Married but in love with another man - please help

[Dandylie]

I really hope someone can help as I am falling apart over this.

I have been married to DH for 5 years (together for 8) and we have 2 young DC. DH is a really good man. He’s funny, charming, honourable, kind, and is a great Dad. He’s probably the most well-liked man I know and we have a great lifestyle. But some resentment has crept into our marriage as he doesn’t earn much (has his own small business), I don’t feel is working hard enough and is hopeless with money. I am far and away the main breadwinner (and work very long hours because in a job I don’t really like) and have begun to lose respect for him. I feel a bit like I have three children sometimes. We haven’t had sex in nearly 3 years - I just don’t want to, even though I still find DH handsome. To show you what a good man DH is, he hasn’t got angry or pressured me about that, although he obviously misses sex very much.

My ex got in touch for the first time in a while a few months ago - we went out nearly 25 years ago and he was my first love (although perhaps infatuation is a better word as I was only 17 and we only went out for 6 months). I was beyond devastated when we broke up, never really got over him and we have always been in touch since and occasionally met up - sometimes years have gone by between contact but I thought of him very often. He was always in a long term relationship, then married, so although it was clear we were always attracted to each other nothing really happened (although it did occasionally).

Fast forward to now, he is divorced and we have met up a few times and are in daily contact. We have kissed and it went a bit further on one occasion (although not sex). I am not very proud of this.

I am completely besotted with him and I don’t know what to do. I think about him every minute of the day and it’s made me feel even further apart from DH.

Would I be mad to be considering leaving DH to be with my ex - not that my ex has asked me to, although he’s told me (when I asked) that if I was single he would want to be with me. I have no idea if I can trust my ex - truth is I don’t know him that well. I actually feel he is pulling away a bit now, as I keep changing my mind about what I want.

I would be putting my own wants ahead of my DH and my children - I can’t do that can I? Is it normal to feel this way in a marriage?

I can’t sleep, I have lost so much weight and I can’t concentrate on work. I can’t find joy in anything unless it is my ex texting me. I feel like I have gone a bit mad in truth.

If anyone could give me some advice I would really appreciate it.

PanGalactic - She's right. You are venting your own issues here. If you can't offer good advice then you should not be on the thread. This isn't about you and your hang ups. Maybe vent to your friends and family or people who know what you've been through. Your personal problems are not the Op's fault, you shouldn't be making her the scapegoat.

Wait do you currently hire a nanny or do you want him to earn more so you can hire a nanny?
If it's the latter then he's saving you £30k a year as well as days you have to take off if the kids get sick.

Ok I’ll be honest, I was nasty but what you are doing to your husband is wrong. Al I’m saying is to at least tell him about the affair. He has a right to decide wether to carry on a. Relationship with you or not. You don’t get to have an affair with someone and then decide actually you’ll stay with your husband because the other man doesn’t want you how you want him. Either tell your husband what you are doing or leave him and try for a relationship with the other man. If you end up single that’s ok at least your husband isn’t being lied to and only with you by default. Stop being a dick to him. You have said he is decent he hasn’t done anything to deserve this, if the money is an issue then leave him or talk to him, don’t have an affair fs.

Aimarge We already have a nanny. If he looked after the children obviously that would be a contribution. But in effect I pay for him to run his company, which has brought in nothing since last December.

QuackPorridgeBacon I am not having an affair anymore. I’m going to try to work things out with my husband and if I can’t we will have to separate. But telling him is not going to do anyone any good. I appreciate your viewpoint but I disagree with it.

You said earlier that your husband's company doesn't make as much as the nanny earns. That's irrelevant. Does it make half as much as the nanny costs, over the course of the year?

Heartsease68 It’s a new company - I don’t know if it will. It’s not looking good so far. I don’t know why you only think he only needs to cover half the cost of the nanny when I pay 100% of everything else.

Because they're your children so obviously you have a responsibility to pay for them. If you're paying for everything else, why are you obsessing about the cost of the nanny? Do you actually want him to give up work and look after them so you don't have to pay for a nanny?

I'm very confused about the way you are conflating childcare, a start-up business and infidelity.

Heartsease Because at least if he looked after the children he would be contributing something!

Op from someone who did tell. i would advise against it if you want to stay with your husband( not the honorable thing to do i know) however the fallout will be un repairable IMO. I came clean about my EA and my partner couldn't forgive and left. I don't blame him though he deserved better. While i didn't go looking for the OM he found me via social media( he was my first love). I never would have believed i could behave in the way i did i still struggle with it as i said in previous post. It has been utter madness. Two years of extreme highs and crushing lows, it's been an adiction i am now trying to move past. I've been NC with OM for a while now eight weeks actually. It's not easy but you can get through this. If things don't work out with your Husband please don't give the OM another chance he is just playing with your emotions move on and stay NC. be happy.

I feel that paying for the nanny is the least he could do so that if I am paying for everything else - literally everything else - I am not having to pay for him to “work”.

Is it the nanny who cooks dinner, does the homework, puts the kids to bed, cleans the house or is that left to you when you get home? If so I could understand the resentment if your husbands work isn't bringing in any money. Did you both agree to him starting a business and who does the childcare at weekends? I am genuinely curious as I would get hacked off working full time and having to be responsible for every thing else too and you have stated he doesn't contribute which suggests that is the situation.

And I feel that you're looking at it the wrong way because neither of you have more responsibility than the other to be the primary carer. Can you turn it around and imagine if you were a man who wouldn't let his wife work unless she could cover the cost of a nanny? It would be unfair because the alternative is pretty awful - it means you don't have the right to work and have a voice in your marriage unless you're a high earner. In my scenario, the wife should only have to be able to cover her share of the responsibility in order to have a right to work. Can you see that?

OP why don’t you pool all your earnings as a couple in a joint “bills” account and just leave enough aside in your own accounts each month as personal spending - the same amount each. That’s what dh and I have always done and he earns six times what I do. Bills, expenses and savings come out of one joint pot and you both have X amount to do with as you please. You need to stop thinking that you pay for everything and he can’t even pay for the nanny. That’s a really unpleasant attitude. You are (or should be) a team.

I realise you are 'letting' your husband work but punishing someone through resentment is not really acknowledging that they have a right to work if they want to, regardless of how much their spouse earns, provided they can cover childcare (and I would say that if the expensive nanny is your preference rather than his, it would be less than half).

Heartsease68 I don’t even understand what you’re saying anymore. Why should he have the “right” to be provided for by me when he contributes nothing?

For the PP who asked, when he wanted to leave his job and set up on his own, I made him promise he would get financial backing from his family (who as I have said before are very rich), in case it didn’t bring any money in. He didn’t, so it is me providing the financial backing. And I resent it.

You need to stop thinking that you pay for everything and he can’t even pay for the nanny. That’s a really unpleasant attitude. You are (or should be) a team

Not much of a team where one person does all the work is it?

My husband was an utter knob to me OP, 12 years ago and a very heavy infatuation with a very young woman, I found out 10 years later because he had written stuff and left it in a drawer, I wish he had been honest at the time and said something or at least got rid of this stuff as I wouldn’t have known, my DH says it was never because he didn’t love me, it was a distraction because other stuff was going wrong in life and it was something pleasant to think about, the texting, the odd secret coffee, writing poems etc. We all like to feel’in love’ And that feeling often goes in marriage after a good few years, problem is ‘if’yoyr DH found out I don’t think he would necessarily react well because half the problem then is not knowing exactly what they got up to, what was talked about etc, YOU know but they don’t and that’s hard to overcome . Either work on your marriage or leave but without the OM in the picture, I think like my H, he’s a distraction, a red herring.

Not much of a team where one person is in love with another bloke and is sneery about her dh earnings either.

Not much of a team where one person is in love with another bloke and is sneery about her dh earnings either.

No it’s not is it? Hence me posting this thread asking for advice about what the hell I should do.

My point is you seem to be using your dh earnings to absolve yourself of all responsibility.

Well if you are banking your future on your husband just suddenly earning over 40k (closer to 50k if he needs money for personal expenses) a year to cover the nanny costs in order to save your marriage without a strong education and career history behind him then really you are probably beating your head off a brick wall. Even with 6 years experience as a software developer and a degree I would struggle to get much higher than 60k in London. I still don't know what you want for him to change, one minute he does most of the childcare, the next he doesn't contribute to the home at all and it's all done by a nanny. Have you stepped back and come up with a realistic plan for what you need from him in order to make your marriage work because otherwise if you can't think of anything and are just hopping from one crime to the next then the chances are the damage is already done.

PiggeryPorcombe It’s not that simplistic. I haven’t had sex with DH for 3 years - long before I met up with my ex. I am not inventing issues in my marriage to excuse my affair - they have been there a while and are due to me having lost attraction for DH due to having lost respect.

My point is that you can't demand your spouse looks after your children because you earn more than them and they have the misfortune of not earning more than a nanny costs. There's no reason why he should be covering the full cost of a nanny anyway - the children are half your responsibility to pay for. But I don't think you want to see it which is a pity because you're acknowledging a problem with resentment while talking and thinking in a way that would be considered chauvinistic if the genders were reversed.

The resentment seems to go so deep that I think you need to split your bills so you're not paying for 'everything' and he is paying for 'something'. You clearly need to be able to squirrel away your money while he gets his family to cover his half of the outgoings. I don't think you're going to 'respect' him until he does that and probably not even then.

I do understand that he shouldn't have gone into this business assuming you would keep him afloat if he didn't have your support. It seems a pity that you wouldn't support him to follow his dream (knowing that it is a commercial enterprise, rather than a dream to become the world's strongest man or something). But if you don't, you don't.

Have you considered counselling. You seem to be in too deep to get back to a place where the resentments, lies and injustices are dealt with otherwise.

But do stop conflating the amount your DH earns with your unfaithfulness. It seems a bit like you expect someone to earn your fidelity.