No longer blindsided by H

[Gingerloaf]

This is a second thread - first one was ‘blindsided by H’

A couple of weeks has passed since that thread ended and suffice to say the shit show is a gift that keeps on giving.

An attempt was made at face to face discussions about ‘us’ and there were tentative noises from H although his concern for how OW would take his leaving her seemed to occupy his mind rather more than it should.

A period of time to reflect and H has decided he is required to look after his mental health - it’s somewhat bizarre that the perpetrator decides that he is the victim and must be protected at all costs. So I readily agreed to some non contact ( more for myself than him) it took less than 2 weeks for the next contact to be made.
Once again the me, me, me dialogue was started. There was also a completely useless email but hey, we have to show we are ‘reasonable’ even if all other behaviours are that of a small child.

Plenty of things afoot for me - busy calendar ahead.
What has been pleasing is the righteous anger of other woman in my age range who are now seeing this pattern play out in so many long term relationships. This is now taking the form of politely confronting OW and asking WTAF was she thinking??
Reputations are being bruised shall we say - and frankly they have both had a very polite and easy run of it up until now.
There is a lot of evidence that the relationship is strained but that was always predicted and very sad considering this little diversion has cost us a relationship of almost 40 years.

So no reconciliation, not even a whiff of ‘I am sorry’ and certainly no adult / reasonable discussions.

Looking forward to hearing from
@Goldcushions2
@MillyCentTap
@shamedbysiri
@Diarygirlqueen
@Acrossthepond55
@Fannyfiggs

I have noticed an awful lot of tarot card reading reels on FB - apparently he’s coming in with a communication and a desire to reconnect ( according to the spirits) Time will tell! Who says FB is not listening to us??

By considering our neglected physical fitness or lack of sexy toned body to be part of the issue aren't we just excusing their behaviour? Is the average 40, 50, 60 year old man fit, toned and sexy? Mine isn't/wasn't.

When my DH cheated I was a size 10 with not an ounce of fat. We had two big dogs and I was walking for miles every day. So I'm not about to beat myself up by thinking I wasn't "sexy" enough for a balding middle aged man.

If they're going to be tempted by a woman who is out to trap, it won't make any difference what your dress size is or how firm your thighs are because they'll find some other way to justify it or to blame you.

And you wont get an apology even when it falls apart and he wants to come back. I never did.

@PyreneanAubrie - I agree with your post and I think it backs up my original post that to blame the wife at home for somehow not coming up to scratch - is wrong.l and we should all guard against it ( the adverts about peeing our do t help)
I wish I had had the foresight to check in with him - but we were busy going to concerts etc and he is not the most communicative of men. That I don’t think he would have told me the truth anyway.

The cheater is missing something in their own psyche - the thrill of the chase, the dopamine hit, the naughtiness, the someone else saying just the right things and believing whatever bullshit they are spun

cheating is a choice
engaging in cheating with a married man is a choice
the betrayed spouse- is betrayed

We so often think it's our physical appearance that attracts/keeps a man, we've been trained from day one to think that. I think in so many of these cases we are all talking about it's been new attention from a new source. That's not to say we weren't giving them enough attention already but when a shiny new smiler hangs off his every word why would he continue to value the one who has been with him for decades, enduring all that he contributed. Or didn't.

I hear you all re the excuses - I was to blame for him not being given the promotion he wanted; I didn't give him the support he needed when he was accused of bullying at work (could it be that there may have been just the tiniest connection??)(when I asked him what could I have done different with the support I did offer he didn't know); I didn't socialise with his beautiful friends, the ones he made sure he kept me well away from; I could go on but it's too boring.

@Gingerloaf that was a pleasant surprise to see that they affair down, I can see that now. It's also very obvious how easily manipulated she was by him but then so was I so I can't really judge her for that. Maybe one day it'll occur to her what she's living with.

I am not sure how to post what I read - but I promise if you google ‘affair down’ in anything it will come up

It says the person is usually easy to manipulate- less attractive, less intelligent and frankly a bit looser with their morals
The OW in this case was described by someone who knew her as ‘mousey granny’ - it’s an ego boost to have someone look at you adoringly - I can imagine for now she thinks she has hit the jackpot with this young man in her arm.
I still hope that karma is real

Cheating is a choice.

I think this is the most important point.

No one has an affair 'by mistake'. Whatever excuses they will make to the betrayed spouse, there came a time when they deliberately stepped over that line.

They may tell lies, or twist things to suit their narrative. They may even reach the point where they seem to believe their own lies, but it did not happen by accident and was not someone else's fault.

@yesmen the same thing happened to me. My happy husband living a perfectly normal life with me and our children, had an affair. Our friends and family thought we had a brilliant marriage and so did I. The ‘unhappiness’ cited was the biggest pile of BS you ever heard. He attempted a history rewrite about ten seconds after discovery and I realised I was hearing the crap he’d invented to justify himself with and the crap he trotted out to her to make him look like the trapped noble hero staying for his children rather than the common or garden cheating husband he was.
My “Eh???? You’re kidding, right?” reminders of what life was actually like broke him down because he knew what he said was actually rubbish, so it left him nowhere to go internally, other than see himself for who he had become. He had to acknowledge he had only himself to blame and could lose everyone who loved him. He was devastated at what an arsehole he’d been and terrified there was no way back.
Women get blamed all the time for infidelity: “he must be unhappy at home.” “She can’t keep her man” “she’s let herself go” and sadly in my experience this stuff is usually said by women about women more than men.
It is very often utter rubbish.

@Gingerloaf I've just had a quick look at the initial google results of affair down - it's so true. I've always been convinced he took so long to actually leave me for her because he was financially better off with me. Added to that were that he didn't have the balls to end the marriage (even though when I suggested separation after listening to five and a half hours of why he didn't want to be married to me he said no) and that he wanted to string her along and set the standards for how controlling I know he will be with her now.

He was once telling me about something she'd said and I said that I didn't think she sounded very emotionally intelligent. He said "I think she's very emotionally intelligent", he was almost childlike in the way he said it. A few days later he tried exactly the same thing he had told me she'd said on me. I don't know whether he genuinely forgot or was just trying to gaslight me, again.

They really are prize arseholes, the lot of them.

The affair down is interesting. Husband has looked at friends who blow up their lives marriages for a right dog (his words)

@justasking111 - you win ‘a right dog’ it is

Everyone who has seen her picture are absolutely stunned - I cannot imagine what went through his head to even contemplate it.
Its 14 years between her and I - and I have used more products
I think somewhere along the lines they forget what they have and fall for the utter crap any Fannie who has poor knicker elastic says.
I know his anger and need to control at the moment are purely because he has fucked up and knows it - so it has to be my fault

Its stunning to watch - and very sad

My advice to all of you still married - have a secret bank account for just in case because the law does not discriminate about who was wrong, who worked harder etc it’s a blunt instrument as my solicitor keeps saying

I don’t think “affair down” necessarily means just looks. There’s no way my husband’s AP was less attractive than me, she was a very beautiful foreign gym bunny nearly twenty years my junior.
However, she was nowhere near as educated or smart as me, far more selfish and self absorbed, ‘princessy’ and at one point even apparently racist. She shot herself in the foot several times as her mask slipped, she just couldn’t keep up who she was trying to be for him.
They had bugger all in common except shagging in hotels and she was hard to have a meaningful conversation with or joke with, because of the cultural differences and big age gap. He said the watershed for him was the one and only night they spent together (all happened during working hours and early evening after work) which meant he was with her for 24 hours solid and had nowhere near the good time he thought he’d have. Once the usual out for meal/ hotel/ sex thing had happened, he said the conversation ran pretty dry. Add to that, as hypocritical as it was, he knew she was also a liar and a cheat and it was obvious she didn’t trust him, either. A friend’s husband left for OW and begged to come back after going on holiday with her for the first time and realising they had nothing in common except sex. After seeing her struggle with a pretty simple crossword in a puzzle book and seeing the inanity of her conversation level unravel, he went from thinking he wanted to leave his family for her to really disliking her. Most affairs rarely survive real life.
My husband’s OW was an ego boost. She might have been arm candy and a ‘feather in his cap’ because of her youth and beauty, but she wasn’t and could never be Wookie and that was always going to be her biggest problem. Your husband’s OW’s biggest problem is that she’s not you, Gingerloaf. Her next biggest problem is that she’s saddled with the very worst version of your husband.
The irony is that most cheats know that the person they cheat with isn’t what they really want or need. They fan flagging egos and say what the cheat wants to hear at the right time. Nobody can keep up the ‘honeymoon’ phase of a relationship forever, that’s what affairs are as long as they stay an affair. Most of the time if they leave for the OW, they desperately cling to the shitshow relationship with post-rationalisation and hanging on, to justify their decision and try to prove to the world that they were ‘right’ in their choices. Time will heal you and lift the rose-tinted glasses from them.
My husband’s infidelity was nothing to do with me and @Gingerloaf your husband’s infidelity is nothing to do with you, either.
It’s all about them. Their circus and their bloody monkeys.

I was speaking to someone not long after we had split up and he asked if she looked like me. When I said not really he then asked if she had changed her hair to look more like mine and she bloody had! One of the other reasons that I was at fault, according to my then husband, was that she was "learing to play the fucking violin" - I play the violin.

So the APs must also know, whether consciously or not, that they are a lesser version who need to dance to, or try and learn 🎻😅, the pick me tune.

I saw a card today and thought of you and your DH. It showed a nighttime scene. And underneath it " The night you were born the stars shone particularly brightly. Just for you'. And when you look at the starlit sky more closely you can see it spells the word wanker....

I need that card!

@LivelyMintViper - I want to shop where you do - brilliant

I agree the ‘affair down’ is not just about looks - l think her personal is placid (. And I am not) the member of the tribe who confronted her said ‘she knows nowt if the real world he’ll be fucking bored with her’
So I think he thought he would get and easy liked and perhaps for now it is

Just informed some people who we know but keep in touch with sporadically- all said the same - various rude words to describe him, it won’t last, he is mad, you will do better etc etc
The repetition from everyone is actually helping with the process - you need to hear over and over it’s not you, it’s him and it w in t last , he messed up

Dor now I am watching him play silly fuckkers and frankly it’s really boring

Happy Halloween- I should have dressed as OW

Happy Halloween @Gingerloaf. Don’t bother dressing as her (even though I just sprayed my cuppa across the kitchen laughing) just dress as your fabulous self. That should frighten the shit out of both of them, they clearly picked on the wrong woman, you’re awesome and they know it.

@LivelyMintViper that card is brilliant! 😂😂

@Thewookiemustgo

so did you end up reconciling with your husband

Me too 😅

@Quitelikeit Yes, he didn’t leave and it was five years ago now. Very tough at first, he was a complete dick with a lot of work to do. I don’t regret it, however, it’s a very different story to Gingerloaf’s.

@Thewookiemustgo - I am pleased for you
I hope he knows how lucky he was / is

One of my friends had a husband who was from a family of career policemen. (They were all men…) There was MUCH nepotism and he was well-placed for his level of experience. He decided that he preferred playing computer games and meeting women online and went off with “depression” and chose to disengage from her and their four kids. She paid the mortgage and did all of the parenting, and supported him until the marriage became entirely untenable. At the wedding of one of their adult kids (he did not contribute financially, but tried to throw his weight around because his parents did…) he snivelled up to her, saying how “They” had done a great job with the kids, as though “They” had no history of antipathy (and while OW looked on, glaring at her…) and wondered why he hadn’t been thanked in the speeches. My friend just said “Oh “Brian”, You are are such a boring man.” - and walked off.

Thank you Gingerloaf, it’s very refreshing to not get judged and it’s kind of you to take the time to say this when you are in the middle of a storm.
Yes, the does know how lucky he is. The sad thing is that he always did and knew he never wanted to leave. It was all so bloody unnecessary and a hugely painful experience for him too, although whilst I have empathy for how he feels, I’m not a saint by any means and can’t extend sympathy.
Without abdicating any responsibility for what he did from him, he knew what he was doing and was neither nuts nor depressed, these fifty-something men in affairs are bloody crazy. So many I see on Mumsnet and among my friends and even my family, get into their fifties and act like teenage boys. They blow up perfectly lovely lives and devastate good women and their families for their ageing flagging egos.
It’s like midlife totally screws their egos and selfishness grows bloody wings. These aren’t excuses, there are none, but it’s certainly common. It’s pathetic. Don’t get me started on the type of women sniffing around them and their wallets.
Even my husband couldn’t recognise himself when the bubble burst, he still can’t really believe he did anything so colossally stupid and insane and a lot of the talking afterwards was unpicking how he got there and the lies he told himself and permissions he gave himself through misplaced entitlement.
He was astonished at the level to which he had duped himself and lied to himself, he realised his obsession and infatuation was with the way the twatty James Bond fantasy he was playing out made him feel, not the OW herself. He was incredibly surprised at ‘how quickly it turned to shit”( literally in minutes) when I found out.
I’m telling you this from the inside track of the cheating husband’s perspective, because I hope it reinforces that it’s absolutely not about you and never was, there is nothing you could have said or done, nothing you did not say or did not do, that caused this. He did.
My husband’s affair was a symptom of what was wrong with him, not me. He said she could have been anybody, he was chasing the validation that the attention, effort she made for him and flattery gave him. He mistook the source of his feelings as being about her. It wasn’t, it was the way the ego boost made him feel. I couldn’t provide that for him because he couldn’t play James Bond with me, he knew I know him and his real self, warts and all. James Bond my arse, he couldn’t even play Brook Bond, I never got a decent cup of tea out of him in forty years. She never saw warts or the real him and never knew him, he could project whatever image he wanted of himself for her to believe and admire and worship. He could make up any story about himself and me and who he was and she lapped it up. “Wookie never appreciated me, I’m not Mr Wookie : husband and dad, I’m actually James Fecking Bond! “
Don’t make the mistake that your husband is madly in love with this woman. He’s in love with the version of himself he sees reflected back from her. Some cheating men fall in love, the vast majority think they are in love, but the vast majority really aren’t. Cheating is rarely about love. It is far more likely that his ego is in love with the validation that the shiny new source of flattery and attention and sex provides.
He’s going to look like more of a clown than Ronald MacDonald once he realises what he’s doing. From what you say this is already happening and he’s saddling up his little clown bicycle as we speak.

@Thewookiemustgo - another excellent insight and I hope many happily married people read that and know - it can happen to anyone. The James Bond analogy is so true my H always took care of himself but he was taking leisurely baths and asking how he looked on occasions I now know he was going to her.

There are many signs he knows he has blown it - at the moment he is trying to control one of my reasonable requests ( solicitor speak for sort the damn thing out) he even left me on read …..like somehow I haven’t noticed this is a game.
Unfortunately for him having now had sleeping tablets and 8 hours sleep
every night - I am fired up and ready to see the game and outpace him.
So he is angry at the moment because clearly I made him go to her house, I made him
unzip his trousers and I must have given him his erection etc etc
I feel stronger and despite still grieving what I thought in had my world is supported by MN and friends IRL who have shown unwavering support and kindness - I am truly blessed to have that.

I am really pleased for you - you and your hubby should write a thread - because there is much to learn from self aware men who did this. Everyone said the same about mine - never in a million years …but he did , the shiny new 72 year old toy was enough for him ( now he’s having to make the best of it to keep a roof over his head)
No need to start the age thing again folks - the reference is more to how much they dont have in common. Many people can have that age difference but they build a life together of shared songs and places to go - this is not the case. Even he knows she’s trying to replace he dead husband

She doesn’t sound like the concert going type lol. I am sure in a few years time when he’s her carer then he will be banging his head. Someone referring to he as “Miss Daisy” has really stuck in my head! It sounds like she wants someone there to maintain her house and I think at a later stage in life an age difference is more noticeable as she will prob not have high energy levels.

My exH also had what my dp calls a downgrade. A women oldter, plain and out of shape. I on the other hand got my dp, who is younger, has hair on his head and is incredibly well endowed( iunsuperficially he is really kind and loving and has taken care of me through sickness and a few major bereavement). We have a lot in common so like you and your H, we will go to events together and book holidays away but also happy to just stay at home with a good bottle of wine.

I think what you have gone though is all consuming @Gingerloaf . It’s horrible for you under the anger you will of course miss him ;(

Happy Halloween- I should have dressed as OW

Absolutely hilarious! But that wouldn't have worked anyway. You would have needed an idiot on your arm, and you got rid of yours.