Please help me get myself and my shit together, husband has slept with prostitutes

[beingstrongmumma]

I am posting here not knowing what to do. I don’t have anyone in the world I can talk to about this and it’s the middle of the night. My darling sweet little 4 year old boy’s asleep upstairs oblivious.

I would appreciate calm clarify here as I’m in a fog. It’s so shit as I even have an interview tomorrow for the next stage of a qualification I’m doing and had gone to bed early to feel fresh. So much for that now, I’ll be up in 4 hours.

My husband came home around midnight blind drunk, fell up the stairs, absolutely wasted. He’s been at a staff team building day all day. It was meant to be a lunch with drinking but it went on so I went to bed.

In his hand was his phone open on WhatsApp. I saw a chat with a woman. As soon as he fell asleep comatose I got his phone and looked. Since about 7.30pm tonight he seems to have been contacting sex workers looking them up then chatting on WhatsApp. He’s asked 2 for their addresses. I’ve also seen, that he’s chatted to a different woman (sex worker I presume) who he evidently met up with when in another country for work which was in early March. There’s some chat about the apartment she was staying in and he’s asking about her studies.

I am furious by the way but keeping calm typing this as I need to keep cool and stay sensible to look after myself and my boy.

Anyway this evening he’s evidently got in touch with 4 women, 2 of whom he has paid a visit to., and 2 chats seems to fade off due to his drunken typing making no sense. He’s absolutely wasted beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Anyway I’ve seen uber journey receipts and Revolut payments receipts in his email inbox which tally with timings. In between he was phoning me / missed calling me when I was asleep. I could sit here and piece together all the messages, journeys, payments and calls to piece together a timeline of the evening but that seems like a grim task and I’ve got enough evidence should he try and gaslight me.

I’ve photographed everything using my phone and saved to my private cloud folder just in case.

Tomorrow morning he is supposed to be looking after our boy on his first day of Easter holidays which he was so excited about whilst I go to my interview which I’ve spent today prepping for. The week after next we have a holiday booked in Norfolk with our son. I feel so sad.

Anyway what can I do? I’ve seen threads on here before but never thought I’d be the one writing it. Now I’m in this moment I’m feeling calm / quiet whilst also sad and angry for myself and our boy, our future. I have no other family at all and it was always going to be just us three against the world. Our son is my joy.

Anyway I don’t want to cry just now. I am still going to go to my interview because long term it’s for my future career and I’ve worked bloody hard.

I’m worried I’m vulnerable though. Please can you help me to know what to do? things I’m worrying about:

-we sold our home last year and have been renting for various reasons. So no property owned by either of us.
-husband works in city job earns a high salary
-my job brings in less and it suffered due to Covid and maternity etc so hence my plan was to retain and build extra skills into my work, eventually with better earning power, but would take at least 2 more years to complete. I have been working part-time while I study, and being there for school pick up, bringing in not much £ (paying for holidays and extras basically) but husband’s salary supports us and he has been supportive of me doing this.
-so as a result I don’t have much to support me or any real pension built.
-we have some joint savings left over from sale of our home

What else do I need to be thinking about practically?

I know this sounds crazy but has anyone ever come back from this? We had been having couples counselling and had made progress (I thought). We went through a bad patch of lots of arguments when my child was smaller, caused by resentment and realities of parenthood / differing roles etc, and a terrible situation with my husbands family / Dad, and alongside this our sex life was bad. However emotionally we had got closer thanks to the counselling, understood each other much better and were starting to work on sex life. Husband had uncovered a tendency for destructive behaviours like eating junk food, drinking, gaming, porn etc and we had worked through that knowing what it was masking (stuff relating to his Dad who died suddenly end of last year and was very problematic).

Don’t get me wrong there’s no excuse for cheating on me and ruining our family no matter how shit he has felt or what difficulties he’s had. I’ve had a shit life and I haven’t cheated, nor would I!

I just don’t know if there’s any point in thinking we could continue to work on it with our counsellor, (who is great) if of course he took full accountability for what he’s done.

Also, when should I tell him what I know? Despite this late hour I’m fully intending on getting up and going to my interview tomorrow morning and I’ll be leaving at 8.30am. He will no doubt feel rough and will have a 4 year old to manage.

Should I wait until little one is in bed tomorrow night then say something? What if he asks anything before then? We have no family to support us so it’s just us 3. I can’t ask anyone to look after my son in the daytime to give us time to talk. Also on Sunday we have a special treat - a full day out booked with our boy, and the holiday over Easter week. How can I get through these moments pretending it’s all normal front of my son?!

Anyway enough now. I will login tomorrow after my interview to see if anyone has replied and maybe take myself off for a coffee somewhere to get my head straight before going home again.

Thank you if you’ve read this far.

He won't care. Punters never care. They don't see prostitutes as human.

I don't blame you for thinking this way, OP – I think the shock makes us scramble for what is salvageable and what makes us desperate to think of a way through – but it's the wrong analogy. In this scenario the house is not your marriage. A marriage is not a 'thing' in the ether. Your husband, the person, is your marriage. Your husband is the bomb, but this bomb has free will, and HE has chosen to blow YOU AND YOUR SON up – and willingly too. So the question is not whether you can rebuild the house, it's whether you wish to stay married to a bomb that has willingly tried to destroy you.

This from @Didimum- “Idon't blame you for thinking this way, OP – I think the shock makes us scramble for what is salvageable and what makes us desperate to think of a way through – but it's the wrong analogy. In this scenario the house is not your marriage. A marriage is not a 'thing' in the ether. Your husband, the person, is your marriage. Your husband is the bomb, but this bomb has free will, and HE has chosen to blow YOU AND YOUR SON up – and willingly too. So the question is not whether you can rebuild the house, it's whether you wish to stay married to a bomb that has willingly tried to destroy you.”

do not rush into making a decision it will eventually dawn on you what he “choose” to do to you & your son because he could & wanted too. You will never feel the same about him you are in shock just now eventually it will dawn on you your giving up nothing because what you had was fake/not real in the first place. My advice is to get him to leave the house give you time to process your next move. He is not a good role model for your son (would you want your son to have a wife who fucked about? ) as that’s what your showing him is ok. In the long run don’t waste anymore time on this looser you'll regret it eventually. Take care of yourself just now be kind to yourself. “Things eg gardens, houses etc” are nothing at the end of the day its true love that makes you happy- sorry but your husband doesn’t love or care about either of you. He is a selfish entitled idiot of a man

I haven’t RTFT, only your posts OP, but just wanted to say that I understand the fear of leaving a relationship because you don’t have family and few friends. I stayed in two awful relationships for far too long for this reason, although admittedly there were no children involved.

In my experience it drags you down, resentment builds and the relationship becomes increasingly toxic. I never trusted them again. Mental health suffers, and the more it does the less able you feel to leave.

So I wouldn’t recommend basing your decision around that. It’s frightening to go from being with someone you feel has your back (which he does not otherwise he wouldn’t have blown up his family like this) to having no one, but after a while you realise it’s actually not as scary as you imagined and start to build up new relationships.

The thought of a man thinking he can buy access to a woman’s body to do what he likes with is repulsive. What sort of person gets off on a woman doing something to him that she doesn’t actually want to do? It’s sick. I personally could never move on from that.

Well done for prioritising and getting through the interview.

Hoping counselling session helped a bit OP. All so raw and shocking for you. Try not to worry too far ahead just now. Not normal times so just be extra kind to yourself and your DS and take a day at a time.

I disagree, when i found out my stbxh was seeing prostitutes that's the first thing i asked him.....did he know these women are vulnerable.....and i felt like me staying with him and giving him the security of a marriage was co-signing to this.

not the point of this thread but Another reminder to women not to give up their friendships for marriage/kids. It’s not wise, it’s unnecessary and it’s unhealthy.

I understand family if they’re toxic but you can choose your friends so I don’t quite understand it.

Hope you’re ok @beingstrongmumma and have managed to have some time to process things this week x