I've been with my husband for 15 years now and we have been married for 8 years and have 2 young children together. We’re both Indian and come from traditional Indian families, we got together when we were quite young, and our marriage would be considered to be a ‘love marriage’ as it wasn’t an ‘arranged marriage’. When we got married, I moved in with my in laws (who spend half their time in this country and half their time in another) and husband and it all changed after that as I felt I married a completely different person.
I then had a husband who put his friends before me and was hardly ever home when I got back from work and was very secretive with his phone, I felt that he generally was no longer interested in me.
A few months into our marriage I found out he had been talking to and meeting up with a female friend (who previously admitted to having feelings for him and was at our wedding with 600 other guests). I knew of her, but my DH had asked me not to pursue a friendship with her and said that he no longer was speaking to her. However, I found out that he had been lying as I found out that they had been exchanging texts and were chatting frequently and were also meeting up when I was at work. After I confronted him about this he said he would stop speaking to her and I took his word for it.
About a year into our marriage I started to again suspect something wasn't right and one day I went through his phone and found flirty text messages to a colleague, however I didn't confront him about this. I then looked through his phone again a few weeks later and saw texts where he said he couldn't stop thinking about her soft lips and had feelings for her. Out of anger and shock I text this woman pretending to be my DH to see if I could get more answers into what was going on and then I confronted her by telling her she was speaking to his wife not him. She tried to tell me nothing was going on and wanted to speak to me over the phone, however I told her I didn't want to speak to my husbands w*e.
Rather than confronting my husband I went upstairs and packed a bag came downstairs and told his mum I was leaving as he had been unfaithful. Whilst this was going on my DH was in the spare room playing on his Xbox without a care in the world. My DH's mum told her son to stop me and I confronted him, he tried to explain that it was just flirting that got out of hand and was a stupid kiss that meant nothing. I spent the next few years believing that he would stop talking to her and would focus on us and truly believed he was sorry. I really wanted this marriage to work but not only for us but for our families as getting a divorce is very frowned upon in our culture and is considered to be shameful (especially for women).
A year later My DH went on holiday with his friends and when he came back he bought me a bracelet, however I found there was another bracelet of a different colour hidden in the spare bedroom, I burst into tears and my DH told me I was being silly as it was for me and he was putting it away for me to give to me for one of my Christmas presents. I was 3 months pregnant with our first child at this point and my DH made me believe I was being paranoid and said it was down to my hormones. Again, I believed him.
A few months down the line, I went through my husband's Instagram and found pictures and posts of him and the colleague he had kissed having banter at work and then found a photo of her dog in our garden, by this point I was 8 months pregnant and I just found out that they had both just carried on having this 'close friendship' and that she had been to my house whilst I was at work. Out of anger and revenge I messaged her husband and copied in her and my DH on Facebook and told him about their kiss and 'close friendship' and that she had been to my house whilst I wasn’t there only to find out that he works at the same place but on a different team and that he had previously approached my DH about his 'friendship' with his wife as there were rumours going around about how incredibly close they were.
My DH begged for forgiveness and as we were expecting our first child I forgave him as I didn't want our child being brought up in a broken home.
A year later I found my DH’s mobile statement, at this point I had just returned to work after my maternity leave and I was finding it really hard to adjust to being a working mum and had all sorts of emotions going through my head, one of them being my husbands close friendship/ relationship with his colleague and whether they still spoke (yes, I was naïve enough to think that although they worked together they would have strictly kept it professional, for the sake of their own marriages and families) This statement showed pages of all the text’s and calls made in the last 2 months and there were pages and pages showing the same number, my heart just sank as I knew they were to her. So, I confronted him and asked what the texts were about, he admitted that they had been sexting, I also sent an angry text to her and wanted to speak to her and ask her why she was ruining my life. As you can expect she didn’t pick up, yet she sent a text telling me that she was not having an affair with my husband and the thought of it was ‘absurd’, she then went on to accuse me of ‘harassment’ after receiving 4 missed calls and a text.
At that point I had just had enough, I hadn’t spoken to anyone about this and felt that I couldn’t confide in anyone about this due to the shame it would bring on my family if I was to divorce. I felt powerless, lonely and worst of all suicidal. My husband saw me at my lowest and kept on apologising and telling me how much he loved me, but deep down I just thought you don’t do this to someone you love. He then said that he would stop speaking to this colleague (even though he said he stopped doing this years before).
Since then, they had both moved different teams and were no longer working together, however deep down I knew that he still wanted to speak to her.
A few months later I found out that he had reconnected with the old female friend (mentioned earlier) and I was livid, so I slapped him, and he got very angry so he called the police on me. My DH is a police officer, so he knew what he was doing. A few hours later I was banged up in a cell for slapping my lying, unfaithful husband. However, this was my opportunity to tell them about 2 police officers having an affair whilst on duty as they had kissed previously during their shift. But at this point I felt that all the odds were stacked up against me as I deleted all the screenshots of their messages and threw away the telephone bills and thought they would both only deny it when questioned as there was no proof. Luckily no further action was taken that night and I was free to go, no one knows what happened that night between us and luckily our young son was staying at my parents so didn’t have to witness something that turned very ugly (although this is something, I would never let my children witness)
More recently we have had another baby and deep down inside I want my children growing up with both parents, however I am so unhappy in our marriage and feel so stuck as I can’t let the past go. I’m never going to know the full extent of what happened and feel like I’m married to a husband I don’t trust and never will. Since lockdown my anxiety and thoughts have been getting worse and I don’t know what to do, I keep telling myself that we have 2 small children together and we have to make our marriage work for them.
My DH has also been suspended and is currently not working, I know I shouldn’t think like this but a part of me feels like this is karma for the way he has treated me over the years.