looks like it's over

[mylittlestar]

well after everything you will have seen so far, and my happiness at dh and i giving our marriage another go, sadly it doesn't look like that is possible anymore.

i've been feeling down the last couple of days and couldn't put my finger on it. thought it was probably a bit of paranoia. the pregnancy scare etc. but looking back dh had also become distant and withdrawn and i think i was picking up on that.

i checked his phone this morning. there was a message in his saved items to the ow. basically said of course i'll get up early to come and take you to work. i'll leave a bit early so we can have a little kiss before we set off...

confronted him. he swore he hadn't been back in touch. then has admitted that after his paranoia that i may have met someone on my work night out last week, he got back in touch with her.
don't really know much more than that and there's no point in asking as i'm not sure i could believe what he tells me anyway.

i had four main reasons for giving things another try. my love for him. the fact that anyone can make a mistake once. the fact that he swore he hated living a double life and would never want to live that way again. and finally, the fact that he said after seeing what he'd put me through, he'd never put me through that again.

just 4 weeks later he has.

to be honest i really don't want to turn this thread into a session to slag dh off. i don't understand his reasons and never will. but i do love him.

i think perhaps it's time to let my head rule my heart and make myself wake up to the fact that he doesn't love me in the same way i love him.

one day he'll realise what he's lost and what he's put me through. and i truly believe that nothing i say or do from this point on will have any impact. it's up to him now.

i've come into work to try and take my mind off it all and calm down. so i'm ok. i'm glad i have MN to get all of this out as this time i do not want one single person in RL to know. i don't want people getting at dh. i don't want people telling me 'i told you so'. i don't really want sympathy.
i'm sick of my life being one big drama after the next. i want to focus on me and ds and i want a happy quiet life filled with love and laughter. if the only way to get that is being alone with ds, then so be it. i'm truly blessed to have him.

so perhaps this thread should be about how i can now move forward without the love of my life and my soul mate....

MLS - hope you enjoy the concert. x

MLS and Ernest - I think we are all at the hard bit. I have had a couple of bad days where it is constantly in my head. H is great but sometimes i just need to work it out myself.

I know what you mean about everyting being ruined - but remember she will have also have those thoughts and she has 'lost'. She will have believed all his lies too - the only difference is she already knew he was a liar (which must make her feel even more of a fool!)

I too would like to 'know' how it is with someone else - since being married there has been no-one. I keep it as my fantasy now and do wonder if i would now given the chance - (as long he wasnt married).

It is hard but it is best to think only about how good it is now - you are only in this relationship whilst it is good for you now - if it gets bad again you can always leave. Not an option you may want but it is a powerful place to be. Think about what you want now. the future is a big scary place but if it is good now enjoy - none of us know what tomorrow will bring.

I try and feel lucky that awful as this is there are worse things that could happen - recent news for example.

Stay possitive and strong and he will know that there is no-one as good as you in this world for him.

It really is very hard it is nearly a year since I find out about the OW a year of ups and downs but I think about her constantly - and still quiz him and give him a hard time - my every memory seems tinged with her - sometimes I have to bite my tongue not to comment on everything he says - like MLS she "kindly" filled me in on all the details ...Dh says I will never forgive him - I think he may be right can you ever trust them again I always thought it was the one thing he would never do

MLS glad you are going to give yourself some time out. There is no rush to come to terms with this or make a decision. You will know when you are ready to make the right decision for you and ds. Hope you have a lovely night tonight. Am of your social life it's none stop isn't it! For every good night you have togetherit will bring a part of your relationship back x

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Hi everyone

Well we had a great night. The band actually weren't too good, but we'd had enough drinks by then not to care... and so we headed into town before it finished and ended up in an 80's bar which was a great laugh. Rolled in about 3am and have just made us a big fry-up at lunch time! Not sure if I feel better or worse for eating that!!

BoM you're right, at first nobody knew what had happened and I wanted to keep it all as quiet as possible. But in the last week or so I've begun to tell some details to people very close to me just so I have that RL support and someone to speak to when I'm having a 'wobble'. I didn't want close family judging us or getting involved. But my best friends have been brilliant (just angry that I didn't say something sooner!).

macdoodle you sound very similar to me I'm not sure I'll ever forgive now. I just hope I learn to put it to one side and focus on what's important, me, him and ds. I liked paddlechick's advice about replacing all the bad memories with good ones... I think that should be up to him to take charge of

We do have 14 years of happy memories... I hope so much that I am able to start remembering them instead of just the last 6 months of hell.

We managed to have such a good time last night as I stopped the questions and just focussed on us and on having a good time. It was so nice to 'forget' even if it was just for the evening. DH said this morning he doesn't know how I'm doing it but he's so grateful that I'm trying so hard even after everything he's done. He said he hates himself and wants to start trying to do whatever he can to reassure me and try to put things right.

We agreed this morning too that if we are to have a future together, we need to realise it's not the one we planned. We've both changed and even if we put this behind us, we'll never fully forget. So we said that the key will have to be calving out a new, better, future, in which we've learned from our mistakes and in which we never forget what's important ever again.
(I hope that can be done!)

(As for the holiday... we thought Vegas might be a bit ambitious but wondering if the grandparents will share looking after ds for a couple of nights and we can go to Paris. We had a fantastic break there a few years ago and would love to go again. So we'll see!)

So glad you had good evening, it will be just what you need. Hopefully grandparents will help out as a break to Paris would give you both some real quality time together. Am so that he has seen and acknowledged the effort you have put in to your realtionship and hope he heeds that and follows suit.x

Thank you
I really hope he does follow suit. It's going to take a hell of a lot of reassurance to make me believe him from now on!

your just at the beginning of a long road MLS but at least the worst is over (hopefully) can't believe two active threads now just at the initial finding out stage can't believe how many women have to suffer this.

Glad you had a nice nght MLS

I suppose it helps us know we aren't failures just a bloody large part of a group we didn't ask to be part of It's like ground hog day. Is it part of growing up worry for my dd now and she only 2

I have actually had a nice weekend with h .We went out for a curry buffet lunch while ds was at a party and I actually told him about my colleague. Well, the fact that he offered sex and I refused! It was during a conversation about his general flirtiness (colleague's) and he (h) asked if colleague had flirted with me. So I told him!

He seemd disbelieving at first, and asked a few questions. He then seemed a little disgruntled but not with me.

posted on your thread dior - h is jealous. definitely xx

hi mls glad your doing ok again now. Try to eat though hun you need your strength for you, ds and dh. xx

Hi ladies,just wanted to add my support to all of you who are going through this in recent times.
As most of you know I went through it 3 years ago when my dh had an affair with a work colleauge- it was completely out of the blue after 20 great yaers together.
we are still together and I don't regret the decision to try to make it work- what I wanted to share is that everything you've described I went though! It's like a process and I even made a joke about men having a "how to cheat on your wife manual" as they alll seem to follow the same pathetic path and then eventually some of them wake up - just in time.

MLS- 1 thing I struggled with was the forgiveness thing, then in counselling my counsellor said it's ok not to forgive- after all some things in life are unforgivable! (lots of sense) but what you do have to do is make some sense of it and some sort of peace with what your dh did- not making excuses, because they all had freedom of choice- but trying to understand how/why he got where he which isn't easy when often they don't really know)
My dh looks back on that time and is utterly ashamed of what he did- he finds it hard to recalll what he was thinking/ doing , almost like it was in the third person- he totally accepts he made the choices and almost threw away all that was precious to him for so little!

The pain still exists but in timw it graduallly lessens and fades - you do start looking at where you are now not back (although i do think you have to look back and annalise that before you can start to move forward)I still have the odd day of agony and wish her all the pain I'm in buut really things between us mean so much more- having gone through such a trauma together and come out stronger we appreciate more about each other an dour lives.

Please don't despair- you go though a patch where you doubt it will ever feel normal again, every little thing is a reminder, evry date has a significance and he...he wants nothing more than to forget it- not fair!!!! However ladies if he's truely making a go of it , trying to put it right don't give up- weigh up the good you had against this "time of maddness" and hold out for the long term,=.

You learn alot about yourself going through tnis type of truma- not least that you are strong and true to yourself and your own values.
I sometimes get angry because what happened has raised questions in my head I'd never ever even thought of...;ike the "what's it like to be with so else etc? ( I too met dh very young and didn't play the field at all) however looking at the many stories on mn I know I'm not missing out on anything.
If you had something special, fight for it- the pain , the memory joggers, the crying do lessen- it takes time and you must keep talking but it's worth it. Good luck all!

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Hi MLS, sorry not been around again. Due in part to it being tricky at my parents, but also because I've been finding things tough and not really felt up to posting. Have updated my thread.

I'm sorry to hear you're having a bit of a wobble, but I think it's completely to be expected. It must have been devastating to discover the extent of his deceit, and as if those details weren't enough, the fact he hadn't been truthful with you is something else again. Am really so for you.

Sounds like you're doing plenty of family things and plenty of couple-y things too, which sounds perfect. Paris would be fabulous, and just the place I'd say!

maturer, really enjoyed your post, that's so inspiring. Too late for me though

maturer thanks so much for that lovely post.
I'm really struggling right now so I will re-read that many times I'm sure, to keep reminding myself why I am still fighting so hard for this relationship.

thank you xx

(lily I'll find your thread now )

Maturer what a great post. Hope that helps MLS.

MLS, I hope you're okay. How are things? xx

hi lily

not too bad I guess. back at work which is hard. both because I have to take that leap of faith that dh isn't seeing her whilst I'm stuck in the office 50 miles away, and also after 3 weeks at home with ds I miss him like crazy

things are very up and down. like last night we went to my dads for his bday, had a lovely evening, got home and got ds to bed. then started talking, and it all kicked off again.

rather than just expect dh to know what I need and want from him at this time I'm literally spelling it out. I know this is no time for playing games and I know I need to be very clear what I need from him.
So I'm saying I need you to tell me it wasn't good with her, I need to hear the bad things, I need him to tell me he loves me etc without being prompted.
but he just can't seem to get it...

it's like he's spent so many months mentally distancing himself from me, feeling unable to be completely relaxed and natural with me, that he can no longer let himself get close to me.
and now I'm there and crying out for him to grab me, hug me, anything, he just can't seem to do it. like he's scared of me rejecting him. or like he's forgotten how to behave with the woman he loves. and it's even like he just doesn't think he deserves me anymore.

it's like the guilt, and the way he hates himself and what he became, has overtaken all the positives. I've tried even saying to him, if I say something negative or remind him of a time he's let me down, he should remind me of all the times in the last 13 years he's been a fantastic partner and how he's going to prove to me that he can be that person again... i.e. take everything I say and turn it into a positive. above all, look to making a happy future, having learnt from our mistakes...
but he just keeps saying 'sorry'. and that he's ruined everything and can't expect to ever be forgiven

why am I the one who always has to find the positives? I ended up lying there saying how I wanted to learn to focus on the 13 years of good memories and not the 6 months of bad ones. How I want to make new and better memories to make the ones of him and her fade away. I ended up telling him how strong he is, and how he needs to use that strength to get us through this.

why aren't I able to just crumble and why can't he use his instincts to help me and do/say the right thing? is that too much to expect from him?

sorry - didn't mean to turn it into a rant! it's just so difficult. I'm sick of being the strong one. I need someone to look after me now.
but I think the combination of his depression and the way he hates himself, means I don't really have much choice. If I make him suffer. If I make him constantly remember what an absolute b*stard he's been. He'll end up getting worse and probably leave anyway, out of guilt and shame. (although he swears he'll never run again and will do whatever it takes.)

Time to start finding positives. Think we need a nice holiday and think we need to get our house situation sorted so that we all feel settled and have a fresh start. That's the way forward...

Im sorry MLS. I'm sorry you are going through all this and I'm so very sorry that you are the one doing all the work again. You are not going to like this but, I think you should stop. You are never going to get a true outcome to all this, to your DH's feelings and natural reactions if you keep having to ask him or tell him. You will never be sure if he is doing it because he wants to or if he is doing it just because he thinks you want him to.
I hope you don't think Im being harsh, please believe me, I'm not meaning to be.

I just see a woman who loves her husband so much, wants him to love her so much, feel as much for her as she imagines he felt for the OW, wants him to prove to her that he loves her. It is heartbreaking. But he has to be given the space to come to you with all this, without you having to ask for it. Yes, he should be already doing it, yes, he should be doing everything possible to make you feel loved and secure. But he isn't is he. The little bit he is doing isn't working. All that is happening is that you are geting more and more hurt by his 'lack' of anything.

I have to go take dd to school now but i will be back. I dont want you to take this the wrong way and im worried that in my haste i havent come across very well. so bear with me xxx

Not taken the wrong way at all IOHW

I think you're right. I shouldn't have to be spelling this out for him. Any rational human being can see that if I ask 'were her boobs nice' (for example! ) the answer shouldn't be 'yes they were ok'!!!!!!

There's a time for honestly. And a time for saying and doing the right thing, and finding the inner strength to turn negatives into positives. I guess he needs to learn on his own how to balance those things to save his marriage.

I just know what he's like (or I thought I did!).

Not sure if a few months trial of getting back together is the right approach, or if a few months trial of being apart may now be the right thing...
I need to really think about that.

MLS, so much of what you're saying really rings true with me.

i did all of those things too, tried to get dh to see what a good dad he is, how successful he's been in business and can be again etc. try to see all those things that are positive about him.

but he just can't seem to get past the guilt of leaving when i was pg and letting his other kids down and losing the business. the constant abuse from the ex hasn't helped but it's not the entire cause.

he also promised never to go again and to do all he could to make things right.

i really think relate would've helped us at that time. we had an assessment and have been waiting for an appointment for months - not that he'd go now of course!

get yourselves into relationship counselling somewhere. you need a safe place with a mediator for you both to explore the whys and wherefores and the way forward.

perhaps a 3rd party telling your dh that he is not the devil incarnate and showing him that he can make this right will be the key for you.

try CAB and ask if there are any other mediation services in your area who offer counselling. Relate are so busy you might be ages waiting for an appointment.

totally empathise with wanting someone to take care of you - we always seem to have to be the strong ones!

you're doing fantastically you really are.

hope work goes by real quick. x