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.

I missed this earlier -

be very wary about stepping in to understanding & loving mummy mode with anyone other than your own child

That's going on my fridge! (yours too, OP)

Izchaz, I have just read all your posts on this thread - and am so sorry to hear what a terrible and difficult time you've been having. It sounds traumatic.

You are very articulate and, the more you have posted, the more a picture is built up:

i) Your deranged and sociopathic 'friend' completely did you and your H over, wreaked total havoc between you and him, using your H's weakness and ability to be manipulated to set him up to do this.

ii) The whole thing has blown up and, as well as blaming the friend, and even you for foisting the friend on to him, he takes responsibility for his part and is remorseful, and is still beating himself up, that he allowed himself to be manipulated into doing something so against his nature, something which hurt the woman he loves. Both of you are angry, upset and traumatised about different aspects of this, and have unresolved, strong residual feelings about what happened.

iii) After initial reactions and separation and fury etc., you have made the choice to try to recover from it, work through it and repair the marriage.

But, for the reasons above, when you argue about other stuff, all the unresolved feelings leap to the surface and invade/escalate your argument so that it is a full-on, vicious, haranguing 6-hour row, which neither of you can put a stop to, because your emotions and feelings, the anger you must feel, the disappointment he must feel in himself, how abused/stupid/sad/upset/shocked you feel about first being treated like this by the 'friend' who you were trying to help, but who was playing you, and the feelings about the enormous thing your H has done, are all so raw that they cannot be kept under the surface permanently.

So your marriage is suffering as a direct result of not having been able to recover from this terrible, and actually quite recent and long-drawn out, complicated event.

The only thing I can think of, if you BOTH EQUALLY want to repair your relationship and are prepared to actually take action (him, I mean, because you evidently are), is individual counselling for you, and the same for him. Try to get a very good counsellor/therapist on recommendation, SO important.

Because this trauma and all the complicated feelings around it is something that you are still suffering over, even if what you are actually arguing about is other, more trivial stuff.

Perhaps you could agree that the problems you are having require you to undertake the drastic action to live separately for now, and each attend counselling separately to work through your own stuff, and he his, but with the intention/hope of coming together again and perhaps, at that stage, doing some therapy together, perhaps CBT to address the way you now live together, and how you move on.

This is a HUGE and SERIOUS thing which has happened, with a PROFOUND effect, and it will have to be a HUGE and SERIOUS thing you both do to get past it. DRASTIC ACTION IS NEEDED. It cannot be swept under the carpet.

I wish you the very best of luck.

I don't think OP's husband was "set up" at all. How do you do that then? Set up a newly-married man to fall repeatedly into your fanjo? Any decent man would not have gone near SickFriend. For seven months.

Can you write about how you found out? That can be very important. The two times you asked him and he denied what had made you suspicious? Was he good at lying ie convincing? Did he make you feel you were paranoid or jealous at any point?

It cannot be swept under the carpet

nor minimised, rationalised, explained, reasoned.

UNLESS you can BOTH accept haw devastating this has been for you as a couple.... its dead in the water.

IMHO of course.

But I know a bit about HUGE and SERIOUS things in te middles ofa marriage which I tried to deal with by minimalisation, rationalisation, explanation and reason. When that didn't work I tried to sweep it all under the carpet. My H did fuck all except be angry that I was trying to control his drug / drink use

I am now (thankfully) divorced

OP, I am the poster who mentioned the round peg and square hole upthread.

I honestly think you are not seeing your sitauation clearly right now. Entirely understandable, given the huge amount you have on your plate right now.

However, you initially asked for advice on how to stop arguments spiralling, and reiterate that request in one of your last posts.

You have been given the standard advice on this (stop to think, leave the room to cool down) etc. I think this is good advice, and if you follow it you may well be able to reduce or even stop the bickering and sniping currently going on between you and your DH.

However, this will be, at best, papering over cracks. It will not deal with the underlying issues, which have been laid at out length by other posters.

Further, once the baby arrives and your physical, emotional and mental reserves are low (which they will be, inevitably), this learned behaviour will not last. I fear you will lapse back into your old (true?) MO.

And all this assumes that you are both equally committed to changing in the first place, that you both learn new behaviours and techniques. Even so I fear you will struggle.

One can only wish you luck, OP. Round pegs do not fit in square holes.

Actually round pegs do, with a bit of space at each corner. It's the square pegs in round holes that are an absolute bugger.

Hi OP I can't possibly know what is going on in your H's mind either but I was in his shoes for a while, as I had an affair with a very manipulative person, who in hindsight was probably some sort of low grade sociopath.

Two things - firstly I didn't know who he was when I started the affair - didn't know he would go on to lie and gaslight and emotionally tie me up in knots for the best part of two years. But I still had an affair with him. That's my responsibility. Doesn't matter who he was. I chose the path of an affair quite willingly.

Secondly - when I discovered who he really was, knew he was lying to me, was hurt by him, I still continued - not because I couldn't get out of the situation (although I agree it's hard to detach from a manipulative person), but because I didn't want to. I had invested everything with this person - left my marriage etc. Those were my reasons for not stopping it.

Even though I am ashamed at the way I let myself be manipulated, at no point would I ever say it was his fault or that I couldn't help myself. Nor would I allow anyone to believe that on my behalf, just because I would gain some advantage from it. When people close to me found out I had an affair it would have been the easiest thing to play the victim card and gain their sympathy rather than risk their disgust or alienation, but I chose to take that risk. Sure, I was very vulnerable to having an affair at the time and he probably singled me out because of it, but I still went there of my own free will.

Can you honestly say that your H knew who your friend would turn out to be when he chose to have an affair? He couldn't have known when he took that first step. Yet he still did it.

If you want to reconcile you have got to understand why he chose to do this, chose to do it just after you got married, chose to continue it.

If he can't be honest with you about this, if he can't face taking that risk with you and experiencing your disgust and possible rejection due to the real reason he had an affair, then there is no hope, I'm afraid.

To allow him to do that - if he's willing - you have got to abandon this false narrative that he was some kind of passive player in someone else's drama. I can tell you he was not.

That was a very honest post Hatpin, and brave to post it here.
I hope op can gain more perspective from your insights, not easily gained I'm sure.

LPL It's funny you should say that, I was wondering about that right after I hit post. I concluded that it would depend entirely on the relative size of the pegs and holes

izchaz I really hoped after reading all the responses to your post that there might be someone else who could see past the surface and have hope for this relationship.

You followed up with this women's psychiatric history and issues and i'm reassured that my thinking wasn't completely skewed. It was what i expected.

Gosh. You have had a 'job done' on you both. No one is perfect and a chink in your relationship has been exploited and your DH has been really stupid.

You have failed to keep yourselves safe or protect your relationship. You are both early days if you have only been together for two or three years too. At this stage in a relationship, your not so well functioning bits are very vulnerable. A good relationship gets stronger and stronger as time goes on, not weaker. The strengths you build make difficult times easier to cope with. So early on to have serious problems is absolutely battering.

Despite the common consensus, I actually think that you can get through this. I think you are both traumatised by what has happened, vulnerable and very angry.

You are not just a izchaz and mrizchaz but a relationship has a third element, the unseeen element that is you and he. This has been damaged and needs to get better. Neither of you have protected it.

You need to both treat that 'other' like something very fragile if it's going to recover. Arguing is fine if you can find a healthy way of doing it. If you can get counselling separately first, i'd advise it.

If you both want things to work out, and have the capacity to be honest with yourselves and each other and to 'live in the wounds' for a while then it might work out. Your DH Jus needs to look into the guilt and see it for what it is. A great mechanism to stop him ever risking your marriage again.

Go and do nice things togethher, light things and for god sake don't let random people into your lives and learn to put some bloody boundaries down!!

Yoou know you need to consider the impact on your baby. I won't even mention that.

I'm sorry, but you will not get through this. That is, you will never have a healthy marriage. I'm sorry, but you won't. Your marriage is a seething ball of dysfunction. Accept it and live that way or get out. But this mess cannot be salvaged.

"a chink"??? "really stupid"??? Think it goes a bit deeper than that....

If you both carry on pretending that this evil (pregnant?) woman was entirely responsible for seducing your newlywed husband and if you both decide that you were the one who desperately ignored his cried for help (despite his lying) then yes, I think this relationship could stagger on for years.

Hi OP. I skimmed yesterday's posts by others so apologies if this was raised already and I had missed it.

Couple of days ago, you posted that "WE were working on this". One resounding (thunderous) message coming at you from all these strangers is that your husband isn't taking full responsibility, isn't taking full blame, and doesn't genuinely seem to be sorry (based on your own posts).

Can you elaborate - mainly for yourself, really - what specific ACTIONS he has taken to fix your marriage?

I don't think you will resolve this until the baby comes, and a lot of posters worry for you, as life will turn upside down in a way none of us can predict yet.

You may draw a lucky straw and get an easy baby that feeds well, sleeps like a trooper, and is comparably an easy baby. Or, you may get a high needs baby (google that plus dr sears). We had the latter. She is an absolute joy but almost destroyed her parents' (stable) marriage by keeping them sleep deprived for over ONE YEAR (there is a reason sleep deprivation is an inhumane form of torture).

Regardless of which straw you draw, the entire dynamic of your marriage will shift and you won't have time to give your marriage problems all this time. And, you will change. Being responsible 24/7 for the welfare of a helpless, dependant being - it changes everything. It causes huge stress. Huge. Many couple divorce within a year of having a child. That huge.

Everyone here is very worried for you. That's why the urging to take action now.

So back to the question. What positive actions has he taken to repair the damage his affair caused?

That is exactly what they are both doing Thisis. Personally I don't buy it that this woman is/was especially vulnerable, even if she was sectioned. Some sociopaths and people with narcissistic personality disorders may be mad but they are not always vulnerable and they do far more harm to those around them than is ever done to them. Not every person with MH issues is automatically the innocent vulnerable victim.

However, that aside, whatever she is, or is not, is entirely irrelevant. He was a willing shagging partner. He either loved her, in which case the OP deserves better, or he didn't love her but still continued to shag her for 7 months, just weeks into his marriage by the sounds of things, in which case the OP still deserves better.

He chose to have an affair in the very early stages of marriage, when they had only been together a couple of years. None of the classic, cliched reasons for an affair (mid-life crisis, stress, boredom, lack of sex, financial pressure, the hamster wheel of bringing up kids, grown apart etc, etc) would have applied here. He was greedy and opportunistic and led by his cock. It's all very simple really. It wasn't a stupid drunken ONS, or an ill-advised fling, or a flirtation that got out of hand once or twice, it was a protracted affair.

It happens, often actually, probably more than many of us like to admit, that within many young couples, despite loving one another, one or other or both will find it hard to resist the sheer excitement of sex with someone new. Sometimes people want to be married and a grown up on the one hand, but can't quite let go of the very basic desire to shag around. Which is why people marrying young and having children very young is so often doomed to disaster. Ask anyone who works in a busy office in a city, staffed with lots of 20 and thirty somethings - affairs are absolutely rife, even among young, childless couples who should be in the honeymoon period of their relationships.

But what concerns me is that if he were truly sorry and wanted to put it behind him, grow up and throw himself into his marriage, he sure as hell has a funny way of showing it. He seems to refuse to accept that any of the blame is his - never mind all of it. It wouldn't matter if the OW had marched into the room naked and forcibly sat on his face - he was newly married and he should not have succumbed to any temptation, full stop. the fact that he did is not the surprise - it's the fact that he can so easily play the victim upon being found out that astounds me. The inability to resist temptation itself is not a reason to shift the blame onto the OW, however much she may have thrown herself at him.

This marriage is going nowhere. I mean for goodness sake - they are both in agreement that it was all the OW's fault, and yet they still can't seem to get any peace and move forward.

Fuck fuck fuck! I'd just written a huge schpiel and twatphone+fat fingers has minced it before I could send it. Right, start again!

scarletwoman and periodfeatures you both very accurately describe me/him/us, and the actions/decisions we have taken in the aftermath. It feels sort of like a juggernaut has ripped through or there's been an earthquake and everything is still sort of recognisable but on closer inspection turns out to be broken.

hatpin thank you for having the bravery to share your insight. Whilst I'd never given him carteblanche for what happened I am increasingly coming to believe that he could have said/done more to prevent or stop what happened. At the very least he could have spoken to me.

Someone upthread (sorry, I can't find you to namecheck) asked how the whole thing came out. I think perhaps it makes sense to give a precis.

After I introduced them they became quite good friends - similar interests and senses of humour, I had been told by her that she was very unhappy in a multiply-abusive marriage (turned out to be bollocks), so I encouraged them to spend time together as he was good with her kids and she always seemed more "up" when he was there. Over the coming months she began to text/email/call him and me more and more, and whenever we sought time for ourselves to prep for the wedding there would be a disaster - little timmy would need rushed to hospital, or she would collapse whilst on the phone to me, or her husband would come home and she would be afraid of him. So we were both drawn in. I work nights, DH days, so we sort of fell into the habit of keeping an eye on her in shifts. When asked she was not keen to leave her husband, and whilst offering support we both knew better than to push her to leave or to confront her hsuabnd. She left him briedly and moved in with us, the only instance I know they definitely had sex happened during this period. Eventually I became unhappy with how dominant she was becoming in my own home and suggested to move to a hostel or another friend, she went back to her husband. Over the coming months DH stopped taking her calls, would leave when she came to the house, or would call me infront of her so I knew she was there. I was working increasingly long shifts, and by the end was working 60+ hours a week. As the months passed he stopped keeping her at arms length and they began sending inappropriate images and texts/emails to each other. (subsequent examination of phone records shows me she initiated each flurry of messages) (by this point she might be sending me 60+ texts a day, whilst sending him only a little fewer, lookign back now it boggles my mind that I didn't question any of her behaviour really, but it was so gradual and would stop if I mentioned anything,only to build up again in later weeks).
Anyway, eventually he told her outright "I'm not engaging with you any more", a few hours later she allowed her husband to accidentally catch some of the content on her phone, creating a little alibi for herself. She then swore her husband to secrecy (for my sake apparently) and then put plans in motion for a massive suicide bid to get DHs attention. She got mine instead and I involved every single unit I could think of because I realised that her children were at significant risk.
At the end of the most harrowing day of my life, where I stopped my best friend making a (I now realise false) suicide attempt, protected her children from witnessing it, made various statements to various professional bodies and sat with her for more than 20 hours to ensure she got the help she needed she told me my DH had driven her to it. I drove home not having the first idea what to think and asked him, he denied it, I don't really remember what he said, but he could have told me he was Desmond tutu that day and I'd have believed him I was so wrung out.
She spent a good while in a unit, banging on to me about how DH had put her there, so eventually I asked him again, again he denied it, but there was something about it that didn't add up, so I asked again and he admitted it, but their stories never matched up.

So how come you have "divorced" her & not him? They are both equally responsible.

Right, now, I came on here to say that I am going to take some steps to rectifying my life a bit, with or without dh. I don't want to go into massive detail on here a) because the plan isn't fully formulated and b) because I think it fair that dh know before you lot :-p But I'll be taking some time for myself in the coming weeks and will be going to therapy. I'm also going to strongly suggest that dh returns to his therapy and make it clear that non-attendance will have consequences.
Hope that helps you all to stop worrying about me a squidge. Sorry I've not replied by name to everyone who's posted over the last 12 pages, you have all been read (some of you have been sworn at), and I have tried hard to take on board what's been said.

At the very least, he could and should have stopped it! Not carried on for 7 months......
This must be such a difficult task for you - your protective instincts as an about-to-be parent must run away from the scary place that splitting up with him must seem.
But what has he actually done to repair / reassure / commit to you? Really and seriously? Reading your thread he seems full of half baked words / sentiments - when he's faced with your understandable fury and feelings, he goes off on one, indulging himself in battling with you. I get no sense that he is truly contrite and has any capacity to be sorry and step up to the plate and be a partner who will be truly supportive.
I have been a single parent for the majority of dd's life and it has been a joyous experience. The thought of someone experiencing the first months / years of their child's precious life with a 'partner' who is paying lip service to their relationship is just so sad...

i All the best to you. You sound really strong.

That sounds awful Izchaz! I'm one of the swearers from a few pages back but I really do wish you peace and happiness, not with him of course as I think he is vomit inducing scum. But for you. This is one of the saddest stories I've ever read.

To all the people who are being heavily critical, have you ever had to deal with someone who has a personality disorder? I'm guessing not. Not all people with mental health issues are ''vulnerable'' Some are really dangerous.