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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

A year on from affair

211 replies

Drama99 · 27/10/2020 23:47

Hi
I scroll thru Mumsnet All the time looking for threads that help me work thru my own issues. Specifically, those of u who are the victims of affairs.
I discovered my husbands affair over a year ago. We have stayed together.
No one knows. Just me, my husband, and the dirty whore (sorry, don’t know how else to to refer to her)
So I have literally had no one to speak to about this for over a year.
It is fucking exhausting.
We r still together.
My children r still happy. Which I guess Is probably my main goal. They r 14, 12 and 10.
Not sure why I’m posting.
The crap I could pour forth is almost limitless.
Might like to connect with someone else who has stayed with a cheater???
It’s a twisted complex tortuous world
So easy to just say leave.
Life is so much more complicated than that ☹️

OP posts:
Greeneyes78 · 27/10/2020 23:54

This is your life forever now op, fuck that!

Lovechilli · 27/10/2020 23:54

I have recently got back together with my partner who cheated and it’s so tough.
I feel like he hates me because it didn’t work out between them.
And I hate myself for being with him and letting him walk all over me.
And I hate him for doing it to me, so much hate in this relationship

Drama00988 · 27/10/2020 23:58

Green eyes
Would u leave?

Drama00988 · 27/10/2020 23:58

Love chilli
The feelings are so contradictory aren’t they?

WatieKatie · 27/10/2020 23:59

@Lovechilli why oh why are you with him? Life is too short and you are worth so much more

thisgardenlife · 28/10/2020 00:00

Oh my dear. I am that person who stayed. I was 43 and now I'm 63. The children are grown and after 20 years of trying to get over the betrayal there is a new, recent issue with porn taking him out of the marriage in a very similar way the original betrayal did. I am undone.

Still not over the first betrayal, compounded by years of defensive justification and small cruelties, and now with this latest incident I doubt I ever will be.

I thought I could assimilate the betrayal into a longer term big picture of a loving 40+ year relationship. I was wrong.

It feels too late for me to start again in my 60s. I'm guessing it's not too late for you.

Lovechilli · 28/10/2020 00:02

They are, I’m so unhappy but also don’t really know life without him and when he is not with e, he can be so nasty, more so than when he is with me

Lovechilli · 28/10/2020 00:04

It’s really hard to leave as he gets really spiteful, plus his name is on the mortgage only, I’m in a lot of debt from when he left and I’m stuck really, unhappy and stuck

Bamboo15 · 28/10/2020 00:04

I can’t help hugely on this but don’t want to leave you hanging if there’s no one else around.

What a very difficult and isolating situation because situations like this do help to be talked about but I understand that staying together means limiting the number of people who know.

It does sound like you have struggled to put what happened in the past, is there someone you could talk to in real life, someone you could confide in who wouldn’t judge or share? Could you talk to your husband about couple counselling to air some of the things your feeling and find and positive way forward together? It feels a bit from your post that staying together is something you have accepted from necessity but don’t feel like you are ready to get behind emotionally especially with the limitless anger you need to get out! (Which I quite understand)

I know it’s easy to say leave, and life is often more complicated than that, but it’s also sometimes easy to stay without both acknowledging the complex things that need working through / airing to actually make staying together workable. Short or long term.

Drama00988 · 28/10/2020 00:14

Thanks Bamboo. A thoughtful response

This garden life - your response is exactly what scares me.
I stay, and 20 years later find that I made he wrong decision

Drama00988 · 28/10/2020 00:15

When no one else knows it is so much easier to gloss over and pretend to be happy

Drama00988 · 28/10/2020 00:15

I feel utterly alone

Drama00988 · 28/10/2020 00:16

It sometimes amazes me that it is possible to have a small cry, short, almost imperceptible, so many times a day

Drama00988 · 28/10/2020 00:18

I used to be so close to my mum. And now I know she doesn’t know me. Because I never burden her with the agony I feel. I want her to die believing that her little girl is happy.

Maze76 · 28/10/2020 00:20

@Lovechilli

I have recently got back together with my partner who cheated and it’s so tough. I feel like he hates me because it didn’t work out between them. And I hate myself for being with him and letting him walk all over me. And I hate him for doing it to me, so much hate in this relationship
Then don’t let him walk over you. My husband did the same, I cannot forget what he did or how he’s treated me, but he doesn’t know that. I recount the counselling sessions, being left after my miscarriage, the dramatics from the mentally unstable OW.. it was tough! So I play the happy wife role, he’s comfortable.. and that’s just how I want him to be. His meals are cooked.. his middle aged spread is growing, his hair is thinning. I put the effort in to smile and be happy, I’m working out , and I’m looking good and we get on. He’s very comfortable.. so it will really kick him in the gut when I drop him, when he has his very own D day. Why should it be that our only options are to stay and placate them or to leave on their terms. Not in my life- revenge is a dish best served cold.. and this man has absolutely no idea what’s about to be served!
MMmomDD · 28/10/2020 00:28

OP - I was going to say nice and supportive things about counselling, and not bottling it up, and telling at least the closest people in your life as it’s not helping you to keep his secret.
Also reading Ester Perel’s book and finding a FB group with lots of support from people I the same situation.

But the name-calling threw me a bit. You call her the Other Woman. Be angry at her and all that - but no one should use that ugly world irrespective how bad you feel.

No one can get through an affair without lots of counselling and efforts at rebuilding a marriage from both sides.
If you both are just sweeping it all under the rug and trying to carry on as if everything is OK - you’ll live your years in misery. Something Ester calls ‘sufferers’.

Not a way to live.

Smellbellina · 28/10/2020 00:33

It’s weird isn’t it reading these comments, because if any of these were written by my mum I’d be heartbroken and wish she’d left, whatever the upheaval I’d still hope she’d have thought she deserved her own, happier life. And if she didn’t, why would I?

Smellbellina · 28/10/2020 00:35

I want her to die believing that her little girl is happy.
Oh god I’d hate my DC to do that!

Lovechilli · 28/10/2020 00:44

I think you’re my hero and some really good advice there

Lovechilli · 28/10/2020 00:45

@Maze76

Aquamarine1029 · 28/10/2020 00:48

Living an absolute lie is such a pointless exercise.

SenorFrog · 28/10/2020 00:51

We are 13 years post DH's affair. I genuinely barely give it a moments thought anymore. I was devastated at the time but he was 100% committed to our marriage from the second I found out, we had counselling and we worked hard to make things good again. Both of us worked on the marriage, not just him, he has to be happy too or we'd be doomed to fail. I know dh loves me and I highly doubt he'd do it again and we have discussed at length what either of us would do should we have our heads turned, as such. Few marriages have those measures in place as they've never needed to discuss them, it's a vicious circle. We have a strong marriage now, we've worked hard and we both know how devastating it can be, neither of us ever want that again.
I don't blindly trust him, but I think we're stronger for that.

julietmanchester · 28/10/2020 01:41

@Maze76

Love love love your strategy.

@Drama99

I do not think it's very easy to forgive or forget the betrayal. One tried and actually failed 2 times, due to the OW not being interested. But I am absolutely positive husband would have done it had the feelings been reciprocated.

I hate his guts. I'm planning my exit strategy, and be divorced once the pandemic is 'over' and post Brexit.

It's impossible to me to stay with a cheater, especially one who couldn't 'close' the deal. He is just as guilty, if not more pathetic.

I am gutted to the core, but most of the time I stay strong waiting for D day. Just plan ahead- if you cannot forget about it, it's not worth living this way. Another man could be out there waiting for you- someone loyal, committed and who will treat you the way you deserve.

On the flip side, I also don't think it's weird for couples who find infidelity ok, as that's their mutual agreement/belief. But I sure as shit do not agree with cheating and he unilaterally decided that's the way our marriage works.

everyonebutme · 28/10/2020 02:03

I was in your situation OP. No one knew about my ex husband's affair - I didn't talk to friends so no one knew about the betrayal or what I was going through. He belittled it of course and showed no remorse and we carried on our lives as normal but after a year I found it was still going on (or had re-started) and that was the end of it for me. I wanted to make things work for my children, my own reputation and because I was scared of the alternative but I couldn't in the end.

Ofgareth · 28/10/2020 02:08

A view from the otherside... I’m a year on from finding out too and it’s been the hardest year of my life, but despite all this my children are happy and thriving and so am I. It’s hard and lonely - what a year to go through this but you’re not alone op, I know the pain you feel because I forgave the first time.