9 months after I was told about husbands ‘affair’

[MyCosyTraybake]

My life turned upside down 9 months ago and honestly I have no idea how to move on from this…
This is a really long one!

I’ve been with my husband over 15 years, children, house etc.

Last year a man turned up on my doorstep telling me my husband had been having an affair with his wife who was my husband’s colleague. I knew of her but only by name. I was in total shock, we had a young baby at the time and my MH was all over the place (I had support in place for this and I was doing a lot of work on myself) he’s always been a very hands on Dad and a very loving husband, some might even say to the point where he is just totally obsessed with me. It was just all so confusing, there had been absolutely no signs and I never would have suspected anything. His phone was always around, not that I ever looked, we spoke on the phone daily when he was at work as we always have done, worked from home for majority of the week.

I was shown emails from my husband’s work email but never any from her until later down the line. There were notes in my husband’s handwriting and a photo of them together on a train going to a work event. I was told at the time that he didn’t think anything sexual had happened only emotional.

The story unfolded and it turns out a lot of things had happened in the run up to the guy turning up at my door. The guy had been turning up randomly when my husband was at work trying to confront him, kicking his car in etc. My husband then discovered he had a tracker on his car in the April. I found out after that the female colleague had tipped my husband off as she was being tracked too. He’d also rung another male colleague at some point accusing him of an affair too.

My husband had kept everything from me, apparently to protect me as I had other things going on. The police were called that day as the guy had followed my husband to our daughters school where he verbally abused him in front of our child and then followed him back to our house which is when I turned up.

I got sucked in to what I was being told that I ended up contacting the woman she said everything was true and they had in fact been intimate multiple times (which her husband knew but just 2 days before he told me it wasn’t sexual) Their stories kept changing and it just got more and more confusing. I saw more and more emails, he’d written her a song / poem, a long love letter. By the time this had happened she had resigned and in her exit interview she told them it was because of the affair and apparently they carried out an internal investigation. From that no emails were found and no evidence of an affair. The guy ended up getting a caution for stalking as they were able to trace the tracker to his address etc. He’d lied to the police at first but ended up confessing apparently.

My husband still 9 months down the line says it absolutely isn’t true, he’s denied everything. He says they are both crazy and the female colleague had gone off the rails at work. Other colleagues have told me the same story about her. But there has been such a huge deceit from my husband, affair or not, and I just cannot get over it. We are still together but I can’t take anymore ups and downs. I love him but the resentment towards him builds and builds.

I asked him to take a lie detector, stupid I know, but i’m out of options. He won’t do it and says I need to forget about it and move on…

Where do I go from here…. I will never ever know the truth and I don’t think I can live like that 😔

Sod whether or not he has an affair, I'd be done with any husband who was being stalked and didn't bother to mention it to me, resulting in it escalating to the point my child was impacted (and potentially put at risk) by it.

It's very clear they had sex op, the husband found out and kicked off. There's emails, photos and notes. His work colleagues have zero loyalty to you they will lie for him. The fact this woman felt she had to leave this job is very telling shes completely took the blame for this affair and your smug husband gets to stay in his job and gaslight you into staying in a marriage. You've had trust issues before op open your eyes here's there in plain sight taking you for a mug.

He sounds guilty to me. I imagine that they had sex. The only reason for the other couple to make it all up would be financial, presumably -- some kind of blackmajl or benefit. But she left her job (presumably after deleting all the emails!) And the husband was distressed enough to be kicking a car in.

People who strand you in a strange neither-nor reality and who keep important information to themselves because it's 'in your best interest' are not good people and sometimes master manipulators. On a hunch, I'd say that your husband has done more than you suspect rather than less.

They are not reliable, which is why they aren't admissible evidence in England and Wales. They detect stress reactions; an honest person could be bricking it and many dishonest people are excellent liars and pretty calm about it.

It's a crazy situation, though, OP. I'm sorry you're going through it.

Also:

Your husband seems to have separated you from a friend because he was jealous of the intimacy. Or was he anxious that she knew something about him? He eventually (charmer!) allowed you to get back in touch with her but something was damaged. What does she think of him?

You mention PND. Had you had depression with your other pregnancies? How are you now? Is being married to this man making life more difficult than it would be without him?

My husband had kept everything from me, apparently to protect me as I had other things going on

Your husband was never protecting you from this, OP, he was protecting himself. This happened 9 months ago and yet you're the one still feeling the consequences of his actions. Only you can decide if you are prepared to give on living like this. It sounds as though you are very unhappy.

Sorry you are going through this. It sounds soul destroying.

I think I am right in saying that the hard facts you have, where you have directly seen evidence is that he wrote her love letters and that he spent walks talking to her on the phone. Is that right?

The rest you can’t prove but looks VERY suspicious. But, lots of people think the couple are unhinged and created this drama.

You also know for a fact he had an affair earlier in the relationship?

Ask yourself the following and see what comes up;

Do you think you can ever trust him again?
If you can’t, are you happy to stay in a relationship without trust?

I would also watch Dr Ramani on you tube about narcissistic personality styles. You may find it familiar when thinking about your DH and it may help you to get a different perspective and look in on his behaviour from a different view rather than getting blown around by it.

You sound inexperienced with relationships and I wonder what your experience of childhood was like and what your parent’s relationship with you taught you and what their relationship taught you.

Get yourself a counsellor who can help you to unpick these things. Good luck!! You deserve to be respected and heard.

Well of course he had an affair. You don’t wish to believe it, he doesn’t wish you to believe it, it’s clear they aren’t running off together and he’s not wanting to end it with no where to go.

im not sure what you wish from the thread. You don’t want to leave, you’re trying to convince yourself it’s not true to enable that, just accept it and stay.

This is fucking awful.

Yes this sorry op. But you've said yourself you know the notes and love letters were written by him... What other evidence do you need? Just because the couple behaved badly it doesn't mean your husband has done no wrong. There is no smoke without fire

I mean - he had an affair, he lied his face off, his colleagues covered for him.

The question is how much of your life you want to spend in denial of this.

I’m afraid I agree too that he has had an affair.
I was very much wondering until you said he had spent hours on the phone to her whilst walking the dog. And the immediate reaction to show you how you can modify and email so it looks like an email from someone else.
(Note if he is practiced on how to do that, he might well have done the same with the so called email/docs from work exonerating him).
Plus his attitude with you being close to a friend, making you destroy the friendship only to push you again to get in touch when it’s too late. Feels very manipulative to me. And makes me wonder if he doesn’t do that often, Wo you realising, because you implicitly trust him (or trusted him).

But you’re never going to have an answer.
I think that the trust is broken anyway.
I also think that if you were starting to stand up to him (like not following his lead, doing stuff he doesn’t quite agree with etc.l.) you’d see a different person too.

And because your dcs know, believe their dad etc…. I’d be very tempted to let things go for a bit and then ask for a divorce on very different grounds.
Yes he is a great dad blabla but I’m sure he has some defaults too. Ones you’ve accepted so far and might turned out to be unacceptable anymore.

Oh have counselling again.
My experience with ‘counselling that isn’t making a big difference’ is that it’s usually down to the counsellor. Could their techniques that isn’t suitable for you, how good they are or simply not connecting well together. But finding the right person would make a huge difference and will help you clarify what you want, looking at your whole marriage. Not just this whole shambles.

OP, I have been cheated on. The whole 'never quite knowing the truth' kills you. But I'd say listen to your gut. I ignored little things that didn't sit quite right with me that have now been confirmed as he was cheating on me.

Regardless of the affair, he was not honest with you about the OW's partner turning up and harassing him and the kids. He should have told you about that for your own safety and didn't. He lied about that, what else could he lie about?!

You can ask him to leave for a while. It doesn't need to be permanent. Just to give you space to work stuff out in your own mind. In my experience lots more comes out over time.

Hi OP.

The priority here is your health. Focus on that until the end of the year. Get well enough to deal with this.

If he did have an affair, putting a pin in it and getting some help isn’t going to change it. If he didn’t he will be patient enough to wait, and perhaps get some help himself.

Best of luck.

He's lying.

@DullFanFiction the speaking on the phone for hours was the previous work colleague 11 years ago.

I think you are right about the counsellor, we talked about his feelings a lot (as if he was innocent) which probably confused me more!

As soon as they pull the whole it's not true she's crazy, it is true and she's not crazy.

Sorry, I got confused there!!

This is sad because it's so so obvious he's done it but he has you so warped and manipulated that you're still doubting it - even though your intuition is screaming at you that he is guilty.

OP in your first post you said he is such a loving husband to the point that he is "obsessed" with you, then further down you admit that he absolutely definitely had an emotional affair ten years ago - those two statements don't compute. "Obession" to me in this case sounds like control. He has controlled you this whole time and you sound sweet and naive so it's been easy for him to do so. The issue with your friend backs this up further. He was trying to distance you from a source of support so you would be further enmeshed and reliant on him.

I completely understand the agony of "not knowing" as I have been there - but you DO know! When I was trying to work out if my STBXH was having an affair I would have killed for as much evidence/proof you have been given. This man has form, he has done it before. You let him away with it once so he felt brazen enough to do it again - as there were no consequences first time round.

I'm curious as to what your upbringing was like, as in the kindest possible way he's treating you like a mug and you're allowing it. I don't think you're at the stage of accepting this or leaving yet but if I were you I'd start taking tiny baby steps to a future without him. Envisage what that would look like and how you could make it happen, practically/financially.

You've been through quite and ordeal so be gentle with yourself but also dig deep for your self respect and don't tolerate this blatant very public disrespect.

BTW if you left your children may not understand now, but as adults they most certainly will and they will have much more respect for you than if you stayed in such intolerable conditions.

Please don't bother with a lie detector, they are bullshit. The JK show was extremely unethical in using them.

Sorry to say I think he has cheated and he is very untrustworthy anyway if he didn't tell you about the stalking incident when your child was involved.

Go with what feels right for you. Either drawing a line under this strange episode, accepting you got together young and your husband may not be as honest as you'd like, or deciding it seems very like some sort of infidelity has happened, a lot of other characters are involved and you seem to be kept in the dark somewhat, and deciding whether or not to stay married on this basis. You don't need solid evidence to make either decision

In my opinion he had an affair. To not tell you about a stalker and lots of difficulties at work regarding this woman doesn't add up he didn't want to tell you incase u found out. He was betting on the work investigations coming back as no evidence so was trying to protect himself all along. I very highly doubt this is some psychotic couple who get a thrill from lying. You have evidence of emotional affair it was clearly more and still an affair but only you can decide what u want to do. For me there is too many lies and deceit in this story.

Op, my mum died 2.5 years ago. It’s been awful. I have really taken it hard. I haven’t, however, used it as an excuse to indulge in an emotional affair with a colleague.

That situation showed what he is capable of. Having an emotional affair and excusing it with the death of a parent. He did it because he wanted to and used bereavement as an excuse. But he did learn how you spotted the signs.

Why would this woman say she slept with him if she didn’t? The fact that the husband thought it was someone else is neither here not there. He knew she was having an affair just not who with.

Those note are bizarre. And his excuse of his note book being missing doesn’t make sense. Is he saying he wrote those notes, not to her but she stole them to stage an affair? So he was just sat doodling love notes to nobody? An adult, sat at work writing love notes about nobody?

Think about it logically. One of them is lying. What does she gain by lying about it. What does he gain by lying about it?

Oh and anyone having an affair and leaving evidence on work email is an idiot. The fact that work found no evidence doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It means they didn’t use work email or instant messaging to conduct it.

@Arnia he was obsessive when we were younger, he did a lot of work on himself so when he had the first affair I was so shocked. Just thought it must be a mistake. Things very much carried on as normal after that until last year! i’m quite social and he isn’t which has always caused bumps in the road, But from outside he looks like the perfect husband / dad so it’s difficult.

I just can’t accept it, for whatever reason. Even as I look over all the evidence I have I still am able to second guess myself.

I know i’m partly staying for the children because it’s what they want. I also wouldn’t know how to leave because he won’t go!!

You've seen love letters, notes and a poem that you know he's used before, notes written in his hand, declaring his love for her.

It couldn't be any plainer. It's easier for him to paint the OW and her husband as crazy but you know he's capable of cheating.

The simplest explanation is often correct. He cheated on you.