over time, it settles down into something much more manageable.

Madabouthotchoc - I don't think it's fair to say Relate is a "waste of time" as in any therapy/counselling, so much depends on the therapist, and it is imperative that anyone seeking this way of working things out, finds someone with whom they feel safe and comfortable. Of course counselling/therapy only works if both parties are agreeable. Maybe people like the OP have to issue an ultimatum, that they must sign up to going down this route. It's certainly not a cop-out for the "bloke" as one poster mentioned, as it can be very painful to go through the reasons for our actions, and what lies beneath our behaviour.

I don't intend to answer anyone else who makes what I perceive to be unhelpful comments as I think OP has enough to contend with at the moment, without posters pushing their points of view and getting cross when others don't agree with them.

onefewernow · 28/07/2013 20:26

MAHC, although I generally agree with that comment, I'm not certain it is always the case.

MC can be used in a variety of ways. We went twice- we are still on our second lot- with an 18 month gap. The first time we went WAS too early- the stage OP is at. However, it did help me to be crystal clear that I thought he was lying and could commit to nothing till I had the truth, and it did enable him to admit the infidelity, which he wouldn't have done otherwise.

But it was too early to help with the true fallout, as it took three or four months for me to feel fully how bad things had been, and also to surface all of the anger. Also, it took practice at the 'new relationship' we were trying to have for me to see clearly how selfish he had always been, and the extent to which he hoped to patch things up without addressing his selfishness.

That took us back the second time, which has been excellent.

I would also comment that Relate, for example, is a big organisation with staff at various levels if practice and training background. The counsellor we have had has been older, male, tough as hell and actually willing to join in a three way conversation, with views of his own to contribute. He is very, very good, and also had a wealth of related qualifications and specialisms.

I know not everyone finds that. Also, personalities don't always match up.

I just wanted to offer that as an alternative view.

If I should have done one thing different back then, it would have been to ask him to leave as soon as my suspicions reached that critical point, and not had him back until I was satisfied on all the usual counts.

MadAboutHotChoc · 28/07/2013 21:15

onefewer - I was referring to going to relate at the discovery stage (a poster upthread advised MC).

As I said in the same post, it is a much more worthwhile exercise later on a part of the rebuilding process.

With some relate counsellors, their training in the field of infidelity is often out of date/inadequate and they are so intent on not taking sides that they can make things worse - I have read on here of how the betrayed party has been made to feel responsible for the affair. Not what you need when you are feeling so traumatised Sad

amijustparanoid · 28/07/2013 21:31

To try to answer some questions - I thought our relationship was ok, there were no major issues - it's just the standard stuff of a busy life and not enough time. We both work full time and when we're not working we're with dd so there's not really a lot of adult time but I thought we were happy enough with that. I suppose it is (was) comfortable rather than exciting. Sex life was ok, I knew he would have liked it more but it wasn't as though it was non-existent.

He's generally a very laid back 'nice guy'. He doesn't really get stressed but when there is 'drama' he doesn't deal with it very well and tries to ignore it or solve it and when he can't do either straight away he just withdraws which is why I think he's been so useless in all this. He doesn't want to deal with the consequences of what he's done.

I've confided in one real life friend and she can't believe he would do this. He's never been a 'charmer' or made me feel insecure about other women. He doesn't open up much but he'd never even hinted to me he had a problem with us or wanted anything to change. When we have talked and I've asked him why he's unhappy and had to go off and do this he says he's not unhappy, that he likes our life and doesn't really know why he did it.

Madabout - in what way do you mean he is protecting her?

Apart from saying that she was the one who stopped it going further he hasn't talked that positively about her. He hasn't blamed her but he keeps saying that she doesn't mean anything to him and that he only went there because he could (not that it makes it better)

Don't know what to do about her now - she has text him yesterday and today and he has ignored. Apparently for the last 3/4 months they've been in pretty much daily contact. He will see her at work tomorrow so will have to tell her I know (if he hasn't already - he says he hasn't contacted her since Friday and her texts seem to support that but obviously I'll have no idea what he's saying to her tomorrow)

OP posts:
MysteriousHamster · 28/07/2013 22:36

Remember it's not about him choosing you over her.

You have to choose whether you want to be with him after this.

He doesn't get to do whatever he wants, hurt people and then 'reward you by going back to you after he's been elsewhere. That's no punishment at all. That just teaches him he could do it again as long as he came back to you in the end.

Has he shown in any way that he knows he could lose you?

The best thing would be for him to move out until you can make your own mind up what you want to do on your own. Otherwise you're going to be trying to win him over, when it should be the other way around!

ProphetOfDoom · 28/07/2013 22:37

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Thisisaeuphemism · 28/07/2013 22:44

Amijust, you must be hurting :(

So it's been going on for months - when did the "fumble" take place?
Do you believe hes telling the truth now?

What he has said is so hurtful and shows such selfishness and lack of empathy. Saying its a 'friendship that crossed a line' is pathetic. Saying its just because he is bored is horrible. Somehow i imagine it's even more insulting that she was the one putting the brakes on.

I wouldn't look to the future now, just get through this time as best you can - I do think he should move out for a bit - the enormity of what he's done to your marriage seems to have passed him by.