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..?

Really, though I'm sure it affects the DC feelings. How the relationship ended between her parents is moot, past, irrelevant really.

The op is being drawn into her ex's wish to draw her home IMO, which is an extremely bad idea.

For DD to move on she doesn't need her split up parents flip flapping around in indecision.

People don't simply 'move on' when they become an adult.

I know many people who still talk about the dislike they feel for their step parent and these are people in their 40s married with children and their own lives.

Yes on the surface they 'get along' but deep down they absolutely do not accept or feel comfortable with the 'other person'
The other person was not necessarily involved in their parents relationship breakdown either.

Often they simply met someone else after their husband/ wife had left.

It's not fair but it is very common.

A friend recently told me again how much her fathers wife irritates her.

He doesn't know it.
She was 19 when her parents split up, her brother was older and he too dislikes his fathers wide immensely. She was the ow.

She is into her 40s now.

This isn't what the op would like to hear. Many people love their step parents but it is fact.

Offred - I think Op said that 'deep down' she felt that her ex still wanted her to return. I don't think it's something he's said openly since he's been with his new partner.

She may be right. There are lots of threads where the new partner feels that her dp still carries a torch for his ex. Or he may experience the same nostalgia for the past as Op. The happy family times when he was younger. They were together for 25 years.

But, to all intents and purposes, his relationship with his new dp isn't obviously dysfunctional. He may be sincerely trying to make a go of things.

The daughter is another matter. There's probably a sense in which she's still clinging to memories of her happy childhood because she's scared of the realities of adult life. She doesn't want to move on. Her development stalled when the marriage broke up.

People just despise the om/ow don't they.

There's another thread running at the moment 'it's a bad idea to contact the ow right?'. Have a look at it and you'll see how people generally feel about that role.

Completely understandable - even if not rational - that op's dd, particularly being so close to the situation, should feel nothing but contempt for the om.

In time you might get 'polite acceptance' op, but I doubt you'll ever experience the sort of family closeness you had before.

OP I just wanted to add another voice as a daughter who has been in this situation. My mum left my dad after an affair, in my case he had done nothing wrong (which she since admitted). It took a long time but we now have a great relationship and are quite close (as close as we were before). For me it took me having a child to bring back that relationship. I think what I am trying to say is that over time if you gently persevere your relationship may well improve but you need to give it a lot of time (in my case about eight years). It became a lot easier for me when I stopped feeling emotional pressure from my dad so when he met someone else and was settled everything started to fall into place.

Oh and the OM is now a favourite grandad too,

Good luck

My dad had an affair for 5 years and left 4 weeks after my younger sister finally went off to uni. (I was 21 and still at uni myself)

He said he'd waited until then for her. What he actually succeeded in doing was to pull the rug out from under her when she was newly 100s of miles from home with very little in the way of a support network.

At 18 and 21 my sister and I were knocked sideways by our parents separation. Absolutely devastated.

I didn't speak to my dad for several years, and only met his now wife last year.

I strongly suspect he feels like the OP because we are all still very close to my mum and her new husband. Holidaying together etc.

Our relationship is slowly improving OP hang in there.

Lots of posters saying 18/19 year olds are adults. I thought I was an adult. But personally I think it's one of the most damaging times to have your foundations completely rocked.

Really good point Offred

I'd imagine that DD's OM thing is majorly influenced by father.

It's bizarre that father has gf living with him but would rather be with OP. I know he hasn't said so, but OP is aware nonetheless. Totally unfair on gf. It may be a continuation of the affair dynamic. Wanting two women at once.

He sounds manipulative. That may be how he ended up with the children and the house. Quite unusual after adultery. OP should have kicked him out at the time, then she could have hung on to the house and the kids.

Your DD is perfectly entitled to her feelings. At the end of the day you had an affair and left them and their father for another man.

You didn't end the marriage before pursuing the new relationship which makes a huge difference.

I'd have no desire to be friends or like the OM in that situation and would have strong feelings towards the parent for doing something so bad.

If you were unhappy following his affair, why not simple ask him to leave and you could have stayed with the children. By doing what you did it sent a clear message that your own wants were more important than them.

If her wants had been so fucking important I really doubt OP would have stayed with a cheat.

You haven't explained Leaves why DD accepts gf of the father who cheated (granted she wasn't apparently the OW), and his forgiven one parent an affair (the one who actually nuked the marriage) but not the other.

In that scenario I wouldnt be able to live with my father. I would understand, whatever happened later, he was the one who originally buggered up the marriage that led to my mum leaving.

Why is no-one taking the husband to task for failing to end his marriage before he fucked someone else.

Some posters are in danger of falling into the old-fashioned chauvinism that if a man cheats his wife should suck it up and certainly not leave him for someone else.

OP, you left the family, your ex did not. If I was your daughter, that is all I would see. I am sorry you feel like this now but you did put your feelings above your family unit. She might come round later, but I suspect it will still be pretty raw for her now.

There is no point leaving your current partner. That ship has sailed.

QuiteLikely I have a feeling that your views differ depending on the gender of the person who cheated.

in fact i know they do

Offred i totally agree.

DH's mum stayed with his stepdad, even though DH and his sister didn't get on with him at all. It culminated in stepdad hitting DH, who then moved out to live with his nan.

DH and his mum haven't had a good relationship for as long as I've known them. It really has damaged what they had - irrevocably, I'd say. The difference is, he was young and had no choice but to stay with them in an awful atmosphere until he was old enough to move out. I know all the reasons why she stayed with him and I'm sure the children weren't easy but I simply can't imagine choosing that over my own child's happiness. MIL and stepdad split up last year.

Your situation is very different though. If she's acknowledged that she doesn't want you to be alone, she will hopefully realise that she'll have to start making an effort soon. She'll miss out on so much with you too if she doesn't. I also agree with Offred Indecision is extremely unsettling.

I hope you can find some resolution soon.

YY Twinklestein. Some thinly veiled misogyny on this thread.....not even thinly veiled actually but blatant.

ou haven't explained Leaves why DD accepts gf of the father who cheated (granted she wasn't apparently the OW), and his forgiven one parent an affair (the one who actually nuked the marriage) but not the other.

You partially answered that one yourself. Her father's GF is not the OW.

I doubt the OP's DD would be queueing up to throw flowers and invites to tea at the former OW her father had an affair with. Because former OW willingly colluded in hurting her mother, and by extension the DD herself, being one of the the first dominos in the chain reaction that imploded a formerly happy enough home.

By the same token the DD will possibly see her mother's new partner as having willingly participated in hurting her father, imploding her family AND giving her mother a reason to choose him over her own children (in the sense that she left her children's home to be with him.)

Children can be terribly hurt by their parents and still have enough love left to not want to hate them full time and avoid them entirely for the things they have done. But an OW, or OM... there is no love/bond buffer there. Leaving you perhaps with nothing more than the anger, the "I see my feelings/wellbeing/happiness mattered not one whit to you" and the utter outrage at yet another member of the adult community failing to practice the "be responsible" that they preach to kids and YAs.

The above isn't always the world's greatest motivation to start digging around for a reason to build some kind of relationship with somebody you didn't know before they gate crashed your life and helped make it look all different.

The DD has possibly forgiven her father to a greater degree because he cheated on her mother, but he didn't leave her feeling betrayed as a daughter. Becuase he didn't chose, or want the final implosion of her family and leave her. From her perceptive, perhaps she sees it as he picked his children over his extra curricular love interest. Mum... not so much. So maybe she believes he loves her with a profundity and a tenacity that her mother does not.

And/Or she might feel she can't afford to get too obviously angry with her father right now. He's the only parent left sticking with her full time. The only one staying by her side, live in. Part of her might be terrified that he could leave too if she makes life too uncomfortable for him. Certainly that was the reason why my sister took so much crap from my mother. She stayed. She was all DSis had left. And in a world where parents hanging around was no longer a given, the poor girl was scared that she could lose her too, unless she gave her every possible reason to stay. Including letting a lot of really bad shit slide that mum did. The sort of stuff that she wouldn't have been prepared for our father to get away with without comment, or reaction.

Although no parent getting away with that "get out of jail free" card in the first decade or so of aftermath should count on that fear enduring for a lifetime. It can catch up with and bite you on the arse much later on in the game.

HelenaDove, it's not misogyny because no-one has said that her dad was allowed to be unfaithful because he's a man.

But I suspect that her dd's reaction may be borne out of seeing her dad's behaviour as the 'least worst'. Not because he's a man, but because of the details of their respective infidelity, about which we know nothing, but op's dd does.

Op called her ex 'a great dad and a great guy' which doesn't make it sound like she's been living in a miserable marriage. Can we say he broke the marriage if he was unfaithful twenty years ago, before the children arrived, and the marriage was happy for decades afterwards? Maybe. But OP's dd may not share that view.

In any case it sounds like it is not the relationship with her mum that's the problem, it's the fact that she can't accept the om, for reasons already explained; her dad's gf was not the ow, so is blameless.

It's nothing to do with gender.

The DH cheated but obviously wanted forgiveness for his mistake and the fact the OP stayed sent the message that the marriage was worth saving and indeed stayed for some years. If it had of broken down at that point why did neither leave. That's what the DD will see.

Her dads new partner was never the other women, her mums boyfriend is was the other man. There's a big difference.

Doesn't matter which way round the sexes are in this, if reversed the DD would have stayed with her mother.

She's more angry with you because you left her, her dad didn't. And his new partner was not the OW so had no role in the break up of the family unit.

Sigh. Should have said she might have disliked your partner anyway - we don't always like everyone we come across - but the fact is that he was directly involved in your leaving her, and for that reason it was very likely she would have more animosity for him as opposed to her father's new partner. Effectively you left the family unit and she will have taken that as a massive rejection of her. Unfair? Maybe. But not really very unreasonable when you put it like that.

Superb posts from iPost

I was about to make the point covered in iPost's last post. If the DD judges both parents equally harshly, she's left with no parents.

We can all sit at our keyboards logically picking apart reactions and what should and shouldn't be. Fact is, feelings aren't a logical decision or choice and it's hard to work through them because they are complicated.

By doing so in this case, it leaves the DD with less of a dad as well as no mum, as was. What she's gone through is painful enough, but to do that would outrank that painful past even.

Tread carefully OP, you and your partner are the bad guys in your DD's eyes but to try to correct that could hurt her even more, even though she's wrong in her assessment as it stands.

ipost

Dad's current squeeze is simply a replacement for both OW and mum, personally I wouldn't be involved with her either were I dd. Nor does it explain why she has forgiven one parent an affair but not the other. Sure dad stuck around, but he is the one who fucked up the marriage. In that circumstance I would have been even-handed in apportioning blame where it really lies. (At the same age I was able to evaluate my parents' marriage equitably at that age).

Joysmum it's not about judging both harshly but about judging them equally and being realistic about what actually happened.

I have emphasised in this thread that I think dd would have been very hurt by OP leaving. However I don't think that justifies or explains the scapegoating of OM by someone in their early 20s, and I suspect it's partly irrationality and immaturity and partly her dad's influence.

Of the friends of mine whose parents were divorced at the age DD is now, they didn't want their parents to get back together as they could see their marriage didn't work.

SongBird you keep hinting darkly that DD must know some secrets that Dh's cheating was less bad than OP's. That in itself is misogynist. All cheating is the same - you fuck someone else you fuck the relationship.

Leaves Sure DH wanted forgiveness - he wanted his cake and eat it - to cheat and to keep his wiife and family. But life doesn't work like that.

OP clearly tried to save the marriage otherwise she would have kicked DH out straight away. Many people try to save a marriage post-affairs and find it doesn't work. The trust cannot be rebuilt. The love is gone. The respect is gone. It's over.

Twinkle

We are all the perfect heroes of our personal pet theory... when the context is hypothetical.

And if the OP were seeking a restitch/rekindle of a previously close realtionship with you, we could close the thread with gusty sighs of relief that a Disney ending had been found.

You have 2 parents who have been flawed humans. Humans usually are.

And in the face of that flawed human fall out, their child (unsurprisingly) is unable to pull off a flawless Mr Spok approach in the period when both of the parents decided they'd rather put down their individual buckets of unhappiness, and let their kids carry them instead.

A popular higher behavoir/perspective bar for children than parents may be part of the reason why children of divorce have a higher risk of poor outcomes than bereaved children.

As long as they are perceived as mere bit players in the movie that is their parents' lives, the insistence that they perform their role of supporting a parental narrative according to the parental script, will remain the status quo. Leaving significant numbers stuck. Becuase you can't move on from a pain, a loss, a sense of betrayal or abdondonment if the world and its mother insists you are doing your grieving all wrong, and aren't entitled to most of it anyway.

If the OP wants to feel exonerated, she should listen to the people who are providing her with justification and blame shifting stratagies.

If she wants at best to restitch/rekindle her mother/daughter bond, and at worst avoid a continued chilling that could start a creep towards a full blown estrangment, she might be better off focusing on how her daughter actually feels, and avoid the temptation to reframe her daughter's feelings as "you are doing your grief wrong ! Poor me"

Morning! Wow didn't quite expect so many responses! All valuable and All good fair points.

Yes I had an affair for several months prior to leaving my husband for my partner (I had known him for many years I add). I wasn't caught - I told them. I left home to live on my own in rented. All discussed with my children at the time. Just up the road to them.

My affair was during the day mainly. I never left my home or children to meet my partner. I never lied about my whereabouts and never sneaked off anywhere. I was at home every evening and all weekend with my family. My husband never questioned me about anything. Which actually upset me more as I would have hoped he would have seen the changes and what was about to happen and stop it! But yes I lied because I was living a lie!

Husband was unfaithful on more than one occasion and for 18 months he had 2 phones and pursued other woman with an aim to meet them for sex. How often he did I do not know as I didn't want to know. After that stage I lost respect for him and always questioned why he would did it. Wasn't like we didn't have a good sex life ourselves. However it was the attention and excitement that drew him to it. Yes we did get over it but it was never the same. Things became distant. From the outside people couldn't see the flaws because there was no bickering shouting arguing etc - just leading separate lives to a point. This happened I would say about 15 years into our 21 year marriage. I never told the children or anyone else at the time.

My husband told both children about his infidelity when we split up and the part he played in our marriage break up. He still to this day does not blame me for my actions only himself. I to this day have never bad mouthed him to my kids or anyone else. What went on in our marriage is only our business - what's done is done. We are both paying the price for our mistakes so we don't need to run the other down for self satisfaction or brownie points.

Yes I have sat my children down endlessly explaining - talking - listening. Have answered anything they question. I know they love me and understand what their dad did was wrong but they want their family back together - that's about as simple as it is. Any son/daughter would. My daughter misses me at home. She wants me there with her. She knows she can call upon me 24/7 but wont come to my home with ease in case my partner is there. She hasn't come face to face with him in all this time. I for one have never ever pushed that - she is an adult and has to make her mind up herself. She respects me for not demanding. But it makes our relationship difficult at times. Distant too at times.

She also sees me as sad as I miss being with her and having those times as we did - so she asks me is it all worth it? I myself have questioned that hence coming on here. But to make things right I would have to go back to my ex husband knowing that I was still desperately in love with someone else. We all know that wouldn't work.

I made a massive mistake in what I did and never imagined the massive consequences. But you don't do you at the time - its afterwards.

I was a good mum and was there always for my kids when their dad was perhaps a little 'absent' at times and I think that's what has saved my bacon in these difficult times. Plus I have always listened to what they have to say and respected their feelings as much as I could. But I cannot change the despicable action that I chose to take. But I still step up to that role in times of need and I know they still turn to me for that help/advice etc. Its just different in between. Although not with my son to be fair.

As for my ex husbands GF - she is a nice person and has to contend with living with my children who crave for their mum to be there instead. However they do like her and yes like so many of you have said - she did not break our family up - she came along a year later and made their dad happy again. Although it is a fact that each and every person in this sad story would wish that things could go back 15 years and stop the course of all cock ups!

Twinkle - I cannot emphasise enough that not once have I suggested that my daughter is dealing with things wrong. I have only empathised with how she is feeling as like I have said many times to her, I cant say I would be any different if I were in her shoes. At the end of the day what she feels is what she feels. She has constructive talks and advice with/from my dad and gets comfort that people respect how she feels. Equally she does listen to what others say and tries to consider my feelings too. looking at the bigger picture. Please don't anyone think I believe my daughter is being unreasonable. Because she isn't.

Sorry not Twinkle - Ipost - sorry