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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Affair/separation - DH has asked me to leave. Do I go?

428 replies

runningLou · 03/07/2017 21:06

To avoid drip feeding will not spare the details.
Unhappily married. I was caught cheating 4 years ago. Tried to mend everything for sake of kids. Didn't work, both very unhappy and with MH issues.
I recently met someone. Told DH I wanted to separate. We had discussed 'bird-nesting' with me staying over some nights to be with DC overnight. We want to keep the family home for the kids if possible.
DH has said tonight he wants me out. Every night, and basically told me I had made my choice and to move in with OM.
Don't want to do this - too soon, bad for kids, bad for everyone, I think.
Also I do not want to be the Mummy that leaves, and that is what it will look like to them.
Can I persist in staying? Am I right that me leaving and taking all my stuff (DH wants it gone) will be more distressing for kids?
Financially could just about manage to rent a room somewhere nearby so thinking of doing this. My idea is to come in every morning to do their breakfast, and stay every night till after bedtime. This is what we have been doing the past couple of weeks since we first talked and it has worked ok ... I thought.
House is in joint names, as are all savings.

OP posts:
hoddtastic · 03/07/2017 22:00

there is absolutely no way on this planet that i would leave my children if i had an affair, he's the one who can't live with you, he can go.

BeepBeepMOVE · 03/07/2017 22:01

You should leave. Now.

How awful to cheat twice and then to insist your forgiving ex has to see you at breakfast and dinner everyday. Kids will resent you if you pretend you did nothing wrong.

Cheaters are dirty scumbags not the type of people who should be raising the rest generation.

MinorRSole · 03/07/2017 22:01

I feel so sorry for your husband. He has to live with the woman he loves knowing she is shagging someone else. It's just cruel to rub it in his face like this.

You can't stay living in the same house, that is just awful for everyone but especially him.

He's the father of your kids, which option helps him regain mental stability for their sakes?

You have treated him dreadfully op, poor man

hoddtastic · 03/07/2017 22:01

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Mrscaindingle · 03/07/2017 22:01

Am I wrong to think that falling out of love with DH doesn't mean I have to spend less time with DC?

Actually any split will automatically mean that both of you will now be spending less time with DC. And I love the way people who cheat dress it up as falling out of love

Sorry op you will not find much sympathy here, your DH cannot legally force you to leave but in the circumstances I think it's the decent thing to do.

KarlosKKrinkelbeim · 03/07/2017 22:02

I think the notion that because someone has an affair they should automatically be the one parted from the children is deeply juvenile.
She has moved on from her husband not her kids. What is best for them is the guiding factor here. I'm sorry for the husband if he is not robust enough to cope with this but his hurt does not entitle him to dictate a course that may damage his kids.

OnionKnight · 03/07/2017 22:02

there is absolutely no way on this planet that i would leave my children if i had an affair, he's the one who can't live with you, he can go.

And if I were your husband I'd say tough shit, you fucked another man, therefore off you fuck Grin

CoolJazz · 03/07/2017 22:02

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

NaiceBiscuits · 03/07/2017 22:02

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

GutInstinct · 03/07/2017 22:03

There are two issues here. Firstly, having had an affair does not define one as a parent, regardless of what posters on here would have you believe. If you have been the main carer then this is the normal that your children know, and the fact that you have chosen to leave the marriage should not change that just because your ex has been subjected to your infidelity.

However, staying in the family home is not the be all and end all, and if you want an exit from the marriage then you might do best to seek to sell the house and move on with your children and work out an amicable access arrangement with your ex. If you co-own the house then under no circumstances should you leave without the children or without first having come to an arrangement with regard to what will happen with the equity etc. You are no less entitled to a fair share of the equity than you would be if you were divorcing for other reasons, and this includes potentially being entitled to a higher percentage if you have given up a career to bring up children and will need to find somewhere to live which includes you all.

Secondly however, as you were the one who has had the affair, your husband is well within his rights to want to file for divorce on that basis and to want you to be the one who leaves, especially considering you are still in a relationship with the OM and are planning a new life with him.

Having had the affair means you have to accept responsibility for your part in the marriage breakdown. Even if the marriage was unbearable before that, the fact is that you had the affair and are now planning a new life, not because you want out of your marriage and want to be alone, but because you want to build a new life with the man you left your marriage for, and your husband's attitude that you shouldn't just be facilitated to do that in what was the family home isn't unreasonable.

And I disagree with the advice to remove half of your savings etc. Do bear in mind that if you go through solicitors everything will be taken into account, so even if you take half the savings now these will still be taken into account when the consent order is drafted and you will be required to put them back for the purposes of dividing the finances.

KickAssAngel · 03/07/2017 22:03

In order to support the children, the norm is that the money/home etc get divided so that the children can stay in their home with the same parent, if possible. No matter how much anyone dislikes a cheat, the best thing for the children is that their mother continues to be their main carer.

If there isn't enough money for two households, then compromise needs to happen.the children also need to be able to stay with their father, and it may be that 50/50 is best. But castigating one parent for having an affair won't help the children.

ShinyGirl · 03/07/2017 22:04

Poor bloke.

Think about what's genuinely best for the kids, ignoring the obvious, that you hadn't cheated on your husband, and do that.

Vereesa · 03/07/2017 22:04

there is absolutely no way on this planet that i would leave my children if i had an affair, he's the one who can't live with you, he can go.

You have got to be kidding.

Patronsaintofglocks · 03/07/2017 22:04

She had an affair, she didn't kill someone. Do you all really think just leaving will benefit her children more?

OP is clearly in an unhappy marriage and is asking what is the best way to proceed.

April229 · 03/07/2017 22:06

OP - I think you need to leave. If a dad had cheated, agreed to work to patch things up which didn't work, and then met someone else so wanted pursue that relationship everyone on here would 100% say he needed to leave. How can you think you could live in the house separated and be there for the children. If you weren't ready to leave why have you started a new relationship that makes staying together impossible, twice??

KarlosKKrinkelbeim · 03/07/2017 22:06

So she's had an affair, all entitlement to live her dc is automatically forfeited.
Did I go to sleep and wake up in 1817?

Notknownatthisaddress · 03/07/2017 22:07

Can't believe a few posters on here - saying the cheated-on husband should go, because HE can't stand living with her, when SHE is the one who has fucked everything up with her nasty little affair. Just because SHE is the mommy.

Load of fucking sexist bollocks.

If the gender roles were reversed, these people would be saying LTB.

SHE needs to leave.

Sugarpiehoneyeye · 03/07/2017 22:08

Please don't leave your precious children.

OnionKnight · 03/07/2017 22:09

Please don't leave your precious children.

Hmm

If the OP was a bloke, you would not say that.

MusicForTheJiltedGeneration · 03/07/2017 22:09

MN double standards never cease to amaze me.

"My DH kissed another woman"

Vereesa · 03/07/2017 22:10

It's completely ridiculous how people are using "fell out of love" to justify OP's actions. Yes, sometimes you fall out of love. The correct thing to do whilst you're still in a relationship is to restrain yourself like a civilised human being. Not go spread your legs for some other person and hurt everyone else in the process. And yes, this includes the kids.

CoolJazz · 03/07/2017 22:10

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

PacificDogwod · 03/07/2017 22:11

You made your choice when you cheated.

You must separate and then of course both of you will spend less time with the children.
If keeping the DCs in the home they know is a priority (and I can see why it would be), then they should not have to move out.

I think you need to move out and you need legal advice on how to proceed with regards to PR, access, assets etc.
If you and your STBXH cannot come to some amicable agreement, a Court will try to decide with the best interest of the children in mind, not yours, or your H's.

KarlosKKrinkelbeim · 03/07/2017 22:11

It is of course quite possible that the posters advocating here that the op should not leave are not the same posters who squeak LTB when a man gets off with a woman other than his wife.
Had this occurred to you, Music?

GutInstinct · 03/07/2017 22:14

Lots of black and white thinking on these threads.

I had an affair. So shoot me. My ex husband was an abusive, gaslighting man who ensured that I had no freedom, was unable to go back to work after children while he went out regularly and told me that I didn't need anyone else but him, and it didn't matter that I had no friends, all we needed was each other and I didn't need a job or anyone else but him and was clearly jealous that he had friends and I didn't. Oh, and the bugs he put in the house to try to find out what I was doing while he was out? Just part and parcel of his taking an interest in me. And the naked pictures he took of me while I was asleep so didn't know? Well, I only found out about those after we split, but I was unreasonable to be upset about those because it's normal to want pictures of your wife and I should have been happy that he wanted to take them when no other man would want me anyway.

But hey, I had an affair which made me see that normal relationships aren't like that, and that makes me scum, a bad mother and undeserving of being with my children.

Affairs are wrong. That's not in dispute. But they're also very rarely as black and white as people would like to thing.

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