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!

I'm saying he is waiting in the wings for her because that's exactly what happened with me and my now ex wife. She strung me along for 4 years waiting for him to leave his girlfriend.

He will keep you waiting until the other woman who he will be in contact with every single day decides there future. My exes shag partner didn't get cold feet, he just used her for sex. Then went back to his little, fit as a fiddle dance teacher girlfriend.
But our marriage was already over and to this day my ex won't tell anyone the truth. She even invited the girlfriend over to her house for a party.
You are 2nd choice like I was. Don't accept it.

Hi @BritIndianGal of course I feel angry towards him!
My feelings have absolutely changed and I no longer put him on a pedestal like I used to.
The adult DCs know, as well as my sister who lives overseas.

OP,

The reason people say these things is because for you to be able to have a trusting and rewarding relationship LONG TERM both you and your H need to learn much better relational maturity skills.

During the course of this thread the posters have not seen evidence on boundaries you have put in place to motivate your cheating H to learn these skills.

Therefore they are deducing that he has not done this work and will therefore be at high risk of repeating past behaviours.

What does learning the skills look like?
Example on his side:

• learning how to communicate what is going on inside of him emotionally. His inner drives. His fantasies. His values even when they are in direct conflict with yours. Being able to bear the discomfort which comes with feeling the Shame of what he has done.

Example on your side

• learning to sit and hear these stories from him without spiralling into negative emotions and blocking him out.

Hope that helps with the specifics.
There is a lot more to relational maturity.

You can read more here:

Relationship Wisdom

Link missing above^^

There are many other sources online.

I personally see the "putting on a pedestal" as part of your own relational immaturity for example. Nobody should be on either a pedestal nor should be seen as evil or terrible. They are just flawed human beings. To develop a deep trusting relationship you need to have the courage to confront each other's and your own flaws and work on them or accept them.

OP, the reason people on here are cynical in terms of whether your Husband really will now stay committed and loyal and whether you can re-discover respect and trust in your marriage, is because just from the collective experience on this Board - we do not see this following a healthy pattern of recovery and repair.

Granted he did take a long break where both of you travelled and spent time together; combined with the fact that meanwhile OW physically moved to an office 5 hours away are indeed positives.

Perhaps some posters have concentrated a bit too much on the fact that your husband has not changed jobs, however it does appear clear that you yourself do not want him changing jobs at this stage in his 50s.

The thing is perhaps you will in hindsight when you look back years later be the exception rather than the rule in that your marriage will survive this without going through the required healing process in full; however, it is always better to assume one may well be the rule rather than the exception when making decisions navigating this as it is more likely you may look back and regret not leaving or at least as equally likely to do so. Does that make sense?

I forgot I do also have hope that he may well now be out of the limerance feelings he had for his much much younger OW - it was never practically going to go any where between a 30 year old woman and a 55 year old man or whatever their ages were exactly.

Still the problem remains now , how is he going to gain back your respect and affection again? as all your focus was on getting him to get over OW, what about focusing on what you want now beyond that?

Indeed OP. Please read up on what a full recovery process looks like. This is not something time and distance from the OP alone will heal, but No Contact is an important first step. That means No Physical but also No Emotional contact. Text emails etc. No Contact Whatsoever.

I think Shirley Glass No Just Friends and Affair Recovery.com and Survivinginfidelity.com have huge amounts of useful guidelines for what works and what doesn't.

In my view there is no need to second guess these experts. Even if every couple is unique there is a path to healing as individual people that has to be gone through. And there are tried and trusted methods.

Who Are You exactly? What's coming through from your posts is that you really have no idea of who you are or what your values are.

@Strawberrina your thread is nearly full. Will you be starting a new one and share the link on here. I think you’ve been given some really useful advice and feedback in the last day: wishing you well x

Thank you for all your comments. I agree that no contact is absolutely essential, and that's what I told my H. As far as I know, he cut all contact with the OW. As I've mentioned earlier, they still work in the same organisation but in different offices. There is really no reason for him to maintain any sort of contact with her.

In other news, rumours have it that she plans to relocate back to our town and start her own law practice. This isn't confirmed yet though. I'm still trying to process this, I hope it's not true as it will no doubt reopen old wounds for me.

Hopefully (because she’s a free agent and can obviously do what she wants) she is doing this because she was always going to at some point.
If it’s a deliberate to attempt to follow him or make a nuisance of herself it would be a pretty desperate (bordering on unhinged) act. Either that or the affair hasn’t ended and they want to make it easier to not get rumbled in the same workplace.
Probably just her setting herself up in her career as she was probably already planning to, but not very nice for you either way. I get how you feel, I’d hate it but there’s nothing anyone can do about it, it’s a free country.

@Thewookiemustgo I agree with you - it's a free country and she's allowed to start her own business if she wants to. It's just that I really don't want that, given the progress H and I have made. I'll probably be seeing her around town again...

You're making choices. She's making choices, and your H is making choices. You can't control anyone else's choices. You've chosen to stay. You've chosen to have to look over your shoulder and wait for the next shoe to drop. That's on you.

This was cited as a possible reason for you to leave; you'd always be looking over your shoulder, having niggling doubts and giving the OW headspace. You've chosen to stay without any real consequences for your husband so this is just going to be your reality. I'd recommend therapy to help you manage your responses to things seeing as you can't change what other people do only your reactions to it.

and if she does come back to your town,

she may start driving up and down your road again.

@OlderGlaswegianLivingInDevon that's exactly right. In which case I'll be reporting her to police.

On what grounds would your police report be based? It is perfectly legal for anyone to drive up and down a street!! This is either made up, or you are sadly beyond help.

@KarenW you probably haven't read my previous posts. I wrote about her driving up and down our street last year. So if it happens again, it's a continued pattern of behaviour. Plus, stalking someone is an offence.

Did you report her to the police when she did it before? Because without any sort of paper trail or previous report it's unlikely they'll take you seriously. Also the threshold for stalking is very high and I doubt driving on your street meets that threshold.

How would you even know if she's driving along your street? How did you know the last time she did it (or when you claimed she did it), other than standing by the window all day long and watching out for her? You gave your husband no consequences at all for his affair, you stayed with him, nothing was resolved, and the result is that you're obsessed with her and already thinking of calling the police, FFS, if you even see her car. It's still only a rumour that she might move back to your town, and look at your reaction to it. This is so unhealthy.

What is the one consequence he’s suffered that would stop him doing this ever again. Because I’m not reading any. So why would he stop? He can fuck whoever he likes and nothing changes for him. You however become less and less in every way.

the longer you stay the longer it’l take to recover.

I did similar. My husband had an affair, he still worked with her, we tried to reconcile but it just didn’t work. Turns out he’d been having an affair with her for 9 years despite me finding out & when he said they’d stopped it turns out it hadn’t .

Op i have followed your post,
You may need to brace yourself, as ow may now be hoping for some type of revenge, her supposed boyfriend went away on a long jolly with his wife, you dont know what he told her about your relationship in the beginning or what promises he made her to keep this going, then low and behold he darts of on a long vacation with the wife,

Just be mindful op, yes he might of stopped this relationship with her ,
A woman scorned and all that,

If she does start appearing ' driving up/down street, maybe your husband should do the reporting to police, I hope not for your sake op,
But your h reaps what he sows

This happened to a friend of mine, her partner had an affair, ended it and sobbed to come home. She wouldn’t let him and ended the relationship and he moved out. Even though ex OW knew she’d thrown him out and was no longer in a relationship with him, the ex OW still started driving down her road, parking outside her house grinning at her through the windows and was on her drive one night when she came home from work and drove off laughing.
She started going to the local pub where she knew my friend would be on quiz nights because that was a night the partner would see OW when my friend was out with the quiz team. Public highway, public place, but the police agreed that it was malicious and intervened.
Proper nut job. Police cautioned her and fortunately it was enough to warn her off. Still very scary though.

I bet he’s still shagging her