I’m not sure what I’m looking for by posting .. maybe just to get my own thoughts in order – I just feel ‘detached’ from myself at the moment.
Brief background – been with DH for 12 years – we have one young DS.
DH was recently headhunted for a job abroad. We figured it was a good opportunity and so we’ve relocated lock, stock and barrel to another country. Things were going well.
Then the bombshell dropped …. I was looking for something on his iPad and ended up reading a text conversation between DH and an old mate from his old job .. it was basically my DH writing in the tone of ‘one of the lads’ that he’d been to a work evening reception and met a woman that they’d both had dealings with by e-mail in the past, as part of their job. My DH described how wonderful she looked (including come-to-bed eyes apparently!), how he thought the attraction was mutual and that the wife of the event host had noticed and kept intervening to move them apart but that they both kept gravitating back to each other.. blah blah blah … and that nothing had happened that night but “she’s back here again next week so who knows ….”. DH’s mate had replied with some laddish comments and added that he’d seen the messages my DH had sent to one of the girls in their old mutual office and he agreed with what DH had said that he’d give “ A N Other woman colleague” “one” too.
I was devastated; obviously confronted DH with it and asked him what it was all about. He said he was just being stupid, bigging himself up to his laddish mate and trying to show off that his new life was so good and that it was all pure fantasy – the woman does exist and was at the event but he didn’t think there was any attraction and he certainly didn’t meet up with her the following week.
Then it turned into one of those conversations that you wish you’d never started … I asked if he had been unfaithful to me in the time we’ve been together .. turns out the answer is no, technically .. but there had been one encounter on a business trip, shortly after DS was born, when a woman, who he didn’t know, but was in the group he was with, followed him to the gents, caught him by surprise, grabbed a handful and there was kissing, groping and then he came to his senses and stopped short of having sex in the toilet cubicle. Classy eh! He swears this was the one and only time.
We had a long conversation about the fact that my expectation of being married was that I wouldn’t embark on any conversations or actions, of any type, that I wouldn’t be happy for him to be included in (he already knew this).. he admitted that he’d not lived up to that standard … ie, he had had conversations with other women (from work) that he wouldn’t have been happy for me to hear or be included in.
All of a sudden, little things from the past that I’d brushed off take on new significance, my whole marriage seems to be a sham – I’m a fool for having thought that we were both on the same wavelength and assigned the same importance to our relationship – that we both placed each other far above any other in terms of importance and priority.
We both used to work for the same firm and at social events there were a group of married men who acted in a laddish and lewd way – they were the ones that I had no respect for, seeing what they got up to on a night out and then going home to their unsuspecting wives … now I realise I was one of those wives.
I feel utterly betrayed. Now I find myself miles away from home, having moved everything here, sold our house, gave up my job etc. I don’t want to rip DS’s life apart by moving home with him. My first marriage went down the pan due to us ending up wanting different things and having very different values and I swore to myself I wouldn’t put myself in that situation again … but now it turns out my DH has been paying lip service to my standards while pursuing his own agenda all along.
DH says he was stupid, that he knows he shouldn’t have done any of it and that he’s not doing anything he shouldn’t now .. that our move is a new start. Well, it’s not washing with me because he had carried on the ‘behaviour’ after arriving here – and 12 years is a long time to just brush under the carpet and say that it should be forgotten just because he’s changed now (supposedly!). He doesn’t seem to ‘get it’ that the only reason he’s decided to be respectful to me now is because I caught him out .. I don’t doubt that he would have carried on if I hadn’t. How do I even know that he isn’t carrying on regardless.
He is mooching about, walking on eggshells around me, with the expression on his face of a dog that I've kicked (not that I go around kicking dogs!) – it’s almost like he wants me to feel sorry for him.
All he can say for himself is that he knows it was wrong, that I was important, that he has been stupid and that he’s not doing anything he shouldn’t now.
I don’t know what I want him to say, or how I want him to act, but the above isn’t doing it for me. The only thing keeping me here is DS and what it would do to him if we split up. I know it could have been so much worse (assuming he is telling the truth) it’s not as if he was actually unfaithful … but he’s been making an idiot of me behind my back for goodness knows how long.
I don’t even know what my question is to be honest .. he’s dripping around as if I hold all the cards and he’s waiting for me to decide what to do .. maybe I wish he’d ‘man up’ and ..oh, I don’t know what! What could he do to fix it …. All I keep asking is why? Why do it, why even marry me if he wanted to live the life of a ‘lad’. All he keeps doing is looking mournful, shaking his head and saying he’s not doing anything like that anymore. Part of me wishes I’d never found out.