Apologies in advance .. I know I won’t be able to make this brief .. but don’t want to drip feed.
Moved to Australia nearly 6 years ago with DH’s job – one DD here aged 9 - grown up DCs (from 1st marriage) back in UK. Older DCs now married and I have 3 GC.
Been with DH 15 years, married for the last 11. In first flush of romance everything was great .. and to be honest I used to think things had remained pretty good.
Just before we emigrated – at his work leaving drinks DH was distant and didn’t spend any time near me or talking to me, didn’t introduce me to anyone – I thought fair enough as it’s his last chance to say goodbye to colleagues. One of the guys got really drunk and started perving on me – making comments about my breasts, trying to touch me – my DH was nearby and just looked over and said, “oh, she can look after herself” and turned away. Speechless! He says that he knew I could hold my own and didn’t mean that he didn’t care what was happening, that the colleague was “harmless enough”.
I thought he was an arse for doing that and cursed myself for becoming so overweight and old that he must have felt ashamed to be married to someone like me (I’m 2 years older than DH). DH set off a few weeks later to start his new job and I stayed behind for a month or so to see our house sale through to completion. I felt like I was so far down the road of this whole ‘new life’ we had planned that I couldn’t change things at this late stage.
When DD and I arrived in Oz, one day I picked up the family iPad to discover that DH had synched his phone with it. So, I saw his messages to two of his ‘chums’ back in UK – one was to the perving mate from the leaving drinks - a wonderful piece of prose describing a woman DH had met via his new job – describing her come-to-bed eyes and gorgeous long dark hair… along with what he wished he could have done with her and that she would be visiting again the following week, so “you never know”. The other message was to a woman he used to work with – she started the conversation saying she had seen the e-mail he had sent to “name of another woman at work” and that she was surprised that he said he would have ‘given her one’ because she thought that “name of alternative woman at work” would have been more his type.
I told DH what I’d read – he deleted the messages and he said that he was ‘bigging himself up’, showing off because he now had this great life in an amazing location etc etc – I said that doesn’t make sense because there was no boasting about the location or the new job – it was all ‘banter’ with sexual innuendo and conversations that he agrees he wouldn’t have had in my earshot – so in my book, that means, a married person shouldn’t be having them.
This opened the floodgates for DH getting all his past ‘sins’ off his chest – admitted that for our entire relationship he had lied to me fortnightly when on work trips, mostly along with the perving man, this was for the entire time we lived in UK . He would ring me to say goodnight and say he was going to bed but would then carry on having a few more drinks with the work people ‘putting the world to rights’ over a beer or two. He says he didn’t know why he lied because he didn’t think I would have minded – I pointed out that I don’t care that he stayed up later but it’s a huge issue to me that he chose to lie to me, repeatedly and for so many years. During that time we even got married – I’m disgusted that he thought it was OK to marry me, knowing the whole time that he wasn’t being truthful to me.
He revealed that shortly after DD was born (a much planned and wanted baby) he was on a work trip, stayed out late and one of the women in the group had accosted him in the men’s toilets – that it had taken him by surprise – that there was kissing and fumbling but he suddenly came to his senses and told her ‘no’ after about 3 or 4 minutes. They had gone back and joined the group and nothing further happened. Do I believe this … no, I bloody don’t! Oldest story in the book – but he’s insistent and still maintains that’s what happened.
Since the big revelations I’ve just numbly gone from day to day – at times, for months at a time, I’ve thought I could get past it .. that it’s not so bad – but then I swing violently in the opposite direction and realise that he’s a lying, cheating rat who doesn’t deserve what he has – ie, me and DD.
He swore it’s all behind him now and he wants me 100% - that even when he was lying he always still wanted me and wants to be married to me.
18 months after the big confession session I caught him locked in the bathroom while we were visiting his DM – he says, looking at porn – I don’t know if that’s true – it was another slap in the face – he could have had me .. I was right there … everyone else was out … but he’d rather look at porn – or whatever!
We’ve carried on and time has gone by – my self-confidence is non-existent – for a while we continued to have sex – in the dark because I can’t bear to think of him looking at my 48 year old flabby mum body. Then he had a period of ED and couldn’t (or didn’t want to) have sex. Then DD started to come into our room each night with nightmares – just normal kid stuff – so now I just sleep in with her each night. We haven’t even touched each other’s hands for about a year now.
Then, a couple of weeks ago the straw that broke this camel’s back - I discovered, on the family iPad again, a photo synched from his phone – that he’d tried to take of me in the bathroom under the bathroom door – luckily I was in the shower and the photo only got the edge of the shower base and a blurry outline of my ankles behind the shower screen. But …. W. T. F. !!!!!!!!!!! He says he realised he may never see me naked again and wanted to.
I know that I need to leave, I know that I shouldn’t have stayed this long. When I’m feeling strong I just do my own thing – involve myself in hobbies and DD’s school activities – I work FT. He thinks this means everything is fine, delights in doing domestic stuff, like housework, making packed lunches, helping with DD’s school stuff like all is well with the world. Then, every now and then, I can’t keep a lid on it and I explode (never in front of DD) and rant and rave at him – he comes out with the same old shit each time, the same non-explanations, repeats everything I say with a bleating “I didn’t mean to be …” at the beginning – insert disrespectful, hurtful, disloyal .. etc etc. He sits there with a face on him like I’ve kicked his puppy and uses a thin, plaintive voice … I don’t know why .. it only ever winds me up more .. I don’t bloody feel sorry for him!
Now it’s crunch time – I read another thread on here earlier where the OP said she couldn’t understand why her DH wasn’t constantly apologising, trying to make things right … I could have written that. Part of me just wants him to show me how sorry he is … I’ve even told him that .. told him that if he wanted me, like he says he does, that he needs to be the one to start ‘the’ conversation – show me that he does really want me. But still he does nothing – I can see the relief on his face when we slip back into the fake, barely sticking together domestic ‘harmony’ – him making packed lunch .. me getting DD ready for school… Arrrrrggghhhhh!
I can’t bear the thought of ripping DD’s world apart – he loves her and does so much for her – and, of course, she loves him. I also can’t bear the thought of the humiliation of going back to UK and facing my family with my second failed marriage behind me.
My littlest GDD is having issues at school at the moment and I feel so helpless trying to support my older DD from the other side of the world – all I can think about it what I could do to help if only I was there.
I’ve told DH I want to go back – he’s said that he would have to give up his job and come too – even if we weren’t together – that he understands all my reasons why but would need to be near DD and that he would do that.
If I go back I won’t have a job – we threw all our money into moving here so will have no money to buy or rent a house. I considered buying a 2nd hand caravan and putting it in my older DD’s garden – at least it would give me and DD somewhere to stay initially – until I can find a job.
Then, sometimes I look at him and can remember how it felt when I first fell in love with him, and desperately want him to want me – then it hits me again that he was never the person I thought he was. This is just so hard – I pulled myself up from nothing when my first marriage ended and struggled through a lot of my older DC’s childhood – and now here I am facing having to do the same all over again.
How do I find the self-respect and resolve to do this?
Sorry it’s so long .. TLDR: In Oz - disrespectful, lying, cheating husband says he wants to make marriage work but then does nothing – I need to find the self-respect and strength to move back to UK with DD to be near older DCs. Where do I start?