Can someone just hold my hand? Just for a bit

[MoreLegsThanMe]

My husband of 36 years has left. I don’t know how to get through tonight. Can someone just hold my hand, please?

It’s half-past-three and here I am. I took the sleeping pill about eleven I think.

Please let me go to sleep. Please.

Hello lovely op, I came across your thread earlier and have read every one of your posts.

This happened with my mum and dad too. It was 13/14 years ago now. They had been together since they were 13, got married at 18 and had me and my 2 younger brothers. They were so happy, or so I thought.

My dad met someone else and had been with her for a while on and off but nobody knew. He then told my mum he was unhappy and said he was getting his own place. Swore on his kids lives there was nobody else. Fast forward 9 months he comes back, truth came out, my mum forgave him and we were all so happy as at this point my mum didn’t tell us the full story.

6 weeks later my mum was in work. He packed his bags and left for good. I didn’t speak to him for 3 years. They eventually got a divorce but our family as we knew it had gone forever. He ruined everything.

He married the other woman. My mum was at rock bottom for a long time. She was 50 and saw a bleak future. A lot has happened the years since. My dad is still married and my mum got married a couple of years ago and is blissfully happy.

Reading how you feel resonates with me so much. My mum was exactly the same and she spoke to me about it a lot.
I know this is only our story but wanted you to know that there can be happy endings and one day you will feel better.

Both of my brothers are convinced my dad massively regrets what he did. It was cruel and cowardly and he has to live with all of the hurt he caused.

Big hugs to you xx

Hi op, here I am on the nightshift, hope youv'e managed to get back off to sleep.

Just to say we are still here, still with you, keeping an eye on you.

Take care lovely.

My mantra was one foot in front of the other and breathe. I used to have to chant it to myself sometimes.

I survived but am happy now.

Try journaling. Have a lovely note book and pen where every day you write him a letter about how cross you are and get it out. But also on the other page. List something positive. Something kind someone did, something about your lovely DC and GS, something that is better or easier without him around. Something you might do in six months that you would never have done if still married. That trip you always wanted to take he was never interested in. For me vegas!

I hope you managed to get some sleep op

I made it up and washed and dressed. Sorting recycling to go out.

DD4 and DS working away.

I don’t know how I’m doing this I genuinely don’t

In a month or so have a read back through your posts and you’re realise how far you’ve come. You’re doing good, you are achieving stuff and I bet that’s more than you managed last week.

@MoreLegsThanMe

I made it up and washed and dressed. Sorting recycling to go out.

DD4 and DS working away.

I don’t know how I’m doing this I genuinely don’t

Well done!

I think now you need to find a way to get your focus off him and what he is or isn't doing. Because letting your thoughts and imagination go running off in that direction is absolutely torturing you. The worst has already happened. It is already bad enough.

But your brain is still searching for all the gory details, both real and imagined. You need a strategy to cut off those thoughts when they start, and redirect them into something that actually serves you. He doesn't deserve to be taking up so much room in your head.

Please start giving yourself credit for each and every little thing you achieve, even cleaning your teeth or filling the kettle. Perhaps part of your strategy could be to research ways of changing your thoughts.

I think you're doing brilliantly by the way, and I'm so sorry for your suffering.

My nightly thank you - thank you.

Oh @FantasticButtocks I do think you’re right. I spend time thinking about what they’re doing and how happy they must be, while I barely get through each day and basically hate myself.

I’m not sure if doing that is even normal? Has anyone else felt that way? Nor am I sure how to stop. I try to keep busy during the day but I just feel any inch of progress I make just gets wiped out at night. I want to get hold of them and really hurt them. Make them understand what they’ve done.

Another day has gone by without him contacting the DC. Please be honest with me - is is still early days for him to be contacting them? Does the “dust need to settle” before he does? I realise I’m looking at this from my POV and what I think I’d do. I thought after 37 years I knew him and that he’d want more than anything to be in touch with his own DC.

Sorry, that was a real waffle.

I haven’t posted before but I have read the thread. You are doing absolutely brilliantly.

I wonder if he’s not contacting the children because while he doesn’t actually message them, he can pretend everything is fine with the situation and continue to live in his little fantasy land with her. If he messages them then he risks them ignoring him or (worse) them replying and giving him their opinion on what he’s done. He won’t want to face reality yet.

Thank you@ladygracie. That does sound like what he could be doing. He’s like a stupid infatuated teenager instead of a sixty-year-old.

He only “met” her in May and was set up in a flat with her the second week of June. Nine DC between them and look what they’ve fucking done.

I don't think there is any normal, and anyway what does that matter? You feel what you feel, and everything you feel is valid. This has been a horrendous shock and you are trying to process it.

Before this happened, what were the things you did for your own well-being? The things you need to take care of yourself and keep you in good health, your maintenance strategies. Are any of them things you can still do during lockdown, ie walks, yoga, creative practice of some kind... I'm just thinking that focusing more on what you need, throughout the day or night... so every time you start to wobble or get caught up in despairing thoughts, you stop and say to yourself, 'right what do I need?' A glass of water, a jog round the block, a massive cake, a phone call with a friendly voice, whatever it might be - 'what do I need, right now this minute?' Focus on your needs now.

You can reduce the time you allow yourself to think or focus on him, his behaviour, his perceived thoughts or intentions by keeping it to a specific time of day, for an hour.

Other than that try to stop going down that route if you possibly can. Self preservation here is important. Self care. Focus on you. Not him.

@MoreLegsThanMe

My nightly thank you - thank you.

Oh @FantasticButtocks I do think you’re right. I spend time thinking about what they’re doing and how happy they must be, while I barely get through each day and basically hate myself.

I’m not sure if doing that is even normal? Has anyone else felt that way? Nor am I sure how to stop. I try to keep busy during the day but I just feel any inch of progress I make just gets wiped out at night. I want to get hold of them and really hurt them. Make them understand what they’ve done.

Another day has gone by without him contacting the DC. Please be honest with me - is is still early days for him to be contacting them? Does the “dust need to settle” before he does? I realise I’m looking at this from my POV and what I think I’d do. I thought after 37 years I knew him and that he’d want more than anything to be in touch with his own DC.

Sorry, that was a real waffle.

What your imagining is best case scenarios. Best case. This isn't best case by any stretch. Honestly. X

Yes. I try and find it easier through the days when I’m busy, although even then it’s just mostly crap like constant cleaning.

Hi op.
Hope your day is better today.

Have you any small jobs planned for today ?
Have you been cleaning a lot?

@MrsTerryPratchett

She sent pictures and also messaged our older girls (found them on Facebook). She came to our house and shouted in the street that she loved him

That kind of crazy gets old quickly. And his kind of old gets old quickly.

Yuk to both of them.

Yes to this!

They won't last.

But you will be fine. Your life isn't over, though your marriage is. You have your dc. You will recover with time, and go on to be happy again.

I do understand the thinking about the details every night. And then I would think of the past of us together and that was shit too.
Was going to start CBT before pandemic to learn to deal with this.

So I too would like to hear any advice on this . ?

Thank you.

Yes @Onthedunes a lot of cleaning. Not obsessively but just as something to concentrate on and do, if that makes sense.

Whatever I’m thinking or doing there’s a constant little voice saying “what’s the point?”. And I don’t have an answer.

Now I have all of Saturday to get through too.

The "point" is for your children, they should mean more to you than your husband. Would you take him back if he wanted too.

Of course it makes sense.

Have you been managing to eat? and have the kids been helping?

Take care
x

OP, have you started looking at solicitors yet?

This may sound a bit lame, but could you take up a project like crochet or knitting? A complicated blanket pattern, maybe for your next GC or for charity. Would keep your brain occupied, and if you did it before bed, might help you sleep.

Thank you x

@kory1 indeed my DC do mean more than him. I accept if he came to the door now I’d be tempted to let him in, I accept that. Having said that I’m really invested in this relationship failing, when it does he will have literally nowhere to go but to come here. I’ll then have the power to turn him away. And I will.

@Onthedunes my DC are so helpful. Probably far more than a fourteen and fifteen year old should be.

@WizardOfAus I’m legally qualified so I haven’t approached anyone. He’s well aware I know what I’m doing. When I do issue a petition he will probably panic, then end up with a huge bill from his own representative, which helps me smile.

@Inaseagull that’s a good idea, if I knew where to start. I’m really not good at things like that..

And I did a bad thing today. The letter we had both waited so long for, with his appointment to learn how to use his implant and be cleared for sex. The letter we’d longed for.

I set fire to it.

Why hasn’t he even redirected his post?