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.

I remember decades ago...my 1st Job was in London. Guy about the same age as me started at the same time - we worked in the same lab in a small college that was part of the University of London (college is now long gone in multiple levels of mergers).

We hung around together as we were the new kids on the block, but we both fitted in and were soon part of the same work-based friendship circle of people in their early to late 20s.

When we first met he told me about long term girlfriend up in the north. Thought he was a very nice guy, but the 1st sign that something was "odd" was that he stopped mentioning her once we started to fit in with the bigger social circle. I ended up in a slightly unusual situation as I was the only one who really knew about the girlfriend up north.

Over the next 2 - 3 years I watched this guy develop a new relationship with a woman in London, who worked in the same college, whilst carrying on his relationship with the 1st girlfriend.

As I said, I initially responded well to him and, to be honest, he was fine to get along with and I never really had any issues with the behaviour / personality that he allowed us to see.

He was, however, complete fantasist living a double life, who told outrageous lies to everyone on an almost daily basis. I'd heard about this sort of thing, but it was a real shock to actually watch a situation like that unfold in front of your eyes. What surprised me was that the guy was so utterly normal. Naive I know - but at the time I'd kind of assumed lying scumbags would be easy to identify!

I suppose that's when I learned that men could lie. I suppose women can too, but I've never encountered one who lied like this one!.

OP said she wasn't looking for sympathy but she was. That is why she posted it on a public women's board. And you are hell bend on giving it to her, good for you.

Me, I call out bullshit when I see it and I don't betray other women like this.

So my moral code is perfectly fine, thanks sweetheart.

@OneMorePlant @BrightHarvestMoon

I agree.

Supporting a woman just because she is a wiman is insulting.

How about considering that women who go along with aiding and abetting cheaters are doing a disservice to the rest of us women who do have morals?

The man in this ghastly scenario I think we can all agree is completely awful but he wouldn't be awful if he wasn't aided and abetted by women like the op. Women who allow themselves to be used by men to cheat on their wives with. Women who don't give a damn about the wife he's cheating on or their children.

Until men and women stop cheating on one another and or being the person that lays down with the cheater then there are always going to be scenarios like this with people getting upset.

If you act like a decent person you won't find yourself in these dreadful situations where ultimately you only have yourself to blame.

I talked it over with friends and everyone seemed to think it must be genuine. After all why otherwise would he do all that.

But what did he do to help with the house purchase? Did he transfer you money? Or did you just go by his promises?

OP the media won't be interested unless this man is a household name or is running a FTSE 100 company (or similar) . Your average Joe Bloggs who is a serial adulterer isn't going to cut it.

You might get a response from some of the women's mags like Closer or the other weeklies, but the best way to do that is to find a journalist who writes these features and who is listed as looking out for such experiences.

👏

Well aren't you a ray of sunshine?

Stand by my previous comment. Scroll on sister, your anger and judgement is not needed, or helpful. Says more about you than you realize.

@DrJoanAllenby

Are you really helping anyone or just liking the opportunity to be nasty to the OP?

I'm laughing at the irony of all the goody two shoes here who are spending their day abusing another woman.

Stand by my previous comment. Scroll on sister, your anger and judgement is not needed, or helpful. Says more about you than you realize.

^^ This.

Women professing their superior moral code yet getting their kicks out of lambasting a woman in distress.

Yuck.

I am not your 'sister' @ChiefEverythingOfficer and never will be. And you do not get to tell me what to do. You don't make the rules. This is a public message forum, for ALL to post on.

And I shall throw your patronsing 'advice' back at you. If you don't like MY posts, scroll on by and ignore them. I neither asked for, nor want your reponses to my posts.

I am responding - like everyone else - to the OP.

And on that note, I shall be ignoring anything else you say to me. And that goes to anyone else attacking - and arguing with me, and other posters who are not saying what the OP wants to hear. (Or are coming out with less than favourable comments about the OP and her 'situation!')

People are entitled to different views, and don't deserve to be attacked, lambasted, and called 'nasty' for not showering the OP in sympathy. Seriously, get a grip.

As you were.

@BrightHarvestMoon But she's right perhaps.

Take a hard look at what your posts could say about you.

She didn’t literally mean you’re her sister.

You can’t stop people calling you sister.

I just don’t understand why he didn’t let me walk away.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if someone has already said this, but this line jumped out at me.

OP, you didn't need his permission to walk away. You could have walked away at any point. If you learn nothing else from this mess, learn that: you can free yourself from any situation based on nothing more than you don't want to be in that situation any longer. You don't need anyone else's permission to leave.

Maybe some therapy to work on relearning to trust your own instincts and to build your self-esteem to help you be less vulnerable to chancers' lies might help you move on?

OP, it sounds like you’ve talked about this to friends in the past, when buying the house, and as recently as this morning, when your friend was parsing his narcissism.
If he’s a very high profile “celebrity of sorts” do you trust your friends not to go to the media about this? I’m surprised you’ve told them.

I totally understand the comments. I am fortunate I have friends who know this whole situation and know me.

And I’ve said I understand it’s karma. But there are levels of karma. The last ten years for me have been an utter shit show of bad stuff for me. I’ve managed to get through it all but now I’m broken with it.

This man met me for lunch last Sept on the road him and his GF work on. Held my hand. Kissed me in the street. Utterly brazen. I thought at that time he was separated, single. Where is his karma?

They have promised not to. They wouldn’t put me in that situation.

I was feeling reasonably sympathetic to the OP until two things struck me.

She bought a house with him on the understanding that they will live together, but HE HAD NEVER MET HER CHILDREN - so how does that work then?

Why the fuck didn't she shut it all down when he pulled out of completion on the house, especially since it's caused her huge financial problems? That is a klaxon blaring red flag if ever I saw one.

In his next life he might be reincarnated as a turd fly. None of that matters.

What matters is that you take responsibility of your own actions and go to therapy. You helped break yourself. Time to fix yourself.

I hope you are a better judge of character of friends than of lovers, then. People find sharing tales of scandal and high drama so hard to resist.

I hope you come through the days and weeks ahead, it’s good you have friends to support you. I find it strange they didn’t give you a tough love reality-check a long time ago, though.

@honeyandbutterontoast

Before i read the bit section of your mumsnet thread i just knew there was another female somewhere in the background that had come on in the scene,

I can understand totally you being in a shit marriage relationship and when someone like this promised you the earth a fallacy,
You were ripe for the picking,
he toke advantage of your situation and your low self esteem and neediness
this loser guy, a player of women's ❤️ hearts,

My advice is to seek getting good effective therapy for yourself,
spend quality time on improving your self esteem cofindence levels and just looking after yourself in generally a lot better in all ways,
also looking into putting in place robust personal boundaries,
of what you expect in a relationship and not acceptable,
therefore your less likely to fall for bullshit from anyone,
or
tolerate this kind of thing,
and emotionally cause you will be in so much better place emotionally you will also likely attract a better type of man in the future,

Ultimately we can only save rescue ourselves ,

No Knight man in shining armour can do this...

He wanted to meet my children from early on. I said no. That was too complicated. But yes actually the scenario of gradually meeting him over a year or so made sense to me. They knew he bought the house with me, they were so happy to live there.

Oh they have.
But even they have been surprised by the scale of it.

He cheated and you cheated. He has gone on to cheat on you. Why would you expect a cheat to be faithful. Separate lives?. It's a sorry tale which was never going to end well.

Calling another woman that you disagree with "sweetheart" is just embarrassing.

My friend’s situation was sooo similar and it wasn’t until various “girlfriends” joined the dots and got in contact that it unravelled. He was also quite high profile. But they were all so humiliated that they had fallen for it - that’s why they don’t go public, look at the response the OP had got! Why would you risk having thousands of people abuse you!