One about a sad pregnant lady married to a sad angry man.

[izchaz]

Before I start, please don't read this and say "divorce him, he's a shit head", much as that might be outstanding advice it's not an option I want to engage with. What I'm after is help in turning the negatives in my relationship into positives. How do I let go of the grief and hurt, and how do I persuade my husband to stop beating himself up over the protracted affair he had with my best friend (no longer)? I try every day to push the positives in our relationship: we're a good team, we can laugh and have fun together, we have an incredible group of friends that we share, we are going to be parents to a much wanted baby, and when we are both behaving we have glimpses of what used to be - it's easy to be together and we can both see how much the other loves us. However whenever times get tough - work stress, the whisper of tightening belts, having to multitask or balance multiple issues at once then the whole house of cards crumbles and one of us reverts to recriminations and aiming to wound the other. He is under a huge amount of pressure with work, an impending family bereavement, the worry of my earnings disappearing when I go off on maternity etc etc, and I try so hard to keep him afloat. On the days when I fail, as yesterday he rails and I cannot help but bite back. Last night we fought from 9 at night until 3am, and only stopped because our lodger came home. Once he has started he will follow me from room to room, verbally attacking and prickling me until I re-engage the fight. I am desperate to stop the cycle as I am conscious that our marriage is tiny and frail (married 11 months, his affair was on/off for the first 7, and when confronted twice he lied about it) and I do not feel it can stand up to such punishment without becoming a very twisted paradigm of what we wanted when we got engaged.
Please, help me to figure out how to break the cycle of bad behaviour we have both sunk into, I am miserable with him now, and would be miserable without him, but we had something so good and so precious not so long ago, and I want to find a way back to that.

Even the way you have phrased your thread title is desperately attempting to present you and your H as equal in this (3 attributes each, and both equally sad). However, making something satisfactory out of words is not the same as resolving the situation. It is just a story you are telling yourself, for reasons we cannot know, and that you are asking us to ratify. You say you need to take time in order to formulate responses to posters' questions - why? This is not a debating society, with points awarded for a well-turned phrase. You cannot control our opinions by careful rationing of information. Sadly, your arguments do not convince - and I think if you believed them yourself you wouldn't be asking these questions on this forum. Posters here have masses of advice and experience to share. I know it is hard to hear, but I really hope some of what previous posters have said will stay with you. Genuinely wishing you and your babe all the best.

OP your posts make me really sad. It seems to me that you are shouldering a lot of blame for what your H did, when in fact he had choices all along.

Big hugs xxx

Please remember that you have choices about the family life your baby is brought up in but your baby does not. The faster you turn your back on this man, the less the negative impact it will have on that child, and th better the chance of you finding a better father for her quickly.

You may be unable to engage with the idea of leaving him now, but when it gets really bad (which by my reckoning will be when your baby is about 4-6 months old), remember that, and don't let your baby down. You may convince yourself that it is currently worth trying to rescue this at the moment, but when your DC has arrived and it descends into Hell and you find yourself supporting yourself, the baby, and by turns arguing and making up with him, and forever wasting emotional time, you will hopefully realise then that your baby deserves better, even if some reason you can't apply that logic to yourself.

I've asked for advice before and then found myself getting tied up in knots because i felt I hadn't explained it properly because the people whod responded didn't seem to understand, and it had all gone skewed and missed the point. It was only a couple of years later, when I looked back at the thread, that I realised that it was my perception that was so wrong and not everyone else's. it will,come to you too, and in the meantime please make sure you surround yourself with those good friends of yours because this is going to get so much worse when baby arrives, and you are on a journey that will involve a lot of pain somewhere down the line before you realise that you can't ignore the demons but need to face them head on.

"am hiding this thread because I am losing all sympathy for this deluded woman."

Pramela, I get your frustration but I find that post very harsh

this is a pregnant woman, who has ONLY just posted, give her time. she will learn, and make her own way. the fact she has posted here speaks volumes IMO

Jesus-H-Christ-on-a-remarkably-uncomfortable-bike! Right. Firstly, posters who referred to me as deluded, frustrating, and married to a cunt please don't bother posting any more you are drowning out the sensible advice framed in a way that doesn't make me want to throw things. How would you feel if your life were being torn to shreds by things you weren't even aware of? Wouldn't you at least try and stop the damage? I don't have the necessary "abandon ship" attitude required to go "my marriage is broken, I'm less than a year married and pregnant, I have nowhere to jump to, but I'll just jump, some fucker will catch me". If I do leave it will be under my terms, at a point of my choosing, and I will walk out with my back straight, knowing I have tried, and that I failed. Anything less than that will haunt me all the days of my life.
Secondly, the emotional blackmailers telling me to think about my coming child and get out before "hell/PND" strikes when the child comes. Thank you, but I am painfully (literally, most days) aware of this impending child, how it will change the power dynamic again, and what I risk by delaying. I also know me, know what I am capable of, and what I am not. I can't leave until I've tried, otherwise what was the point of getting married? I genuinely feel I risk a greater chance of depression by abdicating any input in my marriage than I do of leaving it post birth. I am neither stupid, nor unaware of the damage abuse of any sort does in relationships, nor will my child be put at risk... ugh, I am flabbergasted by some of the responses since my last post. What is so wrong with wanting to try? It's not like he's a pair of old socks for fucks sake, this is something we both work to repair every single day. Of course I can't tell you his thinking, because it's his thinking, I could go into the minutiae of how he shows me he's doing better, I could tell you how his mother's worsening health and the pressure she puts on him would crack a Titan's will towards calm and rationality. But I doubt any of that would help you perceive him better. He made a colossal mistake, huge, potentially marriage ending, but every day he tries harder than any person I've ever seen to fix what he did, to rebuild my trust and to better himself. He slips from time to time, and when he does I want to be able to help him, which was iirc the basis of this post.

All the people who have written kind, thoughtfully worded comments of support or gentle cynicism: Thank you. You have been listened to, I have taken on board what you've said and will try and build a plan out of it

Garlic I will have a gander at that book, it sounds like an interesting play on game theory, which I've always found fascinating as a whole.

"How would you feel if your life were being torn to shreds by things you weren't even aware of? Wouldn't you at least try and stop the damage?"

I did once. I tried to save a relatively new marriage against a backdrop of lies, infidelity and emotionally abusive behaviour. I also thought I was doing the right thing, taking vows seriously and committing to the relationship. However, what I want to share with you is that 'trying' in this situation will leave you feeling demeaned and cheap. You will be the supplicant and he will be dominant. All the time you 'try' to hold things together he will exploit your unwillingness to walk and interpret it as approval of his behaviour. Your self-esteem - which is already badly damaged - will be crushed, even after he's gone. You will look back on this episode of your life and wonder 'why did I tolerate it?'

I think I and others are simply trying to save you from a few years/months heartache.

Thank you for clarifying that Cogito, what you say makes absolute sense, and I can understand your approach. What I struggle with is calling him a cunt (that's my job, no one else gets to do that) and saying that I'm frustrating (I am frustrated, I haven't felt so out of kilter in a long time, I look to correct to the norm before I make decisions for the future)

I don't feel demeaned or cheap I have to say, I feel....driven, and not by him, or by my pride - I want this to succeed not because I don't want to have "a failed marriage" (stupid hateful phrase), but because I think we are both better than this, and we are both capable of moving past this.
He knows I dont approve of his behaviour, he has witnessed sides of me he didn't even know existed prior to March, and they have all revolved around my shrieking dismay and grief over his actions. He is absolutely aware now of what he risks by pissing me about again.

"He is absolutely aware now of what he risks by pissing me about again."

But you don't seem to be aware of what you're risking by keeping this man in your life. Right now I can understand why you feel you have the whip hand, are in control and 'woe betide him' if he messes you about again but I fear a few things. One is that you are kidding yourself that by sticking around this makes you the stronger party.... you're mistaking 'hysterical bonding' for 'choice'. The second is that this euphoric feeling of control/victory/keeping it together will wear off very quickly and that one day - soon- you'll wake up and realise that you actually despise him

I think what others are getting at izchaz, he needs to bear the weight of his actions, he chose to cheat, he needs to accept and understand the consequences of his choices, you have the cards in this and he has to prove to YOU, that he knows what hes done and it wont be tolerated.

He shouldnt be constantly picking at a pregnant woman for 6 hours, to me that says hes using your vulnerability to push for forgiveness.

You need to stop trying to take the blame for his choices, you didnt make him cheat, nor did the other woman.

Forget him for a moment, and work on your self esteem, expections and what you will and wont tolerate, you dont have to accept him being unfaithful in your marriage, if its your deal breaker, then break the deal, right now its your choice alone to make, he has no right in deciding that now.

But stop convincing yourself hes sorry, because hes only sorry for himself, otherwise he wouldnt be goading you into fights, that is NOT what a sorry
man does.

It's still gross, he fucked a mentally ill pregnant woman in the first year of your marriage. I don't think posters are blackmailing you, they feel sorry for you, and your baby. Because this is going to end badly. It's disgusting and really fucked up. You can't see it, because you are desperate for it to work. But I would think that most posters commenting on your story really feel for you. And it's heartbreaking. Best if luck to you. Nobody deserves this.

I might have missed this OP but it sound like he was having an affair with your best friend at the time you actually got married or straight after. Why? Usually at the very point people marry is when they are most in love & sure about being together "forsaking all others". A "mistake" usually occurs way down the line after the relationship has soured or become boring or weakened somehow. I know what you mean about wanting to do everything you can to feel you have given it your best shot especially with a baby coming but I really think you need proper couples therapy to explore why he was having an affair at that time & why he is so angry at you that he rails at you for 6 hours at a time (shouldn't you be resting?!!) He had the affair not you. Why is he so angry with you? I feel you're over compensating for him & making excuses for him. He should be walking over hot coals to put this right not screaming at you half the night!

Right, I think I need to clarify here - we've had one six-hour fight, so to say that "he keeps" goading me into huge fights isn't accurate. We bicker, sometimes that bickering becomes a vicious, the advice I sought on here was about how to stop the spiral of bickering. We have never fought the way we did the other night, it was horrific, but it is by no means a signifyer of what is normal for us. I agree that if it were normal I would be the worst sort of stubborn fool for staying, but it isn't at all representative. When we fight normally one of us walks away to let the other party cool down - that is about 50/50 in terms of who walks when. He is contrite, he doesn't harangue me every day, or even every week, or every month. We have fought badly once.
I didn't make him cheat, I didn't force them to collude, I didn't give either of them the "go ahead" for an affair, I don't feel quilty or responsible for what they did. That is on them, I do however bear some responsibility to not throw my broken toy out of the pram. I choose to stay, that doesn't necessitate choosing to take responsibility for what they did, I cannot see how one could possibly link the two.
Deal breakers for me are emotional infidelity, physical violence and failure to learn from mistakes. I don't believe that all of the damage wrought can be undone in 4 months, so of course I expect there to be some bumps and fights and hurt feelings, I'm not expecting miracles here!

Sorry, I'm starting to get really angry. I will be back once I've been out and kicked a rock and sworn at a pigeon.

"emotional infidelity"

I hope you haven't told him this one. Because he will interpret it as carte blanche to fuck who he likes, just as long as he never gets emotionally attached. Very dangerous message....

I think Cogito, he already believes he can.....

I'm sorry you are getting angry, OP, and I don't blame you because some very blunt things have been said on this thread.

But the posters are right to say those blunt things.

Yes, everyone has different dealbreakers within a relationship and yes, some people will find emotional infidelity far worse than sexual infidelity. That's your personal choice.

However I'm really interested to see that you don't believe a 7 month affair constitutes emotional infidelity. A one night stand - yep, that can be viewed as purely fucking and nothing else. But a long affair? With someone close to you? I am genuinely interested to understand how that was emotional infidelity for you.

Also, I asked before - how does your husband feel about the baby? Have decisions been made yet about finances, childcare etc?

The reason some posters are being very blunt is that from an outsiders perspective - and it is up to you whether you feel those perspectives are helpful or valid (though bear in mind it is often easier to take an overview of something when you are not involved) - your husband has done something very, very wrong/offensive/whatever word you want to use, and your description of your parents marriage also waves a ridiculous number of red flags around.

do you not believe he was 'emotionally unfaithful' to you when he fucked another woman, repeatedly during the first year of your marriage ?

That other woman being your best friend too?!! The worst possible emotional betrayal (apart from maybe your sister) in my mind.

I think you're angry because you're not getting the answers you want, ie how to help your husband not be angry about being caught out shagging your best friend for the first 7 months of your marriage whilst also conceiving a baby with you. I don't think anyone can help you with that.

We can however sympathise with your betrayal, hand hold & support you in coping with your grief & pregnancy.

Can you explain what he is angry about?

Also, is his mother now going to take the place of OW in the game? It's her fault he is being bad tempered. Another unreasonable woman forcing him to behave badly?

Anger is good. But you are projecting it onto posters here rather than your husband.
I get it. My H cheated and I tried to rationalise it and 'move past it' but he wasn't really contrite either. 4 months in I was still checking his phone and finding him with 'find my iPhone' and fantasising about giving the OW an almighty bollocking (ie I was still deep in the drama and denial stage). I can't imagine how fucked up I would have been if I had been pregnant.

I think we all just want you to see what we already know, through experience, but of course you won't, until you have lived it. I really hope you can use this thread as a place to work through your feelings and don't get goaded into abandoning it.

Have been out, sworn at some pigeons (neighbour was like ) and have reigned in the pregno-temper. My apologies for getting wound up, I know you're offering sound advice, tempered with experience, my frustration comes from my failure to give you an accurate picture of him (I've told you the big bad, but not the small, consistent lovely heartwarming kindness), and from the frankly rude way some posters have approached the thread.

Thurlow sorry to have missed your earlier question: he is over the moon about the baby, like "kid at Christmas" excited, he can barely contain himself, and not because he thinks the child is going to fix our marriage, but because we have both wanted this child for a very long time, and will love it regardless of our marital state. You are right to say he has done a heinous thing, and that the timeframe for his betrayal beggars belief, I'm not saying the posters are wrong, just that it is hard to swallow and I am disinclined to listen to anyone (DH/forum poster) when they are prepared to be so callous and rude.

I am going to have to go into more detail here in order to explain why I don't believe he has been emotionally unfaithful. Ugh, it's going to muddy the waters. Can I ask you all to suspend your disbelief for the purposes of clarity here? Just accept this as an accurate story and we'll go from there, otherwise this will all get deeply confusing and I will probably throw my (very expensive) phone at a(n unsuspecting) cat/wall/lodger/dog.

I've just written a huge timeline, detailing everything, but have had to delete it because it was like a spotlight revealing exactly who I am to anyone who might be looking (painfully aware I've probably already said too much)
Suffice it to say I can't explain or justify his behaviour or my faith in him on here without making way too much stuff about her,him and me public.

What I think I can say is that they didn't have a lot of sex, (not that that is likely to make a blind bit of difference to how you view him), that she initiated all of it (but that he's not innocent) and that she chased him and chased him (and that I encouraged him to spend time with her, believing her to be lonely and stuck in a truly awful marriage) emotionally blackmailing him with threats of what she would tell me if he came clean (with hindsight I can see that on numerous occasions he did try and tell me). This is not me taking blame for what they did, but you may have noticed I don't tend to listen to things if I don't like what I'm hearing, so when he tried to tell me he didn't want to spend time with her, and that she made him uncomfortable I just asked him to suck it up - she was a lonely woman trapped in an abusive marriage and very dependent due to a rough pregnancy.

free he is angry because he knows he has risked everything for something he didn't even want - his anger is almost exclusively self directed, I only see glimmers of it when he has been pushed to the absolute limits, as he was last week with his mother's terminal illness, a crappy piece of news from work, several other balls failing to juggle nicely and a few incidentals. All in all I very rarely see this anger, he is furious with himself, angry with her, and I think frustrated that he can't unpick it as fast as the damage was done. His mother won't be a player in any games for very long at all, sadly, which makes things worse, because he grieves for her as well as for what he feels he has broken.

Ehric I'm sorry you've been through the mill too. This is going to sound perverse, but I don't feel the need to check his phone, or track his movements, because I know a) she set it up (and believe me when I say I'm not demonising her, I spent a good deal of time talking to her, visiting her in psych units, speaking to her husband and her psych team, and we all (except for her) reached the same conclusion - she set the whole thing up) b) he won't ever make that mistake again (which isn't to say he won't make a different flavour of mistake, but he won't have an affair again)

I don't dream of bollocking anyone, I have nightmares about her stealing my family (literally cutting my child out of me), and I dream about finally getting to be happy the way we were before we met her.

I know that what my parents lived through has probably thrown up ALL the red flags, but again there are mitigating circumstances I won't go into on here. I had counselling for an unrelated issue many years ago, and my odd family unit came under the spotlight, my counsellor felt that I had made a good adjustment to it all, and that although it had coloured my approach to relationships, they didn't feel it had negatively impacted that approach.

Izchaz I hope you are able to take what you need from the advice here. To those of us not in your marriage it is hard to see where your husband's commitment is. It is great that he is positive about the baby but, as I said upthread, even putting aside(!) the affair, now is the time for him to be cherishing you and minimising your stress. Being a husband, in fact. He should be thinking every day - What does she need - how can I make her day easier - not showing the mix of grumpiness and resentment that you have described.
After the baby arrives you will both have huge emotions, sleep deprivation, visitors to juggle and you will have post birth exhaustion and raging hormones. You need to be able to be civil to each other and even supportive during this time so that you can both share the euphoria.
Maybe try a conversation with him where you don't go back to the affair but talk calmly about what you, his wife, need now from him.

Izchaz - you're going through hell and I'm sorry it's all such incredibly difficult stuff.

I have a lot of admiration for your determination to work at it, not give up and try really hard to see a positive way forward. A few comments and/or observations that I hope might be constructive:

Positive focus and thought is great and useful. You need to be clear, though, about finding the positive within what is the bare truth and make sure you're not refusing to look or deal with stuff that is fundamentally important because to do so doesn't leave you being positive. So, to summarise; be positive but don't let that blind you to dealing with the dark and difficult that needs processing.

Seven months is a long time to keep making the same mistakes and not find a way out.

Any anger/blame at you at all (alongside the blame and anger he feels about himself) may indicate that he's not taking full responsibility, even if he's taking some.

It's always easier for the partner who has been cheated on to lay lots of blame at the door of the person their partner had an affair with. All her manipulation, chasing etc came from some level of insecurity/desperation/pain/vulnerability on her part.

That he believed her emotional blackmail would hold more sway with you than his own account is worrying. If his reason for not talking to you was this, then it isn't a great testament to his assessment of your trust in him.

You sound incredibly smart, loving, motivated and in many respects, self aware. I know the pregnancy brings a feeling of time pressure, but don't be afraid to take space to work things out too. Sometimes it's only by stepping away that we see things clearly. You are well within your rights to ask him for more space and distance to help you.

If I were you, I'd be trying to boil it down to the core and key questions and answer those. Yours may be different, but I'd imagine mine might be:

• Can I forgive his infidelity?
• Can I forgive his lack of faith in my trust in him? Why didn't he think I'd believe him over her re the emotional blackmail stuff?
• As much as I love him and want to be positive, can my trust be fixed? Completely fixed where I'll never worry about this happening in any form again? Can I trust him to be 'manipulated' and be strong enough to walk away?
• Will he ever move past in part giving me responsibility for his affair and take full, 100% responsibility for it himself?

-Is he prepared to take all my insecurities, worry and anger and absorb them? Is he prepared to work it all through without resenting me?

• Can there be a time where this isn't the big issue in the room and we've all moved on?
• Will I be able to be intimate with him without thinking about the affair?

My experience of having babies is that they can put a great deal of strain/pressure on a relationship so think through what that period may be like for you. For all your positivity, can you be in good enough shape together to get through that period?

Wishing you all the very best with whatever the road ahead brings..

Izchaz, you are honoured - after weeks of lurking on this site, I've registered specially to post this message.

Regardless of how much sex you think they had, and regardless of how much you believe she initiated all of it and set it all up, you cannot make a man who does not want you have sex with you for seven months, particularly if that man has just got married. Believe me, in my time I've tried luring men away from their girlfriends (not something I am proud of) and it never, ever worked. A man who is committed to his partner will not have sex/an emotional affair for seven months just after marriage.

He did this all by himself. He wanted to. He stood up and said vows to you in front of witnesses, and then ignored those vows because he wanted sex with your friend.