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..?

Op both me and Dh have step- parents, it was the opposite for us we got on with them when we were young adults but since having children have found them almost unbearable to be around, and have gone almost NC.

You can't sort out the complex dynamics that this break-up has caused between you all. It will alter maybe for the better, or maybe get worse. The only thing I can advise which our parents have never done is allow your Dd a relationship with you on her terms. If she wants to see you when Dp isn't around accept it and build a relationship again with her just the two of you.

Remember your Dd does love you and wants a relationship with YOU she has no interest in having a realtionship with your Dp at this time or probably ever in the future. That is normal and her choice please respect her decision.

I cannot emphasise enough that not once have I suggested that my daughter is dealing with things wrong.

I know love. I wasn't commenting on you. I was commenting on some of the advice/perspective being proffered to a parent in your position.

ipost

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

I'm speaking directly from personal experience, not from hypothesis.

I'm not requiring flawless behaviour from the daughter: simply a degree of maturity and intelligence that I was capable of that age, as were friends of mine who parents split up. They managed to see both sides. I've no doubt DD is capable of it too, and that she will get there eventually.

I find your interpretation that the OP wants to feel 'exonerated' or 'insist' her daughter is 'grieving wrong', or that her DD only as a 'mere bit player' in her life - bizarre and utterly without foundation. It is supported by nothing the OP has said, and apparently originates entirely in your own head.

I know love. I wasn't commenting on you. I was commenting on some of the advice/perspective being proffered to a parent in your position

Seriously? No-one has given that advice either.

Perhaps you just express yourself very poorly.

(Talk about 'justification and shifting blame strategies')

Sorry Op I just read your last post. You are doing everything right and treating your Dd with great respect.

You have to accept the fallout from you marriage breakdown. I'm sure your relationship with your Dd will improve in time. I would imagine most people who are divorced feel the same way.

I come at this puffin the perspective of parents divorcing when I had just moved out. In my case they just weren't right for each other and I'm glad they divorced. Even so, even 24 years on with me in my mid 40's, I still feel like a child sometimes in my relationship with them.

It's something I've been able to reason through more with more time and maturity behind me but feelings are feelings and often aren't that logical.

I wanted to think and reason through because tgeir breakup wasn't due to infidelity or anything other than not being right for each other, the DD of the OP has that added complication.

ticking I think you're doing exactly the right thing in waiting for her to realise for herself, rather than trying to convert her. You and your partner are bearing far more than you rightfully should be, but you do so knowing that the alternatives are to increase the hurt of your DD. That makes you a good mum.

I'm speaking directly from personal experience, not from hypothesis

No you aren't. You can say what you did, in your shoes, with the exact details of your family. But none of us can take our own personal experiences and directly apply them to a mostly unknown "other people, other details" context and know with outright certainty what we would do in their place.

Because neither we, nor our lives, are photocopies of other people's.

We can only have a hypothesis what might be in other people's heads/hearts. What they could be feeling. What maybe their persepctive is.

Re exoneration, humans in pain, suffering with guilt, unable to see a way forward can find the temptation of exoneration, justification and rationalisation very very attractive. And pleanty of them leap on it when it is proffered. To the detriment of their already strained relationship with their children. The OP isn't the only person reading the thread. Lurkers can out number posters by as much as several thousand to one. Given the title there is every chance that there are several other parents in similar situations reading. Some of the advice/persepctive on the thread can look v. tasty to somebody starving for a solution. But as a solution it carries a risk of an unattractive outcome in the longer term.

Yay for you for having been a better evolved teenager. Here's the thing. There are no guarentees that "less evolved" teenagers will automatically, over time come around. Sometimes sitting an waiting for a former teenager to come around can leave room for a crack to become a chasm.

Living with a chasm that never heals carries a risk of lifelong, unresolved pain, for one, or both of the people standing either side of it. I'd much rather neither the OP, nor her daughter had to face that. If anything I am more highly motivated than I have ever been to see people avoid it.

Whatever ones persepctive on the degree of risk involved, there is no denying the potential dizzy heights of the stakes. Reading the OP's words, they drip with her pain. If she were more detached, or less invested in the desire to restitch, I'd save the effort this is costing. But she reads like the last person you'd want to see accidentally paint herself into a corner from which there is no coming back. And I don't get the impression she can afford the highest stakes if she bets on low risk coming good, and that doesn't work out for her.

On a brighter side, the OP's latest post doesn't read at all like somebody tempted by a chance to reframe her daughter's feelings as "not what a more mature and intelligent teenager would do". Which is good. Becuase if that attitude leaks out, it can swiftly deepen resentment and dampen willingness to keep looking for a way forward. She seems very willing to validate how her daughter feels. Which IMO indicates that she has a better than average fighting chance of getting through and past the worst of this.

Why is there a puffin in my post

Good post Joysmum

I am speaking from personal experience however you want to spin it ipost, however I never said I was the OP's daughter.

So now you're not addressing the OP nor other posters giving advice, but some random lurkers. I can't actually be bothered to read any more of your overblown ramblings.

Yes ipost I agree. The Op is doing the right thing. She is giving her Dd the space, love and respect to transition through a difficult time. This is a long term project that will pay off I'm sure but the Op will not see the results of this for some time.

Op I believe in the future you will have a close relationship with your Dd again.

I can't actually be bothered to read any more of your overblown ramblings.

If they are causing you irritation, that is probably the healthy choice.

They're not unhealthy, just irrelevant.

OP, your latest posts suggest that you are doing everything right and that your dd's attitude is surprisingly illogical.

Keep doing what you're doing and it will come right. I believe you will have a good relationship with your dd in the future too, although she may never progress beyond 'polite acceptance' of your partner. That's the nature of his role, some people will never understand a person who embarks on a relationship with a married person.

Just let her rebuild her relationship with you on her terms, as you have been doing. Forcing her into difficult situations or insisting on om attending family events, as some here have suggested, would be counterproductive IMO.

Thoughtful posts iPost.

No hes not allowed to be unfaithful because hes a man. But society does pressure women to stay with unfaithful men.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3456506/Blamed-hero-PC-s-suicide-not-forgive-eighth-affair-David-Rathband-s-widow-embroiled-bitter-feud-family-officer-blinded-Raoul-Moat.html

"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."

THIS

I think leaving your shit marriage to a man who treated you so badly is not something you should feel guilty for.

I don't believe affairs that help people exit unhealthy relationships where they are being mistreated are wrong.

Your daughter is wrong to expect her mother to stay with a philandering husband just because it suits her.

She is a grown up now. Stop protecting her from the fact that you are a human too.

I didn't have a shit marriage and whilst he was unfaithful he was equally a very good man. There is a saying 'forgive for all the things he did right, not the one thing he did wrong'

He didn't do "one thing wrong".

He cheated on you for 18 months, lied to you, had an extra phone to make it easier to get extra-marital sex.

He treated you like a piece of shit on his shoe because he found it exciting to have affairs.

Nobody thinks that's a good marriage. Including you, which is why you left.

Own that.

You left because he treated you badly.

He wanted to stay married like most philanderers of his type do.

But I doubt he wanted to stop cheating on you.

Staying in a marriage like that just so your adult daughter can have her six year old fantasies kept intact would be ridiculous.

Her father was a bad husband.

She has no right to ask you to stay with a bad husband for her sake.

I disagree bathtime because people always have the choice to leave marriages, not sneak around behind people's backs. It's being dishonest to the children as well as the spouse. Ok in this case the husband had already cheated. But the kids didn't deserve that.
OP you are doing the right things now in taking account of how dd feels etc. You just have to keep plugging away, accept she may never like your dp, give it time imo. I hope you rebuild your relationship with dd. Your relationship with exh is over and I think one potential problem with affairs is they don't give the leaver the chance to properly grieve the marriage as its straight on to the next relationship.

sorry x post bathtime. I agree with your last post. Although disagree that the dd wanting a family intact is a six year old's fantasy. I think its many peoples fantasy/desire all ages

The husband was a habitual cheater who wanted to be married too.

He had a wife who was prepared to put up with being treated like crap until she had an exit affair.

The affair gave her the motivation to leave a marriage that was damaging her.

That is a good affair.

To coin a cliche, two wrongs don't make a right. She could have left before, without deceiving people. No affairs are good imo

As far as my counting goes there were far more than two wrongs on his side.

I think having an exit affair to get out of an emotionally abusive marriage (which is what I consider repeated infidelity to be) is not a wrong.

Sometimes compliant people, prone to guilt tripping and manipulation, which seems to be the case here, need a little help to get out.

I think begrudging them that and saying it is equal to years of poor treatment is pretty poor.

Op ask yourself, if your partner left you tomorrow would you go back to your EXh? Because therein often lies your answer, and/or your motivations.

Affairs are rarely black and white, and more often than not they are symptomatic of something wrong in the marriage. And often they also give people the strength to leave a relationship which they otherwise wouldn't have.

But sometimes if the affair partner leaves for the OM/OW and that relationship breaks down, they suddenly realise what they have lost and seek to go back.

So while you currently feel unable to leave your partner, how would you feel if he left you?

I had an affair. But unlike you I didn't leave for the OM. The affair did however make me realise that I could leave an emotionally abusive marriage, and even when the affair ended and my EXh said that he would do anything for us to make things work again, I realised that the affair had been the symptom not the cause of my marriage breakdown, and I didn't go back. I could have, for months and months I had the opportunity. But I realised that if I'd gone back it would have been for the wrong reasons, because I didn't want to leave my comfortable life with security rather than because I had realised that I loved my EXh and wanted to make my marriage work. So we split, and are both with new partners now.

I can categorically say that the affair is one of my biggest regrets in life, and if I could have gone back and left at a time when I had wanted to I would have. However I can't go back, and so now what is left is for everyone to move forward.

You have to do that too op. You left your marriage for a reason. Not just to be with the OM, but because your EXh had previously cheated on you. He is currently with someone else, but you know that if you gave him the green light he would come back to you. So he still would be prepared to cheat on his new partner to be with you. Is that what you want? Your children are currently hurting, but is that the kind of relationship you want them to see as normal?

Your DD is angry at the moment and feels that you and your H should get back together, but realistically she should be aspiring to relationships where all the parties are equal, and where no-one's feelings are trampled in pursuit of anyone else's happiness.

Now is the time to decide what you want op. If you want to go back to your EXh then make a clean break from the OM and go back. But remember what made you leave him in the first place. And remember that your children are adults, you can only go back for you not for them. Because before too long they will be embarking on their own relationships, and the happy family you see now will be taking on a different form, where you see them maybe every few weeks, months, etc, and you are no longer centre of their world as their world expands in order that they live their own lives.