The outcome of my affair

[Namechange2399]

Hi, I am not sure why I am posting, perhaps I just need to get my head straight.

I am now a divorced early 50’s with two adult DC. 2 years ago I had an affair and left my husband of 25 years. I thought I was bored with my life after the DC’s had left and was swept off my feet with someone new. The key context here is that on reflection I was suffering with undiagnosed effects of the menopause prior to this - it literally changed me as a person.

Post treatment (HRT amongst other things) I am mostly back to what I was before. The new relationship ended as on reflection it was never what I really wanted or needed. Without excusing my behaviour the acts, the impulses and behaviour was not the real me. However I do take full responsibility.

My DC’s though traumatised at the time have adjusted and have their own adult lives. My xDH although devastated behaved impeccably, probably to protect the DC, and we split without rancour. XDH lived locally until last month when he moved to the coast - this is something we spoke about as retirement.

The problem I have is that I still love my xDH and miss him terribly. We have continued to meet as a family and over the last 9 months or so I have realised he is the good man he always was, funny, respectful, kind etc. He even helped me financially when I split with my affair partner. I am not seeking sympathy, however I realise the menopause has screwed my life and that I have thrown away the future that I should have had. I also realise I have caused the man I love a huge amount of pain that he did not deserve.

Some posters have no clue how utterly life shattering and traumatic the menopause can be for some women

And some posters have no clue how utterly life shattering and traumatic an affair can be.

and as someone who has experienced both an affair and a pretty shit menopause, at no point did I lose my morals, sense of wrong or right, or feel the need to engage in behaviour that would only be life-changing for all involved.

@Namechange2399 I don't know why you posted this. My reaction is that your are blaming the menopause. My wife's menopause has been horrendous and long lasting - difficult on many levels for both of us but an affair, involving either of us would never have happened. I would probably react in the same as your ex. Even if he still loves and cares for you, even if memories of you and your marriage are precious to him - for me there would be no way back after the ultimate betrayal. I could not be in that relationship again and live with with any of thoughts of the affair in my head - absolutely no way. There's no way I could put up with being sh!t on like that: None. Don't delude yourself - forget him and try and make a like for yourself - what's done is done and can not be undone. The menopause is an excuse - just drop it.

Interested to know whether you got dumped by the new partner and are harking back to the past. Your husband may or may not take you back. You may as well ask. I'd never take a cheat back but everyone is different. Making excuses about the menopause is a bit pathetic, it doesnt make you cheat.

Thank you for sharing this, @Namechange2399

I didnt read it as anything other than wanting to share your experience in case others can identify and, crucially, pre-empt the same experience.

I hope you find peace and comfort.

It's a classic case of your ex-DH witnessing and not being able to stop you from having an horrendous car-crash and you taking him down with you.

Everyone has their breaking point and you broke him, so his self-preservation instinct will always repel you. It would be like sleeping with the enemy.

If you really wanted to, you could have got professional help, but you chose to run into the arms of someone else.

It's a sad tail as old as time, but come on, you did it all by yourself.

Have you been through menopause ?

@Changechangechanging and as someone who has experienced both an affair and a pretty shit menopause, at no point did I lose my morals, sense of wrong or right, or feel the need to engage in behaviour that would only be life-changing for all involved.
And yet there is a huge upswing in suicide rates amongst menopausal women. So you didn't kill your self. Congratulations. You are morally and emotionally superior

Ask him again, apologise with sincerity and tell him what you said in your post.

If he says no then move on. To be honest if I was him I would tell you to do one too, you must have hurt him so deep. To be betrayed by someone you love for selfish whims is hard to forgive. You have to live with the choices you make. Sorry if I sound harsh!

Way back in the day when I was at uni studying anatomy, I remember very clearly a tutorial where we discussed male and female anatomy. The lecturer said that male reproductive system is very simple, basically testicles and penis. Women's system is so much more complicated and requires an entire subset of medicine dedicated to it, and even then we don't understand it completely.

So to say the effects of the menopause and a male mid life crisis are similar is to display massive ignorance about the female body.

Honestly the women on here who either don't have a clue about how much of an effect menopause can have, or who have experienced their menopause and decided no one else can have one more devestating is ridiculous!

I also think a lot of this regret is coming from reality dawning. The heady days of an affair mean caution is thrown to the wind and the future and repercussions aren’t considered. Now you have woken up in your early 50s without a loyal, loving husband who is now an EX and has moved onto live the life you think you deserve.

Unfortunately decisions have consequences. I have always been heavily affected by my hormones, suffering a few days severe depression (that made me think I was losing my mind) with my cycle until I went on the pill in my early 40s. I recently had to take opioids for severe pain due to cancer. When I was coming off these and my brain was readjusting (after 3+ yrs on them) I went through a manic stage and was restless, agitated, thrill seeking and very horny. DH got pretty worried about me and spoke to me about my behavior because I was spending way, way too much time in a social media group. I wasn’t doing anything sexual and wasn’t having an affair, but I was talking to a guy much younger than me online constantly. DH asked me to stop and to shut down the app, both of which I did as I realized it was a coping mechanism and I was hurting my husband. We refocused on our marriage and getting fit and healthy and recognized all the stress and fear we had gone through with my cancer diagnosis and treatment.

What comes to me is that we have been married 26 years and are very happily married, but in any relationship there are years and times when one or other partner isn’t getting their needs or wants met all the time, work is tedious, you are sleep deprived, the kids are demanding etc. etc. There are constant small and large sacrifices you make because you made vows to the other person and ultimately you want to stay married more than you want to focus on yourself. My husband has a job and status where he could easily have affairs and get attention if he wanted to. In fact I have had two “friends” who threw themselves at my husband and made passes at him, both times he turned them down. I think they both thought I wasn’t good enough for him.

So both partners get temptations and opportunities throughout marriage. Your DH I’m sure had plenty of times where he would rather not have spent the day working hard doing something tedious to help provide for the family.

I just can’t accept the “It was the menopause” excuse. I appreciate our hormones can do a number on us, but they don’t cause as to immediately have another man’s dick in our vagina, that takes active planning and if married, deception.

I went on HRT after I recovered from cancer and was no menopausal due to chemo. It has made me feel like I am in my 30s again and our sex life has definitely benefited. We all have times of needing to reinvent ourselves in marriage.

You realise now that when you were bored and at a crossroads as an empty nester and menopausal, having an affair was one of the many options you could have chosen.

The thing is, you are talking to an audience of women, many of whom have been in your shoes and were/are also dealing with the menopause but they didn’t burn their marriage to the ground.

I am not judging you as I haven’t lived your life but you ultimately got the huge change you were looking for - the end of a long marriage.

Its time to accept your new reality and move on from here. If it was the other way round, I doubt you would be willing to take your husband back.

and as someone who has experienced both an affair and a pretty shit menopause, at no point did I lose my morals, sense of wrong or right, or feel the need to engage in behaviour that would only be life-changing for all involved.

Good for you.

Peri menopause has completely changed me beyond all recognition too. Until you have experienced the anxiety, the irrationality, restlessness, huge increase in sex drive, loss of empathy for others (when previously youve been described as hugely empathetic) and the extreme selfishness that rampaging hormones can bring, then its disingenuous to judge others.

To me its felt like a second teenage. But was totally unexpected and swept my life into a completely different direction. One I’m happy with luckily…but it could easily have gone badly wrong.

Please do not beg him back. Let him go and find someone who will not treat him in this way. You can be amicable for the benefit of your DC and any future DGC

Sorry op, that things have not worked out for you. In your shoes I think I would respect your ex’s views. If you truly love him, then you have to let him go.

Or respect that he has said no and leave the poor bloke alone. Jesus.

This ^.

The cavalier dismissal of the effects menopause can have on a woman, from other women particularly, is shocking.

All women don't suffer in the same way but it is a major seismic shift that men don't experience.

And while it doesn't excuse a wife cheating, it can go some way towards explaining such uncharacteristic behaviour.

@Namechange2399 I don't think it's fair to ask your exH again about reconciling. He can't. You've already broken his heart once and he's not going to risk that again. You've lost his trust and you can't get it back. It's sad because he clearly still cares about you in spite of what you did, but you can't expect him to put aside a massive betrayal because he would always be living with the possibility that it might happen again.

Think you may have to make your peace with that, and get on with your life.

They talked about, he cried and left the area. He is done. He seems like a good man who still did the right thing for his children’s mother and ex-wife by helping her financially when she was in need. Let him recover and find a relationship with a woman who appreciates all his qualities and won’t find them “boring” when he is loyal and reliable.

Imagine if we all blamed the menopause for our bad decisions.

Crazy hormones will do very very strange things to your brain. Been there done that.

I wonder if it had worked out with the other man would you still 'love' your Ex-husband

I wondered the same

The whole thing's a heck of a shame, not least because the exH sounds a thoroughly decent man - which could also be why he just can't re-start this.
Still, it's absolutely his decision to make and here's hoping you can also find the happiness he has

You haven't given any indication that you've taken responsibility for your actions - it was all the menopause. Not you. You may have undergone personality changes due to this but you still knew right from wrong and you still knew the immense amount of hurt and pain you would cause.

Simple as that - you think? How glib.

GPs are seriously ignorant about menopause. Workplaces policies only pay lip service - I was at a meeting with very senior managers and the subject came up. One declared that her menopause had been uneventful. Another complained about how women would only use this as an excuse.

HRT is great, if it works. It doesn't for some of us, or we can't take it.

If you haven't been through menopause, you don't have a clue, and even if you have been, not all menopauses are the same.

Thank you JRHartley72

This is really sad to read.

I feel sorry for you for being affected by hormones in such a negative way.

I feel even more sorry for your lovely exDH who sounds decent and was probably really heartbroken.

However, I think you need to respect his decision and move on. It must be incredibly hard, but he told you he can't move pass this and you should let him be.

I hope you eventually find some peace and happiness.

Menopause can be brutal and sadly even peri menopause can be awful so you don't even realise. Late 30s - my moods became awful, I isn't really like my kids, I was snappy, irritable, a bit of a twat to friends - needing one up manship. Work friend mentioned peri menopause as I was hot at work all the time. I was like I'm too young but nope it was peri menopause. Started hrt and antidepressant and I felt like the old happy me.