Does love come back/what do I do

[helplesshopeless]

Nc for this.

Advice needed please, I've created a huge mess and can't see a way out/what is for the best. This may be long.

I am married with a 3yo. DH has always had a nasty temper, I've suggested anger management counselling numerous times but to no avail. The last few years since having my child have been really difficult. He's generally spoken to me with contempt and disdain a lot of the time, with occasional temper flashes, arguments are always toxic, things could get very nasty (never physical). On a day to day basis we would be civil enough to eachother, but nasty looks and snappiness from him were definitely daily as well, with bigger flare ups fairly regularly. We have had happy family times too and we both dote on our child.

All of this treatment from my DH culminated in my withdrawing from him and ultimately having an affair the last few months, with someone who made me feel loved and cared for. It was mainly an emotional affair but there was a small amount of physical contact (we did not have sex). This is someone that I work with, so although we're wfh at the moment, he is in team zoom meetings etc.

My DH found everything out last week. He is angry but also devastated. I have never seen him so upset and it has shocked me that he cares that much about me. He has completely woken up to how he's been treating me and is committed to having anger management therapy and working on things with me. I obviously am ashamed of what I have done and there is no excuse for my behaviour, but he does recognise that his treatment of me took me to a place where I was open to someone else. I still can't believe I had an affair because it is so against my morals and I fully deserve to be judged for it.

We are working on things and will get relationship counselling. There's a lot of self esteem issues that my husband struggles with, especially since we had our child as he's felt like he's been stuck on the outside looking in, and he thinks this is why he's been treating me how he has. I do understand this and it makes sense, but it doesn't change how he's treated me in the past and how damaging I have found it.

My husband wants me to leave my work so there's no interaction with the other man. I totally understand his point but am reluctant to do this as I'd then feel trapped.

I want to get back to a happy place with my husband. I don't want to feel trapped with him. I don't know if I can find my way back to loving him, whether all of this is coming too late after years of awful treatment. I accept I have behaved in a disgusting way and deserve all of this fall out, and am so worried about the impact on our child and how I'd manage if we separate. I am also concerned about the impact on my husband if things don't work as he has been explaining how it will crush him and he'd never be able to trust anyone again if we don't manage to work through this.

I just don't know if my heart is in this anymore, I want to be able to be happy with him and love him and our family deserves for me to work on this and fully commit to getting back on track, but I have no idea if I'll ever get back to where I need to be.

I am ashamed to admit I still have feelings for the other guy. I could obviously never be with him anyway so that is irrelevant, but it's clouding my judgement. I need to hear from people who have learnt to love their husbands again. Is that a thing? Will we ever get there?

I still can't believe any of this is happening.

* I would say that your path to self destruction is more likely if you stay not divorce. I know that will feel hard to hear.*

Quite possibly. I just feel like in the process of splitting I am tearing our daughter's family apart, no more family bedtimes, family holidays, etc it's just such a sad thing.

Unless I’ve now confused you with a different OP, I think a huge part of your problem is that you got together very young and have never been single as an adult

I think that must be a different OP! I'm not concerned about being single as an adult, it would be daunting being completely financially independent and building my own IKEA furniture but I think I'd relish that almost. It is just my daughter's little world being destroyed that breaks my heart.

Go back and read the second main paragraph of your OP. Your DD is little just now but what happens when she gets old enough to become aware of the dynamic you describe there and thinks possibly that is how women should be treated in relationships, that is what you put up with to make the marriage work, or worse, guilty that you stayed together for her sake.

Sorry for the mistaken identity, OP! Agree with PP re consequences for your DD.

Your DD is little just now but what happens when she gets old enough to become aware of the dynamic you describe there and thinks possibly that is how women should be treated in relationships, that is what you put up with to make the marriage work, or worse, guilty that you stayed together for her sake.

Yes I totally agree, and I would be giving the same advice to someone else in this scenario. My concern there is that he's absolutely owning his temper issues and committed to changing and is having cbt etc., so what if, by leaving, I'm denying us all a potentially lovely future together?! That is consolidated by the point that he keeps making that I didn't raise the issue of his behaviour so that he could address it, I chose to have an affair instead

This may all be moot anyway as he's very angry at the moment about what I've done and isn't sure if he'll be able to move past it.

How long does it take for a divorce to be sorted?! Wish I could just fast forward through it all!!

Do you know, I am sure you did raise the issue of his behaviour many, many times, and even if you had not, he is a grown responsible adult and he should know that nasty tempers and anger are not the way to go... he is putting the blame on you for not alerting him to the fact that his behaviour was bad - at age what?? He was not a toddler.

Secondly, if he is angry and blaming you, doesn’t that give the lie to the suggestion that he is going to change. A person who was going to change would be 100% owning the behaviour and also looking at the situation from your point of view, not just blaming. You are bending over backwards to accommodate what he is saying even when he is likely re-writing history and building this up in his head as all your fault and using it as a stick to beat you with.

I don’t believe he is going anywhere. He threatened to, and that he would go for 50:50 of residence; and now he is beating you down so you know your place and it is all your fault, so you will be oh so grateful for the crumbs of niceness he will then throw, which make you hope the lovely family you want will become reality.

Sorry if that sounds bleak, but getting over what has happened requires both of you to examine your actions and not blame only the other. You are the only one doing this.

I don’t know about divorce in England as I don’t live there. You could ask about time lines on the Legal board or speak to a lawyer for advice.

I didn't raise the issue of his behaviour so that he could address it, I chose to have an affair instead
How on earth could you have known that having an affair was a bad thing, without him raising that issue, though, OP?

This may all be moot anyway as he's very angry at the moment about what I've done and isn't sure if he'll be able to move past it.
That's strange, because I thought...
our child is so important that even if we didn't love each other we should stay together for them, and behave in a pleasant way together, to keep the family together and give a stable upbringing

Honestly OP, you sound so browbeaten by him over the years, you are now literally sitting there waiting for him to decide if you need to suck it up and stay unhappily in your marriage or if he wants to divorce you. What about you? What do you want?

And - being a bit harsh - if you're so convinced that being together for your DD is the right thing and divorce is the wrong thing, why are you now not desperately trying to convince him to stay?

How did your husband find out about the affair? Was it an affair or an emotional entanglement? I know I sound like I'm splitting hairs, but when it comes to being attracted to people you can't control feelings so I'm wondering exactly what you did that made it "an affair".
In any case, two wrongs don't make a right. How are you both going to make it so you are happy with him and not vulnerable to other men you find attractive?

When I was in a marriage like yours I found myself attracted to other men regularly (no affairs).
Now I'm in a happy relationship with a DP I adore and adores me and other men never cross my mind.
Thinking about other men/being attracted to them and possibly acting on it are signs you aren't happy op.

I love this thread, PPs have so much wisdom and insight here.

@KatySun
"But there is another thing, I am measuring things against how they should have been. A marriage which should have been. The family which should have been. Because this is the ‘should have been’ which we are surrounded with and grow up expecting. ... It is hard to let go of the ‘should have been’, how you hope or wish your marriage was."

That was really difficult for me too. And I have often used the metaphor "plant that needs repotting" to describe how it all felt, how I eventually came to understand the necessity of something I resisted so strongly. In fact I am finalising Draft 2 of a novel about this very subject, and just this week wrote a similar scene, only not with mint!

It's so, so interesting how similar our experiences are.

OP, your husband sounds very much like my ex-husband in the way he deflects responsibility onto you all the time. I too was accused of "not saying something/the right things sooner," but PPs are right, you've undoubtedly said lots of things over the years and just never been heard. He's "listening" now (or acting as though he is) because you have a gun to his head. (Or maybe he has a gun to yours. It's hard to tell with this relationship dynamic!)

On another MN thread recently, I strongly recommended Daphne Rose Kingma's "Coming Apart" and I think you would find it helpful too. A couple of screenshots from Amazon's "Look Inside" below, from the introduction.

Don't be hard on yourself about the affair. I believe women aren't like men. If a woman's head is turned it's usually because they need love and affection because their husbands aren't giving it to them/are being nasty to them/don't care enough to try anymore. If your husband wasn't behaving as such a dick to you then you wouldn't have strayed. Bollocks to him. And no, I don't believe you can get the love back once it's gone that far. He should have tried harder to keep you.

That's what my friend kept saying to me when I felt guilty about the divorce - "tough! He should have been nicer to his wife!"

I don’t buy that women only have affairs when their partner is behaving badly. That translates as women can do no wrong and men can do no right.

OP - you shouldn’t have got involved with someone else but that’s not really the point. You don’t love your H because for years he treated you badly. He’s continued to treat you badly. You wanted space. He said he’d give you space but could you please give him lots of sex and keep reassuring him that you still loved him. He’s tried threatening and cajoling.

I’ve said a few times on this thread but it strikes me again and again: he is in your head to such an extent that you don’t seem capable of separating how you see things from how he sees them. That’s not how it should be but I’m guessing it got that way because over the years you’ve got so used to anticipating his moods and trying to pre-empt difficulties.

He will get over you, you know. Relationships end. It’s painful and sad and it takes time but people move on.

The fact that you just want to get to the other side of the divorce means that you want to get away but you don’t want to go through the upheaval associated with getting away. But that upheaval is temporary. Your misery in this marriage could be permanent a as bad that would be awful for your daughter.

Life is too short and too precious to spend it treading on eggshells around an angry man.
He may change briefly, as you having feelings for someone else will have given him a fright, but he will undoubtedly revert to angry man mode, and you will have wasted a few more years of your life.
I would end it now and find a kind man who makes you happy and not scared.

Do you know, I am sure you did raise the issue of his behaviour many, many times, and even if you had not, he is a grown responsible adult and he should know that nasty tempers and anger are not the way to go... he is putting the blame on you for not alerting him to the fact that his behaviour was bad - at age what?? He was not a toddler.

Absolutely agree and I have said that to him. His argument is that I had accepted that behaviour from him from the start, and he hadn't changed (although things have obviously got worse), so how was he to know how bad it was for me. Obviously a stupid argument but I do still feel terrible that I chose to just jump ship with an affair instead of first trying every option to improve things with him.

How on earth could you have known that having an affair was a bad thing, without him raising that issue, though, OP?

Ha! I've raised that argument in my head many times, but never quite dared to say it 

Honestly OP, you sound so browbeaten by him over the years, you are now literally sitting there waiting for him to decide if you need to suck it up and stay unhappily in your marriage or if he wants to divorce you. What about you? What do you want?

Yes, you're right. The ball is very much in his court as I'm too scared to make a move. Which reminds me of your quote from sheryl!

How did your husband find out about the affair? Was it an affair or an emotional entanglement? I know I sound like I'm splitting hairs, but when it comes to being attracted to people you can't control feelings so I'm wondering exactly what you did that made it "an affair".

It was definitely an affair. Fairly brief, mainly 'virtual' but there was some physical contact as well. I'm not proud of how I've behaved.

On another MN thread recently, I strongly recommended Daphne Rose Kingma's "Coming Apart" and I think you would find it helpful too. A couple of screenshots from Amazon's "Look Inside" below, from the introduction

Those shots made me cry! Thank you for sharing them @Alcemeg. I will definitely get that book.

• He will get over you, you know. Relationships end. It’s painful and sad and it takes time but people move on.

The fact that you just want to get to the other side of the divorce means that you want to get away but you don’t want to go through the upheaval associated with getting away. But that upheaval is temporary. Your misery in this marriage could be permanent a as bad that would be awful for your daughter.*

I really do hope that if we do split he does manage to get to a happy place and move on and yes, you're right re getting to the other side, it just seems like a monumental mountain to start climbing.

Lost the first bold para again from @KatySun, sorry!

@helplesshopeless: "It is just my daughter's little world being destroyed that breaks my heart."

As the daughter of a woman who stayed married to the wrong man, my little world is destroyed daily by anxiety for my mum and wishing she could have had a different life. Even though that's completely futile now that she is 89 (and my dad 93).

Your daughter's little world won't be destroyed by you splitting up. It will just change. For the better. For one thing, she might actually get to see you properly happy one day. I'd give anything to have seen my mum enjoy life more fully.

@Alcemeg that is so sad for your mu, it's the worst feeling in the world seeing your parent(s) unhappy

*mum

ha! ITS ON HIM..you went to someone else coz ur 'D'H is a toxic mess..and nope imo once its gone,its gone..I dated a physically abusive guy in my20's..i dragged him to counselling(against his will)tried all manner of techniques to try and alleviate his lightening quick temper/rage&guess what-he eventually kept his fists to himself for6months but by then my heart felt like a lump of stone towards him&I simply moved in with a girlfriend..at the time i wanted to love him again but something inside me wouldnt allow it.25 yrs later as i write this i simply cannot believe i even gave a shit lol..but there you go.
-imo its broken,move on.

When I was in the throes of trying to decide, a close friend told me the story of her parent's marriage.
They had been married over 60 years and her father had always been difficult, demanding, self engrossed. They had four children and none of them really got on with one another.
Her mother nearly left once when in her 50's but stayed because the house had been bought with her inheritance and she didn't want to lose it.
My friend's father died about two years finally. Almost overnight her mother transformed and gradually the rifts in the family mended and they all now get on so much better.
It struck me as so sad that her mother had to wait until she was in her mid eighties to finally get the life she deserved and a happy united family. I hope she still has a good few years in which to enjoy her new found happiness.

@Whatdirection That could be the story of my family too. Except that my dad is still alive, in his 90s, so we're unlikely to ever experience those transformations and connections.

Don't get me wrong, I could never wish him dead, he's my dad. But the fact remains that our lives would be so much happier if mum had left him and either stayed alone or married someone else.

I have a Skype call with them every week and my heart breaks to see the way he talks to her, the way she contains herself, all the subtle little flinches. I worry about it constantly.

helplesshopeless

My take on this, and I have read your thread, is that YES you can get the Love back. I have been there and come out the other side. It takes a lot of work on both sides.

You sounds lost. My suggestion is to first figure out where you are:

First Suggested Reading/listening: Map Of Relationships
www.alturtle.com/archives/801

Second Suggested Reading/listening:
The rest of the above website, starting with Safety and Trust
www.alturtle.com/archives/1239

Third Suggested Reading/listening: Interview Series
www.alturtle.com/archives/1299

Fourth Suggested Reading/listening: John Gottman : Making Marriage Work

Fifth Suggested Reading/listening: School Of Life Youtube Channel
www.youtube.com/user/schooloflifechannel

Both Start today doing new things

Don't expect it to be quick.

If you don't see progress after 3 months sincerely both following much of the above advice, check to see if you are really doing the work or resisting it.

Finally as to your workplace affair:

Suggested Reading : Shirley Glass 'Not Just Friends'
www.amazon.com/Not-Just-Friends-Rebuilding-Recovering/dp/0743225503?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Your husband is correct in that cutting all contact is necessary for healing to occur. You will need to figure this one out. It is hard.

Oh, and a huge amount of free & good reading on affairs:

Dear Peggy
dearpeggy.com/

I wanted to add.

There are a lot of voices here telling you to give up, that he'll never be worth it.

In your heart, only you can truly know that.

If your heart tells you there is something worth fighting for, then you have nothing to lose (except some time maybe, and your pride : don't underestimate the power of its resistance) by showing love to someone who has hurt you.

If it doesn't work after you have truly tried everything for a decent amount of time, you can still hold your head high and call it a day. But you may find you learn a lot about yourself in trying.

Good Luck.