Have confronted him. Feel sick. Help.

[Fireplaces]

Tonight I confronted my husband about the fact that he is having an affair. I have known for a couple of weeks but I was so scared of confronting him and of what would happen then. I was hoping he would finish his affair because he knew I was suspicious. But he was out late twice this week with no explanation, he has been shitty to live with and today had a go at me over something tiny.

Then he lied this evening about where he was going and he went out. I questioned him about where he was going and he lied some more. I am sure he was going to meet the OW. About half an hour after he went out I decided that I was sick of the lies and deceit. I literally couldn't take it anymore. I called him and told him I knew. And I shouted. And I told him to stop lying.

He denied it all on the phone and said he was coming straight home, but I packed his bags and left them outside the front door. He has gone, with them.

I am so scared of the future. Of tomorrow. Of the next day. How the hell am I going to get through this? I am shaking. Please help me.

Been there done that. I don't come on to a forum though and encourage people to end relationships because I am bitter though.

I don't think we're encouraging her to end it eines, at least I hope I'm not. All I see is the OP wanting to time to think and gather her thoughts.

eineschlampa why are you going around all the threads telling people off for offering good advice?

fireplaces It is a hell on earth that I would only wish on people who have been willing to be an OW. I am so very sorry you are going through this.

I wouldn't take him back.

However, if you are not sure what you want to do yet, I would text him something like 'I did not say A week, I said, A FEW weeks. I will let you know when I am ready to talk to you. In the meantime stay away and leave me alone, unless it's to tell me you want a divorce'.

Sounds / like we may have a name changer!!

Gehj what on earth are you talking about. You have some serious unreasovled issues. You have already high jacked one thread this week and quite a number ladies asked you to stop, including me. Now please don't try and hike jack another Ops thread. This Op really needs support.

When I was going through this myself I would have found the arguing on this thread really unhelpful and upsetting. Perhaps we could all calm down a bit and be kind and supportive. We all have opinions, but the OP doesn't need them. She needs practical advice and hand holding.

The relationships board can be such a wonderful support to posters, let's remember that.

Lets just stop arguing and focus on OP here

Yes, just support OP, don't get drawn into an argument and report anything you dont like, to MN and let them deal with it if they think it is out of order , as they already have twice today....

Fireplaces - you really will be on an emotional roller coaster for quite some time, but the stronger you can be, the better you will handle it. If you have some good RL support, it will help too.

I am reading all your replies. Thank you for the help. I do really need your help and experiences, more than I have ever done in my life.

The last 24 hours have been some of the hardest of my life. I am trying to hold it all together for the sake of the DC.

I am full of empowerment one minute, then full of self-doubt the next.

DH has sent another email this evening asking to come home. He says he wants things to go back to how they were before we had the DC. He says he wants us to spend time as a family. He says he wants to put things right between us and to resolve it.

He says he has been stupid.

He has not said he is sorry, for anything. He does not acknowledge or ask about how I am feeling. I told him yesterday twice on the phone and again this morning in an email that I needed a few weeks space and that if he had any respect for me and the marriage, he would give me this time. This morning he said he wants to come home. And now again, the same thing.

What I feel he wants is to come home, see his DC, have one or two conversations about it all, come home early for a few weeks and make some effort....but then sweep it under the rug, never to be mentioned again. I will be living my life obsessing for the next 20 years who he is with; checking his text messages etc. The trust has gone. I don't want him ever to touch me again; the thought of sex with him makes me want to vomit because he's been doing that with the OW. I feel the marriage has been awful for ages now and that the affair is one of the results.

I am pouring out my feelings.

But I need practical advice; (yes more😒) in the light of his evening email. I feel strongly that he needs to leave me be for a few weeks to think. He wants to come straight home. I feel like saying that he needs to give the space I ask for a d that if he forces the issue, I will go straight to divorce. Help please xx

I don't usually post on difficult threads like yours. Your instinct sounds perfect to me. You have worked on it so far and maintained your dignity wonderfully. You are making a relatively minor request and that he is ignoring it smacks of complete disrespect.

And as for wanting to go back to how you were pre children. Exactly how does he plan that? Wishing your children away takes a certain type of self obsessed bastard.

You are doing so well Fireplaces, much better than I did at the same stage. I had nothing but self doubt!

From the sound of it your DH is looking to come back on his terms and effectively keep his options open. Mine wanted to do that too. I only made progress when like you I took control, walked out and got on with my life. If you don't want to see him for a few weeks, don't, he has no right to dictate to you.

It's very hard to know what you want so early on, and there is no harm in talking to your DH, communicating by email, meeting him for a drink etc. I did all of that, and in the process we healed a lot of wounds and made friends again. Do stuff for yourself too though, go out with friends and have a bit of fun. Take advantage of the fact your life is your own, and you don't have to fit in with him any more.

I'm still with my DH, we survived and are doing are very best to make a go of things. Life is good, but it's a long slow road. The only reason I am on it is because DH is sorry, genuinely sorry, ashamed, humiliated, desperate to make amends. He treats me with respect, asks how I am, supports me when I have bad days (I'm a year in, and I still have them.... it takes time), and the running is coming from him. If your DH isn't doing all of that and more there is no point really, as you can't police what he is up to, he needs to 100% not want to be up to anything.

My advice, carry on with what you are doing, communicate but on your terms, ask friends for support (you will need it), make sure you know everything you need to about your family finances and get legal advice, and don't blame yourself, or let your DH blame you. He'll probably try, most do. Whatever problems there may have been in your marriage not one of them gave him the right to treat you like this. Big hug. It's so hard, and it's ok to cry.

What he wants, really doesn't matter at the moment. You have the right to ask for whatever you want from him and he should want to give it. Don't take any crap from him, if he pushes faster than you want to go, then he is not giving you the respect that you are asking for.

If he truly wants to make amends, he will do anything he can to make it up to you.

if he gets impatient, doesn't want to wait, wants to push it all aside, then it will never work out. As you say, you will be seething with resentment and he will expect it to be forgotten.

If you stay with him, then ultimately you do have to be able to forgive, or it will never work out, but that is something that only you can decide and from what others post, it takes a hell of a long time to get to that point. There is no miracle cure and your H needs to understand that.

For now, you need time and space to process your thoughts and that is what he should understand

It is such an incredibly horrible feeling - so confusing and scary as well as hurting more than you'd think was possible :(

I am full of empowerment one minute, then full of self-doubt the next

That is completely normal. Exhausting & confusing, but normal.

Of course he wants thing to 'go back to normal' wifey at home looking after the house and the kids, him acting like a Dad when he fancies it and like a single bloke when he fancies that.

Well, Breaking News this is NOT about what he wants, if that is what he wanted so badly he should have thought about that before fucking around with someone else shouldn't he. It is now tough bloody luck what he wants.

How is christs name does he think you can go back to how it was before you had children? Does he not think 'having children changes your life forever' applies to him??

If he wanted to put things right and resolve things - he should have done that before he had an affair - instead of acting like a complete idiot.

He says he has been stupid

... yes, we'd worked that out

He has not said he is sorry, for anything. He does not acknowledge or ask about how I am feeling

There is no way on this earth that he has what it takes to rebuild your relationship from the ground up. You are right, he wants a couple of conversations about it, to look a bit hangdog and then have it brushed under the rug. Fuck that.

I told him yesterday twice on the phone and again this morning in an email that I needed a few weeks space and that if he had any respect for me and the marriage, he would give me this time. This morning he said he wants to come home. And now again, the same thing

This tells you everything you need to know about how much he would listen & how much effort he would put into rebuilding your marriage. NONE.

I will be living my life obsessing for the next 20 years who he is with; checking his text messages etc. The trust has gone

There is one poster on here who will tell you that her relationship is better now, post affair, because they rebuilt their marriage and 'started again' but her DH was a completely different kind of person to yours & she is the only person I know, IRL & on MN, that has had a happy life post affair, everyone else I know is living the life you describe above - then generally still separating a few years later (which is what I did).

I feel strongly that he needs to leave me be for a few weeks to think. He wants to come straight home. I feel like saying that he needs to give the space I ask for a d that if he forces the issue, I will go straight to divorce

^ Is exactly the right thing to do. Just do it x

"Dear (STBX)H

Its seems that you are misunderstanding me so I will be be as plain as I can.

You have destroyed our marriage. You have had sex with another woman, told her that you loved her and planned a future with her. This is not something that I am able to simply forget or "get over".

I have no trust in you and at the moment I am not sure whether I have any love for you.

It is clear to me that your thoughts are about yourself and no one else. You lied to me when I confronted you despite me having proof, you did not do as I asked and give me space. If you truly loved me and respected me then you would give the honesty and thinking time I have asked for and would not be continuing to lie and hassling me to come home.

I make no promises about what will happen. I cannot guarantee that I will want to continue the marriage after I have had some time to think, but what I can tell you is that if you continue to ignore my feelings in this way then I will have no option but to draw a line under our marriage, file for divorce and move on. I dont want to make that decision yet, as I said I need some time to think, but if you force the issue then I will have no choice.

I am afraid that you threw away any choice in what will happen with our marriage the moment you had sex with your mistress.

Regards"

Thank you for your very considered replies and for taking the time to write them; they are really helping me. I would like to send 90% of bogeyfaces email, to be honest, as it reflects my accurate views and would make him realise i meant what I said. I would add a line suggesting a certain day/EOW for him to have access to the DC in the short term. And that I need the car seats back. However I am aware that my views are all over the place at the moment. What does everyone else think of it?

Just write how you feel OP, if there is anytime to be blunt and to the point the time is now.

'I feel strongly that he needs to leave me be for a few weeks to think. He wants to come straight home. I feel like saying that he needs to give the space I ask for a d that if he forces the issue, I will go straight to divorce'

I would text him that tbh.

I am good at emails!

But Octopus is right, just put what you feel. I wrote that to put across the point that while you dont want to be antagonistic, you dont have to be nice.

I would send it as it is, it's perfect or what you wrote earlier, that too was perfect. With a line about the car seats - but tell him where to drop them off (friends/parents/doorstep/whatever) and another about when it suits you for him to see the children. Also, what you are both going to tell the children. Most young kids accept Daddy has to work away & will come and take you out while Mummy does some jobs, older kids you can just say that Daddy has made Mummy very upset and sometimes if one adult does that to another adult it's best if the stay at a friends for a little while.

I have asked my post to be deleted because it is a psychological discussion on splitting and not helpful.

Fireplace, you are being so clear, and focussed on the real issues here. Wow like Worcestershire I say you are being strong firm and clear. He really underestimated his wife!

You also are very aware of the risk of what would happen if you did just let him back. Your 'obsessing for the next 20 years' is a brilliant description of how it would be.

For a man to recover his marriage after this (and my husband tried) he would have to really, really look at himself and own his selfishness and entitlement - and how much better he really believes he is, compared to you and your tedious emotional needs. But those aren't really the qualities of the humility required are they! My H went to counselling till the precise moment where he realised that they were only interested in him and what issues in him drove him to 'make the mistaken choices to be happy' he made. Then he stopped.

It takes a hell of a man to really look at himself and commit to becoming a better person. Very very rare (lucky wives if they do, I know I would have got over the affair in time had he learned from it and chosen to grow up). Most of it is like Chipping says: you try so hard, but end up separating anyway, because they just want to carry on like they always have been 'move on' whilst you have woken up to how incredibly selfish they are - and always have been, and the marriage has always been lop-sided. That was my experience as well.

I advocated little, if no, contact yesterday fire but I think something pretty much like Bogey's email would be helpful for to get things off your chest. However I also think any hour you're not jumping to his tune accomplishes two things. One, it gives you time to reflect and not make any mistakes with contact you later regret. Two, it's another hour he learns to miss what he's lost. For these reasons I advocate leaving a reply until tonight or tomorrow.