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Original poster

Acceptable?

27 replies

Confusedwife10 · 18/10/2022 13:04

My husband and I have been married ten years and been together for over sixteen. I met as teenagers and went to university together. During our time at uni, he well as far as I know kissed another girl and I seven months into our relationship bearing in mind, we were eighteen, slept with an ex boyfriend. My husband and I were off and on at this point and that in now way justifies my behaviour. The tryst with the ex boyfriend maybe lasted three weeks, I cut all contact and my husband and I hashed through uni and came out the other side, still together. I could feel in early 20s, our relationship getting more serious so I decided to tell my husband about the affair when I was eighteen. He was furious and understandably I just had to wait and see if he still wanted to be with me. I decided to move away to do a post grad and we would be long distance for a year and I suppose to give him the freedom to finish it. I took ownership, fully accepted that it was crappy behaviour. He didn’t end it and since then we have been in totally honest and committed relationship and then marriage with children coming along. To now. Husband had a year long affair with work colleague, blamed it on me and said that I deserved it because of what happened when we were younger. Understandably, I am v confused and feel I deserved to us in some way.

OP posts:
Original poster
Confusedwife10 · 18/10/2022 13:04

Sorry I slept with the ex boyfriend not him!

OP posts:
katmarie · 18/10/2022 13:14

Bullshit. He's using it as an excuse to justify what he wanted to do, because he knows what he has done is shitty and unjustifiable. It's one thing to sleep with someone else when you are 18 and in themidst of an on-again-off-again relationship. It's another thing entirely to break your marriage vows and damage the stability of your children's family life.

What you did was (in my opinion) fine. The relationship had been called off, you were 18, you'd made no serious, or legal, commitment to each other. (Who called it off at that point btw? Just curious, not that it really matters) He has gone behind your back while you were very much committed to each other. If he can't get past what happened when you were basically teenagers, then he needs therapy, not an affair. He's a dick.

DatingDinosaur · 18/10/2022 13:15

If it’s come to tit-for-tat cheating then your current relationship is dead.

You feel guilty. He cheated. Neither of you trust each other, or yourselves. Both dragging up pasts that cannot be changed. Can’t move forward from it either.

Time to let go. Of each other.

loottie · 18/10/2022 13:18

Ha ha ha, yeah good one husband.

In absolutely no way comparable.

Your marriage is dead I'm afraid.

Watchkeys · 18/10/2022 13:45

I think that some people might find it acceptable and some people might not. It's impossible to advise you, OP, because you're essentially asking 'How do I feel about this?'

Only you can know whether it's acceptable to you. If you're asking us, I suspect you feel it isn't, but you want to be invalidated or validated. Do you wish it was acceptable? Do you wish it wasn't? I think you think one way, but feel the other.

LeningradSymphony · 18/10/2022 13:46

Tricky, tbh. If it had just been you that cheated in the past then I could understand that possibly he'd found he was unable to cope with your past infidelity after all... but he cheated too, right? So there's already been cheating on both sides. Your relationship was built on a foundation of being unfaithful so stepping outside of the relationship probably didn't feel as big a deal as it would for a couple that'd been exclusive since the start.

Having said that, a year long affair takes SO much deception and lies and disrespect, I wouldn't be able to forgive that. He wanted to have an affair so he did, and to hell with the impact on you and his children, at any point he could have told you he was unhappy and ended things with you to be with his affair partner, but he chose to lie to you to have his cake and eat it too.

I wouldn't personally be able to move on from this, but then I wouldn't have been able to move on from the kissing and shagging early in the relationship either, even at eighteen. What will you do?

Billyjean1 · 18/10/2022 14:24

A year long affair is alot to take in. I’m thinking emotions were involved to. Not only that his behaviour has been shitty towards you. Based on all of that I’d be telling him to leave.

JestersTear · 18/10/2022 14:43

Three weeks of sleeping with an ex-boyfriend at 18 when you're in an 'on/off' relationship is in NO WAY the same as a year-long affair when you're married! I'm amazed that he's even thinking it's in any way comparable - plus it doesn't;t make his actions ok even if it was the same!
The man is a fool. Also, zero remorse from him, whereas you felt guilty and gave him the chance to end things, which he decided not to do.
Sorry OP, this is up to you and how you feel of course, but I could never trust this man again.

MrsTerryPratchett · 18/10/2022 14:49

Three weeks of sleeping with an ex-boyfriend at 18 when you're in an 'on/off' relationship is in NO WAY the same as a year-long affair when you're married! I

This. By his reckoning you are now owed 49 weeks of fucking whomever you choose because you have to keep everything equal, right?

Wrong.

He's not only cheated, he's unrepentant and that would be unforgivable for me. You were repentant. For a much less serious thing.

Original poster
Confusedwife10 · 18/10/2022 15:27

Thanks for the replies.
I understand completely that what I did when we were teenagers was wrong and I really struggled with the notion of telling my husband at the time as of course I knew it would be hurtful but I couldn’t have gotten married on a lie as such. I thought I was doing the right thing after doing such a wrong thing in telling him, moving away and giving him space to decide whether he wanted to commit further. A little under two years later, he proposed and honestly I have never given him any reason to ever question my loyalty since but it appears that wasn’t enough. So sad that our marriage could be reduced to this. I remember last summer before I found out about the cheating in December, he was going on a golfing holiday with a group of men, one in particular being an absolute sleaze. I made a quip about keeping such and such in line and he out of nowhere well sure you cheated with such and such and at the time, I was confused as it was sixteen years previous but obviously my husband didn’t see it that way.

OP posts:
MrsTerryPratchett · 18/10/2022 15:37

It sounds like your cheating was a little card he kept in his back pocket to use whenever he liked to control you. That's really not OK.

He got to be furious about three weeks in a relationship, do you get that too? Or actually white hot rage because it's one year in a marriage.

I suspect your marriage is over anyway so why bother arguing the toss about it?

Original poster
Confusedwife10 · 18/10/2022 15:40

No / I don’t feel like I can be because he’s got me feeling huge guilt about something I did previously. He said he wishes he had broken it off with me before the children were born but is now saying that he didn’t mean that, just that the hurt would be less. What a crap situation to be in for is but also our children. I honestly never saw this coming.

OP posts:
MrsTerryPratchett · 18/10/2022 15:45

Sorry to say your marriage is over. Sad

He wants to keep you sad and guilty while he does whatever he wants. He doesn't want an equal partnership. Plan for the worst. Because this kind of man doesn't behave in divorce either.

Bedazzled22 · 18/10/2022 16:00

A fling when you’re 18 when relationship is off is no way comparable to what he has done! He’s very bitter and twisted isn’t he

whatstheteamarie · 18/10/2022 16:20

He's looking to blame you for something he did.

He, as an adult, had a 52 week long affair when he had a moral & legally binding and exclusive commitment to a woman who is also the mother of his children.

You, as a teen, had a 3 year old week rebound with an ex, whilst also in an on-off relationship with a teen on-off boyfriend. No legal commitment, no children involved, no joint home, income or family.

The two are completely incomparable.

He has done a real number on you if you think you are in anyway to blame for this.

DosCervezas · 18/10/2022 17:07

If there was such a thing as a scale of infidelity , I'd be thinking a 1 and a 10 with these examples IMO.
You know which is which.

Dery · 18/10/2022 17:25

Agree with PP - there’s no comparison in what you did. I think you repented too much at the time and he has exploited your excessive feelings of guilt and contrition. You need to get angry now. He won’t change his cowardly justification of his shitty behaviour but you can and should stop buying into his warped narrative now.

Marthamay4 · 18/10/2022 22:38

In no world is a year long affair comparable with a 3 week fling in your university years. However, I do believe that when one person cheats something that was once pure has been destroyed, and the relationship will always be contaminated. You have form for cheating, as does your husband - there will always be nagging doubts.

Musti · 18/10/2022 23:01

You were only 18 and you were on and off. And you told him and let him decide. How is that comparable to year long affair when you’re both adults and married??

Original poster
Confusedwife10 · 18/10/2022 23:38

Marthamay4 · 18/10/2022 22:38

In no world is a year long affair comparable with a 3 week fling in your university years. However, I do believe that when one person cheats something that was once pure has been destroyed, and the relationship will always be contaminated. You have form for cheating, as does your husband - there will always be nagging doubts.

Yeah - I see that. I suppose that’s why I told him before we got engaged, married, had children, in the hope that if he believed our relationship was strong enough, he would stay.
I cheated when I was eighteen but I disagree I have form for cheating. I haven’t since then as much as looked at another man in any serious way of affection. I suppose that doesn’t matter though.

OP posts:
Seeinglightthroughallhisbullshit · 19/10/2022 00:00

Of course you are not responsible. He is using this affair to justify his appalling betrayal to relieve him of the guilt he feels. Please don't dwell on that as men say anything when caught out. Concentrate on where you go from here.

What do you want to do @Confusedwife10?

username345 · 19/10/2022 00:48

OP he's following a script because he's had an affair. Take a look at Chump lady; she explains the script. He's revising your relationship to suit his narrative. Blaming you is far easier than taking responsibility for his shitty behaviour. You are not responsible and shouldn't feel any guilt. There's a website called surviving infidelity that you might find helpful. It's for those who have found out their partner has had an affair.

Opentooffers · 19/10/2022 01:05

While he was having his affair, he brought up the past as a stick to beat you with, only because he was looking for excuses to do far worse at the time.
You have too much of a guilt complex, which made you put up with his chide remarks, not only that, but it's the guilt that made you tell him what you did ( bad move, that was unnecessary if he was never going to find out). Have and did you feel less guilty for telling him? - obviously not, you caused maybe some hurt at the time for him but also gave him ammo to hurl at him.
Ditch the guilt, its done you no favours. The old adage 2 wrongs don't make a right applies.
It's likely that he would still have had the affair even if he never knew about what you did. How would you feel about what he's done if you hadn't divulged, so he had no comeback? That's how you should feel about it now.
What you did is irrelevant to this. I wouldn't give him the time of day again, even a tit for tat excuse is a good reason to end it as he's shown you now that marriage vows and DC are not enough to prevent him. If by his own reasoning (ie mad excuse) he feels justified now, I think he probably would of felt for years that it's justified so quite possibly has had other affairs, you just found out about this one.
Only ever a way forward if a person accepts responsibility and is genuinely sorry, switching the blame to you is not doing that at all, far from it.

altmember · 19/10/2022 01:26

Well cheating is cheating. Whatever the circumstances the trust is broken. But the fact your (not so) dh presumably forgave and forgot your cheating means he can't possibly use it to excuse his own infidelity years later. If he'd said to you back along "Yeah, I'll forgive you, but you can't complain if I have an affair in the future", would you have continued the relationship, married him? Would either of you have trusted each other ever again?

He's either been harbouring a grudge through most of your relationship, or he's just pulled it out of a hat as a piss poor excuse for his behaviour. I'm not sure which is worse. Is he trying to say he's waited 15 years to get his own back on you?

Freeme31 · 19/10/2022 11:22

OP this is awful and not comparable at all, you are married with children. If he did not forgive you he should not have married you. Did he cheat to "get you back" or is he "in love with his AP"? A year is a very long time to sleep with someone as revenge! What s catch he is!! Does he want her and not you? I think if you have any hope of saving this marriage you both need marriage counselling. Can u even trust him again? Take care of yourself & your children. Ps find your anger not your guilt for something you basically did as a young adult