New house to help marriage after DH affair?

[AnotherDayAndAllThat]

Dh had an affair 2 1/2 years ago and we are getting through it slowly (still heaps of bad days but some OK ones now too) but we've hit another low point and fallen back into the same shitty routine and habits. I discovered DH's affair the same week we bought a new house (found another mobile when I was packing his stuff up)but the distraction of all the work that needed doing kinda gave us something else to focus on and helped me feel like he was committed to me.
Now the house is done we've got nothing really to talk about and I find myself thinking about his affair more now then I did this time last year. It's not helped by the fact he now has the same bored, detached manner he had when he had his affair.

We've made a bit on the house and I'm trying to convince him we should sell and do another one and that it's something for us to do together. He doesn't want the stress of it all again but I don't know what else to do to keep him occupied.

We don't have kids and tbh, I don't feel ready since his affair to bring a child into our marriage.

Friends think I'm burying his affair and keeping myself distracted and trying to keep him busy so he doesn't do it again. They're sort of right but it made me feel secure that he was committing to the house project with me and I want that feeling again.
I'm feeling anxious that what if he doesn't want to do because in his head he thinks it's locking him into our marriage for another couple of years. Is this stupid? Is it even stupid that there is a part of me that doesn't want him to leave and new house gives us longer to keep trying to fix us?

Your marriage is dead. He killed it when he had the affair. You’ve tried to move on but you’ve realised you will never trust him again.

Sell the house, take your profits and start a new chapter. You are in for a lifetime of misery otherwise.

You haven’t failed at all. Your husband has.

OP you're 28. Get out while you can. Because otherwise, before you know it, you'll be 38 with a kid or two and still unable to trust your husband. Only then you'll be a bit trapped. Right now you aren't.

Trust me, I left an unhappy relationship at 31 because I woke up one day and thought "shit, what if I get to 41 and still feel the same?" And that made me realise that I need to get out.

Do you really want to spend the best years of your life with a man who makes you feel like this?

Have you ever done a "Chase the pain" exercise? That's not a technical term, it's something I made up myself. I'm sure there is a proper way to describe it.

How it works is that you stop trying to avoid the pain. You focus hard on what is causing you pain when you think about the bad things. You prod about in your psyche. Instead of hiding and soothing yourself when you feel the pain as you think about it, you follow that pain and follow the lines of thinking.

To me it's like getting a splinter, then having a big painful swelling on your body that keeps irritating you. Ibuprofen and distracting yourself only goes so far, at some point you are going to have to find the splinter. You have to dig around in the pus filled painful areas, the more it hurts the closer you are to the splinter. When you get that out then the other symptoms will start to fade.

I know I need another outlet to focus on otherwise I fixate on DH and OW. Maybe the problem is that you have not yet allowed yourself to properly follow the pain on this one. You haven't had a proper fixation yet. Maybe that's because you fear the solution being to end the marriage. If you follow the pain though, you'll find your actual splinters which might be about abandonment, fear of wasted time, embarrassment to been seen to be breaking up when everyone sees you as the perfect couple, worries about meeting someone else and having children.

That was quite long, but what I'm trying to say is stop distracting yourself from the pain, focus on it to the best of your ability for several days, cry buckets, do not talk to DH about it, know your pain properly. Then you will find it easier to end the pain. This is my experience anyway.

There is no issue with moving on with your lives.

There IS an issue when you feel you have to do this to keep him occupied.

If you're not feeling any better and this happened mid-2015 then you are not going to feel any better about this marriage. Ever. This will be there every single day of your life. Every anniversary, every Christmas day, every time you hear things that were in the charts when you found out. Every time he works late or starts a new job.

As others have said, you went through hysterical bonding which is a weird sort of triumphant look-at-us-everything's-great period, and now that's over.

I sincerely hope you told someone at the time because if you didn't then that's even more pressure on you to keep on smiling through gritted teeth.

My ex cheated on me in 2011. When I discovered his affair, I read a message he sent OW about being the pain of
stepping on a bee and 7 years later I still think of the affair when I see a bloody bee!

I found out 6 months after the affair started and they were very bonded. The number of events in my life tainted by affair related lies is shocking. I thought I wanted a reconciliation (I thought a 12 year marriage was more significant than a 6 month affair) but he luckily left me. In truth he was "gone" before those 6 months.

You need to confront the pain. Its fucking horrific and painful but it does get better.

You were so young when he had that affair - 25 maybe? You are still so young. You don't have children. You really don't have to settle for a man you can never trust. Of course you are the one who is anxious - he is completely in control of whether he has sex with someone else or not. you don't.

Your husband had an affair very soon after you married - he needed new sources of excitement. Then the whole hysterical bonding thing you did was probably quite exciting for him too but that is now over. My guess is that this is who he is and you know it. no wonder you are anxious.

As pp said:
Do you really want to spend the best years of your life with a man who makes you feel like this?

Sell the house, split the equity and get out whilst you can both manage to be amicable (ish). It’ll be a lot better than —when— if you split up with DC and have given up your career etc.

OP, when I found out about the affair, we separated for about 7 months. Then tried reconciling for about 5 months. We've been separated for good (although still living in the same house, separate bedrooms) for about 3 months now.

In these last 3 months, I am calmer, happier and more at peace with myself than I have been for years. I wish him well and know he will be a good co-parent but I am over him. I'm just eager to get on with my new life.

You really, really cannot fix this. Your husband is a liar, able to lie to your face for an entire YEAR. Someone like that will hurt you again, I'm sorry if you don't want to hear it but they will. Please get out now and start rebuilding your life. I really hope you have some real life support.

It took me a year. I was so incredibly miserable and felt stuck in a truly depressing marriage where I didn’t trust him and in fact, no longer cared if he cheated again. Then In January this year I thought ‘I’m not ‘stuck’. I can end it and be free and happy’. So, I ended it, sold up and moved on! I am sooooo much happier now I now longer have a dark, depressing cloud hanging over me. Plus I’m a much better mum to my young son. Everyone says to me I am so much happier than I have been in years in fact. And it’s true, I am. You can be too.

I’m sorry op. I think your marriage ended a long time ago. Maybe before it even started. Keeping both of you distracted and busy won’t change that. 💐

Personally, at your age and with no kids, I would be bringing this relationship to an end.

I know it's hard and will be tough but you have your whole life ahead of you and I don't think you will ever truly trust him. He sounds very detached from the relationship in any case.

IF362525 - I totally agree. If I can do it at 46 with a child.... you can do this.... you’ve so much ahead of you and life’s way too short to be unhappy.

Can only echo what everyone else has said. You don’t trust him because he is untrustworthy, and even if you sincerely forgive him, that won’t change. He couldn’t be relied on to love and support you when life was simple and happy, so what do you think will happen if you’re distracted by children, or work, or an illness?

Those feelings you have mean your brain is working and your judgement functioning.

Out of interest OP, what did you think people’s responses would be when you posted?

And why would you feel like a failure? You’re not the one that’s failed.

Sorry, I think you're flogging a dead horse.

Sell the house and divorce. You're far too young to settle for being miserable/anxious/stressed.

I think you probably need to accept it’s over. I don’t type this easily but how you feel will end up destroying what is left of your relationship plus it will destroy you.

Look up 'hysterical bonding'

What sort of man cheats for a whole year just one year into a new marriage, that should've been your honeymoon period but he was falling in love with someone else.

Run for the hills.

I feel like a failure if our marriage ends now

When a marriage comes to an end it can be for any number of reasons. The whole gamut from infidelity or betrayal of trust to just a natural conclusion and the couple go their separate ways but remain friends.

It's not a test to be rewarded or failed.

The best life is a happy and relaxed one. Move forward OP.

I spent a year trying to forgive him before calling it a day. If there hadn't been dc involved I wouldn't have waited that long. Being a single parent, and considerably older than you, can be hard but I'm always so proud that I did the right thing in the end.

It sounds like its getting worse for you, not better.

I spent my 20s with someone who didn't deserve me. I'm at a loss now to see why I felt the need to hang on for so long to someone who had clearly demonstrated they werent really committed to me.

By the time I then had a bit of breathing space to sort myself out, met dh and got married I was 35 before trying for a baby and the 5 years of awfulness that entailed nearly broke me. I was very lucky to have a son in the end but other women I knew in my position weren't.

Honestly at 28 you do not necessarily have time to spend trying to fix a dud.

What a really sad situation . I almost feel you know deep down your marriage is over you just don't want to admit it so you're trying to be all jolly and busy to disguise the fact. In the nicest possible way you really need to face facts here. A marriage needs to be strong enough in its own right, eithout depending on external factors all aligning to survive tough times, slow times, boring times, lonely times. Yours simply cant manage that. Do the right thing now while you are still young.