Suspicious of neighbours behaviour towards my DH

[Stace88]

The couple who lived next door to us when we moved in broke up a few months ago and the man has since moved out.

The woman who lives there rarely spoke with us before but since breaking up is always chatting to my DH when she sees him. I can be stood next to him and she doesn’t look at me and aims any conversation towards him. She also refers to him by his name but doesn’t ever say mine.

That alone isn’t what my post is for. In the last couple of weeks she has made comments to DH - she saw him get back from the gym and asked him if he’d be her personal trainer (note - DH isn’t in bad shape but is a once a week gym goer and certainly isn’t a PT!). DH politely replied and she said she hasn’t had any workouts since becoming single and added ‘if you know what I mean’ with a laugh - fairly obvious what she was insinuating.

Yesterday, I was out all afternoon for a friends’ baby shower so my car wasn’t on the drive. DH told me he was pottering in the garden when our neighbour called his name over the fence and asked if he could help her with moving something in her garden which was too heavy for her, DH said yes and she told him to go down the side gate.

When DH went round she was wearing a bikini and in his words had clearly not been doing any gardening. He moved a pot at her request and then she asked where I (“your missus”) was. DH said I was out for the afternoon and she then asked if he fancied having a drink with her in her garden. DH politely made his excuses and came home.

I trust DH completely but feel like our neighbour is starting to stray into CF territory and I worry what her intentions are. DH thinks I’m being silly. Do you see where I’m coming from?

Wow @Stace88 so sorry to hear this. They’re both pretty despicable in my eyes and none of this is on you. She shouldn’t have tried it on and he should have rebuffed her when she did. I’d be fuming, devastated and humiliated all rolled into one.

@Stace88 So sorry and angry for you to read this update. He can cry all he wants. They are welcome to each other. Mardy, selfish, idiot. Hold your head high and proud as you have done nothing wrong!

I'm so sorry OP.
How shocking for you.

Of course he blames you for not making him feel wanted!

You must be so disappointed in him.
I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry, OP. Nice of him to blame his despicable behaviour on you. Please take time to recover from his betrayal and consider what YOU want to happen next.

The standard MN response to cheating spouses tends to be LTB, but sometimes it's a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater if there's any way to save the marriage - assuming it's worth saving, that is.

Take care of yourself first, and definitely don't put up with any more attempts by him to blame you for his actions.

Really sorry to read your update @Stace88 - But not surprised after your earlier updates.

Please don't dread seeing the neighbour. You have done NOTHING to be ashamed of. I would be very sure to let her know that you know what happened as he told you.

Oh OP, I'm so sorry to read your update. What a total arsehole. Take time to process and then decide what it is you want to do, going forward. He's cheated, lied and tried to pass some of the blame onto you. He's a grown adult, if there's an issue within your marriage, then your husband should have been adult enough to discuss with you. If you do decide to stay in your marriage, then you both need couples/individual counselling. Oh, and you will need to move, there's no way your marriage can recover living next door to the OW. Sending you big hugs ♥️

I cant get over that update.

What an absolute twat. Him and her.

I would boot him out permanently and look at your housing situation. If you rent, I would try and look elsewhere or if you own, I would look at selling up ASAP and getting away from this neighbour.

Until then, make her life hell. Play loud music, have friends round for wine and cackle into the night. Get a bouncy castle in the garden and have a kids party at the weekend. Go bloody ape

I'm so sorry @Stace88 . You have had a huge shock and none of the posters who felt there was more than a drink had gone on take no pleasure in being right. My now ex h also blamed me for his affair. Apparently I'm not allowed to have an ex boyfriend I still like as a friend but have no contact with.

You need time to process this. You might be in shock for a while. Whatever you decide to do today doesn't have to be forever.

PM me if you want to talk privately. I divorced h over something else but it's still crap to be cheated on.

Oh OP I’m so sorry. What a pathetic, spineless, weak idiot he is. It’s too late to be feeling sorry now, the damage has been done. I hope you have a good support network around you. Take care x

Great. So you get the blame because he didn’t feel wanted, and he tries to throw you off the scent by calling her “crazy”. That’s two ticks off of my Misogyny Bingo Card.

Ah, read the rest of the thread. My contribution was no longer helpful

Thanks everyone, as it stands I can’t see any option other than us breaking up. Living next to her will be hellish now knowing what happened. I told DH this and he said that she might be moving as she has until the end of the month to work out whether she can afford to take the house on herself from her ex. So they have certainly had some cosy chats!

That last bit of knowledge from him just makes him more of a dickhead.

Oh no, I’m so sorry OP. What an awful thing for him to do. And to lie to you as well. Given that he’s lied twice already about what happened, I wouldn’t take his word for it that they didn’t have sex. I’m afraid you’ll be needing an std test if you’ve had sex with him since then.

It’s a lot to process. Don’t feel you have to leave him immediately to placate some of the posters on here who will demand that you do exactly that and then turn nasty when you don’t (it happens every time this topic comes up). Take your time to think. Maybe take yourself off somewhere else if you need to think somewhere you don’t have to endure her right next door.

I’d advise reporting this thread to mumsnet HQ and asking to have it moved to relationships.

Let her have his cheating ass and let the dogs lie together where they belong. You have done nothing wrong. His cheating has absolutely nothing to do with you. He is a liar and deserves absolutely nothing from you. Whether she moves or not doesn't matter. He has shown you who he is and then lies about it over and over. You deserve so much better OP and sound like a lovely person. It is his loss, not yours. Hold you head high because you my dear are amazing and he doesn't deserve you.

Well in that case your husband can stay living with his parents until she moves out.

She sounds like an absolute sex pest and it's highly likely she instigated the whole thing and was very persistent, and he was just very weak.

Have you confronted her? I'd be sending her a Moonpig "Slut of the year" card in the post!

Why on earth would you confront her? Nothing to be gained by that but humiliation for OP. The best thing is to keep your dignity and quietly get a good deal in the divorce. Giving the husband and neighbour and excuse to call her crazy is not a good move.

@Stace88 I’m so sorry my heart sank reading that update. It was clear he was still lying and had crossed a line but I hoped it was just with words.

His excuse of feeling desired by her and not you is ridiculous. I would point out to him that she is clearly feeling insecure after being left by her husband and needs validation from another man — any man. If that is the kind of desire he is after he’s is welcome to it. Your standards are higher than hers. You expect a partner to be loyal, trustworthy and faithful. You love him for the man he is (or you thought he was) not his dick.

She has been obvious in her disrespect for you and rather than protect you he has encouraged this and turned your marriage and the love you have for him into a sham. And I’m sure that’s what she wanted. If her marriage couldn’t work why does anyone else get to be happy.

The only thing to hold on to is he obviously has a lot of guilt over what happened. Now you know the extent of what happened his behaviour is even stranger. He knew he had been intimate with this woman yet still told you half truths and lied about it when he didn’t need to. If he had never mentioned it you would be none the wiser. But it was almost as though he had to re-write the scenario in his head and then say it out loud to you just to live with himself. To be honest I wouldn’t completely trust this is the only incident but it may have been the furthest they have gone. He’s definitely been flirting with her in the lead up to this. Has he said whether he has her number?

I would bet every time he felt the need to tell you about their conversation where she came on to him, he did or said something he feels guilty for.

There is no way you can live next door to her now. Let’s hope this has made her want to leave but it may in fact make her want to stay if she thinks he will continue. I would be planning to sell. I would then rent separately and see what you want to do from there. So sorry for everything you are going through I hope you have support IRL ❤️

OP, I’m so sorry. What a spineless, craven specimen your H is being. All those lies, the infidelity, the deflection and the ‘poor me, you drove me into her arms’ posturing.

I encourage you to take your time in working out exactly what you want to happen next. Do you have some ‘in real life’ support, good people who you can lean on?

I’m sorry but why is this the neighbours fault?! How we do we know it’s not him who’s not the sex pest? It sounds to me like there might be more to this. Possibly more of an affair than a one off!

Yikes. I am so sorry. Don't believe his blame-shifting about not feeling wanted. Don't believe they stopped short of fucking either. It's a common way to minimize when making a confession. You will probably get what's known as trickle truth, where he tells you new details with every questioning which will contradict what he said earlier, some of them true and some false and you won't be able to sort out which is which. Don't even go there, it will drive you batty and make you feel even worse. Just get rid. You can go to Chumplady.com to get support.

100%. There are always those posters who are all too eager to blame the woman entirely while giving the man a pass because he's "weak."

I’m so sorry OP, I was one of the posters who suspected there was more to his story but I take no delight in being correct.

I would absolutely NOT confront your neighbour. Mainly because:

1.Neighbourly relations - you don’t want her to start causing a scene and making your life really unpleasant on a daily basis - hopefully she will move.

2.If she’s as brazen as she seems, if confronted she will probably take pleasure from commenting on their ‘encounter’ - I’ve known the OW to do this before. ‘He was between my legs’ - honestly, I know it sounds disgusting written down but it will be 100x worse hearing it from her.

Be kind to yourself x

@Stace88, my heart goes out to you.

Your H and OW have been doing an intentional lusty dance with an agenda for sexual gratification. No wonder she felt confident enough to blank you in front of him.

As many of us suspected, H has been duping you and this has indeed been a reciprocated flirtation that has escalated. He has been feeding you half-truths and lies to throw you off the scent as their frisson progressed and culminated in sex acts at her home. Telling you ‘he didn’t know where to look’?? What a devious con artist.

I would be wondering how long his infidelity has actually been going on. My guess is that his head turned much earlier than a few weeks ago, and when he started participating in the sparky connection, he began mentioning OW’s
innuendo, etc. to hide in plain sight. Who knows how far they’ve actually gone physically and even emotionally. He must be enchanted with her to have served you so many shit sandwiches.

His sudden conjuring and blaming ‘not feeling wanted by you’ is a Script cliche. Nothing you did or didn’t do caused his morally bankrupt decision to lie and cheat. The truth: he is an entitled, weak-boundaried adulterer who so easily stabbed you in the back for cheap sleazy thrills with your neighbor. They actually deserve each other.

@Stace88, the way he played this betrayal was so treacherous. You’d be very foolish to fall for his manipulative crocodile tears or believe anything that spews out of his mouth. You were smart to send him away as a consequence and to give yourself space to think and process. If this were my marriage, he’d be gone for good.

I’m very sorry that you’re going through this terrible trauma. I will be thinking of you, @Stace88.

They're both to blame (it takes two to tango) but please go back and re-read OP's first post about the neighbour's behaviour towards OP's "D"H in front of OP. It's clear the neighbour set her cap at him and shamelessly pursued him right in front of his wife! This woman fucked up her own marriage and then set out to fuck up OP's. I'm not excusing OP's "D"H at all - he should have shut down the neighbour's flirting immediately and had absolutely nothing to do with her, but it's clear this woman has zero respect for OP or her marriage (and, sadly, OP's 'D"H is no better).