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.

"You can't handle the truth!!" - Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men)

I am just amazed by the latest excuse. He shagged your mentally ill best friend for seven months because he couldn't play sport?! WTAF? you really need to cop on, that is the daftest thing I've ever read!

Op I hope you find happiness - if your mother tolerated unhappiness then you have been conditioned to believe that is what you should do also.

I think you would really find a therapist for yourself to talk about all of this - a safe space where you are supported and can look at how your own family background has perhaps led you to be tolerant of cheating

I would say your mother would have been better if she had never stayed with the man who repeatedly broke her heart - and I think that you should not feel obliged to fix this unhappy and what sounds to me very oppressive situation.

You are right to look at ways of mending things - but I agree with others here that you seem to want to fix them at any cost to yourself - and your husband does not sound like a good man.

Please read books recommended here - Oliver James, they fuck you up is a good one. Also find a Good therapist
Who you feel safe with.

You do not have to sacrifice your life and happiness to make a marriage work - just because that's what your mother did.

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, there are far more intelligent people than me trying, in the most articulate ways I have ever read on here, to get you to see that until you apportion blame to your husband as well as the ow you are never going to get peace. Please op, take note of what they are saying, a lot of these ladies have been in the same situation and know what they are talking about.

Fwiw, I too am agog at the "fertile soil" excuse.....forgive me for being presumptuous but you write as if you are penning a novel!

Izchaz, I know you probably have us all down as cheek-sucking bonkers old cynics, but please, please listen to what people are saying.

You continue to minimise and rationalise your cheating fuck of a spouse's behaviour in the most convoluted and deluded manner. Theorising about it makes it explicable and therefore controllable by you. It is not.

Nobody was ever unfaithful because they couldn't go bungee jumping, or whatever risky thing he likes to do. Nobody was ever unfaithful as a displacement activity because of a sports injury. Every time someone is unfaithful it is an active choice. Your husband (I will repeat this ad nauseam until you get it) had sex for seven months just after your wedding, with your incredibly vulnerable friend because he wanted to do it. He chose to do it.

Your husband has no moral compass.

His steps toward dealing with his anger and frustration through exercise are closely linked to all of this

I'm sorry but what exactly does he have to feel angry and frustrated over in all of this?

The only things he should be feeling right now are shame and fear and remorse. If primary emotions are anger and frustration then you don't have a hope of making this work. Not a hope. Because he still doesn't get it.

Anger and frustration would be the emotions of someone who

a) got caught out and is pissed off about it, and
b) would like to continue his "risk-taking activity" but has been thwarted.

Of course we all want a happy ending for everyone. I really hope you get it OP & when you have to shock horror put your new baby first, a fertile soil won't again be created for your husband to seek thrills elsewhere.

Sadly I think when the baby comes, and wants to bf every 2-3 hours, and you are like death from lack of sleep, and you don't know whether you are coming or going, that might look curiously like fertile soil to him.

Springy, the OP has specifically pointed out your posts just antagonise her and don't help. I'm not sure why you continue to post, goading and insulting.

You may have a point, but frankly the OP isn't going to read it. You are coming across as the angry one now and it's getting unpleasant.

Please try to show a bit of sympathy and stop. The OP might at some point need to come back and reread this thread and your comments will make that difficult.

Springy is right though.

Period So if her DH effeminates her, shes allowed to go and screw one of his mentally ill friends while pregnant for 7 months

No. Stuff happens when people have bad dynamics though. 'Allowed' is not here or there. It's happened, she wants to stick with it and it is her choice to try and work things out. Some people have affairs because they are arseholes. Some people have affairs because they are unhappy and unfulfilled in their marriages. Then there is the grey area in the middle I guess.

izchaz can you not see that your behaviour towards your DH, and your situation is a bit controlling and domineering? The language you use suggests that anyway.

I am going to re-engage him with that

..and his behaviour was completely out of order? Inexcusable.

A lot of what you say makes sense to me though. Even the stuff about exercise.

It is possible to filter and justify anything we like through a web of reasons. There is always a root to our behaviour and choices and we can examine and unpick that until forever.

Sometimes it is helpful, it can help us understand ourselves better and make sense of some of the bad decisions we have made.

But, if you and your DH are not able to face your personal flaws and shortcomings boldly in the face in this process it will be very difficult to move on.

You have been given a hard time on this. But I hope that though the vast amounts of opinions and suggestions you can take up the bits of criticism that make sense to you and take them on board.

One of the first posts i made on here i was brutalised for. Called all sorts of names and felt like shit. D'you know though, i actually value the opportunity for real honesty that you can't get in the same way in real life. My perspective was changed, i was educated on something i didn't know a lot about.

I think you and you DH have a good chance of being fine and happy.

Good for your Mum and her husband.

Go with the jip. It won't kill you, though it feels like it will. Go with it Or i could've just said this.

I don't agree with everything springtotty has said but i do agree with this. Wise words. Youll be less exhausted in the long run O.P.

And please, let us know how you are getting on.

It is possible to filter and justify anything we like through a web of reasons. There is always a root to our behaviour and choices and we can examine and unpick that until forever.

I 100% agree. As an over-analyser extraordinaire myself, I sometimes have to give myself a shake and say it doesn't matter why something is what it is, I just need to deal with the fact that it is what it is. IYSWIM.

I am prepared to shake and rattle that cage very violently. Pregnant or not. Not just for the OP but for the child who is going to be born into this absolute shit. In the hope that she is prodded into reality. Maybe her anger and contempt towards me could start a landslide? That would be good.

... you write as if you are penning a novel!

EXACTLY.

Someone told me something back in the day when I was up to my neck in similar shit (which involved a man, of course!). I thought she was unbelievably rude, I was astounded - she didn't hold back and said it straight. (Was she jealous??) I shelved what she'd said - completely discounted it at the time, anyway. but years years later, what she said came back. I can't express what a solace it was to me, how grateful I was that she had said it. It was a pin of reality in the midst of unbelievable confusion and I held on to it.

I'm not professing to be OP's saviour (my friend wasn't professing to be my saviour, either) - this poster/situation get on my tits big time, of course. But she has 9 months here, give or take, and I'm not going to be holding back for the sake of upsetting her feelings. It's not just about her now.

... you write as if you are penning a novel!

Yes, I agree. While noone can deny that the OP is extremely eloquent, all this talk of 'the perfect storm' etc means that she is romantising a seedy and crappy situation in oder to allow herself to deal with something that is essentially seedy and crappy. She's trying to turn it into a fairytale, which is nothing more that a naive coping mechanism and ultimately a form of denial.

There are alot of people who have been through shit, have seen the light and have moved on from the cunt wad ex partners.and are happier for it.

GREAT, good for you, and those of us in the mire, will hopefully get to that place someday

But I am baffled as to why their frustration at the OP, means they think it justifies being quite so rude and scathing

so they care, and they dont want her to make the same mistake as them, well thats all well and good. But when they use rude, insulting and personal insults...its horrible to read

You all say her DH is bad.abusive. a cheat. etc....

CANT YOU SEE YOUR FUCKING POSTS READ QUITE ABUSIVELY TOO?

I find it really fucking upsetting TBH

The op does not need more bullying and abuse - very very nasty calling an unhappy pregnant woman an idiot - go and hang out on aibu and leave vulnerable people alone

I have reported some of the posts that I think are particuarly offensive

MN at its worst (again!!!!!)

I think we might as well give up, anyway. The OP wants to believe in her perfect storm. It's much more comforting to believe that a predatory insane woman and a sporting injury conspired against you, than to believe you married a man who has no morals.

paris - what part of this thread makes you think that calling her h 'bad, abusive and a cheat' is anything other than plain, simple fact?

The OP may not wish to hear it, but it is the truth. And the truth is not offensive.

I've been in something approaching the OP's position, and I recognise in her some of the desperation I felt to fix things that I could not fix, to sort problems that weren't mine to sort, to load the entire responsibility for the success of my marriage on my shoulders. So I feel some sympathy for her, because it's really bloody hard to admit you've married a wrong 'un. It's even harder to face those facts when his baby is growing inside you. You rationalise and intellectualise and analyse. Oh, the self help books I bought! Trying to solve a problem that wasn't mine to solve in the first place.

But I don't think I would've got angry with people who'd told me I was wasting my time trying to fix him. In fact, I wish I'd had MN at the time to tell me I was on a hiding to nothing.

I hope things work out for the OP. But I have to say that things only worked out for me when I realised that some things aren't worth fighting for, and left him.

hi izchaz

i'm so sorry you're going through this.

i think what people are trying to say in various ways is that, for change to happen space is required. which means less doing/finding solutions. it means if you are a 'doing' type of person, sitting back in the uncomfortable place of 'not doing'. space can be really unsettling as lots of painful and confusing feelings can come up, but that's good really as you have a chance to process them then. and once you've processed them they don't come back with the same intensity.

please think about doing less. you've done lots since you found out about the affair, and you're still hurting inside.

fatal

I have no issue with that, she posted here after all!!!

but she has been called names, been insulted, people have been harsh

certain people who claim to "know whats best" have been pretty fucking vile IMO

Do you know what I think????

I think that this has really stirred people up because actually, it takes a rare sort of courage for someone to actually be able to step up and see beyond the black/white right wrong rhetoric that is being spouted here and want to make things better and get them right.

OP has enough esteem and intelligence to see all the factors that have led to the mess she is in and perhaps (i speculate here) have the ability to forgive her partner, recognise her own role in the situation. I think she writes with crystaline clarity about her view on her situation and perhaps that holding this perspective is the only thing that is going to keep her safe and sane at the moment.

She willl have to face up to stuff.

She is slowly waking up to the reality of what has happened and her own part in it..and her DH and it's a shit load to assimilate.

I love my DH and i would do the same. I would stick with the jip turn myself inside out and upside down to get it right.

I'm sorry but i have more respect for a person who can exercise forgiveness, uphold their marriage vows and work to make things better than someone who would just say.
'lying cheating bastard' and walk away.

This of course would not be right for everyone but i personally think in this situation it is.

Love is insane. People do insane things and make mistakes all the time. OP and DH seem to love each other and have massive issues to work through. Many perfect soulmates have issues to work through.

Better this than a lifeless staid marriage that could fall apart at the first hurdle. It's absolutely shit having to look into the worst part of you character and have to change it..but so much better than not doing it at all.

Some people might see a seedy crappy situation. I just see people who have made mistakes, not kept their marriage safe and are now in a desperate mess trying to come to terms with what has happened.

It's not fair to judge the choices o.p is making unless we have really understood her life. She isn't perfect and nor is anyone.