@ImRunningUpThatHill I’m pretty certain I was in shock, looking back, as I have no idea how I did it either! All cheery after no sleep for two nights and an awful secret, get breakfast and take kids to their school bus as usual, he gave me a kiss and I watched him cycle off to the station to catch his train and go to work, except he didn’t know that I knew he was going to see her at some point after their first night together that weekend. It was honestly like a nightmare, real but not real, no idea how my life was ok and normal (at least I thought it was) on Saturday morning and an epic shitshow by Sunday night. And nobody knew but me. How could I not guess or suspect that a man I had lived with for 34 years was doing this? How could he act normally, sleep by my side every night, have sex with me, book holidays as normal, and be doing this? My head and my life had exploded and I was the only one who knew. Never felt so lonely in my life as I did that day.
I used the time hunting through stuff, searching, looking back at his text messages to me to see if it was actually detectable as to what it was/ when it started. Felt like a huge, huge fool, I forensically read everything to see if I should have realised. It all looked as plausible and normal as it did at the time. There was nothing obvious that I was in denial about, I trusted him 100% as I’d always done, I couldn’t possibly know that 80 miles away in a big city he was in a hotel bedroom a couple of lunchtimes a week. If he was late home it was only by an hour or two, very infrequently, and normal to ‘go for a beer’ with colleagues early evening or, as he was contracting, if he’d been to a school event with me, he’d ‘stay late to make up my hours from yesterday’. All absolutely explicable and not often enough to raise suspicion. All so bloody normal at home. He’d totally compartmentalised until that weekend. And it finally showed in his face. He said that that weekend had shown him how much he was in denial himself about what he was doing and how he had justified it to himself. It was easier to go to work, leave home for a ‘legit’ reason and cheat there in a bubble. Leaving home on a ‘normal’ happy weekend just for OW showed him that home and marriage wasn’t actually “unhappy” as he had told himself and her, I wasn’t neglecting him or being a shit wife as he had told himself. Nothing was different, except him. Going out of the house just to her instead of to work collided the two compartments and totally messed him up. That’s why he didn’t bother to lie any more once I asked if it was true, he was kind of relieved and saw that actually he wasn’t escaping an awful existence, she wasn’t a saviour of any sort, his life was crashing down around him and it was nobody’s fault but his own. The new young adored shiny thing morphed from fantasy into a huge shameful problem within 24 hours and reality hit very, very hard. He was absolutely gobsmacked that he didn’t even know himself any more, always thought he’d leave me at some point for her or if I found out he’d use it as an excuse to go. Reality showed him he didn’t want to do anything of the sort. His headfuck was as big as mine but it was all his own doing and served him bloody well right.
One of our DC was literally within a couple of weeks of their GCSEs starting so I daren’t say a word that morning, they idolised him and I felt didn’t need to know unless they had to know, if you get me. It would destroy both kids and at a crucial time for one of them, so maybe a mother’s protective gut instinct kicked in too. Also I had no idea what I was dealing with at that point. The less calm, less rational me kicked in a day later after confrontation on the Monday night and after the kids had gone to school when he stayed with me and told work he was working from home. It wasn’t pretty.