Am in utter shock

[honeyandbutterontoast]

Will start by saying this is an OW thread. So I’m not asking for sympathy, I’m just in utter utter shock.

Twelve years ago I met someone. We were both married. We fell in love (I thought). My DH was a bad man, I’m not excusing myself but he was. I divorced him, took the bare minimum and waited for OM to do the same.

He didn’t. For years it went on, his excuses, so I wouldn’t see him, he begged me to be patient. I was his soulmate, his best friend, etc etc etc. And I loved him so much.

We bought a house together, he decided on completion day that he couldn’t leave her. I was in a financial mess for years over that.

In Oct 22 I gave him an ultimatum (this date is important), he had to leave her or we couldn’t speak anymore (up till this point we emailed and texted multiple times a day). He said he couldn’t leave her, couldn’t be without his kids. He went away on holiday with them.

Stupidly we stayed in touch “as friends”. Daily he would ask to see me. He would tell me he wanted to be with me, no matter what would make it happen.

(Sorry this is an essay)

Last spring we saw each other for lunch a couple of times. Something was off but I couldn’t work out what, he seemed depressed. I started dating again and told him we could only be friends.

In the summer he sent me a photo and I noticed he didn’t have a wedding ring on! He told me he had “recently” left his wife but didn’t know how to tell me. That he wasn’t sure if we should move in together straight away (!!) or just get to know each other as single people.

We met for lunch a couple of times, he had endless excuses why I couldn’t see his new flat. It all seemed odd but somehow plausible. We last saw each other in October but carried on messaging multiple times a day, chatting about everything. Or so I thought.

He told me he was very depressed and unhappy. Needed time to get used to life alone. I truly believed he was unhappy, possibly even suicidal at times.

This evening I received a message. From his girlfriend. Who he lives with. Who he had told he was separated when he met her 18 months ago. Yep when I gave him the ultimatum, he was with her. They have a whole life together.

She is 20 years younger than he is.

We spoke on the phone and while speaking she was looking through his phone. There are multiple women. All that age. It’s been going on for years with them.

How he has time to run a company I do not know.

So here I am, 12 years on. In utter shock. And that poor girl. I didn’t know what to say to her, I could only assure her there has been nothing intimate between us since before she met him. Unfortunately he has been with others.

i honestly would have told you he was my best friend. His behaviour had been odd yes, but I never thought for a moment it was like this.

His last messages to me were how he had an okay day today, hadn’t done much. They are on holiday!!!

I get that in some ways I deserve this. But she doesn’t. He obviously was putting his wedding ring on to meet me! How messed up is that. Or maybe he wasn’t married then anymore?!

And I’m guessing when we were actually in an intimate relationship he was shagging these other women. I really had no idea. He would beg me not to leave him as he was so unhappy but had no idea how to leave without losing his children/business.

Desperately need to sleep but had to get all that out. It’s like an episode of eastenders.

OP all of this suggests you are still exceptionally vulnerable. You need to get some counselling. Try speaking with your GP about that in the context of your past too.

A sociopathic man controlled you for 12 years mostly from a distance. He even persuaded you that you were buying a house together which is bizarre.

To make sure you don’t get sucked back in when he suddenly finds himself low on options, you absolutely must block him on everything. There is no text he can send, no conversation you can have with him that will do you any good. You are completely vulnerable with this man. Nothing he says is true. You genuinely don’t know who he is. Neither does he. Also block his gf if you got her number. You need to get as far away from it all as you can.

On the upside. You weren’t his wife. You aren’t in the horrible position that his gf is in. Your life can start again now. You will have more mental energy for other things. You will start feeling better in a month or two. Join local clubs, make new friends, reach out to old friends. Fill your time with people who want to spend time with you.

@Whiskerson

I agree, this will take months, maybe years to process. I was not the OW but the wife of someone a bit like this. Over two years later I'm still getting over it.

I understand the shock op, and tge ruminating.

Check out Dr Ramani see if the content rings any bells.

You will get over this but it will take time. I don't think I'll ever trust a man again but maybe that's no bad thing!

This is a completely different issue, but in my 20s/30s I wasted a LOT of time with men I thought were interested in me, but weren't, or who I went out with but then went back to their ex etc.. I thought I was unattractive, was a complete fool for thinking they would be interested, would never find a partner, too needy etc. etc.
I have recently realised they were the type of men who string women along until something better comes along. Either they just wanted attention, or they wanted a relationship and couldn't bear to be without one.
Either way, I now don't think of myself as foolish for being taken in, or at least I'm trying not to.
Regardless of how this started, this man wove a VERY elaborate web of lies and it would have taken a professional detective to catch him out and the OP should not feel foolish.

My friends dad did something similar…multiple women, it all came out when he suddenly died. Potentially 3 GFs turning up at funeral! They all believed they were the one, and two were in process of selling houses to buy with him! My friend was mortified, she loved her dad but it has given her real trust issues in men.

1. affair partner's ex wife.
2. affair partner's girlfriend who believed she was dating a single man.

You "crack on" with reading properly.

I would bet my house this man has never been married. His 'wedding ring' is probably a gold plated trinket from Amazon. It's all too easy to back away from commitment to someone else because of fictitious wife and children. He has probably had numerous women on the go over the years and has enjoyed manipulating all of them, having a different character and back story for each woman.

Of course they were free choices. OP made a conscious decision to get involved with a married man. She made a conscious choice to accept one shitty excuse after another for him not leaving his wife and as a result wasted twelve years of her life. And now she’s found out he has someone else, so she’s justified shopping him to her as ‘the right thing to do’ and feels a responsibility to her. Absolute bullshit.

She felt no responsibility to his wife and kids, because she was the ‘winner’ there. Now she’s the loser to this other woman, so for ‘responsibility’ read ‘revenge’. She’s blown his web sky high and instead of walking away she wants to be involved in the drama. The only thing keeping OP involved in this mess is OP herself.

Walk away OP. Get some counselling and get your head together otherwise your pattern of choosing abusive men will continue.

Yes I'm sorry you've been led a merry dance op but people who fuck around lie. To everyone.

There's no rationalising or understanding his behaviour just accept he's a compulsive liar and a fantasist. Draw a line and move on.

Go for unattached men next time and learn from this.

I’m not actually convinced he was married in the first place tbh.

Nevertheless that is what Op believed but she didn't care & got involved anyway.

None of you seem like great people. This guy, your ex husband, and you. The only ones who get my sympathy are the ex wife and the girlfriend he lives with.

I’ve known two men very like this. Utter frauds. Ended up with a string of high-profile jobs despite NO experience, and weirdly BOTH ended up marrying daughters of Lords/earls.

We all think we wouldn’t fall for a con artist but it’s not that simple. They are highly convincing.

We spoke on the phone and while speaking she was looking through his phone. There are multiple women. All that age. It’s been going on for years with them.

This part I can't fathom out @honeyandbutterontoast

She was looking at his phone (while he was on it speaking to you?) and she saw multiple women?

@honeyandbutterontoast Men like this are NOT unusual.

I had misgivings about the bad lot I was seeing {He ran a self published magazine that had a ''romance /travel companion'' section in it...
I got my friend to write in with a fake ad.

Can you believe he fell for it.

Hook, line and stinker.

He was here for the weekend and asked if I had any ''Purple paper''
I said 'No?'

Only when my friend received a thick envelope with a long letter in did I remember the paper she'd used was pale lilac children's drawing paper!

The ad she said was 'Super slim 20, long dark hair, seeks a special someone for cozy nights in front of the fire, loves fine wine and travel'' {I don't drink alcohol- which he found annoying}.

The letter he'd written was full of how he'd been single for years after divorcing {He was actually divorced} and had been very lonely due to working all the time...
and how he hasn't had a girlfriend or partner in years.

All lies!

I top used to get daily phone calls and snail mail from him.{I didn't have a mobile phone or laptop then}
{I burned them all}

I was in complete shock, It did take 2 yrs to get over the hurt.

The reason you have a low bar {as I did} is your past.

Please read ''Women who love too much'' -or at the very least read the reviews on Amazon by the women who left them there.

Block and move on. This man is a narcissistic arsehole.

I too was told that 'my' bloke was abused in his past relationship - I was an idiot who ''understood him''.

Wake up and smell the coffee....He's a loser.

If he respected you he'd not be letting you take financial and emotional hits...

He's using you like a 'Mummy' to witter on to and to prop up his flagging ego.

Horrid little man.

Into the bin with him!
🗑️

Of course they were free choices. OP made a conscious decision to get involved with a married man. She made a conscious choice to accept one shitty excuse after another for him not leaving his wife and as a result wasted twelve years of her life. And now she’s found out he has someone else, so she’s justified shopping him to her as ‘the right thing to do’ and feels a responsibility to her. Absolute bullshit.

She believed he was in an abusive marriage and he wanted to get out of it.
To get as far as completing on a house purchase and pulling out on the day, shows how convincing he was that he was leaving his wife.

The shitty excuses are only shitty with hindsight surely?

In RL I've known several couples start relationships when they weren't separated. And then go on to marry. It's not good behaviour, but it happens.

I haven't read the ft but please don't blame yourself. If you watch Reece Shearsmith in The Widower, or other good dramas about real life psychopaths you will get some insight. It is hard to believe people like this exist, but they do and sadly you met one. A hard thing to recover from but you will in time. It's like a bereavement.

no she took his phone to message me and then whilst on the phone to me was looking at his messages. And she saw all these other women.

she contacted me. I did not know about her to contact her.

and yes he was/is married. Multiple social media sites, photos, television footage.

He wasn't present at first. The partner had his phone though and phoned OP (from her own phone I presume) after/whilst going through his phone. He arrived on scene and the partner locked herself in (the bathroom I think?) and he then tried to batter the door down to get his phone back.

OP has been the other woman for 12 years! Even planning and scheming to buy a house with this man, before he’d even bothered to leave his wife and kids.
She simply doesn’t like it that he’s traded her in.
What goes around comes around.

OP I just wanted to say that for all the bad decisions made, the mistakes, the benefit of hindsight, you don’t ‘deserve this’ as you said in your OP. No one does. This man is a sociopath. Please be kind to yourself

Thanks for explaining.

This man is not the 'normal' run of the mill man having a fling or even a relationship and then leaving his marriage for it.

I'd class him as having personality/ MH issues where he has to have a constant stream of women chasing him, or being 'conquests'.

Maybe you can turn your anger into something else because he's clearly mentally deranged and not someone any woman wants to be involved with.

His wife didn’t deserve this! The OP played with fire and got burned. Now she’s repositioning herself as the victim.

Yeah. I wasn’t going to complicate things by raising it, but something felt off about the “ fulsomeness” of the gf’s performance.

I even wondered if it was a staged scene to shake OP off his tail.

Ultimately it’s neither here nor there for OP; but the whole “unravelling “ of the full extent of it while on the phone seemed sort of odd - almost as if designed to give OP a thorough torching off by knowing she was fully aware of all of it.

I can never have any sympathy for the OW as I would never cross that line and hurt another female or another human. As I’ve had it done to me.

But I also had a bad horrible man as my partner a long time ago. They damage you in many many ways and other male abusers tend to then come along and use you next. In comparison they will seem nice and compassionate. I think this is probably what happened to you. After I finally got free of my abusive partner I spent a long time single and adjusting to social norms so that I would not end up deceived by another monster.

I think for 12 years this man has also been abusing you in a different emotional way. If I was you, unless I had concrete evidence, I would presume he was never actually married or if he was married he was happily married. If he was ever married I feel so very sad for his original partner as she will have had to go through the worst of it all for the longest. Sadly you need to face up to the fact that everything he has ever said to you will be a full lie or a partial lie. You need to block all methods of communication so change all of your phone numbers and emails so that he can never try to contact you again. And forget about the other women, there will probably be 100s, some will get over it some will have worked out who he was and some won’t mind and will tolerate everything he does.

My awful awful monster of an ex (domestic violence coercion grooming you name it he did it to me) slept with at least 30 other women to my knowledge, over our entire ‘relationship’ I was trapped and stuck so not a relationship to me. Some were school girls who would turn up at our home and think I was the landlady, with our baby in my arms. Some were really well educated intelligent beautiful women older than me who would listen to all the lies and believe them and then in many cases get my details and contact me to try to take my son off of me, for example one was a teacher. One was a friend of a friend who was also seeing a third man who threatened to kill me as retaliation so the police had to watch my house for a week to protect my child.

And many years on the very last one gave signed statements in my horrific court case to try to get custody of my child, that woman (and mother of two) had never met myself or my child as by then we lived hundreds of miles away so not even a possibility, but gave multiple statements detailing how I was an unfit parent and how much she as a future step parent loved and adored my child. Thankfully the courts were clever enough to see that my ex was a monster and both of them were pathological liars (I have no doubt she was being manipulated and once the court case went in my favour he will have moved on to the next victim) and not safe to be near my child.

I am telling you all of this so you can see how these men work, if I didn’t know better I would think that the man in question was my ex but if he had been around for that long the mask would have slipped and he would also have been violent to you at some point and taken all of your money and you’ve not mentioned that.

These type of men manipulate all women they ever meet by always giving them a pack of lies about the original partner. And they will do it forever, I think the playing you off against each other is the part they enjoy tbh. And yes in my experience will always target vulnerable and/or young ladies. I was a teenager with no support when I ended up in this situation unbeknown to me and in my late 20s when I got away.

Give yourself a full year to recover now. Focus on your health, the health problems are probably linked, your emotional well being and your children. Once that amount of time or more has passed and you can see things clearer and are happier in your skin try to vet any men you meet before you let anyone in. Have a tick list so say for example you have a best friend what would you want for her with all the list of basic requirements. If there’s anything not ticked do not go near that man.

@ExactlySo I agree. I have a friend whose husband was up to similar shenanigans (and worse, drugs, casual encounters) and what was clear was that risk-taking and playing all these games was part of the thrill to them. He also acted a lot, sent the same love notes to multiple women, the women would overlap, he found all that exciting and thrilling, like being James Bond or something. Of course, it's a sign that the person is emotionally very dysfunctional and can't attach to one person, he liked the lies and the deception and the pretending, and boring everyday life (like really living in one house with one woman) just wouldn't cut it. Might have other issues like drink or drugs, or other risk-taking behaviours.

These people are often extremely charming, though, and able to chat/fake-bond with multiple people at once, often not for anything except the thrill of doing it. So, I do see how you would have believed him to have wanted to be with you OP.

That said, a little voice in your head did know some of this was 'off'-like not visiting his flat, not getting together with you when he left his wife and so on. It will be hard to heal, but when you do (and you will), do listen to that voice and run your partners' actions by your friends or on here, you will find quickly that you did know something was not right but just didn't want to push it in case he cut you off.

You are far far better away from this awful man, he's properly psychopathic/sociopathic in his ability to manipulate others for his own fun/life and doesn't have your best interests at heart at all.

She believed he was in an abusive marriage and he wanted to get out of it.
To get as far as completing on a house purchase and pulling out on the day, shows how convincing he was that he was leaving his wife.

Not necessarily.

Anyone can say anything!

Op could have waited for him to divorce/separate.