Is it him or me? Are we living a lie?

[couchtospecialk]

Have NC'ed. Please be gentle. I'm so confused about what's happening and what I'm asking here.

Married to DH for 13 years, 2 DDs (8 & 6), happy stable life, we laugh a lot and have common interests. Rough patch 11 years ago involving a secret email address & texts with some woman. I forgave him but haven't forgotten. We rarely have sex, maybe 15 times a year which I put down to having young kids and busy lives. We've talked, DH is unhappy (me too) but we plod on. Guess I've ignored it.

DH has quite a big ego and is only genuinely interested in things that concern him (though he can be very thoughtful). He abandoned me emotionally when I had PND after DD2. We've always argued that he's not interested in me or my life. We held a big family party recently and I felt that he couldn't have given a fuck if I was there or not, went off with our friends into town afterwards, left me alone to finish up and take our girls home in a taxi at midnight. Laughed and dismissed it when I expressed my anger.

He's increasingly mentally absent. He told me recently that he's only ever truly happy when he's exercising. I'm very sure he doesnt find me attractive anymore and I think he's probably getting his kicks elsewhere.

I'm having a slow realisation that he's only with me because we have kids and a nice stable family life. I'm suspicious for a million tiny reasons rather than one big one.

I have the same feeling I had 11 years ago in the back of my mind; have done for years. DH won't go to counselling, minimises things, struggles to talk about feelings. I'm just now realising that I've got to tackle it properly.

If he's playing away this time I won't give him the benefit of the doubt. I also know he would never admit anything and I would need proof. So I will need to snoop and I'm prepared to. No idea how to go about it, I know he uses google incognito. He's an IT expert so if he is doing anything I know he'd do his best to cover his tracks.

Any advice?

If it's not working then it's not working.

You don't need any proof. Tell him you're done.

I don't think you need proof at all. Being unhappy is surely enough of a reason to leave isn't it?
Can you see things changing and if not is this what you want the rest of your life to be?

You're unhappy, you don't feel loved or valued. Not every relationship has to end because of a discovery of cheating. You're right to end it if it's making you unhappy.

If he's chosen not to listen to you and minimises all your concerns and your expressions of how unhappy you are then he deserves to have his settled life ended whether he's cheating or not. We all deserve to feel valued xx

I can sympathise with the IT thing my oh is as transparent as a brick wall and even if I could snoop I'd find nothing as he'd know what to hide.

Sorry posted to early!!

I can only add that I agree with the other posters so far, if you are unhappy that should really be enough. You are only here once why be miserable for someone who clearly doesn't care about your feelings.

Don't really see the point of snooping? He's clearly checked out and you don't feel loved or cherished. I'd just make preparations to leave tbh.

What you're all saying makes sense (and you're ALL saying it...)
Not sure why being unhappy isn't enough for me to take action? I guess I've always thought I'd only leave if life was really bad. And it's not but I have this nagging feeling of being unimportant/over-emotional. I suppose if he was cheating it would take the decision out of my hands. It would near kill me to split up our family.

If you caught him cheating then he would look like the Bad Guy and you can be the wronged wife.

It's a rotten situation - have you read "too good to leave, too bad to stay"?

Hope you're ok.

Either leave him or accept it and stay with him.
Your choice.

Please don't waste your life waiting for him to slip up. You deserve to be happy and it will be better for your children to have a happy mother. I was like you a month ago waiting for something really awful to happen so that I had a proper reason to end it. For me that was never going to happen as my ex never left my side. In the end I realised all the little things were wearing me down and I just couldn't live my life like that. I ended it and it was like a weight was instantly lifted. It is hard but things are so much better now. I have bad days but nothing as bad as being in a unhappy relationship.

Sorry waffling but what I'm trying to say is life's to short to be treated this way. I know it's not easy it took me years of feeling bad to finally do it. You deserve better!

Laughed and dismissed it when I expressed my anger

In short, not only couldn't give a shit about you but also enjoys making you feel angry and upset.

Based on the fact that you don't want to leave without a revelation of some wrong doing (and I don't blame you) my advice to you is this...

Stay, detach, live well, don't rely on him for anything. Have your stable family home and have him around his kids but you make a good life for yourself.
Lower your expectations of him and that way you won't get into these arguments where he minimises your feelings.
Expect nothing, get nothing. Anything else is a bonus.

Sooner or later he will stop hiding whatever it is that he is hiding and what you wanted to find will come out.

Do you think you could do that OP?

Yes, you're living a lie. Your OP is contradictory in places:

".....happy stable life, we laugh a lot and have common interests. .... DH is unhappy (me too).....

"DH ... is only genuinely interested in things that concern him (though he can be very thoughtful). He abandoned me emotionally...."

You know he has checked out emotionally. You don't need 'proof'. I think it's time for you to be honest with yourself and him, and make some decisions. Good luck

Thanks for all your replies. Valderal when you put it like that it sounds awful. I couldn't live like that.

I guess my OP is contradictory, we are really happy on the surface. We have fun together, we live well. He's not perfect and god knows I'm not either, but I AM slowly realising I'm being silenced. He's a classic computer geek, doesn't have great interpersonal skills and not the most sociable (except when he's had a drink). He also has a difficult family and dislikes seeing them but I've realised whenever we're around he checks out and I am left to hold the conversations, arrange dates etc. He's mentally elsewhere and trying to live as uncomplicated a life as possible which as you know is not what family life is like. He struggles being in a house full of females and just cannot deal with kids tantrums. I do sympathise with that but he sometimes doesn't live up to his responsibilities in that way.

He is an absolute golden boy to my parents so I know it would break their hearts. To my friends too. He has a loveable rogue persona. He's a self-made man and I really admire him for what he has made of himself and many elements of his character. He's a lovely father I do love him, be easier if I didn't.

Your posts have made me realise that I need to draw a line in the sand and tell him I'm not happy. When we were on our family holiday last August he was so absent, on his phone on Twitter and Whatsapp. I said then that we needed to go to couples counselling but he made a face and now I'm realising a year has gone past and things are still the same. If he's just keeping me sweet so he can have family and kicks elsewhere I will fucking rip his head off. But also be heartbroken as for many reasons I love being his wife. I can't even think about how it would affect our girls, they adore their dad. I obviously still have trust issues as much as I've tried to move on.
jumpinguphigh2 Thank you, I might check that book out.

As well as that I do still want some advice as to how I might snoop on his search history as I'm so convinced. How do you find out someone's search history in Google Incognito?

Also is there some sort of guidance about how to leave a marriage you could point me to?

OP your post struck a cord with me as I lived exactly as you did for ten years after finding he'd been viewing dodgy sites on the internet. I found absolute proof, in the end , he was cheating on me six months ago so we are now going our separate ways.
It's easy for others to say LTB without strong evidence , especially when children are involved. My advice would be don't do anything rash but as Valderal says detach and live well. I did lots of things with friends and developed my own interests. I am glad to be moving on now, I don't think I wasted ten years as I saw my children become adults. There wasn't an awful atmosphere in the house or many arguments. I watched and waited during that time but also enjoyed life.

I'm strong enough to leave now. I've made sure I'm ok financially and I'm surrounded by loyal friends. I don't hate my H , he is a flawed individual and I hate what he did but not him. If that makes me a doormat then I hold my hands up but I'd rather be that than full of bitterness.

*easier said than done for others to say leave him without strong evidence

Really sorry you're in this situation. It sounds similar to my marriage over the past few years. The emotional detachment is very painful but because it happens over time I just got used to it as normal. Sadly in my case h's detachment was prelude to an affair which gave me the impetus to act and we're now midway through divorce, although he has now finished with OW and wants to 'work it out'.

The thing is that even now I know about his affair I am still wavering, wondering whether it really is over and whether I can do this to the kids. My mind changes daily, even though I've known the marriage wasn't good enough for years. I still can't see the situation clearly and mistrust my own judgement about cause and effect and whether change is possible.

So, I would just say to watch out that even if you did get that evidence of wrong doing, that it might not provide the once and for all clear signal that it sounds like you are after. You probably already have enough evidence from the day to day experience of your marriage to make a call - if the marriage isn't good enough for you now, but you find he's not cheated, then does that suddenly make it ok? (and vice versa).

Re guidance about leaving, I'm only a few weeks into my own separation but my suggestion would be that if you do feel leaving is a possibility, start preparing yourself for financial independence now and make sure you have all account details, important docs to hand etc., including getting knowledge of his income and assets. In terms of making a decision, I also found the 'too good to leave, too bad to stay' book useful. The other one people recommend is 'not just friends' - this is about affairs but there is some good stuff about the behaviours and mindsets that go with them and about how to work through trust issues (or not). in terms of following through on a decision, the most helpful things I found were to start modelling the likely financial impact: I used www.entitledto.co.uk/ to look at tax credit etc., and to model a likely budget post-separation. www.gov.uk/divorce/overview gives you the process and costs of divorce. Sorry if this seems coldly practical, for me it helped to go into problem solving mode.

Hth.

OP you can't check browsing history if he's using Google Incognito without doing some seriously techy stuff involving proxy servers. That's kind of the point of it.

You're much more likely to catch him out via emails, saved photos, WhatsApp messages, messenger or whatever else he would be using to communicate with an OW if that's what you suspect.

I agree with PP though, he may or may not be cheating. Even if he isn't, do you really want to carry on this way?

I'm all for making marriages work, but it takes two people to make a marriage work. You can't do it alone.

A lot of your original post and response it quite contradictory and in the response you talk about talking through issues, counselling etc then at the end you want advice about how to leave a marriage.

He does sound to have lots of good qualities and I think you need to either give your marriage your all or not. Although I can see how thinking of an exit route may feel youre protecting yourself.

I really hope he's not cheating and that you can work through this drifting.

Sorry for the late reply to this, I've been away. I''m really grateful for all your replies. stumblymonkeyagain thanks I think those things Whatsapp etc are a better bet. I confess that unfortunately I did have a look through his phone and have found an odd text (well an old tab was open that was a screenshot of an old text that has since been deleted that just said "Ok x" either from him or going to a female I've never heard of). And missed calls from her number when he was in Singapore earlier this year. Don't know what to make of that, he rarely puts kisses in texts. I've never heard her name before and don't want to ask in case he realises I'm snooping and hides things even further. God this is unhealthy.

We did talk last night and I said I didn't think our relationship was a healthy one, that he has emotionally and mentally checked out of our life, that I don't trust him given his past history, that our sex life isn't normal, that we have increasingly different interests, that I feel constrained by him. I asked him outright if he has been unfaithful in anyway... he said no but I still don't trust him and don't think I'll ask that question again. He didn't disagree with any of it apart from the infidelity question, agreed that we're not in the best place, that he's happy one moment then miserable the next.

Something I didn't mention before is that we've been having a discussion about whether to move out of London. Anyway last night he said he definitely doesn't want to move out of London whereas I think I do. Not sure where that leaves us.

leavinghomeintoaflat and mugginsalert I'm so sorry you're going through a similar situation. Thank you for the sage advice. I think it is very hard to leave without strong evidence especially where children are part of the equation. I don't think it's weak or being a doormat at all to stay and provide a nice life whilst also protecting yourself. The uncertainty of divorce must be awful especially if you're not clear on your decision. I hope you are both feeling okay in the difficult circumstances and taking care of yourselves

Our conclusion from last night was that we have agreed to go to marriage guidance. He has offerred to look into it. I'm really scared to pull this thread but it needs to be done.

If you really want proof you'd need to go the private investigator route I suspect. But if they don't find anything that leaves you where you are now or worse off still.

If he's just keeping me sweet so he can have family and kicks elsewhere I will fucking rip his head off

He's not keeping you sweet. You appear to be deeply and profoundly unhappy in your marriage.

I think you want to find out if he's sleeping elsewhere so that you can prove that he's a bad man or a good man.

I think that any man who chooses to allow his partner to be so deeply and profoundly unhappy - is a bad man.

I understand about wanting a trigger to leave, but he is very unlikely to admit to an affair. I agree with PP that if being unhappy is not enough for you to leave, you could live your life well with him as an incidental part of it. But it sounds like you don't want that, but a full life.

On the counselling, he may have agreed to come but is unlikely to be open at it. He might justify the affair to himself using examples of when you've made him feel bad about things, which will inevitably come out in the counselling. But you won't know this as he won't be open.

I'd think carefully about moving and work out where is best for you if you end up seperated. Is it out of London where you can both afford housing? Is it in London where the DC have familiar faces at school (they may be too young for this to be a concern)? Can you go near family to provide support, possibly childcare?

Ending it because youre unhappy is the hardest. Youre putting your happiness before your children's and you also could be more miserable divorced, just in a different way. If he cheated, then you'd havr the excuse you need.

Maybe look at counselling as a way to divorce amicably and parent better apart. I wonder if he's shitting himself at the idea of parenting the children by himself and failing miserably, proving to the world and you that he's a "bad dad" if you divorced. Could that be a fear keeping him in the marriage? Something to discuss and work out with a professional.