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Original poster

How can I have been so stupid

568 replies

Fuzzywig1 · 16/02/2018 08:40

I am in a terrible terrible mess and it is all my own fault.

This is long sorry.

Before I post please can I say that anything nasty or mean you say to me I have said to myself and it is not why I am here

I have been married for 21 years to a kind and gentle but emotionally distant man. I know he loves me but he does not find it easy to be vulnerable and show it in some ways. I am very warm and physically affectionate and he is not or not consistently meaning I often would feel lonely. Sex was also always on his terms and less than I wanted.

30 years ago I had an 18 month relationship with who I thought was ‘the one’ . Yes I was very young 22 and he was even younger (19). Anyway after a very very passionate relationship he went off to drama school and decided to leave me. I was heartbroken and never forgot him and never trusted that sort of passion again.

2 years ago and out of the blue an email arrived saying he had seen me at my sons football training. We started emailing agreed to meet ( I told my husband about this first meeting) blah blah yes we started an affair.

From the beginning he told me he always loved me but buried the feelings deep he wants us to be together we are twin souls. He left his wife and now lives on his own.

I did not ask him to do this by the way

I feel somehow enchanted by him and that I lose my reason ....

I have told my husband I want to get divorced but he cannot believe it and says we have always had a lovely and sweet relationship

Eventually he found out and now I am in an awful impasse.

The om said he does not want to put pressure on me but his moving out made its own guilt and pressure. His constant emailing showering of love and gifts etc have made me stupid.

My husband seems to just want to carry on as if nothing has happened and that I’m the end I will ‘cone Back to him’.

Over and over every day I change my mind about what to do. What will cause the least harm.

I have two lovely children aged 13 and 9 and I cannot bear the thought of hurting them. I have already hurt them by being distant from their father and sleeping separately from him.

I think I have now got to the point of knowing that I cannot do this. It is wrong, I have been deluded Abd stupid.

But I am now scared to tell the om who has changed his life for me and will be devastated

This email sounds so stupid.

I don’t think people would believe this of me.

OP posts:
Original poster
Fuzzywig1 · 19/02/2018 18:11

Yes Ok you are right. I feel a bit broken myself.....

My h said he felt damaged today.....

He is just not as melodramatic. Or dramatic at all in any way.

The email that said that was actually quite a nice email it was mostly kind and said i will always think well of you i hope you find the peace you need to rebuild your life.

But then it also had a thing saying if you find this impossible you know where i am which was bad....

Yes better he is broken than my poor kids and h.

I have been working from home much of today which is not great as it is much less distracting than being at actual work...

OP posts:
Original poster
Fuzzywig1 · 19/02/2018 22:32

I do think that if you have not experienced this it is easy to dismiss as silly and adolescent.

But it is not only that

It is also a delighting in someone else and that is a very hard thing to let go of.

And actually putting away things is not very helpful in the immediate part.

It is like a loss and nobody would suggest packing up memories immediately .

It doesn’t make any difference anyway. The presence of the other person is all pervasive.

And the act of the putting away would cause such a huge outpouring of grief it is best just to ignore.

It is the daily memories that are the hardest

Not ‘stuff’

OP posts:
caringdenise009 · 19/02/2018 22:43

Fuzziwig- delete it all. I put out my stuff in the rubbish and once it was physically gone,it made a difference

caringdenise009 · 19/02/2018 22:45

Also given your latest post ,look at limerance.

It is limerance.

Original poster
Fuzzywig1 · 19/02/2018 22:58

I know it is limnerance. Knowing a thing and feeling a thing are different

I know it will make a difference to get rid of the stuff but I can’t do it right now

And it isn’t the main thing

OP posts:
LizzieSiddal · 19/02/2018 23:19

I hope you can get rid of his “stuff” soon.

You may not see it as the most important thing but it’s pretty disrespectful to your H. I presume he doesn’t know who this “stuff” came from, but if he did find out, how the heck would he feel?

caringdenise009 · 19/02/2018 23:19

It is the main thing. And your children should be a lot more important.

Dump all that shit.

caringdenise009 · 19/02/2018 23:26

You don't want to, he is more important than your children
I've been there,it was a mistake

SchnitzelVonKrumm · 19/02/2018 23:31

If you can't bin it yet, box it up and seal it away. Then when you're ready, ask a friend to take it to the charity shop.

SchnitzelVonKrumm · 19/02/2018 23:32

Remember these trinkets were given to gull you into betraying your family.

sparly1131 · 20/02/2018 08:48

It is very hard to be a parent and even harder to be a parent of adopted children, you long for children for so long and will not have realised initially that you will have adopted 2 traumatised children (all adopted/foster children have suffered some trauma) you and your husband will have spent years trying to be there. Try to remember why you fell in love with him. Have date nights, go away for the weekend. You need to cut contact with your x as otherwise you are not giving yourself chance.
Try to be kind to yourself beating yourself up about this will not make you happy and that will reflect on your children and your husband.

Your husband will need time to trust you and to move on from this but at some point he will need to move on and forgive you xxx

Put your heart into this of it is the decision you have made xx

Original poster
Fuzzywig1 · 20/02/2018 09:13

Ultimately he was not more important than my children. And I knew in my heart that all his words were just words.

The presents were all designed to ‘keep him with me’ and were quite possessive eg a ring, a locket with a picture of he and I in it. Some of them were very expensive things that I would never buy for myself and nor would my h be able to eg Louboutin shoes. Which I have never worn as I fell off my heels and ripped all my ligaments. That was another brilliant side effect of this awful mess, constant accidents and illness and lack of sleep.

I will put them all in a box.

My friend said that one of the things she really didn’t like was that despite constant protestations of how much he wanted to look after me he still would never let me get any rest eg if I went to meet a friend he would always want to meet me afterwards and for me to go to his house.

OP posts:
WitchesHatRim · 20/02/2018 09:18

I will put them all in a box.

Why keep them? How are you going to explain that to your DH when he asks what's in them? Oh they were presents from my fuck buddy that I couldn't let go Hmm

Original poster
Fuzzywig1 · 20/02/2018 09:29

Witcheshatrim

I have tried to ignore your nasty remarks but really could you just stop.

I am not proud of my behaviour .

I am astonished at it in fact

But it felt like a relationship. I shared everything with this person.

I know I should have been sharing it with h but I told myself he wasn’t interested

I do wonder though if you are proud of the way you address people?

It was the kindness and support of people here that actually enabled me to follow through on ending it. Not nastiness. If that had been all I had met with I would have quickly left.

What do you gain from your posts?

OP posts:
WhatWouldOliviaPopeDo · 20/02/2018 11:17

I see the pitchforks are out again. Hmm Look, you might not like what she's done and you can hammer away at the OP as much as you like, but she's already stated she's going to put the stuff in a box out of sight until she's ready to deal with getting rid of it. Clearly this hasn't been some meaningless fling she can sweep under the carpet and if she wants to save her marriage surely the worst thing she could do right now is make a knee-jerk decision about binning it that could cloud her reconciliation with her husband. Personally I would thrown it out asap or at least give it to a friend to store, but I'm not her and this isn't my life, and nor is it yours, so please let's stop the nastiness.

Original poster
Fuzzywig1 · 20/02/2018 12:19

I almost don’t even want to look at or touch the stuff. I have thrown some of it away, put other bits away etc.

But honestly there is such a focus on this

What is hard is the psychic gap. Honestly it is so hard to re immerse myself back into my life . Work etc and everything has had this constant background distraction and whilst in some ways it is a relief not to have it it is also a huge gap.

This morning as I walked to the station there was a white car parked where he would park nostvnkrnings to pick me up and drive me into town.

I got a stab of pure fear.

It was actually quite cathartic to realise that was what I felt...

It wasn’t him. But the fact I thought it might be was also telling.

OP posts:
WhatWouldOliviaPopeDo · 20/02/2018 12:31

That's a really telling reaction and something to cling onto, if you know what I mean. Feeling fearful that it was him and being relieved it wasn't is a good omen for you moving forward. You posted something quite telling earlier about how he wanted to occupy all your time - if you went to see a friend, he'd insist you went to his afterwards. He basically shoved himself into all corners of your life whether you wanted him to or not.

AgathaF · 20/02/2018 14:41

Look, you might not like what she's done and you can hammer away at the OP as much as you like, but she's already stated she's going to put the stuff in a box out of sight until she's ready to deal with getting rid of it. Clearly this hasn't been some meaningless fling she can sweep under the carpet and if she wants to save her marriage surely the worst thing she could do right now is make a knee-jerk decision about binning it that could cloud her reconciliation with her husband

If this was a woman on here, upset and distressed that her cheating H had kept gifts from the other woman there would be plenty of shouts of 'he's a bastard' and 'LTB. Why is it different in this case?

OP, you needs to stop engaging with this guy, stop giving thought and emotional brain space to his bleating of being broken, and telling you that you know where he is. And all the trinkets and shoes that he tried to buy you with, you need to get them all to a charity shop ASAP and let some good come of them to someone in need. I assume your H doesn't know you've kept this stuff? Imagine how hurt he'd be if he found it.

TatianaLarina · 20/02/2018 15:14

Oh for goodness sake! What a self-righteous post.

The thread is not from someone who’s discovered trinkets, but someone who has done some fast work on themselves to understand the problems in her marriage cannot be solved by another man. A man she has actually been in a relationship with for 2 years. She can’t process it faster just because some people here disapprove or it. She still has to go to work and function as a mother at the same time as dealing with her DH. It’s exhausting! She will deal with it in her own time.

Have some respect and compassion and if you can’t muster either - don’t get involved.

Original poster
Fuzzywig1 · 20/02/2018 15:33

thank you TatianaLarina

i do find it odd hwo the whole thread has resolved now into Louboutin shoes and what to do with them.

Given up until Friday i was still in a space of thinking i might leave my 21 year marriage.......

he was in every corner of my life. I saw him pretty much every day, every morning and every evening. Spoke to him on the phone. Constantly emailed. He took me to hospital every day when I had an eye ulcer (caused by stress).

I know this is all wrong and shouldnt have happened but the shoes are not the issue.

OP posts:
TatianaLarina · 20/02/2018 15:43

No worries. It’s a massive about-turn and will take a while to acclimatise.

AgathaF · 20/02/2018 15:45

I didn't say the shoes were the issue. The issue over the gifts is that you still have them and don't seem to be able to acknowledge the hurt that could causing to your husband.

If you want to save your marriage and improve the relationship you have with your H, then you need to be taking appropriate steps to do so. Same advice as any woman whose H cheated would get on this site.

WhatWouldOliviaPopeDo · 20/02/2018 16:17

But she IS taking appropriate steps AgathaF. She's ended the affair. But that was only three days ago and you expect everything related to it to be all to be done and dusted and forgotten about? Real life isn't like that. She hasn't said she's not getting rid of the stuff, just not right this second because you demand it.

And the usual MN advice given to women in the reverse of this situation is LTB.

WhatWouldOliviaPopeDo · 20/02/2018 16:19

Also, the OP's has more than acknowledged the pain and hurt she's caused her husband. You think finding a pair of shoes is really going to eclipse what he's already feeling?

Original poster
Fuzzywig1 · 20/02/2018 16:24

What does LTB mean ?

im not a regular poster since my kids were bigger.

In those days i would be posting about hwo to get my dd to eat more than berries....

Would that was my main concern now.....

OP posts:
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