When is a red flag not a red flag?

[namechange102]

My OH over the years has done a number of things which are possible red flags, but he always seems to have a plausible excuse. I'm hitting mid-life crisis age right now, and feel totally taken for granted, as I've enabled his lovely career while killing off mine to look after the children. All the usual stuff, but I'm now wondering whether I've been taken for a mug all these years. Is OH just really thoughtless and stupid, or is he playing me for a fool and just doing what he wants while I sort out the mundane family life? Has anyone had these red flags in their lives, and they turned out to mean nothing?? Or are they actually relationships killers? What do you think??

5 years into the relationship, he goes off with the intention to shag some randomer at a work do, as 'men are supposed to have more partners than women'. Never sure if he did or not.

Writes to a woman he fancies while working away. Thinks about breaking up to hook up with this woman. She's not interested. Stays with me. Only found this out years later.

Caught looking up porn. Says he'll not look at it again. Ten years down the line, turns out he did! And lied about it when asked!

Looks up Tinder on GooglePlay. Because a friend met his wife on there.

Has looked at some woman's dating profile. Because he was curious.

Computer reckons he has logged out of an email account. Which he apparently has never used. Said email account has many permanently deleted emails, deleted just before he gets back after working away. None since.

'Forgets' to wear his wedding ring while socialising on work do's away from home.

Email spam from numerous dating/fuckbuddy etc sites.

Female colleague starts messaging him gossipy shit in the evenings. Tells her I am unhappy with it, despite agreeing with me at home that it feels inappropriate. Bad wife.

How many 'red flags' can you forgive before they're just taking the piss? Are these all believable individually?

Am thinking we need a serious talk about boundaries because I've just about reached the end of my tether. Any advice gratefully received!

I don't understand. He actually told you he thought men needed more partners than women? That he intended to behave accordingly?

Surely that's all you needed to know. That he has never had any intention of being faithful to you.

You chose to stay in an 'open relationship'. Now you've had enough. What I don't understand us that you now seem to be trying to pretend this didn't happen.

SheFeeds that was my argument at the time - if he was interested enough to look it up, on googleplay rather than plain info google, no less, surely he was interested enough to remember.
I really feel taken for a ride. Even if each thing was an innocent look out of curiosity, it's not respectful of our relationship. Obv didn't think I'd find out, does make you wonder what they're like/thinking/doing when they think you won't know. And how often something has happened.

Costa and lottie - if you read the posts properly, I said I have found most of this out recently. Thinking men had more partners than women was what he thought he must have been thinking at the time he made that decision. I was trying to get my head around his motivations. He accepted this was bad. He did say he didn't actually do anything.

I have not been getting annoyed with posters. I asked for opinions. I got them. I am within my rights to questions comments if I don't agree, but I have not expressed annoyance with anyone's comments.

I did not choose any of this. Would you really tell anyone who has recently found incriminating evidence that they chose to live in an open relationship?

namechange exactly.

I think the thing that annoys me the most about threads/situations like yours is that we (and it is generally we as women) are fed so much crap about how we "need" to get married and then how we "must" make sure that the marriage is a success... there is so much social expectation and pressure on women to make relationships work and the blame is put on us when they fail that many women just assume they have to make it work and that they can't just walk away.

You see it all the time, men are infantilised, "ah bless him, he doesn't see the dirt/understand the washing label symbols/realise how he comes across to women who then take advantage of him..."

It is time to get angry and make decisions for yourself. You can end a relationship for any reason and this seems to be a pretty good reason...

What was the career you gave up? How long ago was that? How old are the children? What skills do you have?

Just wondering what your situation would be like for finding a new job.

Do you not feel angry towards him?

And don't forget, after 20 years together, the financial settlement for a divorce would be quite good for you if he's been able to build his career at the expense of yours.

Is OH just really thoughtless and stupid, or is he playing me for a fool and just doing what he wants while I sort out the mundane family life?

Yes, that is exactly what he is doing.what do you want to do about it?

Your OP is written in a very unclear style. It merges past and present, events, thoughts and justifications in the same sentence. It is unreasonable of you to be cross that people are having difficulty disentangling 'sentences' that make sense only to you. 'He always seems to have a plausible excuse' implies 'at the time', quite different from 'when challenged, he came up with all sorts of excuses'.

Anyway, sorry you're going through this. I understand that writing style might not be your top priority right now.

It's pretty plain that your husband is a faithless shagger. That is his attitude and intention, whatever his actions. As others have said, these are not 'red flags', they're not warnings, they are actions.

Costa of course I am angry. But there are also times (mostly before 6 months or so ago) when we are getting on very well. It's always complicated by other things.
Dorinda haha, I want him to be a trustworthy individual who I can rely on. And to come clean about anything previously so I can judge the extent. How do I go about that?
SheFeeds teaching. Out of it about 5 years ago, doesn't strike me as very compatible with being a stressed, time-poor single parent. It was really hard to do the job decently (along with everything else) when he was working away for long periods. Kids still at primary.

namechange I'm going to pm you.

done

I don't think you're gullible or a fool but I do think you have been and to a certain extent still are, in denial.

There's very little in the way of 'plausibility' in his denials, by accepting his initial bullshit he's felt entitled to deliver more of it.

I think with the accumulation of so many separate incidents that have accumulated over the years you probably know that there is no smoke without fire.

It is impossible that every single transgression be explained away innocently.

Sometimes the easiest thing is to accept the comfort zone we are in when faced with a clever and savvy liar, especially a liar we love. But then there comes a day when it is no longer easy to remain in denial, it sounds as if you are reaching that day.

Isetan you are probably right.

But is this something that can be moved on from if I feel it is worth trying to salvage the relationship? Like the couple who stays together after an affair, can this be treated in the same way as infidelity where you come clean about everything then work on building trust?

JustSpeak yes, I think I'm reaching that point.

I could see how it's possible for a couple to salvage their marriage if it was one isolated instance. If the guilty party came clean and was totally transparent from the beginning and made a huge effort to rebuild trust and respect and was resolved to be open and honest going forward.
In your case op it seems like a long catalogue of lies and fuckery that you're only just getting to grips with. I would be concerned that other things will keep cropping up, more online dating accounts etc.
I would find it hard to move on from that.

I think you've had a bit of a hard time OP, though I agree with everyone else that it is a whole golf course full of red flags - and really, as others have said actual incidents not just flags!

I am an intelligent, independent (practically, emotionally and financially) fairly ball breaking woman.

But I look back and I am AMAZED at the shit I put up with from my XH because there wasn't actual evidence, or could have been another reason.

How many people really would leave their husband if they found out he had looked at Tinder but swore nothing had happened, he was just curious what this new site everyone was talking about was, and his mate had met someone on it...

I mean, in retrospect it's total bullshit but every time there is a plausible excuse, or even if not very plausible, there's the outside chance it could be true.

Here's my best one: my XH got a letter warning him that he'd been seen driving slowly several times round X streets, and that it was an area where residents had a problem with street prostitutes. A warning letter that the police don't need "evidence" for. I found it 6 months later. His explanation? He was circling slowly waiting for a parking space outside KFC to be free - didn't want to park his expensive penis extension car anywhere but out front cos it's a rough area.

Now, everyone on this thread would scream - are you THICK?!! Turns out, he was indeed an avid user of prostitutes, and I later had plenty of evidence. But you know - I'd actually been in the car once before when he had done exactly this!

To this day, I'm not 100% sure which was the truth! But I expect everyone here would say "FFS - it was the prostitutes!" My best friend certainly says it.

But what people don't get is it's hard to reject an explanation if it is possible, it doesn't have to be probable.

In my case for that incident, add in that I had a 4 month old baby, who woke 8x a night and I was barely functioning!

So look, my point is...

It's OK that you missed the flag, made the wrong decision. Why beat yourself up? It doesn't help.

Just remember that it doesn't matter if something was a year ago, 5, 20. You're still allowed to act on it NOW.

We try to justify divorce to ourselves, with perfect evidence.

You know, it's actually perfectly OK to say "many years ago you said men needed more partners than women - that's shit, I'm so over this, I'm dumping you".

You don't have to justify it to anyone.

Btw - when I dumped my XH I still didn't have hard evidence (found plenty later though!)

When he said "I was only looking" (again ) I said and meant "that's still enough for me to end this".

Good luck

On threads like this one most posts would be from MNers who have had red flags and acted on it. It doesn't surprise me that the common reaction is LTB. I would think OP it is up to you really. You are the one who can make the decision to let him stay or chuck him out. I do think however that if you are willing to fight for this marriage your h should be putting in a hell of a lot more effort; it would perhaps be an idea to ask him directly how he feels. Make sure he knows that you are at last drop. That you are not willing to settle for the mundane. Or take any more of his nonsense.

I would say that one or two of these things might be overlookable for the sake of an easy life. But the sheer number of them would make me pretty certain that has cheated at some point.

I think it's tremendously difficult to make a potentially huge life changing decision like ending a marriage and being a single parent to young children without concrete evidence first spelling out what exactly the person has done. We always want to believe the people we love.

All you can go on is your gut instinct and the things you know to be true. Disregard what he has told you and focus on what you have heard/found and know.

You mention he worked away a lot, I may be cynical here but I used to work in a very male dominated environment and there is slim to zero chance that he didn't cheat while he was away. Men simply cannot function long without sex in some form or another.

So, your eyes have been opened and you are beginning to awaken from the haze you have been living under. Be kind to yourself, there is no rush to make big decisions.

Think things over and start imagining life outside the marriage. The children won't always be small and will need you less. A career of your own is not beyond th reel s of real possibility, especially teaching.

Solicitors usually offer a half hour free legal advice session you could perhaps dip your toe in the water to find out how you would fair in a divorce settlement if it came to that.

If something can't be logically explained, there's a reason.

I learned that the hard way. Xh could explain plausibly how black was white or vice versa. Turned out he was a right old philanderer and I never in a million years would have thought that.

Your h seems less adept at avoiding getting caught. I'd start planning his departure unless you're happy to settle for a life of this shit.

come clean about everything then work on building trust?

I'm not sure he has said anything which means you can trust him. It looks to me as though he will carry on in the same way if you don't check up on him, and if you do then there is no trust. I may have misremembered, but hasn't he been lying and covering up for a lifetime? Why do you think he is going to change now?

Thanks for your input everyone. It's really interesting (though slightly depressing) to read about the crap we believe when told by the person we should be able to trust. Unmumsnetty hugs and high fives to those who saw through it and made it out.
Lucie which area was this, if you don't mind saying?

Op You had your doubts already, or you wouldn't have posted here.
Your choice,your decision.
But I think that when someone tells you who they are, over and over again - in their words and their actions- listen.