Hi, please could I have some advice? It's a long one.
17 years ago after my son was born and he was 6 weeks old, I discovered my husband was a heavy user of Internet porn. I had always made it clear porn was a definite NO in our relationship. I know not everyone feels that way, and I respect that, but I do, and I made that clear. What hurt the most is that the history revealed he had done in while I was in hospital having our son and whilst he was alone with my son whilst I was having a sleep upstairs in the early days, amongst many other times, probably 3 or 4 times a week, whenever the opportunity arose. I was devastated but full of hormones and fear as my world had just been turned upside down. Both my family and his became involved and both persuaded me I'd be better off staying in the marriage and trying to build my new family. This took a huge toll on my mental health and I started taking antidepressants. We went on to have 2 more children.
During the marriage there have been a lot of lies, he has lied about many financial things and got us into debt to the time of 15,000. He hid this from me and ended up with a CCJ. He paid the money back at £550 a month which meant that the family was under financial pressure. I was having my third child, it meant I couldn't take time off work before my baby was born despite having placenta praevia and terrified I could haemorrhage, and afterwards I was only able to take 5 months off. I'm self employed so if I don't work I do not earn.
This took a huge toll on my mental health and I began drinking heavily (around a bottle a night). I was then diagnosed with bipolar disorder 4 years ago. I'm now medicated and ok, but continued to drink heavily. I sought help with this in February of this year and have been sober since and working with a counsellor. I'm seeing things a lot more clearly and can see my drinking has been a way of coping with pain, unhappiness, and an unwillingness to face my feelings and emotions.
We don't have much sex in the marriage and I suspected all along this is because of excessive wanking on my husbands part and he's literally got nothing left for me. He swears he's not used porn since the episode 17 years ago, I've kind of believed him and used the drinking to stop me questioning too much.
Anyway, my middle child is very ill, and he and I were in hospital for 2 days over the weekend. When I returned I found used tissues in my office, where I see clients, which stank of semen. My husband occasionally works from there and he was doing so on Monday before my son and I came home. I confronted him and he said it wasn't him, and blamed our teenage sons. He even went to ask them in turn whether they knew anything about it. They said no and I said, I completely believe them as I've brought them up to be honest and open, and why would they hide in my office to have a wank anyway?
After 48 hours, my husband came home and said to me, "I'm sorry, I've behaved appallingly" so finally admitted it was him. I have no idea if porn is involved, he says not, and that his only crime was masturbating and he did it in the toilet then popped into the study and accidentally left the tissues. Fucking weird behaviour, no? I said he was disgusting for blaming our son's, he agrees and says he will apologise to them.
The point here is that I understand masturbation is totally normal, and don't have a problem with it at all, but it's affected our sexual relationship so much and I do suspect the use of porn, which is unacceptable to me.
I've consulted a solicitor this week about divorce. He's said he will make things nasty for me if I cite porn use leading to a breakdown of sex in the marriage as unreasonable behaviour and tell everyone about me being Bipolar, my drinking and generally that he's been living with a cold wife all of these years.
I'm absolutely devastated. I started this post to ask advice about whether there is a way forward in the marriage, or I should LTB. I think I've answered my own question.
Please please offer me some advice, words of wisdom, or experiences of similar situations, and thanks for reading if you got this far!