Husband's affair advice needed

[Clarrie59]

Hello,
I recently found out my DH was having an affair with a woman at work. He has worked with her for several years and we counted her as a friend before whatever went on went on. They were intimate for a year apparently. He says they have broken up (her doing).
I insisted that they no longer work together if there is any chance of repairing my marriage and he told me she would leave the firm. She is reluctant to leave, but insists their relationship will only be as friends from now on. However she also told him (I read an email) that she hopes he will still give her a hug and a kiss when she needs it.
This is not someone who has ended a relationship is it?

Clarrie, I think it took me two months to even really BELIEVE that my friend had honestly betrayed me like that. And kept up the facade of being my friend for so long - eighteen months of lying to my face, of lying to my children's faces and her children too. I fully understand how hard it is to get your head around it.

But I promise you, she won't have got off scot free. Not at all.

I wish you all the strength in the world x

Oh, @Clarrie59 I know just how you feel. It’s so awful, but you will be ok, honest. I took mine back loads of times as I was so scared and dreading life without my family unit. But it was so much better than I ever thought - hang in there 💐

[quote alliwantisagoodnightssleep]@Clarrie59 anger is good and you should be angry at both of them. In my opinion you should stop referring to the scum as your DH. There is nothing darling about him or what he has done to you.[/quote]
DH also stands for dickhead. 😉

@Annonymiss123 now that is one DH we can all agree with!!

Hello,
This is a sad read. One thing that stands out is she left him in your initial thread, so him saying he’s come to you and wants it to work with you, sounds like he didn’t have a choice?. I would be telling him
Where to go

That woman who slept with your husband is no friend, Clarrie. I’d be staggered too. A total stranger was bad enough. I kept thinking “why would anyone do such a terrible, terrible thing to a woman and children they don’t know who never did a thing to them? What monstrous kind of selfishness is this?” (I’m not bothering to mention my H’s choices here. He was responsible for the munted shitshow we went through) If it had been a so-called friend it would have been a double betrayal. But please believe me, affairs are rooted in bloody la-la land in a huge selfish bubble, real life and real love and real relationships are about building and sharing a life together, sticking with it even when it’s hard or humdrum because real life is not a sodding picnic every day. Somebody has to be the fucking grown-up.
Do not listen to a word that comes out of his mouth. He’s an idiot of the first order who has trashed a lovely family for selfish reasons which in a few weeks’ time he won’t even understand himself, because he’ll spend the rest of his life wondering “What was I THINKING?”
Stay strong and trust in time and reality to show them what a pair of selfish arses they’ve been. It’s a double betrayal for you. You’re reeling that your husband you thought of as trustworthy has done the worst thing he could possibly do to you and you’re reeling that a woman who could be so nice on the outside could be so bloody rotten to the core on the inside. People like you don’t understand this behaviour because you are a good honest person with standards, morals and integrity. These pair fall way short.
Hope you and your children are coping. It’s the worst thing they could put you through so don’t beat yourself up if you feel crap or like you’re drowning, you’ll make it. X

LovefromJ are you for real? Is this heavy sarcasm? If this is advice your vocation really lies somewhere else. 🙈

Please hold onto that anger for the time being. It will hold you in good stead for next phase. It took me a year or so to find some sort of peace.

"sticking with it even when it’s hard or humdrum because real life is not a sodding picnic every day. Somebody has to be the fucking grown-up.^"
^
Yes, This in the end is about not taking responsibility & caring, about you, his kids. His promises. It is all about him feeling good, his own little dick ego.
Hedonistic, entitled, childish.
He always knew there was a risk of you discovering, & in the end he wasn't even able to keep his own secret.

*Wookie:

People like you don’t understand this behaviour because you are a good honest person with standards, morals and integrity. These pair fall way short.

Thank you for saying this 🙏🥺

• for all of us who didn't understand, couldn't believe such behaviour was possible, because we would never dream of causing such hurt to people we love, or know, or even don't know.

You're on the good side here, Clarrie - the nicest team! He's fucked up big time.

Melowww you’re welcome. I said it because it’s true. It’s incomprehensible that anyone would deliberately hurt someone they love. A lot of them actually do love their wives/ husbands/ partners but still do it. This is why you are reeling and it takes so long to really see them for who they are. When it happened to me and I found out, I was so blindsided by his behaviour that I still related to him as if he was the man I thought he was. My husband said he would end it immediately and I believed him, because in my head he was still the man who must have surely lost his mind because he would never, ever do something like this to me. He then used the next two months behind my back to panic about upsetting his mistress, even though the coward wanted out, he treated her like shit until she chucked him an ultimatum and he dumped her. I believed him totally and was annihilated when I found out that even when I was on the floor mentally because of his shit, he was still lying to me. I was so angry with myself later that I believed he had finished it and didn’t demand proof. Why? Why did I believe a cheating liar? Because I still hadn’t accepted what he was capable of. Because I didn’t understand the behaviour.
I do understand why they do it, now, however, but not in a compassionate way. I mean I know exactly why they do it. The reasons for it aren’t pretty. Weakness, selfishness and lack of integrity are all ugly.
This is why you never compare yourself EVER to the OW or OM. You are not and never were the ‘problem’ which the affair was supposed to ‘solve’. Their issues led to their poor choices, not yours. No excuses. Ever.
Affair partners are nothing to do with the betrayed partner, nothing. They are not better or more cheerful or more sexy. The response to problems in your marriage or partnership is always dialogue and effort. If that fails, leave. Affairs are a deliberate choice made by consenting adults and the level of deception involved takes planning and forethought. All deliberate acts. There are no excuses for this. They are not temporarily mentally incapacitated, they are not driven to it, their unhappiness or dissatisfaction are not reasons to betray. They are excuses. Like toddlers use when caught with their hand in the cookie jar. No excuses there. No excuses for a grown man getting caught with his hand in the pussy jar, either. If you have to keep something secret outside of it being a nice surprise for someone, you shouldn’t be doing it. Those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing.

Stay strong. ladies, we are a force to be to reckoned with. Wear your dignity like a crown. (Says the woman who poured curry sauce on the shirt he wore at the hotel and binned it and wrote all sorts of shit on his chinos with a sharpie before cutting the legs off. I call it ‘therapy” 😂 )

Love your post, Wookie. Too many excellent and memorable points to highlight!

Yes, there is nothing pretty about the calculated deception of your closest friend in order to fuck their worst enemy.

It's just horrible behaviour, especially as the best friend is often tied to you by children, home and life. So faces the dilemma of humiliating, unacceptable compromise or demolition of life as they and their children know (and often loved) it.

The shock is quite bad. I found the shock really debilitating. I took ages to cope. Was blind-sided.

I don't know if I'll ever be the same again. I guess maybe it's good I won't be so naive. But I quite liked naivety 😐

The use of the Sharpie was inspired 😄😄

I threw away each of the silky soft tight-fitting undershorts I'd got him (as he'd said his old underwear needed replacing). And just left the holey ones in the drawer. And I stopped ironing them.

I'm a real rebel, aren't I? 🥺

Oh it's amazing how hard it is to cut that emotional cord so quickly. @Thewookiemustgo amazing post describing the disorientation and incomprehension. I was in such shock I even offered to help him move his stuff and build new furniture in his flat. It was only when I realized I was actually offering to get down on my knees and build the bed that he would then be fucking her on that I withdrew the offer. I had no anger for the first few months- just shock and utter devastation, and it took ages to reprogramme from trying to make his life better. I WISH I had cut the legs of his trousers off or something.

And all through he kept whining that he loved and respected me and I was a great person and had been a great wife. Love and respect for me aren't nouns - they aren't abstract things you stick in a box while you fuck someone else. They are verbs, they are actions. They are how you treat someone and how you are willing to do the hard thing, make the effort or even make a sacrifice to protect them from harm.

I was so utterly baffled. Someone would literally have had to power-saw through my arms before I would hurt him the way he willfully hurt me... but what did he say about it? "I felt like I had a right to take this happiness for myself"..... as you guys say, total selfishness. And we had a happy marriage. He was loved, cared for, there were no fights, sex available any time he wanted it, he was supported in pursuing his dreams in any way he wanted. Even he couldn't tell me anything I should have done differently ("there has just always been a gap" I was told..... first I heard of it, after 21 years!)......

Sorry- it's easy to go on and on once you open the floodgates! 🤔

All power to all you women going through this right now. Trust me, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

One thing I have noticed (unscientifically) is that the people who are cheated on are often the givers in the marriage. The cheaters were already the takers - it makes sense because of the selfishness/ self indulgence it takes to do it. That makes the betrayal extra unforgivable, but it also means when the giver gets over it, they have a chance to regravitate around their own pleasure and wellbeing. This happened for me.... I rediscovered myself, and I realized how much lighter I Felt - how much more bandwidth for me and my feelings and wants....

Then I went out and found myself a red hot, muscly, hunk of a man who is the biggest giver I have ever known........ I had no idea one could be loved so well.... now I look back at the marriage I had thought I was happy in and reflect on how deprived I was for how long......how hard I worked to make something good that was not truly nourishing me......life really is way better without serving a 'taker husband!

@mellowww you did better than me!

@mellowww The Sharpie was very cathartic. I could vent all my potty mouth spleen over his nice new chinos he bought for the occasion (their first and only night together. Shagging in city hotels was a daytime/ early evening activity during work hours to avoid suspicion) I realised I had been washing and ironing stuff that had been on hotel floors/ bars of hotel chairs and even to her flat. Worse still she had had her skanky paws all over it. I’m allergic to dogs and very allergic to that bitch. 🤢 I got rid of all his underwear. I’d have chucked everything but I felt like I was on the verge of being a looneytunes and didn’t know where I’d stop if I started. One night I remember waking up at 2am and being obsessed with the (very expensive 😂) overnight bag that had gone on their only night away together. I got up out of bed and binned it. Got back in bed with a big grin on my face. Sometimes it’s the little things.....😂
Seriously though, the disorientation is appalling, I wanted to die, if we hadn’t had kids I don’t think I’d still be here, and no, I’ll never be the same person again. I’ve been left with the feeling I couldn’t trust Mother Teresa or Gandhi, even though they’re dead, let alone a mere man. 🙁

@BraveGoldie you sound like I was at the beginning. So much stuff early on I wish I hadn’t been so damn reasonable about, but I was so in shock I was relating to him the way I always did before I found out what he was capable of. Give me that time over again and I would behave totally differently. Shock probably kept me out of jail though.

@BraveGoldie 21 years, what a shock! If it’s any consolation we were about to have our 30 th wedding anniversary the year I found out. Talk about feeling like you got chucked on the scrap heap! I’m never going to let anybody make me feel that old and worthless again. Nobody. Ever.

Thank you for contributing to this. It really helps to hear what others have gone through - Altho I wish none of us had to.
I have got rid of our whole bed - chopped up and put in skip-all the towels and bed linen. I know it seems mad but I don’t care.
Husband seems alarmed by how angry I am. Says I’m using him as an emotional punch bag (think he might have a therapist).
Husband also told me OW would be “devastated” if she could see how upset I am. I wonder if he told her I had checked out of the marriage (I really hadn’t). Anyway I hate her for doing this. PleAse don’t tell me I’m blaming it all on her. I’m not. But I hate her for being “a kind friend who had so much sympathy for me.” (his words). She was supposed to be my kind friend too. She is a nasty bitch. She was interacting with my children while shagging their father in our home.
I hate them both.
This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me (and I’ve had cancer).
Trying to live normally because you have children and a job and a house is torture when you just want to escape somehow from all the crap that’s been dumped on you.
Massive sympathy for anyone who is going through this - or has gone through it.

I hope you told him that you don't give a flying fuck how OW feels, & if he pours out another syrupy word about OW & how she feels you will punch his lights out.
She dumped him, he still swooning about her.
Stop talking to your OH, he is still hurting you

Stop talking to him! Emotional punchbag indeed, - so who does he suggest that you take this out on if not him then, the kids? 😥
How can you even stand to be near this pathetic piece of shit, what do you say back to him when he is telling you all this stuff about the wonderful other woman? You know he just wants someone to talk to her about don’t you? I assume his mates (if they haven’t quietly dropped his disloyal arse) would tell him to fuck off if he started bigging up his dream woman to them, so that just leaves you.
Stop letting him.

Plus you do really need to start talking about you’ve heard how happy other woman and her husband are to be giving it another go, and her looking forward to a new start in her relationship and career.
She’s apparently the only thing he cares about, so I suggest you start hurting him back with your words.

“Husband seems alarmed by how angry I am. Says I’m using him as an emotional punch bag (think he might have a therapist).

Husband also told me OW would be “devastated” if she could see how upset I am.”

More proof that your hopefully STBXH is a colossal, entitled prick. Is he mad? Are they? They knew just how wrong what they were doing was: that’s why they hid it. That’s why she finished it when she thought people were starting to suspect. He’s a bastard and she’s a bitch. They need to face up to that as about themselves.