Can't get over his infidelity

[JamieIsNotFine]

8 months ago I got the call at work. A husband informing me of his wife and my husband having an affair. They work together. Still do. I had my meltdown at work and was admitted to a mental hospital for 21 days. Our marriage of 17 years destroyed. Things are just not getting better. He is trying to prove he is a changed man. Trickle truths are all I get. Little bit here and little bit there. He promised he would find a new job. It took him 3 months and a lot of anger from my side just for him to update his CV. I begged him to go see someone to help him figure out what the f brought him to that point in his life. He knew that it would destroy me. But "he felt dead inside". Myself and our kids did not matter. He threw away what we have built togeter away for a wh*re. According to him they chatted for a few months before they did it. And added "It meant nothing to him" "It was just a fcuk" But her husband told me that he saw a message with "I love you" from him on her phone. How do you tell someone you love them in such a short period? How low can you go to "do it" in the back seat of our vehicle in a parking lot? I told him I want to sell the vehicle, because since i found out, there is a "ghost" riding in it with us. That sent him flying off his handle. We were happy. Our friends used to say they wish they had what we had. We had a great sex life. But that was obviously not enough. I asked him to move out and go live with his sister for a while. To make an effort to start dating me again. To TRY to win me over again. He refused. We are in our old routine again. Work, home, make food, bath, and sleep. Repeat. I constantly watch podcasts on affair recovery, print topics for us to discuss, questions that bothers me. But i am met with yes or no answers. I have to ask for his thoughts on the topics i give him to read. I have to ask for us to watch videos on recovery together, but he is just not interested. I told him last week I am losing hope. I am now the one that is dead inside.

Telling me my comment was unhelpful is a clear case of projection on your part. 'My whole world has fallen apart" - no, that's an unhelpful way to frame what's going on because it isn't true. Her husband is sleeping with someone else. Anyone would be knocked off balance hearing something like that and I didn't say she has got to have a balanced reaction. I said her reaction was extreme and that she needs help which might not be nice but it is true she does need help. This lady has children. What happened to them whilst she was away for 21 days? I'm not asking op to answer this but it's question that needs to be asked. What are the children learning about how to deal with challenging emotional situations from seeing their mother respond like this? You could argue thst this is more damaging than seeing their father have affairs in the long term.

Nope. Not projection. Just unhelpful.

And remember we must all respond exactly as you prescribe when horrendous things happen.

And yes, for some people who discussed infidelity it does feel like their world has fallen apart. Whether it actually had or not isn't the point.

Discover not discussed

JFC!

someone having an actual breakdown to the point of hospitalisation is NOT making a choice to have one. A mental breakdown is just that a breakdown of mental functioning, a complete overwhelm, an utter destabilisation of normal measured mental processes. A person in that time isn’t thinking “oh I mustn’t have a breakdown because I’m modelling poor emotional coping strategies to my children” it’s involuntary. If someone attacked you at work unexpectedly and broke your damn legs no one would say “you can’t allow your legs to be broken what does that teach your children about dealing with injuries” going about your life normally and receiving a phonecall that destabilises everything you think you know about the life you are living and the person you are living with is a severe mental assault and some people will have a very bad mental injury from that. You don’t get to decide they just shouldn’t be having it.

People have all sorts of pre-existing mental complexities like childhood trauma, abandonment issues etc that means what is just a big shock to some is an absolute trauma to others because they are already not well set to cope with such things.

Ok. Reality isn't the point. 👍🏽

@sunflowrsngunpowdr

That's right. How one feels and how one gets through those feelings is the point.

Christ. If someone loses something they truly believed in, centered their life around and they fall apart, devastated by the betrayal and loss, are you really really going to say, "This is an over reaction." Or are you going to be empathetic and kind?

Bloody hell.

Because devastation is their reality. Not yours. Try to show a little understanding.

I suspect you may never have endured such a betrayal or devastation. I hope you never do.

@sunflowrsngunpowdr

Yes what a shame perpetrators cannot control victim's responses.

Or is there a sliding scale which people must adhere to when having nervous breakdowns.
Could you please inform us what those qualifications are ?

What worries me more is there are those that walk amongst us who literally have no empathy.

Frightening.

As if the OP had any choice about his this awful, awful event. I’m
astonished.
She had a choice about how to react? Dear Lord, if this is how it works, then all the people using mental health services need to make a better choice than having a mental illness or reactive breakdown. 🙄 They’d save us all a packet. Any minute now they’ll be told all they need to do is to pull themselves together.
There are times when Mumsnet makes me feel a bit down and jaded and sadly it’s all ‘same shit, different day’. This, however, has blown me away today. Haven’t heard anything like this for a while and don’t actually want to.
Just when you start to think that maybe society is starting to understand mental health issues. Unbelievable.

It is true for lots of people though. An affair shatters their whole world, and that's not an exaggeration because it ruins their family life, their safe place, their future plans etc.

A mental breakdown to the point of hospitalization is rare I would imagine but many many others who get cheated on will say their whole world fell apart and it was a life shattering/life altering/life defining thing that happened.

I'm not asking op to answer this but it's question that needs to be asked

Maybe you should have actually asked the questions nicely instead of what you are saying instead? You phrased your original comment on here poorly which is why people are now criticizing what you said and now you're going on that she's damaging her children with her 'unbalanced reaction' 🙄

Another poster said the OP had also lost both of her parents in the 6 months before she found out about the affair, so that might be your answer for why she had an 'unbalanced reaction'.