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 😔

I think that if your husband had been genuinely trying to protect you, or his family, he would have called the police when a man started kicking his car in and harassing him for no apparent reason.

After all, what if this harasser had showed up at your home one day , when your husband was out ? Did your husband say that he didn't tell you to protect you and he thought this man was just going to go away?

I feel for you OP. Your family are betraying you too by supporting this awful man who treats you and his children so badly. When he cheats on you, he risks their stable family life and so cheats on them too. Your children don’t fully understand the situation when they defend him. He’s not the good father you’re trying to paint him as.

You’re going to spend the rest of your life going through this repeated cycle of him cheating on you, treating you with utter contempt and disrespect when you find out about it, he pressures you to pretend nothing’s happened by saying you just need to move on, them he moves on by finding someone new to have an affair with. You don’t need more proof. You know who he is and how he behaves.

I understand you’ve been together since you were very young so this is all you’ve ever known, but it’s no way to live. You deserve better, your children deserve better and you’re the only one who can stop the cycle.

I'm happy to hear you have your friend. Op i really hope you're ok and you are 100 per cent in the right to be worried. If it's true if its not true of course you can't just get over it. Do what ever you need to do and I wish you all the best what ever the outcome. Xxx

From everything you've said, it sounds like your husband hasn't done anything wrong...
Love poems in a notebook could be a hobby of his? You can definitely fabricate emails.
Phone lying around, always at home, speaking throughout the day, no suspicious behaviour...
I'd be inclined to say he's telling the truth

Really? What a strange take.

Are you the husband? 😅🤔

@MyCosyTraybake Why did the work do an internal investigation in the first place? Affairs happen all the time in the work place?

I think the fact that he won't have a lie detector talks for itself.

@tribpot I think you wrote this all down so well. It’s actually really helpful.

I had thought of a private investigator, in the midst of all my crazy thoughts but because most of it is on work email it would be out of reach - i’m still not even sure if you can recover deleted emails. OW said you could.

• the police - the guy at first said to me have you heard the allegations your husband has made against me it’s all BS etc but then the police were able to get the details of where it had been purchased from the serial number (it was from america) they then put an information request in and could see where it had been activated. It was at this point other guy admitted it all having previously lied to police and got a caution.
• I only ever spoke to the OW once and over whatsapp on another occasion. She did know a lot of details, the exact days my children did clubs, when my husband had gone to a school meeting etc. Total head fuck if i’m honest. But she never had the evidence. Said it was all deleted. Her husband would never let me meet her but said he would meet me to go through everything. The stories changed over and over about where they had sex - one of the places would be absolutely impossible and I know this from being in a similar job myself. I asked if they used protection she said they had, so I said it was premeditated then she changed and said they hadn’t. When the guy turned up at my door he said no sexual contact but this all changed the next day. I have pictures of the notes in my husband’s handwriting but the poem was in an email not his writing.
• The other work colleagues said they were friendly but my husband was like that in general. Another male colleague claimed on of the notes was from my husband to him. Not the lovey ones - there was one saying do you want to go downstairs. It’s odd anyway. My husband admitted to one note that he had written which was a story the OW daughter had written and he had written back this is a lovely story - it’s absolutely bizarre anyway I have no idea why the OW had a story from her daughter and asked my husband to send a note back or why he did this. I think he’s pretty stupid!
• Work investigation happened a couple of days after I found out. she had left on the day OW resigned she’d been off work sick for a period of time. I just saw a letter saying no evidence of an affair could be found. My husband his boss are close so this could have been to fool me. It didn’t go into any details so thats why i’ve always found it so strange.

@Scrollbreadroll I believe because she had alluded that intimacy had happened in a work place so it was gross misconduct 🤷🏻‍♀️

@DoubleTime he had turned up at my house 2 months previous when my daughter was on her own. He knew it was him because he emailed him and said if you don’t stop I will go to the police. Obviously I didn’t know this until September.

Lie detectors are known to be inaccurate, and are not used in court as evidence for this reason. I wouldn't do a lie detector test if I knew I was innocent because it may "prove" that I was lying just because of feeling nervous.

Then has no reason for not having told you, and no excuse for not going to the police before. Other than to protect himself.

@DoubleTime - I don’t know why the OW didn’t leave her husband. I’ve been told they have an unhealthy relationship (but who am I to judge!) the OW husband used to turn up and cafes when she was with female colleagues. I’ve heard the OW would break down in the office, storm out etc. My husband had pictures of our family on his desk and she used to turn these face down (again hearsay)

my husband had gone to HR to make a complaint about the tracker but not the police. OW was then called in and alluded to the affair. My husband questioned her and she said ‘I had to say something so my husband wouldn’t look crazy’ whether that was actually said I have no idea!!

@MyCosyTraybake the evidence you have is admittedly confusing. I would think the woman admitting the affair to you would be evidence enough. There is a possibility she was delusional and wasn’t telling the truth. You say she lives locally - could you speak to her now? Maybe now time has passed she is in a better head space and you could have a more rational conversation where she would be able to provide you with more clear cut answers.

To flip it around - if your husband didn’t have an affair (and had just been making some poor decisions that made him look suspicious) how could he possibly prove that to you? If he genuinely did nothing wrong what evidence would he have to defend himself? I agree with others that lie detectors are pointless. His only defence would be his previous character, which you admit is not necessarily the most truthful. His defence of the evidence you have is flimsy at best, has he ever previously been known to write love notes to himself while at work? Did he genuinely think it was protecting you to keep you in the dark about him being stalked and harassed? That in itself is actually really hard for me to believe, by not telling you he was potentially putting you and your family in danger.

it doesn’t sound like he will ever veer from his stance of innocence. You therefore either have to believe him and work on moving forward or search for further proof from the woman to confirm what deep down you feel you already know.

I had an affair in the past. There was no evidence to be found of this on either side. You could look for messages, calls, emails etc all you like, you wouldn't have found them.

Not saying that to gloat, I am saying that because the absence of evidence doesn't mean anyone is innocent.

Something has gone on here, they really is no smoke without fire. I think you're getting a lot of half-truths from every angle.

Why would your husband take an issue like that to HR ? The husband wasn't an employee - what could HR do ? I would be surprised if they would contact the OW when on sick leave to bring her in. I would have thought HR would have told your husband to go to the police.

Does it really matter if they had sex OP? He crossed a line and you don’t trust him. Your marriage is over.

@NZDreaming It’s a total mess! Something just told me I couldn’t fully believe her either. Probably because her story had changed from her husband, she couldn’t provide dates, she couldn’t provide anything but the husband had it all! I tried to message her a couple of months ago she didn’t reply. She’d stay with her story and my husband will.

I think the trouble is my husband has been so deceitful and I know it’s hard to think any other way. I’m scared of making the wrong decision.

Add to all this your DH's obsessive behaviour around you (monitoring you?), the previous emotional affair, the isolating you from your friend to ensure that you would have no-one to validate your concerns, the fact he is now trying to shut down any discussion about it and telling you to move on. None of this points to a healthy relationship, whatever happened with this woman. But there is an awful lot of smoke here for there to be no fire.

I fully agree with @tribpot here.
Regardless of this head fuck, there seems to be an issue with the whole of the relationship.
That’s what I would concentrate on, esp as I doubt you’ll ever get to the bottom of it.

@DoubleTime I honestly don’t know. Maybe because he was turning up in work time and my husband just went to his manager. She was still working at the time, she went on sick a couple of months later.

It's a horrible tawdry tale whatever the truth of it and I'm sorry you're having to deal with it.

The ONLY thing that matters is how you feel. You can leave your husband for any reason so you could acknowledge that nobody is going to move their position on this weirdness and decide whether or not you can carry on as you are. If there is a little chip of ice in your heart that you can't get rid of, leaving is going to be so difficult but ultimately you will be free of all this uncertainty and dishonesty. More to the point your children will see you being a strong woman who is putting the truth at the very heart of things. Only way to live. Secrets and deceit wither you very quickly and thoroughly ime.

If you can get rid of the chip of ice and believe him without him doing anything else, all power to you. Whatever you do, do it with your whole heart. This uncertainty is not created by you and you don't have to choose to live in it.

You’re not going make the wrong decision if you don’t do it as a knee jerk reaction.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter if he made the ‘wrong move’ in a bid to protect you or whatever.
The reason and the intend dint matter. What matters is the impact on you. Whether you feel you can trust him again.
in the context of the whole of the relationship.

I wouldn’t normally suggest this but if you can afford it have you thought of getting a private investigator to look in to the couple? People who do bizarre things generally have a past history. That might put your mind at rest.

So he didn't go to HR, he went to his manager that he is pally with ? And then the woman was asked, and she said there was an affair going on.

And somehow your husband knows what was said in this confidential meeting between the manager/HR and OW ?