Dear Mumsnetters
This is the first time I have posted in the Relationships forum.
The reason I am posting is that I have been reading other people’s stories for months, in order to get some perspective on my own relationship troubles. It has been truly illuminating, and I would like to thank those who posted their own tales, and those many posters who gave excellent advice, which I was able to relate to myself.
Periodically, the notion is raised that an OP is trolling or that posts have inconsistences in them. Regardless, others continue to post advice and help, on the basis that it might help someone else, somewhere.
Well, I am that someone else, somewhere.
My back story is that three weeks ago, I told my DH of 15 years to leave the family home. Our children are young (7, 6, 4 and not yet 2). In Summer 2013, I was uncomfortable with the fact that my DH had a secret friend. He was meeting another woman for drinks/dinner and the occasional concert or after-work event, without telling me. I discovered this by reading his text messages, which in turn had been prompted by his working late, slight detachment, and the dreadful gut feeling I had (having discovered him doing something very similar nine years earlier.)
In September 2013, I commenced counselling on my own for a few weeks, gathered my thoughts, and confronted DH with my discomfort. I offered him the option of couples counselling (which I had already booked), and he agreed to come along.
We attended counselling weekly for five months. I found it excruciating. DH went for broke on fessing up his secrecy and his remorse for causing me hurt. I felt at the time he was hair-shirting it for the counsellor, but put it down to my own damaged trust. And so we moved on with our lives.
Overall, we had been happy and busy. I am a SAHM with four little children; he is a professional. He is a high earner. We have a good reliable babysitter and we get out regularly and have lots of friends. We live in a smallish community with a great network of families, where we have integrated well in the last number of years. From the outside, we really had it all.
While DH claimed he had never been happier, that he felt we were stronger than ever, and that our future was going to be wonderful, I often demurred and wondered if things could ever be the same again. He said he had cut contact with the OW (she moved away). I was generally guarded, and when we did have heart-to-hearts, I really felt he didn’t understand how eroded my trust and confidence had been. And he was carrying his mobile phone with him everywhere, not even charging it at home.
Over the summer of 2014, my increased anxiety that things weren’t right meant that I was on edge a lot of the time. I read and read and read the threads on Mumsnet, and found kindred spirits. All the women who discovered their husbands’ affairs. The young mother of two with the older, wealthy husband who was being controlled sexually. The technical advice on how to get ‘evidence’ from computers and phones. The helpful respondents who said ‘you do know, he is controlling you, don’t you?’ I had a happy, comfortable life with happy, charming, healthy children, a lovely home, and a husband who bought me presents and concert tickets regularly. But I was not treated as an equal in the relationship (financially, sexually, time-wise, and in many other countless ways.)
Three weeks ago, he left his laptop unguarded for about twenty minutes while he went to collect DD1, and I finally got the proof that I knew would be there. Some further probing, and I was able to collate eleven online orders of gifts sent – complete with flirty notes – to OW.
So I am on my own with the four little ones, while he is moving into an apartment tomorrow. I am attending counselling. We have drawn up a preliminary parenting plan. We will meet a financial planner. I have seen a solicitor and not told him. I have copies of bank statements on file.
I am still in the cold fury stage, and am being mechanical in terms of the house-keeping of the separation. I feel very self-righteous that my suspicions were spot on, though how useful that is at this point, I don’t know.
I am sickened at the prospect of having my four babies go to stay with him for overnight access (which we’ve agreed will start next week). My mother in law is heart-broken. My own family are so sad and hurt and angry. The reality hasn’t really dawned on the children yet (as he would have worked long hours, so would frequently be absent for breakfast or bedtime or both). The support of trusted friends has been phenomenal (the elbow-nudges at the school gate are much harder to bear.)
I had the strength to throw him out. I just hope I’ve the strength to cope into the future. So I thank you for reading this, and for all the advice you have given to women like me.