Husband had an affair - advice needed!

[Strawberrina]

I found out last year that my husband had an affair with a work colleague who is 25 years younger than him. The affair was emotional as well as physical. He was and is her manager at the workplace. The difficulty is that they continue to work together in a small office consisting of 4-5 members of staff, including them, and see each other almost every day. The town in which we live is a small regional town and there are limited jobs available for someone with his level of experience. We have reconciled and are working through things, but I'm at my wits end about what to do! I'm not happy that they work together and see each other almost daily.
Any advice would be welcome!

So now you're circling back to questions you were asking about 25 pages ago. Does it really matter what anyone else thinks? We don't know your H. Does it actually matter to you what anyone here thinks? You've had countless hundreds of posts offering you advice and insight, most of which you've simply ignored. You selectively quote a handful of posts and ignore all the rest.

The entire thing has been going round in circles. I don't even believe it's real, now.

@Calliecarpa I may lead a sheltered life (I don’t) but this is one of the most frustrating threads I’ve ever read. Feels like ever increasing circles!

In all honesty, I'm starting to wonder that myself too. Doubtless we'll get an update sometime soon telling us that that OP thinks it might be a good idea to get legal advice but no, hasn't actually done it, that her H thinks it might be a good idea to get another job but no, hasn't actually done it, that the OW has driven down their street again and what does this meeeeeean, that OP and H have been together nearly 30 years and it's all so difficult and he's doing more chores and has expressed his remorse and regret over the affair but no, hasn't actually done anything.

“Calliecarpa · Today 13:05

Strawberrina · Today 10:34
^ In your view, is it possible to love a person and have an affair/cheat on them?^
Show quote history
So now you're circling back to questions you were asking about 25 pages ago. Does it really matter what anyone else thinks? We don't know your H. Does it actually matter to you what anyone here thinks? You've had countless hundreds of posts offering you advice and insight, most of which you've simply ignored. You selectively quote a handful of posts and ignore all the rest.”

This with bells on. I, like many others, answered that question weeks ago. Can’t you see how you’re just spinning your wheels?

Honestly, @Strawberrina - you’re so desperate for posters to say your situation is okay and you’re your husband’s great love. No-one’s going to tell you that.

As I said before - I think someone can love their partner and still cheat on them. I also think it’s possible to love more than one person at once. So the question is - are you willing to put up with your H’s infidelity or not? Are you willing to remain with him even if he has feelings for this other woman? DH and I have had periods of open relationship so I can see how someone can make that decision.

You said that you insisted that your husband leave his job but he’s still there so in fact you didn’t insist. If you had insisted, he would no longer be in the same workplace as this woman. This is what people mean when they say - look at what your H does, not what he says. It’s very easy for him to tell you what he thinks you want to hear. But you know that he’s capable of lying because he cheated on you. You cannot trust his words; you must be guided by his actions.

It is perfectly valid after a long marriage to decide that you prefer the financial and material comfort of staying married. That’s fine. That seems to be your intention. You can own that.

“I think that you are somewhat clouded by the reasons your H did it and came out of it because not much of that resonates with my experience.”

No, I did say it was my personal experience and obviously all affairs are different. You are still in an affair, you still message each other despite him living with his wife.
Of course it doesn’t look like this from the inside, but the inside of affairs still isn’t a relationship in the real world, the original situational highs are still ongoing and he’s still addicted to it. He wants his real life plus the escape you give him, he’s addicted to that high and he’s finding it hard to go cold turkey. I’ve never seen anyone or read anything from anyone in an ongoing affair who is willing to accept that this might be true or that it’s probably not real love, because if it isn’t, then they’ve been duped and are being used as an emotional crutch and a high for somebody else who enjoys the high as long as it doesn’t involve changing their lives. So they believe the one that they know is a liar, usually up until the point the liar starts making excuses and dragging his feet about actually doing anything concrete towards leaving.
What must resonate with you is the truth, that no matter what he says to you, he’s still where he is and that although he’s complaining that he can’t get over you, leaving is still ‘too hard’. Those are the facts so you must make of them what you will. I am sure that it looks very different from your perspective than mine, but I’ll believe it when I see him do it.
Same for OP’s husband, I’d only consider believing him if he does way more than just say he’s committed to her and the marriage. My message to both men would be “Prove it!”
If you are still messaging your AP then you are either enjoying it as it is, or waiting and hoping for more. If it’s the latter, I wouldn’t wait any longer, it’s looking futile plus he’s proving to you he’s not worth it. If it’s the former, I’d ask yourself why your involvement in this enjoyment, knowing that it is risking further great harm to the welfare and mental wellbeing of a woman and her children, is really that enjoyable to you. Or him.

@Strawberrina this dh could possibly be screwing half the town, both males and females, and OP will still be insisting that he loves her and only her!

I posted the same thing a few pages ago as got really frustrated with a so called educated lecturer seeming like they could not understand what everyone was saying and ignoring the real questions and selecting a random handful, not to answer but ask silly questions back to.

Ended my post with why post in the first place and ull be back here posting later when he inevitably does cheat again.

I know it sounds harsh but this guy will leave her high and dry. OP, posters just want you to open your eyes and get ahead of the situation before it gets out of control.

@ThisChirpyFox I agree I think the whole thread just keeps going round in circles because none of those involved in the actual situation seem to want change.
OP seems very emotionally detached from the whole situation and asks more and more information-seeking questions.
I don’t think she has referred to anything anyone has advised her as being a good idea, or something she sees as what needs to happen. Each reply engenders more detached questions.
OP it’s no wonder people think you might be less than genuine or writing an article, you continue to ask for information and opinions, not help.
Until you start answering these questions:
“What do I want?”
“What do I want him to do about it?”
You’ll get nowhere. You need to stop questioning others and start questioning yourself and your own behaviour in relation to your situation. You are enabling it, not changing it.

It isn’t either of those things. I don’t have any hope and I don’t like hurting people.

The reasons I fell in love with him are complicated to begin with and involve years of trust, friendship, consistency, trauma and maybe an intimacy that I didn’t recognise was there until now. Then I got tangled up in this and it quickly got out of my control and made me feel like a horrible worthless person. So now if I get texts (ironically from the person who has made me feel like this) saying that I have value it makes me feel momentarily better. Like a plaster over a great wound. The feelings are real and hard to disentangle from but it’s more out of a desperate nothingness that a nice text saying I did mean something gives momentary relief. I still believe and always will that the cheater at the centre of these situations is the one to blame.

Absolutely the cheat is 100% to blame for the affair, no question avd I have always said that, but if you know they are deceiving someone and lying to them, which is also psychological abuse, once you start helping them keep these secrets you are part of it, it’s easy to abdicate the responsibility for your own poor behaviour onto another person’s poor behaviour, if you don’t like hurting people, and know that his wife will be hurt by your messaging and sleeping with her husband, don’t sleep with other people’s partners, it’s as simple as that.
Cheating, sleeping with a cheat are personal
choices, not inevitabilities. The wife should not blame you for her husband’s infidelity at all, no, I agree, but she will be very hurt by your continued actions too. You can’t not know and understand that. You are not responsible for his behaviour, but equally his wrongdoing is not responsible for yours, you are.
“I got tangled up” “it quickly got out of my control”
These are phrases used by people who won’t take responsibility for their actions. It suggests victimhood, that you had no agency, but all the time you did.
You didn’t get tangled up, you chose to engage and let it continue.
It never got out of your control, it was always in your control, all either if you had to do was say ‘no’ and it would have stopped.
You are romanticising this, as if you were powerless and swept away by feelings, love flourished, etc etc. Nope, all that’s just as maybe, I’m sure that’s what it actually felt like, but at all times you knew it was wrong and you knew people would get hurt and possibly marriages and family lives blown up but you chose it anyway.
I’m sorry you feel worthless, most affairs make people feel that way. A remorseful cheat feels worthless afterwards (I know if suicides because of this), betrayed partners feel worthless and discarded OW feel worthless. Infidelity is the absolute pits and if people could see what they are about to unleash I swear people would never do it.
If you need a message from a lying cheat to feel better about yourself what you actually need is some therapy to help you unpick this and to get yourself out of so trying that makes you feel worthless. If you feel that badly about what you are doing but don’t stop, then you don’t feel badly enough about it and your sorrow about it all diss not excuse your continuing it.
Your little daily ‘hit’ could devastate that family. He needs to see that too, they are his responsibility. If he was in here I’d say the same things and more to him, don’t think I am singling you out in this.
I can guarantee you that after a period of cold turkey from him you will already feel 100 times better about yourself for doing the right thing and living an honest, authentic life. The bad feelings you have are because you are trying to convince yourself you would never hurt people or do somebody harm whilst still doing exactly that. You’ll never square that circle. The person you are hurting just doesn’t know about it yet.
Please get yourself some help and distance yourself, the whole thing is toxic and harming you massively too. I don’t wish anybody ill, so please, please do something positive for yourself, don’t beat yourself up after stopping this, it’s done, it’s what you do today to put it right that matters, not what you did yesterday. Take care of yourself and do the right thing, he’s never going to, by her or you.

I hope he’s finally made steps to actually make amends @Strawberrina

No the Op is counting down the days to August 1st when she firmly believes her husband will be hers again forever.

Oh don’t, every time this thread pops up again I get the rage.

Op
You seem to be confusing Love with Respect. Both are required for a relationship to work long term..

You husband may well "Love" (as in be bonded, attached, whatever) you, but right now he doesn't respect you.

The reason he doesn’t respect you is that you have no put any firm boundaries in place regarding his cheating. You have given him the signal that he can do what he wants. There has been no pain, no price for him to pay. He wont learn respect this way. No-one does.

In my view, he needs to leave his job or your romantic relationship will never recover. I say this from experience

@PineConeOrDogPoo May I ask what happened in your case?

You are still missing the point, circling back and asking questions of people that are tying to offer heartfelt and honest advice. You do not seem to want to take 27 pages of help, rather you focus on "what happened in your case" . Good grief, this is either a windup post, or you are deluded. You choose..

@Strawberrina I am beginning to think the OP is rather dense!!

Maybe the OP is an academic doing research on attitudes to infidelity amongst online parenting communities.

Geez, if so, we can all pop off and help those posting on the boards that genuinely need help when their partner has an affair. Mumsnet is a support network, not a research tool!!

Why does it matter? This is your thread, that you started, about your husband's affair with a junior colleague. Why do you randomly pop up every few weeks just to ask the same questions over and over, and not respond to the vast majority of posters here who have been trying to help you?

Is it true what some PP believe, that you're using MN as a research tool to assess attitudes to infidelity, and that the stories you've told about your H and his OW are untrue, just a way to draw people in so that you can collect material for an article or a thesis?

I don’t disagree. I’ve no idea obviously if that is the case but OP seems so bizarrely dispassionate about this whole scenario. In the beginning I assumed it was because she was reluctant to end the marriage due to lack of financial status, sale of property etc., but now I’ve no clue. The thread just goes round in circles.

Obviously nobody has to take the advice they receive on here but if you’re not going to, why the fuck keep asking?

Oh, no fuck THAT!

Torn between two women, I'd make the choice for him. Been there done that at 24, I'd have no problem leaving my husband of 25 years if he told me that shit.

The other woman can have him, he's no prize, he's a lying cheater, YOU deserve more.

Highly likely now I think about it. If that is the case why not just ask for views or anecdotal stories ? Rather than create a back story and harvest 'advice' or opinion? I don't get it. Honesty when posting is just decent behaviour.

Feel the same, op started this thread in April and quoted ' they are working through things' so guessing h is still working alongside ow,
I do hope you find peace op, so you can continue in your marriage but being realistic here ' I don't know how you can move forward knowing what you know,