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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Am in utter shock

756 replies

honeyandbutterontoast · 04/03/2024 02:09

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 posts:
shoppingshamed · 09/03/2024 17:20

DriftingDora · 09/03/2024 11:05

There are parts of this that don't add up. And why would journalists be contacting you because he's famous, but they don't know he's famous because they don't know who he is? And as a previous poster has said, how could you think buying a house with this man was viable? You say you've had legal advice - did you take legal advice about the house purchase, as I can't imagine any solicitor would say it was a good idea.

Edited for typo

Edited

That's how journalists work, they don't need to know who it is to try and get a story on spec. Of course they'll try and get the OP to go with them and offer money for the scoop, if it turns out to be a non story then they don't run it, that's not surprising at all.

I would keep all the messages as insurance, when knows what might happen in the future, always good to have receipts as I believe the young folk say

MargoEmbargo · 09/03/2024 17:50

Sounds like you were essentially his concubine, I think if you have benefitted in the past financially and then he suddenly left you adrift, you have to accept you were not protected by marriage and are now suffering the consequenses, it was a chance you took, financially and emotionally.

You at one point felt looked after, financially and emotionally and if this comes out, his wife I should imagine would be very angry at their finances being diverted to keep you.

You were always in a precarious possition and should not have trusted him.
He buys people by the sounds of it.

He may well have bought others and still be buying others. I would be sceptical that this man is divorcing for this new ow, these types of men don't like halving their wealth.

Thewookiemustgo · 10/03/2024 00:20

“All lies. And now I have to turn that off. It was such a fucked up relationship.
not even a relationship. Just a nothing.”
At least you have finally accepted that. Affairs are well and truly fucked up relationships. Unfortunately hindsight often seems to be the only thing that teaches people who behave dishonestly in relationships that this is the case.
Use this newfound knowledge to become a more empathic and kinder person than you were.
You describe the shock at discovering the depth of his ability to lie and deceive, even though you knew he could do this already.
He has a wife and children and you knew this, therefore you knew he was lying and deceiving her for the best part of 12 years.
Liars aren’t that selective, it’s not that he didn’t care about lying to her but would never lie to someone he “cared” about like you… he’s just a liar. Liars just see it as useful,. Wrong, yes, but a necessary evil to enable themselves to get what they want. They use it as a modus operandi, if they have to lie to control the situation, they will. By the time they’ve got used to the risk and guilt of lying to their wife and children, family and friends, lying to an OW is a piece of cake in comparison.
You feel aggrieved that you have discovered you were ‘living a lie’ and find his behaviour with regards to you and his girlfriend despicable. You are right, it is.
I struggle to sympathise however, as it never seemed to bother you to enable him to allow his wife to be living a lie for years, colluding in his gaslighting and abuse of her doesn’t seem to have occurred to you.
Her pain and shock on discovering his infidelity, the pain inflicted by him (and indirectly but absolutely by you) on her, the children, her family, was no doubt even worse than yours. You knew he lied to women, she didn’t.
As long as it looked like you were getting what you wanted, the feelings of those affected were just collateral damage. Now that you’ve discovered you were treated no better, you are heartbroken that your ‘best friend’ could treat you like this. His wife is left wondering how her husband and the father of her children could have treated her and them like that.

I truly scratch my head at how OW ignore their part in the deception of a woman and her family. There seems to be an astonishing ability to ignore the immense pain that their MM is risking and / or causing, whilst keeping quiet, enjoying being his OW and keeping his secrets for him and not caring one jot how much destruction and pain they are helping to cause.
Liars lie. Nobody is so special that the liar lies to everyone else except them. Ever.
I hope that you learn from
this and never help inflict the horrendous pain and destabilising feeling that the life you thought you had was fake on anybody else.
I don’t believe in karma, and nobody deserves what anyone in this saga has gone through except maybe him. We all, however, have to own our life choices and accept that there are consequences.
I hope you can heal from
this and learn to make better choices.

Sceptical123 · 10/03/2024 08:56

Why don’t you name and shame him OP, he won’t know it was you if he’s got a long list of other wronged women he’s treated like shit.

DriftingDora · 10/03/2024 09:07

Sceptical123 · 10/03/2024 08:56

Why don’t you name and shame him OP, he won’t know it was you if he’s got a long list of other wronged women he’s treated like shit.

I think you always have to allow for poetic licence.

Calliopespa · 10/03/2024 15:01

Thewookiemustgo · 10/03/2024 00:20

“All lies. And now I have to turn that off. It was such a fucked up relationship.
not even a relationship. Just a nothing.”
At least you have finally accepted that. Affairs are well and truly fucked up relationships. Unfortunately hindsight often seems to be the only thing that teaches people who behave dishonestly in relationships that this is the case.
Use this newfound knowledge to become a more empathic and kinder person than you were.
You describe the shock at discovering the depth of his ability to lie and deceive, even though you knew he could do this already.
He has a wife and children and you knew this, therefore you knew he was lying and deceiving her for the best part of 12 years.
Liars aren’t that selective, it’s not that he didn’t care about lying to her but would never lie to someone he “cared” about like you… he’s just a liar. Liars just see it as useful,. Wrong, yes, but a necessary evil to enable themselves to get what they want. They use it as a modus operandi, if they have to lie to control the situation, they will. By the time they’ve got used to the risk and guilt of lying to their wife and children, family and friends, lying to an OW is a piece of cake in comparison.
You feel aggrieved that you have discovered you were ‘living a lie’ and find his behaviour with regards to you and his girlfriend despicable. You are right, it is.
I struggle to sympathise however, as it never seemed to bother you to enable him to allow his wife to be living a lie for years, colluding in his gaslighting and abuse of her doesn’t seem to have occurred to you.
Her pain and shock on discovering his infidelity, the pain inflicted by him (and indirectly but absolutely by you) on her, the children, her family, was no doubt even worse than yours. You knew he lied to women, she didn’t.
As long as it looked like you were getting what you wanted, the feelings of those affected were just collateral damage. Now that you’ve discovered you were treated no better, you are heartbroken that your ‘best friend’ could treat you like this. His wife is left wondering how her husband and the father of her children could have treated her and them like that.

I truly scratch my head at how OW ignore their part in the deception of a woman and her family. There seems to be an astonishing ability to ignore the immense pain that their MM is risking and / or causing, whilst keeping quiet, enjoying being his OW and keeping his secrets for him and not caring one jot how much destruction and pain they are helping to cause.
Liars lie. Nobody is so special that the liar lies to everyone else except them. Ever.
I hope that you learn from
this and never help inflict the horrendous pain and destabilising feeling that the life you thought you had was fake on anybody else.
I don’t believe in karma, and nobody deserves what anyone in this saga has gone through except maybe him. We all, however, have to own our life choices and accept that there are consequences.
I hope you can heal from
this and learn to make better choices.

What a fabulously clear-sighted post. Wookie has told it like it is.

Many of us have little sympathy for your past actions OP but that doesn’t mean we don’t wish you well in your future ones.

Get your priorities sorted and that will at least help to guide events to flow in a more positive direction for you. We can’t control the unfortunate things that unfairly come our way, but we can control getting involved with people who we know lie and deceive and will eventually do the same to us.

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