My life is in ruins - Affair with married man

[Stormtheprincess]

Hi

Two years ago my husband had an affair which resulted in the end of our marriage.

Fast forward 3 months and I became involved in a sexting relationship with a former colleague over Facebook.

This continued daily for for many months and I became emotionally attached to this man despite knowing he had a history of cheating on his wife several times over the years. He openly told me about his conquests. For whatever reason that wasn’t enough to put me off.

We met up and started seeing each other in person and I ended up pregnant with twins.

I told him about it and he said we couldn’t continue to be involved if I went ahead with the pregnancy. For weeks I went back and forth and kept changing my mind about what to do. My biggest fear was that he was lying to me and was involved with someone other than me and his wife as he had previously mentioned he had an affair that went on for years and years and said that woman had been in touch to meet up again but he declined. He came to my house, held my hand and looked into my eyes and promised me it was only me he wanted and there wasn’t anyone else and hadnt been the entire time we were I involved. He swore on the lives of his adult kids and grandson and in the end I had a termination but by this time I was 14 weeks gone.

On the day of the abortion he was at a family wedding and he did check on me that before morning but I was angry with him so he didn’t contact me again the rest of the day.

He said he hadn’t been on his phone the whole day.

Things got difficult for me after that, I was filled with regret and terrible guilt. I was open with him about my feelings. He seemed fairly supportive at that time.

I felt we had gotten closer due to it all and became more attached to him and felt like I loved him.

Something felt off, I can’t explain why but I asked him who the woman was that he had the affair with for years and he refused to tell me. That made alarm bells ring because I thought maybe he’s worried I find out something he doesn’t want me to know. After I pushed him he told me who she was and I knew of her but didn’t know her personally. I messaged her on Facebook and asked her if she was still in contact with him and stupidly I told him I was doing this.

She said she wasn’t but asked me a lot of questions which made me suspicious.

2 weeks went by and she messaged me and showed me pictures he has sent her on the day I had the abortion, so he had been on his phone and was busy sending her messages as I was bleeding out his twins. She also told me dates they had been together and send me copies of messages.

He came to my house and I said I can’t believe you lied to me and I believed you. Why that wasn’t hard for me to believe I’m not sure as he had been lying to his wife for 30 years so why would I be an exception to the rule?

He begged for forgiveness and apologised said he ended it after the abortion. For a few days I went along with it but I became ill with anxiety. I didn’t sleep for 4 days and couldn’t think straight.

In mid August he had just left my house after we spent a lovely evening together. The other woman messaged again and showed me new information where he instructed her to lie to me and told her I was nobody and he didn’t love me he loved her.

I snapped and got ready and walked round to his house, knocked his door and he answered. I said I couldn’t listen to his lies any longer it was too painful and I had to tell his wife because if I didn’t he would somehow manage to talk me round into forgiving him again and that would only led to more pain. He then got in his car and drove away and his wife came to the door and I told her the truth. That he’s lied to her for 30 years.

I haven’t heard from him since. I deleted my social media.

I’m absolutely distraught over it all, I feel like such a fool and the guilt is killing me. I have terrible nightmares and my anxiety is crippling. I can’t go on like this. I’m in therapy but it’s going to take time.

I feel ashamed that given I was cheated on I entered a relationship with a married man and even more ashamed I aborted two innocent babies to continue to see him and now it’s all been for nothing.

I think every word he ever said was a lie. It’s all so confusing. I just cry all day. Don’t go out and go over the messages time and time again trying to make peace with it all or find answers.

I would love to sit down with him and get some closure but I know that won’t happen.

He’s totally broken me and I have no idea where I go from here.

Surely his wife had a jolly good idea of what he'd been up to for 30 odd years? I cannot believe she was naive. There are wives who turn a blind eye and keep the marriage going for the sake of appearances, the kids, their financial stability

I suspect that the wife has been well aware for a long time, but for whatever reason she has accepted the situation.

It could be different though, now that OP has thrown it into her face. I imagine that she has been accepting because she hasn't had to face the humiliation of any of his women coming to her door - now this has happened and her bubble (and family life) are threatened she might give him hell.

He won't change, though. Ever.

JHB I agree that it is the preferred modality for mild to moderate depression. But it can be very damaging for some people with serious trauma like the OP because it deals with faulty thinking, not understandable feelings. It will not explore what led the OP to this place. It will not allow her to grieve for past experiences.

CBT lends itself to experimental studies because it is standardised and replicable and works over a short timescale. Other therapies take longer but can have longer term benefits. GPs love CBT because it can be seen as a quick fix. Six sessions and you're away. But people aren't always that easy to fix and many people who have had a course of CBT end up looking for something more.

Trauma based CBT takes longer and looks at other aspects, like family history and uses a more humanistic, person-centred approach.

Reading a few articles in Psychology Today does not make you an expert. The picture is much more complex than you present.

Someone early on in the thread said this whole process feels like self harming and I agree with that. The very act of starting this discussion thread on Mumsnet feels like you are continuing to look for a kicking.

My advice would be to get off this thread, stop picking the scab. Keep up the therapy and start looking to the future. You need to cut him out of your life forever and start focusing your attention elsewhere. It's perhaps trite advice but helping others would be a good place to start. Make your life story be about more than this dreadful situation.

Reading a few articles in Psychology Today does not make you an expert

@Carthage And you are an expert are you?

Where did you get your degree in patronisation? The cheek of it- honestly! You come along on your high horse and accuse me of reading Psych Today. You have no idea. Do go and do one.

JHB not claiming to be an expert, no. Just not liking people claiming to have psychological knowledge giving crap advice.

Anyway don’t want to derail thread further so I will go and do one.

I think you need to start liking yourself again. Maybe start with something small: go and volunteer for something, anything that appeals to you?

@Carthage Maybe take your own advice re giving advice. Unless of course you are a psychiatrist who is wiling away some free time on MN. You are laughable- what I said is common knowledge and yes, of course the OP needs a proper assessment but that goes without saying.

Tell us more about what happened when you confronted the wife. That might hold the key to all of this.

@MaidenMotherCrone -I'm really disappointed at the paranoia people are having in response to OP. There's no way of saying she's also another poster or not, so it's best to just be helpful. If she is also someone else, I think the mods would be able to tell from her IP etc usually, unless she's a technical wizz.

OP- if it was me and I decided to tell the wife, it'd be partly based on resentment and anger at how he was treating me. And that's understandable. He should face the consequences of how he's treated you. I understand that it would've hurt the wife, who's done nothing wrong, but arguably it's important for her to know, so she can make informed decisions about her life, anyway.

@Interestedwoman your IP address has very little to do with making a story up. It will indicate a PBP however. Not all trolls are PBP.

AFAIK IP address are changed randomly on pcs and using a different device in a different location gives a different IP address FWIW.

On topic now...

I wonder if the wife simply sighed and said 'Oh not another one. Run along dear and get over it all.'

I doubt very much she knew nothing and if not, I doubt her knowing will change his behaviour.

Oh do stop squabbling, it is most unbecoming.

OP, if you are still around I hope you are feeling better. I agree that getting involved in something else (not necessarily good works) is a good idea. I took up a craft activity I had given up many years ago and the combination of good company in classes and the meditative nature of practicing and making things did help. I can say that as a 60+ professional person I certainly never imagined I could be taken in by the piece of scum who ensnared me. I almost felt it was social work! It illbehoves people to criticise you when they have not been on the receiving end of this type of behaviour.

@higgyhog Have you considered that some posters may have some experience of this kind of thing (to a greater or lesser degree) but decide not to reveal everything about their own lives in the thread? Just because people aren't declaring an experience doesn't mean it's never happened to them at some point of their lives.

Not the ones who arent being kind...

Trauma based CBT takes longer and looks at other aspects, like family history and uses a more humanistic, person-centred approach.

I'm not claiming to be a psychotherapist either, but I'm quoting the thoughts of one who is (and who successfully treated me for trauma over 18 months). CBT was developed for use in a controlled environment, and can work very well on the purpose for which it's designed. It was never intended to be a long-term 'cure' for such serious conditions as PTSD/cPTSD (the latter of which was my diagnosis); nor was it intended to be a 'catch-all' treatment for trauma. But as far as the NHS is concerned it seems to have become both.

I'm a strong advocate for EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) therapy, because it worked for me and it's worked for others. I've been reading a thread elsewhere on Mumsnet which is populated by trauma victims, many of whom report the same experience. EMDR can't take traumatic memories away, but it can strip away the emotion associated with them and enable an objectivity and clarify of vision I never would have thought possible beforehand.

CBT addresses the symptoms of trauma. EMDR can actually alleviate them. It's said you can never be cured of PTSD and it will always be with you in some form. It's hard to say at first, just a year after concluding treatment, but I believe mine's gone. And the academic research appears to illustrate the same conclusion. It's available on the NHS. As to OP being 'old enough to know better': here's another truism from my psychotherapist. The vast majority of his clients were between 35 and 65. If you're a victim of trauma you don't necessarily know or realize it until middle-age. That's because of pure self-preservation. The mind won't allow anything in that's too difficult for it to handle.

I too have made poor (albeit different) decisions as a result of the experiences that contributed to my condition. Trauma affected my ability to form adult relationships, without the smallest degree of insight into why. I never understood why, as a reasonably skilled communicator who is by no means stupid, I was such a poor judge of character, or why others picked up 'warning signals' that a person was bad news when I seemed to find this impossible. Why was it that in my case, this 'gut feeling' people talked about was apparently non-existent?

All is crystal clear now. A PP was right when they suggested some people don't have the slightest idea how trauma can affect the brain. It's a psychological injury, as much as a physical injury can manifest in a broken leg. But it can be treated. If this is you, you don't have to be stuck in this hideous limbo forever. I am proof of that.

yes, it was the "what do you expect if you get involved with a married man" type answers that I was talking about.

My own experiences would tend to confirm what MVAS says about trauma. I looked for but could not afford specialist counselling which has resulted in me taking far longer to heal - and I still have problems.