This is a long one so apologies in advance!! My DH and I have been together for 14 happy years, the last 7 of those married. He’s the most incredible and amazing person I’ve ever met and we have had the best fun and loving relationship I could have wished for plus now our amazing little family on top of all that. But, I think something I did 14 years ago may have just completely destroyed it all…..
3 months into our relationship (almost 14 years ago) I received an email from my ex containing friendly chat and asking me to design him a tattoo. I replied with equally friendly chat and said I’d design the tattoo. My memory is failing me with some of the details surrounding the event as it’s so long ago but my DH (bf at the time) was massively unimpressed when he found out I’d emailed him back – I said I’d replied with friendly chat and told my DH that moving forward I wouldn’t design the tattoo and wouldn’t reply to my ex again, and I stuck to my word. However, and this is the hazy area but a key point, I did tell my DH that I’d mentioned him to my ex in the email and said how amazing he was. DH seemed okay. Case dropped. We moved on continuing to be loved up and happy.
Fast forward 14 years…..still loved up and happy but….DH and I have a heated conversation, jealousy kicking in over my past and previous relationships (this has happened on and off over the past 14 years but not been a real issue, just normal jealousy needing some reassurance). Said email mentioned above comes into the conversation and he’s saying how can I believe you, how do I know you didn’t reply again blah blah blah. I said I’ll see if I can find the email and show it to you because I wanted to prove to him and make him feel better. Well what a can of worms that has opened up…….we found the email trail containing the friendly chat and showing no further follow-up, but no mention of me telling my ex about my DH, in fact no mention of him at all. My DH has absolutely flipped saying that I’ve lied to him and betrayed him and been completely dishonest which I think he’s within his rights to say and that I chose my ex over him as should never have emailed in the first place. But he’s also saying that I must have still had feelings for my ex, must have wanted to re-kindle something with him, the content was far too personal and friendly. He simply will not believe that this wasn’t the case however much I try to reassure him. And let me tell you, that absolutely was not the case – my ex was controlling to the extreme and made life hellish the majority of the time however the breakup, when I finally plucked up courage to leave him, was amicable and we did exchange sporadic messages as friends on and off in the following months. My DH is interpreting it completely wrong and the daft thing is that I feel like I only replied to my ex in the first place because of my own insecurities/jealousy over my DH’s past. It just all feels like such a mess over something that isn’t significant at all in my mind (although obviously the consequences are) but is HUGE in my DH’s mind and nothing I seem to say or do is fixing it. I have honestly believed for the last 14 years (as has he) that I said that in the email but it’s clearly not there in writing – I either bare face lied or it’s in some other correspondence that I have zero trace of…?! And the thing is, I don’t know which is true and will never know now!!!
Now is also probably a good point to mentioned the other issue I’ve caused, and there is a link – that I lied to my DH when we first got together – I was intimidated by his past and felt threatened by it which led to feeling insecure and jealous. So for some ridiculous reason I bigged up my past sex life up to something fairly extreme, stupid I know, but that’s all come back to bite recently too. I have now been completely honest with him about that and explained why I felt the need to glorify things but again, and again unsurprisingly, he doesn’t believe me and can’t take my word as the truth. Understandably he’s saying I’ve lied to him over the last 14 years and what else is a lie, how can he trust me etc. etc. The problem with telling him the “honest” bit here is that the past basically boils down to sex with the ex in the email above so DH is thinking I had some amazing sex life with my ex that I was trying to rekindle in the email. Aaaarghhh!!!!
I feel so ashamed and embarrassed that I’ve done this, I can’t sleep and it’s making me feel ill. How can I ever put this right if my DH won’t believe me when I explain my feelings for him and how amazing he is and how happy and in love I am with him. I don’t want this to destroy my marriage and my family who are all perfect in every way!! What have I done!!!