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.

Just don’t do this. If you want to leave your marriage do it but the infatuation stuff ruins lives. I’ve seen it play out and it wasn’t pretty. OP, please cut off contact with the ex. Whatever happens with your marriage he isn’t The One.

For the second time OP, have you considered joint counselling as a way to bring some honesty and respect into this rather toxic relationship?

Heartsease68 DH would despise it. But as a last resort, perhaps.

But at the moment, you know exactly why you despise your husband. His failings are on view to you and you are dissecting them mercilessly. If you accuse him of letting you down, he has no idea of the context. The truth of what you are like, how little you think of him and respect him, how little you are prepared to be loyal to him and how unwilling you are to support him - all this isn't known to him. It will be cruel of you to 'talk' to him without making yourself vulnerable and allowing him to see that you both have flaws that could, if you wished, allow you both to lose respect for each other. At the moment, you are dithering over whether to choose him or not but taking his loyalty to you for granted. I think you might respect him more if you realised that his loyalty to you was not, in fact, a given. I also think you will never respect someone you don't feel the need to be frank with.

Even if he didn't enjoy it, I think he would prefer to know the truth about his marriage than live under the weight of your contempt, trying to give you his respect and utterly failing to win your approval. Can't you see? You've said you don't think he is happy. I can only imagine! What if he hates himself? You don't know what you're doing, drip feeding negativity to someone who doesn't realise you are no oracle.

Dandylie

Why do you insist on laying all the blame at the feet of your DH?

Just leave him.

Sorry OP but it sounds as if you’ve checked out of the marriage already - it always seems to be his fault yet you’re the one cheating - for his sake - leave him.

Just tell your husband that you’ve been cheating on him. Do the decent thing and let him choose wether he wants to be with someone who cheats or not. You are basically slagging him off for any little fault while hiding a huge one of your own. Awful.

You are unhappy in the marriage this ex sounds like a bastard to be honest and you’d never trust him. It sounds like you have fallen out of love with your husband now, the ex is a welcome distraction because you have gone without sex for all this time. Not an easy decision OP but this ex shouldn’t feature in that decision making I don’t think.

No sex with your husband in 3 years is a very bad sign. Combine that with these feelings for the other man, it means you've probably checked out of the marriage. You may like your husband as a friend, but do you still love him as a husband?

I wonder how long pp would be prepared to support a dh who fannied around playing at running a business which brings in £0 whilst they worked 12 hour days in a job they hate, paid all the bills, paid £20k or was it £30k for a nanny and invested a not insubstantial sum of money in said business whilst dh frittered away money to boot.
I think in that situation I would be extremely stressed and extremely resentful. And that's without even considering the roles regarding childcare. With such long days op must see little of her dc during the week. I wonder how much the dh engages with them. Or does the nanny do pretty much everything?

I have not read every post on this thread, but there are some things that jump out at me.

The ex came over and pressured you to have sex, then disappeared. He was with someone else at the time (his wife?).

On that alone, he should have been kicked to the kerb, not allowed anywhere near your marriage, particularly not when he finds himself single, and you are exhausted of all resources.

The second point is just that. You are being exhausted of all resources in your marriage (time, energy, money) and therefore vulnerable to his predatory advances.

He broke up with you when you were seventeen, he has toyed with you since, and pressured you to have sex when it suited him. He should NOT get to walk back into your life. He does NOT deserve this. You are in love with the person you wanted him to be when you were seventeen and not the person he is. The person he is has been in two long term relationships, including one marriage, and neither were with you. Have more self-esteem than to be his fall back. Do you really want to be coerced into sex every time he thinks this is okay? That is abuse. Reframe the pressured you into sex as abuse; this man is a predator and you are at the moment ripe prey.

Setting that issue aside (which I think you should), I don’t think the ‘if it were a woman’ arguments hold up. You are basically working till 10pm, a nanny is looking after the children, and your DH is running a company which you are financing. You are fed up with this. I don’t think this is a gender issue, unless it is that you don’t seem to have any boundaries. How did this situation come about, that you ended up in such an unequal partnership, when equality clearly matters to you? Why did you end up bankrolling a business you said he should seek other backing for? You said your H is very repressed, does he talk about feelings at all? Does he open up about things? Do you?

The problem with working such long days continually, hardly seeing your children, resenting supporting a business you did not want to start, is that your health will suffer. Adding a divorce into the mix (where you will most likely end up the non-resident parent and paying maintenance etc) will not help.

Do you have time for therapy for you? It would help to know how this situation came about, to work out how to improve it. I personally would not throw away a marriage on a crush who sounds like a predator but I also would not be happy with an emotionless marriage where I was simply the funding source.

On the business, it strikes me OP a) complains about being miserable working until ten every night and then b) complains about her DH not working until ten every night. I would suggest sitting down together and setting a clear objective, such as ten thousand pounds in turnover by the end of the year or something, to see if it's a goer or not.

I also agree with reframing the ex as a creepy user and abuser and I think OP needs therapy to see why she's so hung up on some guy she went out with briefly in her late teens.

In fairness, regardless of how rich your in-laws are, marriage tends to mean that expenses are covered between spouses. Why on earth should they bankroll him?

I do have some empathy for you. Stress can do funny things to us and you have been so deep in a hole that you can’t see which way is up anymore.

My final advice would be:

Improve your own working life. You might find that working 0.8 is feasible and gives you some breathing space.

Cut your childcare costs - can you nanny share or shorten the nanny’s hours?

Talk to your DH about the business - the business needs a chance and he can contine but he has to do something else like a pt job to bring in money. But be realistic, his earning power seems quite limited.

Arrange counselling.

Hope it all works out.

I think your marriage is already over, but this other guy, your ex, is bad news and is messing with your head with his own little power trip, blowing hot and cold.
You dont love him, even though you remain fascinated by him. Neither of these guys seem to be giving you anything close to what you need. I think the excitement has woken you up to how bored and dissatisfied you are in general with your life but its up to you to make changes. Is it your husbands choice or yours to not have sex for 3 years, because unless there was decent medical reason for it, id be long gone.
Bin them both

FGS, I wish people would stop going on about "if the genders were reversed" a man would get a roasting. No, he wouldn't.

Being a SAHM or SAHD is perfectly okay. But, Op has paid the Nanny £20,000 since December, because her DH isn't doing the jobs that a SAHD would do - rather he is devoting his time to a "career" that's bringing in Jack Shit.

If a woman was "working" on a little business of (let's say) making jewellery, and she refused to do any childcare, because she spent her days in the spare room, making the jewellery, and she insisted, that her husband paid a Nanny £2500 a month....if after EIGHT months, she hadn't sold a single piece of jewellery, and the man became exasperated and came on here asking for advice, I think he'd be told that the wife was unreasonable.

Furthermore, given how sensible us ladies usually are, I suspect that any woman doing so would have pulled her head out of her arse sooner than this, and realised that her "business" wasn't viable.

Huskylover1 The OP has said her husband does MORE childcare than her. So he does do some.

I don't think he hasn't sold anything at all either. A business takes time.

Besides which, if the man (in your scenario) then started an affair, he wouldn't get any sympathy.

He pursued me before when he was married so yes he would be interested

Huge red flag here Op. The guy is perfectly capable of cheating, and all that goes with this (lies/deceit/secrecy). This is NOT the sign of a good man.

Besides which, if the man (in your scenario) then started an affair, he wouldn't get any sympathy

Yes, I agree. I was just talking about the "work" side of things.

Agree with a PP who said that you really need to put a time limit of his business working now. And by that, I mean bringing in a decent amount of cash. At least enough to cover the Nanny, because otherwise, what's the point?

Our nanny finishes at 6:30pm, so DH puts them to bed. And he does do more than me with childcare on weekends (I’ll quite often have to go into work). He will also get up to do the children in the morning more than his fair share, but then I do a job where I need to be really sharp mentally and really struggle when I am exhausted.

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. Why are you providing the financial backing if you'd previously agreed he'd get his family to do so? Does he acknowledge that this was the deal? What if you were to say, the business needs to have made X amount by year end or I will pull the plug and you'll need to get a job that contributes to the household?

Agree with a PP who said that you really need to put a time limit of his business working now. And by that, I mean bringing in a decent amount of cash. At least enough to cover the Nanny, because otherwise,what's the point?

I kind of agree, but many women do work post kids. Many only break even or a little less than even. The reason they usually do it us to keep their career going. In this case it's to build up the business. In both cases, it 'should' pay off in the long run.

I think that's what people are getting at.

husky look at the ops most recent post if your man posted that he doesn't do mornings with the kids, or evenings and works at weekends so does less than half then......would you still have sympathy for him?

I do get what you are saying but I do think a man who did barely any childcare during the week and weekends posted like this, they would be getting a roasting.

You’re right - what my ex did when I was 27 (leading me on to think he wanted to be with me and leave his girlfriend he was living with but then not making any effort to meet up and talk, coming over at midnight drunk and staying the night and pressuring me into sex, then disappearing the next day and making me chase him for an answer as to what was going on and then telling me he had decided to stay with his girlfriend) was pretty awful behaviour and I should never have let him have another chance after that.

But he was always in touch saying how much he wanted to be with me etc then either saying he couldn’t be because of his situation or arranging to meet up then cancelling at the last minute.

Obviously since he’s been single we have met up but after the initial “love-bombing” it was again me trying to meet up and him seemingly happy to converse over text/sext or just arrange last minute hook-ups at his flat, which I didn’t want to do.

I guess what he has done most of my life is “breadcrumbing”. I just wanted to believe it was more than that.

Getting everyone’s views on him has been really helpful. I genuinely feel differently about him now than I did before this thread - I’m beginning to see he’s not a very nice human being. I only hope I can now use that to change how I feel about DH by comparison. He would never in a million years have done to anyone what my ex has done to me.

I’m glad you’re seeing the light OP, my ex of 9 years sounds like your ex only I was the long term partner and loads of other women were you. He was a complete bastard and yours sounds the same.

You obviously have issues with your husband, maybe these can be worked through, maybe not but don’t let the ex come into the equation.

The ex is a horrible person who is incapable of loving anyone, OP. Even if you can't sort your marriage out, take this opportunity to get rid of his toxic presence from your life.