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.

@Alcemeg are you God? You are the wisest person I've ever met (well, not 'met' but you know what I mean!) and you always have something really insightful and thoughtful to say. Thank you for all your contributions on many many threads x

Blimey @19Bears, that's quite a compliment!!!!!!!!!!! 😮🤩

I can't be God, though, can I, because He's a bloke 😉😁

GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!!!! XXX

19Bears in your position, I would make sure that I was very clear what I wanted to achieve with any discussion. If it is to set the ball rolling to end the marriage, then what are the key points you need to convey to your husband? If you are sure what you want to get across, then it is easier to stick to the point and not get side-tracked. In my opinion, you don’t need to tell him anything which is not relevant, because it could just act as a hook to draw you into debate. So whether you had an affair or not, the key point is that you want to end the marriage. Therefore focus on that.

By which I mean that if you mention an affair, then the discussion becomes about the whys and wherefores of that, and not when you should begin to think about mediation to sort out the details of the separation.

@Alcemeg
No, we have not yet told the kids.

Btw, I love the comment about the cat. My counselor asked me the other day, when and how did I become the person that takes care of everybody and everything? Btw I totally understand that you faxed your husband, I wanted to email mine, and even now we do not talk about anything, if we want to communicate something we email or text. He intimidates me so much that I get panic attacks when I talk to him. Even so, just like you said, I am sick with guilt these days for "hurting" him. He walks around the house looking like he is dying and I cannot help but feel sorry for him.

bears I don't think you should say about the affair, especially if you have children, because that gives your husband ammo to paint a victim narrative and potentially damage the way your children see you (speaking from experience here )
It's hard because you still want to trust the person you thought was your life partner, but if you don't believe he has your best interests at heart, you have a duty of care to yourself to protect yourself

@Alcemeg yes, I totally agonise over hurting him, when really I'm blinded to the fact he doesn't seem to mind hurting me at all. Like the thing about putting a random cat first, yes I would do that! That is me and I can't help it!
When you're in this situation you just don't notice what is happening, and that your feelings become so unimportant, you completely stop thinking about them and just run on autopilot, getting to the end of the day, or the end of the week, or the end of the year.... Then you realise you've lost something entirely because of this inaction and indecision.
Yes @katysun I agree that bringing up the affair will mean all of the focus is on that, and not the fact that our marriage has been dead for years. I know he would jump on that and make everything about it, when it really isn't the issue at all. Not belittling what I did, but it's not the reason I want us to split.
@loveyourself2020 we do this too, communicate only by email. Well, we used to, even that has gone now. But he would email me as if I was a work colleague, all weird and formal. I would be much more comfortable emailing him than sitting down to talk. Like you say talking to your partner makes you anxious and flustered so much that your part of the discussion collapses and in a way you give in. This is how I feel, so I'd rather do it in writing. Mine too walks around like a sad old dog as if he's badly done to (and like he's about to give birth to triplets) and I feel sorry for him too. Back round to the vicious circle of not wanting to hurt him. The trouble is, I'm like his mum more than anything else. He depends on me, but at the same time lives like a single man. He even buys his own food, he'll come in with a pizza and a pack of sandwiches from the co-op. Never a thought of cooking for me, ever. But he'll moan if I don't make something for him.....and then when I do, he'll say he'd rather have a f*ing pot noodle!!!! Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent now.
@QuentinBunbury thank you, yes I think you're right. I have to protect myself and not get painted as the bad guy. Again, not excusing myself, but there's a lot more to it.
Thanks everyone, I hope we all get sorted out and can move on sooner rather than later xx

Good points from @KatySun and @QuentinBunbury about keeping it simple. Just essential key message(s), as short as possible. After all, you are probably going to have to repeat it all quite often... so you don't want to have a whole long script! 😃

@loveyourself2020, if I hadn't done it by fax, I am not when I'd ever have set the ball rolling. That sounds very cowardly, and yet I am not at all a coward. I've come to realise I'm actually a very brave and truthful person. It's just that somehow all that energy got sucked out of me the minute I faced him.

All these labels get thrown at you -- weak, stupid, overemotional, mad, hysterical, silly, cold, heartless, irrational... and they do undermine the confidence needed to simply state your position and stick to it. That's why you just have to make do with whatever method you feel able to actually carry out.

@19Bears
Mine too walks around like a sad old dog as if he's badly done to (and like he's about to give birth to triplets) and I feel sorry for him too.

OMG thank you for this picture. It made laugh out loud and cried a little ( I think I peed my pants a little). Yes, yes mine too. I mean he is only 55 in great shape and still he walks around like he has cancer or something. I seriously worry about him, all the time, but every now and then think that maybe he is just pretending that he is unwell to hurt me, because he knows that I care.

@Alcemeg
It's just that somehow all that energy got sucked out of me the minute I faced him.

This is exactly how I feel with my STBX. I forget what I wanted to say, I lose my words, I feel like a little kid facing an adult. It is really embarrassing. Sadly, I told him once that he intimidates me. Instead of being hurt, shocked, Idk surprised, he just said: "Interesting, a colleague from work told me that once too". I am not sure what he meant by that. I mean it is not a good thing that people around you feel intimidated by you. I would be beside myself apologizing to him if the roles were turned. But he.. idk, was he proud of that?

Hello everyone, thank you so much for your recent thoughts. I have to say, I do not feel strong at all- still going round in circles over here!!

I'll have to wait until my next workday to reply properly but just wanted to drop in quickly to send lots of love to you @19Bears. As others have said, I absolutely would not bring up the affair. It is not relevant to what you now need to do and say, and it will only muddy the waters and cause you additional guilt and confusion when you're already clear on what you want to achieve. I have found this thread so amazingly invaluable with the support these ladies have been offering me, so please do stick around and join our little club!

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend (as far as possible for those sharing in my position!)

Bless you @helplesshopeless, personally I'm not expecting you to feel anything like strong until this relationship is safely behind you and you've had some experience of a different kind of life.

One thing that occurred to me in relation to the "Getting the ball rolling" exchanges we had on here last night is that one of the extraordinarily difficult things about this situation is that we are used to behaving according to certain standards. For example, not doing anything that would hurt someone else. Not making any big changes without being absolutely certain that we're doing the right thing. Treating others with kindness so as not to upset them.

It's all turned on its head when leaving this sort of relationship, because the whole scenario involves hurting someone very close to us, whose welfare we are used to focusing on to the exclusion of our own. We cannot possibly understand (and believe, accept) the necessity of what we're doing, because we have to recover from the relationship first in order to begin seeing things in a less distorted way. And however kindly we try to go about it, our ex will make sure that (a) everything is horribly traumatic and (b) the blame and anger are firmly on us, like having a flamethrower steadily pointed at us. It's unbearable and I certainly backed down at least once before finally seeing things through to the bitter end. (Of course he made sure it was bitter.)

If we beat ourselves up for not meeting our usual standards of behaviour, it's a bit like trying to escape from jail but worrying that we have no proper clothes and haven't cleaned our teeth for a month.

Your affair might have been one way for your subconscious to warn you that different rules apply in your situation. An invitation to scrap your usual moral self-judgement because the ethics of being subjugated in a cruel relationship are, to say the least, blurry.

I hope this isn't just me blathering on like an expert when this was just my own odd experience. Maybe @18Bears calling me God has gone to my head 😋 ...so, I'd really love to know if this is how other people who've been through this experienced it all? I know one of the fabulous PPs related to my description of it being like finding your way out of a maze when drugged. When you went through a separation like this, did you feel confident and clear? Or were you constantly tormented by shame and self-doubt? When did that start to clear, and did you ever feel regret for "all that damage you did" (as the husband likes to paint it)?

For me, once I started really understanding what I'd done, I was kind of blown away by it. Looking back, I still can't quite believe that little me managed it! -- and I'm so proud of myself for managing to escape and for eventually creating such a different life.

When I separated from ex, and the relationship was characterised by coercive control, there was no confidence and clarity, just sheer and utter terror at what I was doing Alcemeg. My inner picture of myself was just running over this ragged landscape. It felt like he threw everything he had at me, from promises of the stars, moon sun to calling me mentally unstable to mutual professional colleagues and in the legal process. He said we had communication problems and needed to learn to communicate better - which was rather funny because he turned up at the first mediation session with a lever arch file of emails which were pages and pages of explanations and trying to resolve matters for DC. So he meant that my communication was not what he wanted to hear. He still referred to me as his wife after five years of separation. We went through legal processes of several years. Then one summer a couple of years back it stopped. Just like that. Either he had tried everything he could or he had met someone else.

Within this all, I kept my focus very clearly on what I wanted to achieve for DC in terms of their relationship with him going forward. This has been achieved. Ex pays attention to their needs and contact is consistent. DC are growing up with a meaningful and safe relationship with ex. I also do not hate ex, although there are certain things I still find triggering.

My own view, reflecting on it, is that *helplesshopeless, you are showing immense courage going through the couples’ counselling. I think this will give you an additional platform to understand what is going on. I just ran (metaphorically). It might have been easier if I had not done that. And yet, my fear was that he would somehow get me back and indeed, we did discuss this at one point. Here it was the difference between an imagined life and the reality, though. He is who he is, and I am who I am.

So, no - not confident and clear, just running.

The other thing I wanted to all is that in my case there is no ‘happily ever after’ with someone else yet. I need to figure out what I want to do first.

*to add

Plus I think I need to name change, so much is on this thread!

Well now I know you can't be God @Alcemeg as you've missed out one of my bears 😅
@loveyourself2020 yes I feel like this too, as if I'm a naughty kid who's been called in to the headteacher, I forget everything and go into my shell and just hope for it all to be over. However, not so much during our last discussion, I let go a bit more than normal, and got a few things off my chest that previously I would not have said, because I wanted to protect him from it and not hurt his feelings. Maybe I am getting stronger and realising I can say what I think and it does matter how I feel.
Sadly though not strong enough to tell him to go fuck himself for yet again being a lazy slob today. It's a lovely day and he's sat inside all day watching various things on telly. I've just been in the house assuming he'd at least have the football on for the boys to watch, but he's sat there with Line Of Duty on, while my littlest sits beside him buried in his iPad, and the biggest had gone off to his room. They've played out in the garden with me today, but all they get from their dad is whatever he wants to watch while they just do their own thing. So much for his idea of taking them to play tennis after buying the littlest his own tennis racket from the charity shop yesterday and acting like dad of the year. Surprisingly that has not materialised. Oh, and he's just cooked a horrible frozen curry which he left out on the kitchen bench since yesterday, defrosting and then sitting at room temperature all day. Disgusting. All the while fully aware that I'm cooking a roast dinner. Who does that???? And to think I let the bloody love of my life go to stay here with this crap. 'For the kids.'

@KatySun it took me a couple of decades to find my happy ever after. First I went through other kinds of abusive relationship, wolves in different types of sheep attire. I'm a slow learner 😂 but I got there eventually, better late than never!

@19Bears sorry about that 😎 I'm pretty good at multitasking, as you can imagine, but it can be hard for Me to keep track of all My creatures on Earth, having infinite galaxies to take care of too.

@Alcemeg 😂

OMG we told the kids. This was probably hardest thing I have ever done. I had to cook dinner, and eat it beforehand, I thought I was going to through up. Had chamomile tea and a sleeping pill. Still it felt like I am going to get heart attach. But my kids, omg, I am so proud of them, the older ones, they took it like the champs. My son, the oldest, just said, “wow, when did this happen”? Then he came and hugged me. After he went to the kitchen to clean up the mess. My middle one, daughter, was laughing, as she always does when she is uncomfortable and said, “as long as you guys are in agreement”, what prompted my STBX to say, that this has NOTHING to do with him, that he was "told" just like them. Youngest one, who is 16, took it the hardest. Ran up to the bathroom. She went for a walk with her dad, and I had a chat with her later. Will have to keep an eye on her. I guess as youngest, she was not picking up on clues that the older ones did. I mean, my older daughter knows literally what drives me nuts with him and my son asked, "is it because dad is not doing anything around the house?" which is also true, but you see, he noticed. Youngest one will need to be monitored as she is in mental health crises anyway, but I think that we will be ok, once he is out of the house.

I was not sure how I will feel because when I told my husband it felt good but only for a second and then I was on fire for weeks, my whole body was aching, anxiety, stress. However, with this one, I feel so good, I am so relieved, OMG guys, I feel so much better. I felt bad that I was holding this from them, lying to them, but I did not even realize how much it was affecting me. Now, onwards and upwards.

Oh well done loveyourself .

Much strength and comfort in being honest .

I guess we forget that our children are complex beings ,sometimes capable of more than we expect .

Wow @loveyourself2020 this is great news. I am really proud of you for doing what must be the absolute most terrifying thing in the world. It sounds like it went well overall, of course it's going to be a shock to them, but at the same time they have seen the problems for themselves and they know their mum. Good luck to you all, you can move forward from here and things will get better. I can feel your relief from here!!

Well done love

@loveyourself2020 sending you a gold medal for bravery!

So glad you've got this crucial step out of the way and that you're feeling so much better for it. Onwards and upwards!

@peridito
I guess we forget that our children are complex beings ,sometimes capable of more than we expect.
As kids we'd probably be mortified if we realised just how much more of us our parents notice than we think they do. I think it works both ways.

Thank you all so much. OMG I feel so much better. I finally slept last night after so long. It feels like this weight was lifted of my chest and I can breathe again.

@helplesshopeless
How are you doing these days? I apologize for stealing your spotlight for a moment there, I felt like I had to share. Thinking of you

Can’t believe he calls you a battleaxe! Is he in his 80s? 😂

Just to add a massive well done to loveyourself. Psychologically what you have done is a major hurdle and can be one of the blocks to leaving. Now the news is out there with your children, you can be your authentic self and what a relief that is, rather than living a life pretending.

I’ve been reflecting on Alcemeg’s and Katysun’s memories of making the move to leave. My final motivation (although there was a clear build up and many moments of ‘that’s really it’ but not following through) was the horrible feeling of not feeling safe in my own home. I had grown up in that atmosphere so when it returned it really triggered me and l thought ‘ As a child l had no choice, but there is no way l am going to live like this as an adult’ . So in many ways my childhood trauma ‘saved me’ . My STBX frames this as me leaving because of unresolved events in my childhood and absolutely denies any unsafe behaviours on his part of course.

He also said we had communication problems and can’t understand why l won’t engage in couple’s counselling. But like Katysun l have realised l simply wasn’t saying what he wanted to hear and he couldn’t accept my narrative.

I have had a weird few days. It’s been my birthday and l busied myself, went to see my boys in order to distract myself. Inevitably there was a lot of talk about STBX especially from DS1 who likes to analyse. He is 100% supportive of me but he painted a picture of STBX of being completely bewildered still about the split and disturbingly has this narrative of ‘I didn’t deserve this’.

Inevitably this has impacted on me and l have been having conflicting thoughts about my own behaviour. I actually feel like a naughty child who has run away from home. It feels so alien to me to defy my husband’s wishes and to put me first. I am quite a rule follower generally and always feel mortified if l am ‘told off’ for something.

I keep feeling that at any moment my STBXH will appear and tell me ‘that’s enough now and time to come home’ and l will meekly follow. It’s a weird thought and l can’t quite shake it at the moment. It’s almost like l can’t believe l have actually done this and going to follow it through.

I find it helpful to have a few simple mantras when l am wobbling;

I do not respect him
I do not love him
I do not trust him
I do not want to go back

So that really grounds me. How on earth could l go back if those four things are true?

Hope you are ok Hopelesshelpless. I think you are sounding clearer in your thinking and this is all part of the process. Once you see something you can’t unsee it, so as time goes on l think you will get the measure of your husband and become stronger as a result.