Left Husband for OM - 3 years later - miss the family unit and fear for the future

[tickingclock22]

Facts to date:
Husband was unfaithful. I in turn some years later left husband for other man. My children (20/21) remained living with their dad. I rented for a year but then went on to buy a house with other man and have been together since. He and I as far as our relationship/love is concerned is great - still deeply in love with him and he is with me.

Ex-husband has been living with new partner for past year in what was our family home for 20 years and our 2 adult children still live there.

Husband fought for me for over a year. But each time I considered going back for the sake of the family / for the 25 years we had been together I stopped and couldn't do it. Would have been for the kids and not for him.

However I remain forever guilty and shameful and also regretful. My son accepts my partner - my daughter doesn't which as you can imagine makes life tricky. I have never forced or pushed her. She has to make her own mind up about things.

But....boy do I miss that everyday family life. Yes I see my kids all the time and actually still have a very good relationship with my ex but the ties never seemed to severed. Always something that draws us. Our family is very close so I guess that's what makes it like that. But I know my life ahead could mean a distant relationship with my daughter..no xmas days...no family holidays...no lazy afternoons watching TV. I watch my kids and their BF/GFs go on holidays with their dad and his partner and I know they would never do that with me and mine. My daughter wont come to my house if partner is in. My daughter wont go to any family event if partner goes. I used to be so close to my daughter and they put me on a pedestal but I destroyed that when I lost self respect and my morals and went down the road of an affair.

What I am asking...as a mum...to 2 adult children who are very much home birds and whom have always been close to their parents and enjoy doing things with us...is love and happiness with your partner enough...Will I run the risk of always being an outsider to my kids lives purely because of whom I am with...I struggle with that concept every day...always fearing that one day I wont be included at all!

Can I make right the wrong that I have done...no I cant turn the clock back...I have offered to leave my partner if I knew it would make my kids happier but daughter said no as she wouldn't want me alone - also I know the quest would be on to get me back with her dad. Which I know deep down they all want including Ex...

Yes I made my bed...I know....I love my partner so much and that has never wavered...but...is it enough..?

Myredcardigan - you keep painting an image of this poor tortured woman trudging through an unhappy marriage after enduring years of infidelity from her husband. We don't know whether that's true or not yet, because op hasn't been back to explain.

It could always have just started as a grubby affair, like all the other grubby affairs that women come on here every day to tell us about, with nothing particularly noble about it.

Either way, all the unhappiness and sadness, if that's how it was, could've been nipped in the bud at any time if op had left to be alone for a little while, with no recriminations from anyone. She chose not to do that.

it's too late to change any of that now but if people close to the situation, people who know more about it than us, refuse to accept the om as a legitimate partner then there's bugger all op or anyone else can do about it except be patient and wait it out.

And if dd is demonising the om instead of accepting that it's her mum that hurt her, not another man she'd never met, then that's probably a good thing for mother-daughter relations.

The fact that she considers her dad blameless is interesting, I'd still like to know more about that.

Why because you think he's blameless too? Why do you want so desperately to know more about something that is none of your business?

So you can judge a little more and underand a little less?

Well, QuiteLikely, the needs of my children are my absolute priority too. However, if my husband had a ONS, that would end my marriage as I would no longer love, respect or trust him. I don't feel I'd be setting my children a very good example of how a healthy relationship should be if i kept the marriage together. And the truth is, once they were adults, I wouldn't even consider their feelings. I love them more than life itself and I'd die for them in a heartbeat but I wouldn't sacrifice my own emotional wellbeing and stay in a sham of a marriage. Their emotional wellbeing would be done no favours by doing so anyway.

Somewhere there is a balance in the middle though, you don't want to be teaching your children that they should put up with a miserable marriage for years, so that in turn their children can have a stable childhood but end up being miserable for years making the same sacrifice, and so the cycle continues.
At the other end is teaching that, if life is miserable, make a change for the better rather than putting up and shutting up.
Where the balance lies is down to individual circumstances at the time, so hard for others to call. Either way, retrospective thinking and years of regret is a barrier to making the present happy. You are in a loving relationship, reason to smile. Give your DD more time, she will likely come around.

Op's dd was 17. That isn't even legally an adult. And you don't turn into a grown up person with grown up emotions the minute you hit 18. She also experienced first hand the effects on her father, who is close to her, and spent a year trying to get her mother to return.

Even the partner who's left feels guilt at the failure of a marriage and its effects on the children, which can continue many years into the future.

I think Op is doing her best and it's wise that she's not criticising her daughter for her attitude to the new partner. As pp said, she won't know if she did the right thing until many years down the line. But there's no point looking back. She has to put all her efforts into the new relationship or she may be left with nothing. Just hope that with time, and a greater understanding of life, her dd will become more accepting.

BibbityBobbity, because OP said that her husband had an affair, she stayed for a bit, then met someone else and LEFT the marital home. She hasn't said that she had an affair, just that she met and left.

Husband definitely DID have an affair and OP could have left then and there - or kicked him out, she didn't. I think many women might have just grinned and bear it for the children's sake, I probably would have told my husband that I had met someone else, that I wanted to be with OM but that I would be staying for the kids - but not as a couple with husband anymore. If husband chose to leave then that would be fine.

I don't see that OP did anything wrong and I completely agree that it's not for children, particularly adult children, to embroil themselves in their parents' relationships, it's just none of their business. The parents love them, that's all they need to know.

'partner who's BEEN left' - a bit ambiguous.

No, not the image I'm painting at all. A ONS or an affair, no different in my book. My DH telling me he'd been unfaithful once or a hundred times would be all the same to me.

But the picture being painted of holidays bring a lie etc are no more likely with her having an affair or her living with the effects of his infidelity. Not that either mean that the fun she was having with her children was a lie. That was very likely genuine.

And the idea that the op left her children is ridiculous. She left her husband and her adult DC continued to stay in the home.

Her dd has valid feelings and may well blame the om. However, equal blame for the demise of her parents marriage must lie with her cheating father.

Lying - earlier on I asked the Op if we could assume she'd been having an affair with the OM before she left the marriage. She says in her OP that she left her husband FOR the OM. I think it's extremely unusual for someone to leave a marriage when there is either an OM or OW already on the scene, without some sort of infidelity having taken place.

She didn't correct me.

I think the age of a child is irrelevant.

If anything the older a child the more they suffer as they have been with their mum and dad for longer.

Your dds feeling are her feelings.

I think your ex h and partner living in the family home is a red herring.

The real issue is whether you can be with a man whom your child dislikes.

I've heard lots of similar stories.

I know adults who still hate their parents partner and it does drive a wedge between them and their parent.

I don't envy you op.

Thymeout, fair enough. Both then cheated but SHE left when she could have told husband to leave after his infidelity, stayed single for a bit and then moved OM in... I think that happens quite often and the timeline is very often a bit on the short/coincidental side. OP did a very difficult thing to leave her family.

As an adult I would feel the same about my parents divorce as I would about a siblings divorce.

That was the common assumption. But recent studies into the impact on the adult children of grey divorce/separation seem to indicate that your hypothetical reaction may not be the norm.

OP

You had your reasons. You chose you. Knowingly, or unknowingly you badly hurt at least one of your children in the process.

The sense of betrayal. The feeling that somebody has shattered your happy enough home. The shock and disappointment that somebody you thought highly of lied, cheated, deceived. Many of those things you felt when your husband cheated on you, well it is entirely possible that your daughter feels something very similar about your affair and its aftermath as per how it affected her realtionship with you, her vision of you, her entire life.

That's the bad news

Your realtionship bond with your former husband broke, becuase of what he did. He was your husband, these bonds can break and often do.

But the good news is, you are not her spouse, you are her parent. Those bonds are more tenacious.

At the moment it might be that there is a locked door between you. Both standing close on either side wishing it wasn't there. You have to find the key. Right now if you ask for hints as to what the key might be, the only thing she might be able to offer is "find a time machine, hop in, go back and don't break my heart this time, undo it all like it never happened and make all this pain evaporate". Which you can't do.

So it might be for now all you can do is stand on your side of the door and keep tapping. Let her know you are still there, want it opened too.

In time she might be able work out what the key is, you can unlock, and the work of rekindling your relationship can begin.

For me the key was a simple, unqualified, sincere "sorry I hurt you". Hers might be very different. She might not know what it is for quite a while.

Keep tapping. And be patient becuase whatever you may hear about how she is supposed to feel, supposed to move on, supposed to get over it, supposed to whip back into the same relationship formation with you on a timeline of other people's choosing. Well, just like you couldn't will yourself into forgiveness and "kiss kiss, all better now" to suit other people and their timelines ... possibly neither can she.

But that doesn't mean she can't possibly love you, miss you every day, hurt from a sense of loss over who the 2 of you used to be in your mother/daughter bond

Keep tapping becuase it is not beyond the relms of possibility that the last thing she needs is the sun to set on your life with the door still locked tight shut. And she might not know that till you're gone.

I want nothing more than the 2 of you to find the key, open the door to your road to peace and rebuild to a point where the scars go silver. So I want you to know that when you feel like giving up, cos it's so quiet on the other side you think she isn't even there anymore, don't bank on it. Kids can huddle on the other side of the door, silently aching, for decades.

edit

and the work of rekindling the former closeness of your relationship can begin.

To be honest, I think you did something very brave. You left a marriage that was dead. Many women stay in dead marriages regardless because they are afraid of being poor change. You didn't and that is brave an honest too.

I am divorced and miss the happy family times, but frankly, to say I would have continue to have such joyous times if I had stayed is ridiculous.The last years of my marriage, in every family outing or event I felt as if I had a huge stone tied to my neck. It is only now, after a few years, that I realise how awful family life was when I was putting up with exh, it certainly sucked the joy of any day to have him around.

New man or not, I'm sure you would have ended up leaving anyway. I understand your DD's feelings but, it is a very selfish attitude, she must have seen how unhappy you were and still she doesn't care and seem to think that it is ok for you to put up with infidelity because his dad always came back home? How crap is that? Honestly...

I think you need to be thankful that you have now a wonderful partner, it will be difficult for your DD to understand you. But she is an adult now, you didn't abandon a child.

emily, I'm sure that's the case, until they are no longer children as in the op's case.

ipost, as I said earlier, my parents are both dead but I'd be surprised if other adults are that emotionally invested in their parents marriage. In their parents happiness, yes, but surely their marriage is their own private concern.

Your daughter is an adult now and she will come round eventually.
It's not like you have done anything wrong, perhaps talk to her and ask what she'd have you do differently.
let her know you stayed with her cheating father for the sake of her and her sibling.
Let her know you deserve some happiness and you have found it and ask if she would leave somebody because you didn't like them.

but I'd be surprised if other adults are that emotionally invested in their parents marriage. In their parents happiness, yes, but surely their marriage is their own private concern.

The research is out there. It's not nearly as developed/extensive as the work being done to examine the impact on younger children, but it is there.

For a very long time your assumption was THE assumption. But when the number of grey divorces/separations increased notably, so too did the possibility/desire to have a poke around in its various effects. And much to many people's surpise, the impact on adult children was not as expected.

ipost - very much agree, especially the betrayal and loss a 17 yr old would have felt when her mother chose someone else instead of her. Also your optimism for the future. If the mother-daughter bond was strong before, there's a good chance it will survive this.

MeMy - Even at 19, when technically an adult, I don't think a mother and daughter are on equal terms.That shift doesn't happen until old age when the grown up children start feeling responsible for their mother instead of v.v. Her mother put herself first when she left. The daughter is now putting her own feelings above pleasing her mother. Is that selfish? Why does she have to make an effort to make her mother happy?

My assumption is based purely on how I'd feel so I guess I would assume most adults would feel the same.

Her mother chose someone else instead of her father, not instead of her.
And her father broke the marriage first.

I really don't get along with my (late) df's second wife and I've known her since 1977! On the surface all is well but I really am only going through the motions for the sake of my children and siblings. There are millions of people who really can't abide their own parents, let alone step parents, half parents or new partners.

I reckon if your adult children want to see you and be with you in any capacity then be grateful for that! As autonomous people in their own right they can choose to cut you off without warning and without explanation. We see "going NC" discussed often enough on here.

Never heard an affair described as 'brave' before. Must remember to tell that to the next abandoned wife who posts on here. Brave would've been leaving and making a new life. Lining up someone else before making an exit is the very opposite of brave IMO.

And to the pp who made reference to the 'unfaithful husband who kept coming back' - we don't know the details of her ex-DH's infidelity so it's a bit of a stretch to now be surmising that he was a serial adulterer.

But none of that matters. The situation is what it is. Op left and her kids don't like the OM. It doesn't matter how childish, misguided or selfish people think they are, that's how they feel and there's no going back. Just patience and hoping they come round eventually.

You said it yourself OP

you can't turn the clock back

Going back to the family home and rekindling things with your ex can never ever make things as they were. Your relationship with your dd will never again be like it was when she was 17.

So make the new future as good as you can and don't try to recreate a past that obviously wasn't as happy as all that anyway.

Although it seems to be being ignored, I certainly think it should not be - her father....

He kept asking the OP for a year to come home. Even after she had bought a house with her new partner.

He has been living with his new partner for a year now and she states he still wants her to come back to him...

So any wonder that the daughter doesn't see dishonest faked relationships as problematic? She is living with her father's current one...

Any wonder that she wants her parents back together when her father simply won't move on?

I think it's her father's feelings that are likely to be the main source of her anxiety TBH.

Hankering after the past like this and never allowing yourself to move on and be happy is a really passive aggressive way of maintaining control over your ex and surprise surprise the op, despite being very happy with her new partner is pondering whether to go back or not, even though her DC are on the cusp of leaving...