Husband’s confession of ‘minor’ dalliances

[Whatdirection]

My head is all over the place and l do not know what to do or think.

About four months ago my husband confessed to three ‘minor’ dalliances about 25-27 years ago. They involved him going out, getting very drunk and kissing three different women. The first time was when our oldest son was 3 months old. The other two occasions he cannot place but the last one could possibly have been close to when we got married. His memory is hazy and when pressed for details, he is unable to give much information. Therefore l know l cannot totally trust his version of events and there might be more to these stories.

For some context, l got pregnant very quickly into our relationship and we had only known each other a year when our son was born. We loved each other very much though and were totally committed to each other.

The first two occasions involved him going out with a group of men (one - a stag do) Although l feel sick about it, due to the intense pressure we were under and his relatively young age (he was 25/26) l do feel l can see how it might have happened.

However the third occasion involved him going out with just one other friend, meeting two other women and going back to their flat. He admits going into the woman’s bedroom but insists no more than a kiss happened. I cannot get past this - he has always been a very moral guy so l am staggered that he didn’t learn from the past two mistakes and repeated the same behaviour again.

My husband has said he has felt terrible about these events for years. He has apologised and expressed remorse. However he has also continually minimised his behaviour by blaming it on drink and saying it was not like he had an affair and he never planned any of it and has repeatedly said ‘ l am not like that’

He said these events have always haunted him and he felt they were a stain on our marriage. He said he didn’t want to die without telling me. He said he hoped as we had a happy marriage l would be able to forgive him. He feels he has been a good husband over the years. It almost feels like he thinks he now has enough ‘credit’ in the bank of our marriage to weather this behaviour.

I do not share such a rosy view of our marriage. He does have good qualities and he can be lovely. But he also can be grumpy, over sensitive , needy, demanding and there have been crunch times where it has felt his needs have triumphed over mine.

I feel l am questioning everything about him and our marriage. I feel so angry and am deeply disappointed in him. His ‘funny little ways’ that l guess we all have now seem intolerable. We have not been physically intimate since and the thought of being so makes me feel sick.

We have started having some marriage counselling. The counsellor thinks he was a bit young and a bit stupid but the drink affected him and he hasn’t done it since. She even used the term ‘mitigating circumstances ‘ to describe the context.

Please help me make some sense of all this. Am l over- reacting, should l cut him more slack? Or should l pay attention to my spidery senses that tell me that something is very wrong here.

What @ihatethecold said.

When he told me l was hundreds of miles from home in a foreign country with no one to turn to

So once again no empathy, and hardly the behaviour of an upstanding, Christian man - more the choice of someone who hoped you'd get over it during the holiday so no-one else would ever have to know

I'm truly sorry, OP, but he sounds less appealing with every update. I hope you can resolve this somehow, but I'd start paying more attention to your own interests as an absolute priority

Thank you all so much. I can’t tell you how it has felt to share this and get such a considered bunch of responses. I am going to take a break now for a bit, get something to eat but will return later on.

When I found about my exH’s affair and decided to have counselling, I was convinced that the Counsellor would take his side, so I decided to have counselling on my own and not as a couple. In fact, my counsellor made me see everything in a different way, and changed my life. I realised that I was not at fault at all and it was my H who was weak with no morals. It gave me the strength to leave him and I feel a stronger person now.

I really advise you to not carry on with the counsellor you are seeing, and to see a counsellor on your own. If you decide that you want to stay in the marriage, then you can work through all the issues with a counsellor together if you think that will help.

My ex did a real number of our counselor too- we booked to discuss his jealousy and the way he would absolutely hang me out to dry verbally during his telling off of me, for hours sometimes.
Within 45 minutes the counsellor was speaking to me like I was a delicate little anxious flower, she literally called him 'a sensitive soul'. I cant describe the betrayal I felt when she said that.
Thanks to mumsnet I realised it was actually emotional abuse, and got free about a year after the shitty counsellor.

The sad thing is you'll probably never know the true and full extent of his playing around. Really disappointing to have this dropped on you after so much time. It would taint and ruin everything for me. Your time togeather would seem to be based on lies. The person you thought you were with is not that person at all.

@Whatdirection the thing about this is, it just doesn’t ring true. I think that is what you are struggling with. You must feel that.
It doesn’t make sense for him to suddenly tell you now.
Why now?
How was your marriage before all of this?
Why did lockdown make him feel so low that this sudden confession came out?
If it has been truly eating him up all these years, then why is he sketchy on detail?
Why burden you with any of this information if there were just 3 episodes of random kisses decades ago?

It does not make sense.

There HAS to be more to this. Either this is scratching the surface and there’s a whole untold story of affairs going on, there was an affair that lockdown put and end to and he’s masking that with some rubbish from the past to minimise actual wrongdoing, there’s a child he fathered in the past popped up, someone is threatening to expose something. Who knows, but you can bet your bottom dollar that this cock and bull about meaningless kisses is not the whole story.

Yes Raidblunner, it has felt like everything has been tainted. Also he was the one who wanted to get married. My parents had such a rubbish marriage that l was very ambivalent about it at the time but l felt if l said ‘no’ to him then it was cause friction. If l had known about these hook ups especially the third one which l suspect was maybe just before or after our wedding l would have called it off. So l feel he got me to marry him on false pretences knowing full well that if l knew the truth l could have changed my mind.

Wilson you are spot on. It all feels so strange and weird. However l have never sensed any red flags regarding other women. Nothing.

Could this person he 'kissed once' have resurfaced somehow?
Is suddenly worried you could find out and it's better if he gets in there first and spins you some half truth.

Was it an affair and one of them got back in touch or there's some common link?

On the subject of the crap counsellor, she has come up with a few other gems as well. On our last session we were just finishing and wishing each other a Happy Christmas, when she said to DH, ‘ l hope you are not one of those men who go out on Christmas Eve to buy presents’ to which DH could smugly say he wasn’t and he had already wrapped his up. I had to bite my lip as that is not the full story. He had wrapped his presents to me. He had not wrapped any of our sons’ presents of course as he never does. But l thought that was a dreadful comment whatever way you looked at it. If he was a late minute shopper he would have felt really put in his place.
Sorry rambling now but definitely going to find a new counsellor.

We now live in a totally different area to where we lived at the start of our relationship.The friends he was with are all pretty much off the scene. The friend he was with on the third occasion was a regular visitor to the house and l got on well with him. My DH must have worried that something might have slipped out at some point - l know l would have been petrified if that had been me. So l am realising that DH was very good at hiding things in a way that l simply wouldn’t have believed a few months ago.

I'm also going to go against the majority here and say him telling you because of guilt and COVID could very well be genuine. Yes he's only told you to relieve his own guilt, and yes that is selfish. He's likely ashamed (which makes sense) hence his avoidance to wanting to listen to how hurt you are about it.

I don't agree that him saying he kissed 3 girls 20+ years ago means oh there must be a child somewhere. Or that he must have had a recent affair. Or he must have had sex with them.

It's not something you should be expected to get over because it was so long ago, or that it was "just a kiss". It'll be a massive shock, and also make you look at him in a completely different light.

I wish I had advice for you, but only time will tell whether you can move forward or whether you can't. There's no shame either way.

And also, yes, get a different counsellor!

I think that if you emotionally detach and withdraw to gain some space and perspective you will see it and feel it more clearly. In the vacuum he is likely to trip himself up.

In some ways it looks like you are doing all of the emotional processing for him by interrogating - he might be getting some sort of release or kick from that.

Watch his behaviours closely once you take the heat off and observe coldly. That may be v uncomfortable for him.

Hi OP.
I'm sorry to hear your story and I totally empathise with your difficulties in dealing with this.
Am TOTALLY not taking your husbands side on this, but two things struck me from all the comments.
1 if your husband told you this because of ongoing affair/ pregnancy/ lovechild/ threats from other woman... various Mumsnet theories, why has nothing happened in the following 4 months? No love child knocking on door or OW showing up.
This would suggest that possibly he is telling you out of guilt/ distress from intrusive thoughts and not because his hand was forced.

2 your husband was diagnosed and treated for OCD. Intrusive thoughts are a feature of OCD and can be overwhelming. OCD symptoms can shape-shift from one compulsion to another, particularly in a time of stress , and it is possible that the stress of lockdown has resulted in an exacerbation of his OCD and he is now suffering with intrusive thoughts whereas before it was checking compulsions.

just an alternative view point before you start looking for things that may or may not be there.

Also you have no evidence or suspicion of anything untoward for the last 25 years and he has stopped binge drinking which seems to be the cause.

If he had not told you , you would never have been the wiser it would seem.

Just a little balance to counterpoint some of the other theories which are not necessarily correct.

I wish the best in dealing with this, it must be terribly difficult .

@Frankinmachine

When I found about my exH’s affair and decided to have counselling, I was convinced that the Counsellor would take his side, so I decided to have counselling on my own and not as a couple. In fact, my counsellor made me see everything in a different way, and changed my life. I realised that I was not at fault at all and it was my H who was weak with no morals. It gave me the strength to leave him and I feel a stronger person now.

I really advise you to not carry on with the counsellor you are seeing, and to see a counsellor on your own. If you decide that you want to stay in the marriage, then you can work through all the issues with a counsellor together if you think that will help.

Totally agree with this. Counselling on your own will give you a chance to work out how YOU feel about this, without his minimising or justifying his actions.

So very glad you’re seeking a different counsellor, I’ve had better help from my dog tbh (he peed in his shoe)

Do you believe your husband's convenient assertion that he can't remember any of the details of his various infidelities?

Bin off that counsellor and find one of your own. My GP was able to recommend someone for me who was far more suitable than my previous awful one.
Really sorry you're going through this.
My experience unfortunately echoes PPs.
They always seem to confess to the absolute bare minimum. I've found that far more comes out eventually and these initial confessions are the tip of the iceberg.
I think you may benefit from telling him to sod off and give you headspace so you can really identify what you need here. The trust has gone and you're badly hurt.
I think it's really fucked up for him to expect you to hear this crap from him - delivered under such selfish circumstances - and then absolve him and float along in a way that suits him.
You don't have to be his emotional dumping ground and suppress your own feelings.

I’m also wondering ‘why now?’ It sounds as though the start of your marriage was very stressful for both of you. I’m not going to speculate as to what happened or whether he’s told you everything. What matters is he’s told you something that has changed your perception of him and, whilst he may feel better, now you have the burden to carry. The counsellor doesn’t sound great if they are colluding with one person’s version of events - when working with a couple the ‘client’ is the relationship, it’s not about picking sides. Maybe your own counselling might help you sort out where to next?

I read this book a few years ago. It tries to explain why some marriages survive affairs by focusing on the behaviour of the cheating spouse after the discovery of the affair. I feel I’m being a bit clumsy suggesting this as it’s written like an instruction manual for the cheater to save the marriage but it really helped me to clarify my thoughts, about what is needed to recover from an affair. It might help validate your feelings and needs at this time because it’s not uncommon to be made feel that it’s not that big a deal or you should be able to get past his mistake when actually the injury is compounded by minimising the issue.

• I’m very sorry that you’re going through this.

It’s odd that he has decided after so many years to tell you now? Is adult child going to appear on the scene? Or is something else going on.... as it just seem a bit odd for him to decide a few songs many many years ago requires disclosure now

Sorry op the monkey on his back is now on yours , and so is all the responsibility of the future relationship.

Thank you so much for the book theleg. I will give it to him. Sadly l predict his first reaction will be ‘but l have not had an affair’ or something similar.

I have been thinking about his incomplete memories. I don’t get a feeling he is deliberately hiding something BUT l do believe that his memory is not accurate and there could be more stuff he has suppressed/denied. When l asked him for more details on the stag do - he admitted he couldn’t remember what he had done, he just a feeling afterwards that he had done something bad. He was adamant this had not involved having sex. He even said that nothing may have occurred and his memory and thoughts have become distorted and twisted over time so he believes he did something when he didn’t. WTF! What am l supposed to do with that?

As a person he regularly misremembers details and events. I know l cannot rely on his version of events and this makes me feel very uneasy.

I am thinking of sitting him down later on today and bringing him two photos of our sons. I am going to ask him to swear on their lives that he has told me everything and watch his reaction very carefully. Not sure if this is a good idea but l can’t think of another way atm.

If l try and put a best case scenario on this then he has made a series of very damaging misjudgements. At the heart of this has been his need to relieve the burden of guilt that became unbearable for him. There has been a frightening lack of empathy for me. Even if this can be explained by his mental health issues, his inability to process and understand my distress has meant further damage has resulted and l have not been able to heal in any way. Not a great best case scenario is it? It actually makes me feel scared to share any future with him.

Worst case scenario is there is much more to this with more extensive or damaging cheating than he has let on. How l will know this l have no idea.

My options are not looking good.