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 😔

Did you see the original emails to/from the police @MyCosyTraybake or screenshots? I'm assuming the originals given your DH would have sent them from his own device.

Well OP, if he went with his hands up on those emails to the police, I am inclined to believe him, that there was no affair.
Do you think he has learned his lesson about being too friendly/familiar with women in the workplace ? She seems to have known an awful lot about his personal schedule....

Either some people in the office knew or suspected him and covered for him. Or DH was careful not to use work emails and ensure work colleagues didn’t find out.

Exactly… especially as she acknowledges that the poems & songs were written in her husband’s style, using lyrics that she knows he has used before.

Everything you have said is right.

some days I can get through it, some days I can’t and I go into crazy mode where I can think of nothing else. I know it’s not healthy. Even if I left I think I would still struggle with all these thoughts. I know I need to seek some professional advice before it totally ruins my life.

What proof do you have he ever shared those emails with the police?

That couple, at the very least, sound dishonest. True stories surely don't change as they are true. Facts continually changing would make me write them off. Of he is a good husband and Dad now, I'd take his word for it and chalk it down to a horrible experience. You can never really know what happened and I wouldn't throw away my family for people who definitely HAVE lied to you and who have motives that may be hidden from you. Good luck.

The other thing, the husband only came up with one photo of them together, and it was from a work-trip. Yet, he had tracking devices on both of their cars. Surely he would have had more photos, if they had been meeting up.

Have you told him you know about the other emotional affair years ago? He has form for it so of course it's hard to give him the benefit of the doubt

My dh works in a very VERY toxic workplace and people absolutely make things up and weaponise harmless every day actions. It's naive to think no one ever lies about having an affair. The accusers stories have changed more than once, they don't have credibility.

She knew a lot and I don’t know how. Maybe it came from the group whatsapp.

I mean he’s pretty much isolated himself at work. Doesn’t go in to the office, no work whatsapp, no social media (which he came off 10+ years ago) he’s not friendly with anyone anymore. Because in his mind he can’t trust anyone if thats makes sense.

@Gcsunnyside23 yes he knows I know and it’s something we swept under the carpet at the time, we were young (21 at the time, kids etc) thats why he said he didn’t tell me about what was going on as he panicked because of past behaviour and not believing him.

I’d say the story is too bizarre and too many people know enough about it for it to be true. (I speak from experience here that some of the maddest situations are all truth) the truth is somewhere in the middle of all the stories.

its also convenient he she’s ‘crazy’ and so is other husband. You don’t know what your husband is saying to her beyond screenshots. He could manipulating her and her behaviour in the same way he is with you.

Your husband is lying. There is no doubt about that. He has had an affair. No doubt about this either.

the sad thing here isn’t that he is lying though.

it’s that you don’t value yourself enough to want more for yourself- we all deserve honest and decent partners. If your husband is a good father then he will continue to be when you divorce - you should by the way. But I wonder if that reality scares you because he won’t be?

you are stuck in limbo and have been for 9 months already. How much more of your life are you going to dedicate to lying to yourself and not holding the man who has put you in this awful situation accountable?

do you really want to get to your 40s, 50s, 60s even and still be rolling this bastard of a lie around your head, sucking out all the joy and taking time away from yourself, your passions and allowing you to love someone who really deserves your love?

I mean I wasn’t happy with the photo anyway. Thought it was odd when I saw it. To my knowledge he never ever found them together because he would have told me. He was trying to prove they went to a travel lodge together but said he couldn’t get the bank statement account had been closed etc. we have each other on find my phone and I never once thought he was somewhere he shouldn’t have been. You can’t check in to travel lodge until 3pm - he did every school run without fail.

Or because they know he shagged a colleague which led to her resignation and her DP turned up and made drama at work?

I suspect that you are at a stage where whatever the factual truth is, its always going to bother you. If you can't move past that then you can't, it doesn't make you wrong or mad or stupid, but its time for YOU to decide what your future will be and to take the next step towards that.

What if OW husband IS a psycho and forced her to confess to an affair she hasn't actually had because he was convinced she was cheating? I mean he was accusing more than one man at the start so...

I’m not so sure. The husband of the OW has clearly demonstrated stalking behaviours which have involved the police. That’s a fact.

@MyCosyTraybake has heard that they have a strange/toxic relationship. This is obviously hearsay but does lend itself to the theory that perhaps the OW is in a very controlling/ unhealthy relationship. She may well have fantasised about OP’s husband and created a delusion in her head that they were in a relationship. She could have concocted ways to get him to write her messages via some strange story about her daughter, done an online deep dive to find old you tube videos, written emails herself supposedly from OP’s husband. She could have been paying very close attention to everything he said so that it seems like she had a lot of in depth knowledge about the family but in reality had just picked up bits and pieces over time from general conversation that she had committed to memory. Her husband could have found out and taken this as clear evidence of an affair, leading to his stalking behaviour. When the police got involved OW panicked and ‘confessed’ the ‘affair’ to make her husband look less crazy. The fact that she couldn’t give OP any straight answers about how/when/where this affair took place, changed her story multiple times and had no knowledge of his tattoo also backs this up.

Obviously OP’s husband has been stupid but in his head hiding what was going on (if innocent on his part) because he was afraid of OP not believing him due to his past behaviour. It sounds like the previous emotional affair to him was viewed just as a friendship and he perhaps feels OP overreacted so wanted to avoid causing turmoil in the marriage with this situation. In doing so he has made himself look very guilty and achieved the opposite outcome.

However there is no way of knowing what is true. OP could hire a private investigator to look into the OW and find out if she has a history of delusions, causing drama etc. This wouldn’t be definitive but would help give a clearer picture of who she is and whether there is a pattern of behaviour.

@MyCosyTraybake you are unlikely to ever know the truth. You need to make peace with that. It might help if your husband could admit/agree to the following:

• he needs to be more conscious about his behaviour with other women in the future
• he handled the situation appallingly
• he has lied
• his trying to ‘protect’ you has caused you more pain
• he needs to acknowledge from your perspective how it looks and that it is reasonable for you to feel uncertain about what actually happened
• he needs to never give you reason to doubt him again and commit to being open and honest about things moving forward

If He can do that and you can work on rebuilding your trust then maybe it can work out for you. Ultimately you cannot know for certain and have to be ok with that. He can’t prove his innocence anymore than you can prove his guilt.

I’m not so sure. The husband of the OW has clearly demonstrated stalking behaviours which have involved the police. That’s a fact.

I don’t think anything is a “fact” in this story. But to take it at face value - OW’s DH in the grip of jealousy and wanting to know the truth about what his wife was up to - stalks the man he’s having an affair with. Hardly an unusual story.

And far more likely than randomly stalking someone he has no connection to.

has heard that they have a strange/toxic relationship

Well she would wouldn’t she. The same is true of OP.

I know it's not encouraged and I hate to point out the obvious but there's also the small detail none of us actually know anything other than what OP is telling us anyway and the whole thing could all be just creative writing for the weekend. In fact it's so bizarre I'm surprised MNHQ haven't taken a look behind the scenes yet...

I disagree that you need to carry on searching for evidence. That’s just feeding the anxiety.

I see your choices as either accepting that he did something wrong but you can forgive, learn to tolerate the uncertainty and move on, or you can’t and you leave him.

do you have a job? Are you financially independent? If not then this should be priority, whether you stay or not.

@Mirabai
I do see what you’re saying… it does look like a shitty relationship on my side!

Not to the point where I had any reason to distrust my husband at the time. We were working on issues we had. The first ‘incident’ was the OW husband calling the other male colleague. They were abroad at the time. On that phone call he threatened to kill him and tell his wife. 2 minutes later my husband phone rings. He didn’t answer. Maybe because he didn’t answer that was the trigger to the tracking I don’t know.
The OW told me her husband found a group whatsapp and didn’t like the content. Then he said he found out in July to the full extent of the affair, Which I know is a lie because the screen shots are dated April, but maybe he started collating stuff 🤷🏻‍♀️

I know i’m probably in denial. But the replies have helped me feel a little less crazy that i’m not the only one who would have doubts on this situation!

I wish it was creative writing….

There are three responses in reaction to the suggestion of a lie detector test. You don’t actually need to book one, the other person needs to believe that you have and that the results are crucial to your decision making. One reaction tells you all you need to know, flat out refusal, in circumstances where you’ve said that this would bring you peace, would suggest that there is something to hide. A reaction of ‘ I don’t want to do it but if it will help you then I will’ or ‘happy to do it ‘ are reassuring. Research a company online, tell him you’ve booked if for a few days time and see what unfolds .