Husband grieving for OW

[Filly2011]

Anyone had experience of this?
Husband had 14 month affair with woman at work. Told me about it when she finally dumped him in favour of her husband. DH says he wants to keep marriage and willing to work at it. After months of counselling he now admits he is very upset as still loves her and knows he’s lost her. I feel very cut up by this. Can’t stop thinking about it.

Thanks once again for the kind replies.
It’s really helpful to hear how people got through similar and worse.
I’m hoping the counselling will help me detach and get less emotional.
I am going to plan things to do every night after work (even staying-in things) so I’m not tempted to start wallowing in self pity or phoning dh.
I have to accept that this just takes a long time.

Just keep going OP
I would also stop going to joint counseling with your H as well as you need space from him and your counsellor doesn't sound very good anyway.
I would also block his phone calls so you can get used to not having to communicate with him.

'I’m hoping the counselling will help me detach and get less emotional'

OP, you're in pain, you're hurting and that's totally understandable. You've been so badly betrayed, and treated appallingly by this man. You are entitled to your emotions, whatever they are at any given time. Counselling should support you to feel that pain, in a safe and supportive way, so that you can start to heal. I'm not saying this to put you off- I was in therapy for several years and it was the best thing I've ever done for myself, but it was also bloody gruelling at times. Counselling will allow you to focus fully on you, without him there as a part of the process, and it will be tough at times, but with the right professional to support you, it really sets you free

I think that having plans, even small ones, every evening is a great idea, and yet another way of putting yourself back at the centre of your life

Oh OP, have just read your full thread.

Fuck him, fuck her and the horse they rode in on. You can do so much better.

My mum is 65, been in her own for 12 years (widowed) and is as happy as a pig in shit. You can do this.

Also, you always get people on here telling you off for being angry with the ow

I think it’s more that people get concerned when the betrayed spouse is ONLY angry at the OW and not at her husband. Because then the wife is very vulnerable To being hurt even more.

It stops her moving forward if she sees her husband as the injured party who was seduced by an evil harlot, she has to feel sorry for him ( poor lamb) and feel guilty for being such a crap wife that he was so easily stolen.

It makes it so much harder - bit like @Filly2011 dealing with her pathetic, self pitying husband.

I know there are some OW who genuinely didn’t know that he was married, especially if it’s a long distance affair.

But That’s so very different from the Ops situation , when the OW was actually shagging her husband in her bed. I don’t think I could ever get over that either.

IMO @Filly2011 is doing well not to have buried them both under the patio.

Don’t phone your H. Do anything to distract yourself from that temptation.

Don’t be “on tap” / an easy option for him. Provide him with practical or emotional support, “friendship” or sex.

If he wants to resume your relationship and IF you are still willing to consider that, then he should make some serious effort! And STFU about his feelings about OW and his other woes.

He’s currently not even saying he wants to resume your relationship, or making any effort at all. So he shouldn’t get to have any of your time, attention or other resources. Let him deal with the reality of life without you.

I agree with lottapianos. You have been treated very badly. It is normal to feel pain.

How did you get on with therapist /counsellor?
Was it ok?

I think the therapy will be really helpful but atm I’m just a raw mess.

Sometimes I think I’ll never get over it all going on in this house, him cooking her dinner, using our bed etc. Also the fact that she knows me and has been my friend.

he has been an utter fool and he’s a horrible person.

I also think she’s a horrible person - and a 2 faced cow.

I think being in the house at such a raw time must be very triggering for you.
Is there a way to sell the property, maybe rent in area whilst you make decisions?

Even if you made (the mad) decision to get back with him, it certainly wouldn't be in that house where he disrespected you.

I’m in my office

Let it out Filly, if you can. You have every right to feel the way you do. Your pain needs to be felt, it's real and it's there for a good reason.

OP it sounds like your still going over everything in your head looking for answers here two:

1. Both your H and OW are crappy people
2. You better of having neither in your life

What you have been through is just one of the most spiteful things that one human can do to another. The way you have been treated by your husband and the OW is despicable. And then for him to have the audacity to play victim, just goes to show what a self-absorbed; nasty piece of work he is. They have not only broken up your family, but made you feel uncomfortable in your own home. And yet he expects you to ‘let him grieve’. It would be funny if it were not so heartbreaking.

You’re going to feel awful for a while. People often don’t want to say it, as it’s not nice to tell someone ‘yes, this is going to feel like shit’. But, it will get better with time.

The things which will help you feel better faster are also the things which are hardest to do:
Not contacting DH
Ignoring his messages
Changing the layout of your home/ the room you sleep in - even potentially selling the house
Telling friends and family what has happened

I’m so sorry this hurts so bad. You’re not alone with this though and you can come back and vent as much as you like. It’s impossible to be strong all of the time; so cry when you need to; get angry when you need to and do whatever you feel up to doing.

Thinking of you.

All of it is horrible and shitty and a total nasty, nasty betrayal. I'm wishing you even more strength than you are currently displaying (which is considerable).

When my OH had an emotional affair and was lying and then I found out, I felt like I wanted to be Samson and bring down the pillars of the temple with my bare hands.
I honestly was so ENRAGED that I felt physically powerful. I nearly took every door in the house off its hinges slamming them, while he sat quietly.
What I would have done if he's shagged her in OUR bed, well I don't know, I dread to think.
Are you going with him to the therapist appointment he mentioned? I wouldn't. What would be the point?

Oh, Filly, we have had parallel lives, from the sulky holidays, the grudging phone calls with her in the room (so many times his phone was switched off) and the general silence and despising.

She was also in my house and being f* in my bed. Nobody ever talks about the disrespect and contempt of a man in love during an affair. We are being compared, we are being dumped on, we are seen as the Source of All Their Misery. It is so cruel.

I am afraid there are no hints, there is just getting through it one day at a time, one moment at a time. Be with your friends as much as you can. The fact that they like you helps soften the abuse memories.

Two things that helped me:

His behaviour does not determine your worth
"When you are going through Hell, keep on going!" - Winston Churchill

@Filly2011 You probably won't believe me, but you are better off than many betrayed spouses.

What often happens is that the cheater will say all the right things and move heaven and earth to get the betrayed spouse back on board. He'll go to counselling and work on the marriage, show remorse and explain what a horrible mistake his affair was. He may be sincere or he may not. Years can go by where the relationship may seem superficially fine.

Except they aren't. Somehow things just aren't right. The betrayed spouse continues to ruminate, wonder whether he has told her the whole truth, fear that the OW meant more than he is letting on and that he may still be thinking of her.

Ask me how I know. Truly I wish I had been forced into pulling the plug there and then. These years I spent trying to make it work are years I'll never get back. Which is so much worse at our age. But even now I'm glad I finally got out and started to focus on my life, my needs, my future.

Do you know when I turned the corner? When I suddenly thought "Why I am sitting here waiting for him to decide whether he's coming back to me?" I picked up the phone, and told him I didn't want him back. It still hurt, but I felt like a big weight had been lifted.
Take the control out of his hands, and leave him to his wallowing. The one thing you do definitely know in all of this, is that if she crooked her little finger, he'd be straight back to her. I'd be inclined not to answer if he phones as well, let him stew.

I would definitely get rid of that bed, Filly, and all the bedding.

There is nothing wrong with being emotional, with experiencing the emotions and expressing them - just look at what he has put you through. Stoicism is not your goal here, and there is nothing to be gained from the stiff upper lip.

Detachment should be your goal and it can be attained step by step even while seemingly at the mercy of the fierce emotions you are feeling and will feel. Detachment is letting your anger put a healthy barrier between you and him, his words, his personality, and his behaviour. It's disengaging from him emotionally and psychologically, edging him and his unreason and irrationality from the space it is occupying in your head and making room only for you, for decency, and for order there. It's escaping from the morass he wants to drag you into.

You need to do it because engagement with him is engagement with the toxic. It is hard to do when everything in you wants him to give you an acknowledgement that what he did was utterly wrong, that he defamed you, disrespected you, and treated you terribly but he will not do that. Detachment is the ability to draw a line under what he did and move on without that apology, that closure. It's the process of letting your wound heal itself.

Detachment is how you will put him and what he has done into a box, a 'left luggage office' of sorts, and regain your own identity, reclaim your own individual sense of purpose, reinhabit your own life, on your own.

@Filly2011 I agree with @FlowerArranger it is better to know how betrayed you were, better to know how flawed he is.

@81Byerley good decision! I would do that now I know but in my younger years, so many times I waited to see if somebody was going to decide I was good enough. I wish I could have a word with that person!

Burn the bed and all his clothes