Something isn't right - emotional affair or just friends?

[FourAndFive]

Name changed for this. It's a bit of a blur, and long, apologies in advance.

I need help and/or a slap to either wake me up to an emotional affair and huge gaslighting from my DH (47), or to help me deal with a shiny new friendship my DH of 24 years has.

He's hidden a friendship from me that has been going on for nearly a year. He has never, ever done this before, and has been a completely open book in all our years together. The last five years have been so good for us emotionally, and our relationship felt solid as far as I was concerned.

He has a hobby that he is obsessed (not lightheartedly obsessed, genuinely obsessed) with, and while doing this hobby he meets people from time to time. He would usually mention these people in passing, and I'm happy he's happy, so all good. About 6-7 weeks ago, he started to mention at funny times how he was meeting 'great people', and 'so many people to chat to' and 'I know so many people now' while he's doing his hobby and I thought yeah, great, but it was out of tone, and quite odd.

Fast forward a week or so, and he keeps name dropping and then tells me that I have to meet someone (single F28), because I'd really like her, and she does the hobby a bit more than he does, and has done it all over the world and how nice she is etc. and so I found myself meeting her for a few hours across two days, alongside some of her family members, who all knew about my DH and the shared hobby and thought how sweet it was... It was so very odd, and I couldn't put my finger on why, and I was so uncomfortable.

To cut a very long story short, it turns out they've been regularly meeting up since late last year, texting multiple times a day, including gifts and planning things around their hobby... I've since seen most of their messages. I have never seen my DH speak to anyone like he speaks to her (except me). He is a man who I know has strong moral boundaries, and keeps a safe distance from other women, doesn't encourage and is completely platonic with all of his female friends - which is clearly no longer the case! There is no 'sex' chat, and he talks about us occasionally (we have 2DC) but it's overly affectionate/mutual appreciation and excitement for finding each other - and I've hated reading them. (I asked him for phone access after all the minimising he was doing, and he said he'd deleted all messages - but he forgot to remove them from his deleted items, so I restored them. I know this is a massive red flag.)

I've told him that I need him to cut all contact with her - but he had serious meltdown (talk of CS), insists it's just friends and that I should trust him. I am finding this impossible, considering the lengths he's taken to hide her until recently. He hasn't done anything to reduce contact, and has even initiated meeting her multiple times, even though I specifically asked him not to. I know they met today for the hobby, and I know they've text each other, because he is telling me - at my request. But I shouldn't worry, because he loves me blah blah. I just want a bit of respite from it so I can get my head around his utterly bizarre behaviour, and consider everything that's happened. It's so unlike him.

I feel sick. The trust isn't there. I feel anxious all the time. I know what I should be doing, but I don't want him to be unhappy at the same time - especially if it is actually platonic. Thoughts please wise MN women! How do I navigate this shit show?

Yes, it was a shite time.

My Mum always loved pearls but we were a solidly working class family and had bugger all growing up.

Mum was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and I bought her a string of pearls as a gift. After Mum died I kept them in my own jewellery box and wore them now and again as you are supposed to with pearls to stop them drying out.

You know where this is going. I should have buried Mum in her pearls basically!

I have the memory of my Mums face when she unwrapped them though. Bitch tits can never take that away.

you should have involved police & her boss

Thank you. My DH was quite up front that he was flattered and that it was an ego boost, it took a while for him to stop defending his actions but eventually the lights came on and he saw how much his actions had destabilised our relationship. It is very true that men really don’t see emotional affairs as cheating. It takes a lot for it to dawn on them that signing out of a relationship emotionally, even if it’s temporary, has a permanent effect on their longterm partner.

I do nt often blame the OW but in DHs case his ex ( who is the same age as me) was a very attractive woman, bubbly and popular. I suspect that like most of us in our late 50s she was becoming invisible and thought that by rekindling an old relationship she would get some of the attention she was missing. It worked. Her overly defensive reply to my simple text informing her that DH was still married ( not obvious from his Facebook page, we are not SM friends and DH avoids SM normally). I was angry with DH for his lack of transparency with OW and texting her was a courtesy rather than aggression so hat she had all he facts.
I’ve never met the woman and all my SM is private so she has no idea what I look like or what sort of person I am. I was rather surprised by her character assassination. She is still visiting our locality so maybe we will bump into her. She has no idea of DH’s health status so would be shocked. She has been very proactive in trying to “bump I to “ him.

Our relationship has changed but not as a result of his EA. I don’t know if things would have been different if he hadn’t had a stroke and I don’t think I have won any battles. In fact there have been times when I wonder if life would have been easier if he had chosen OW. Although I suspect I would still have been expected to pick up the pieces.

So many of my friends have quietly coped with their DHs midlife crisis. Most have settled back into their marriages, weathering the storm, but left with the insecurity and internal emotional scars. Not all have “found a friend”, sometimes they just spend a few years creating doubt and worry. Women are so much tougher, maybe the menopause allows us to put a name to our midlife crisis. It’s a real physical experience and the changes we experience are tangible and obvious.

For men the ageing process is not so easy to define, but the physical decline seems to trigger the need to reaffirm themselves, the perfect solution is to attract a younger woman. What they don’t realise is that younger women are not interested in physical attraction, but find older men more reliable, settled and successful than their younger counterparts. It’s hard work building a life, much easier to walk into someone else’s.

@PulchritudinousLycanthrope , OP has kids too so in the (endless) absence of her husband, she is unlikely to be able to attend shit unless she goes to yet more effort and finds a babysitter.
OP's DC are 20 and 17. I doubt they need babysitting.

Brilliant insight.

Before the end of this one, I think fair to say you've got amazing kids to stand up for you. I am a type which in my time would fight teeth and nails for my mum wellness

I imagine she saw the fact he was working and earning £££££ and had a lovely house in the country with a beautiful garden and lots of lovely friends and a few nice holidays abroad each year and a flat in London and thought - I want that life. Didn’t realise the reality of the fact he achieved that because his wife was devoted and loving and working full time and was a full on parenting mum whilst he worked long hours. He didn’t want to screw his wife over completely so gifted her the house and put the flat in the grown up children’s names to protect them all. The new girlfriend wasnt aware that he was effectively homeless at that point. But I imagine he fell for the fact that the 24 year old said she loved him for him and not what he had (materially). He convinced himself his ex wife loved the lifestyle but not him. Also got a head rush by thinking a young hot female would was fit and a size 8, would jump his bones. I imagine that he was egged on by some of his younger male friends.

What he didn’t see is - adult children wanted nothing to do with him or her. He wasn’t invited to stuff. She never explained and never criticised him in public - she always said ‘he needs to do what he wants and make his own choices’ she was a wreck for about 12 months and then regrouped and met a man at 62/63. Similar age, solvent, children all the same age and grandchildren and married him - know all parties and honestly my friend and her new husband are great together. He is living in exes annex by her grace and her new husband because she always took the high road. It’s not for me to judge and I’m not saying it was playing sailing or she didn’t need serious support and help emotionally. What we saw outside was ex wife being strong, asking people not to pick sides but equally saying ‘I’m not competing he is what he is and he makes his own bed’ - turns out it wasn’t a great bed.

Ex husband lives in the annex for the moment and his new children come over and play with the grandchildren, but ex wife won’t parent them - he has to do that. She still has strong boundaries.

I believe the ex girlfriend has been doing similar at a new club. This is just rumour though. However my personal feeling is - the married one is the one that has to respect their partner and not get embroiled or over step or get into emotional or physical affairs.

This is exactly how it felt when my H got friendly with his ‘work wife’.

I did actually meet her once when I picked him up after a works Christmas drinks thing at a pub. She was hammered, slurring her words and stumbling about. My H looked embarrassed. I remember thinking is this the pitiful mess you want to blow our marriage up for? She had apparently wanted to meet me for soooo long but then she told him after Christmas that she hadn't even noticed I was there. Probably explained why she grabbed him round the neck as we were leaving and tried to snog his face off maybe…

@Peaceandlabradors there are some quite switched on young women who deliberately latch on to these well off guys using their youth and attractiveness to their advantage , make damn sure they get pregnant a few times and are effectively set up for the next 18 years if not for life if are smart . I’ve seen very few cases where 24 year olds are matching up with 60 odd year old blokes without a pot to piss in and very few where they don’t either don’t get pregnant or insist on marriage

To his AP my husband was a walking wallet, he looked good for his age but you’re right again, he represented stability, tried and tested in a very long term relationship, financially very well off. A good bet and a serious upgrade of the life she could afford when she met him. They say a fool and his money are soon parted and he enjoyed flashing the cash like an idiot because it impressed her. She didn’t find it grim that it was literally all cash, to keep the hotels/ restaurants and champagne untraceable. A guy paying a few hundred quid in cash in the afternoon for a hotel room who checked in about two hours earlier, then checks out without staying the night screams one thing only. Grim as anything, I’d have died of embarrassment.
They could only discuss work and ‘my life up to this point’ conversations, they never got each other’s references or jokes because of the 17 year age gap and the fact that she was from a different country. Conversation and relating wasn’t really what it was about anyway.
She didn’t want him, she wanted my life. The penny only dropped with hindsight that all she asked about with his work was how senior he was in the company and what his role was. He said it became obvious what she really wanted to know was “How much do you earn?”. He said he saw her apparently fancying him and thinking he was wonderful as a feather in his cap at the start, then realised he’d been totally played and he’d chased it and believed the lot.
After telling him she was ok with him staying married and being just in it for fun, she started pressuring him to leave me and talking about marriage and kids and trying to get guarantees out of him. She started giving herself away and he realised and felt like the complete idiot he’d allowed himself to become.
She wanted a ready made life to step straight into. If not him, then anybody wealthy. To be fair with introspection he also admitted she could have been anyone younger and pretty who made it easy for him, he was chasing the situation in general and the way it made him feel, (Young, desirable, powerful) not her in particular. He was just turned fifty-two when it started. Doesn’t take much to see that the change of decade plus older kids and a wife in her early fifties too made him start to feel old. Pillock.

Someone said about its easier to walk into a man's built life than to get a young man and scrimp , save ...well. See it in my country also

I feel sick just thinking about it.

I see we're back to blame the women and oh the poor deluded led astray husbands 🙄 who didn't really know what they were doing.

@jamnpancakes I didn’t get the impression that anyone was ‘led astray’.
I also didn’t get the impression that the women involved behaved very well either, however.
These people, men and women, are all adults with personal choices and made them with no help from anybody else.
The women in these situations weren’t led astray and didn’t cover themselves in glory either, however. Or maybe women are the only ones who ever get played or ‘led astray’ and would never, ever try to pull a fast one on a man or heaven forbid lie to them the way men lie to women.
I don’t find it a particularly nice trait in women either, to knowingly sleep with other people’s partners and husbands, they take a 50% share in the situation even though I believe that the husband’s choice to pursue the affair puts the blame squarely with him.
I see we’re back to talking about infidelity where women’s behaviour must get totally overlooked again.

@jamnpancakes , sadly it's a case of if someone offered you something delicious and different to eat, you might find it enough temptation to 'forget' that you had a hot meal waiting for you at home.

The fault ultimately is with the man, but the EAP should have been aware enough to know that they were crossing boundaries.

@Thewookiemustgo I'm not saying the women are not to blame but the way some people write you would think these men were poor innocents. I understand that that is the mindset that a person may use to rationalise such a situation.

A friend recently split up from her husband. A female relative said 'If Sarah hadn't been working so much, and spent more time at home tending to him he wouldn't have strayed'.

What hope is there when women say such shite?

(not the actual name)

Yes and remember there are plenty of married women on here who were affair partners. They must be quaking in their boots but will find something nice to post about their darlings

I mean the women participating in the affair - not the wives.

Or the few posts that were suggesting he's just deluded silly cute old sausage, he's just doing friendship....that could come only from a man

Or a Daily Mail reader.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. To me it's more likely to come from a woman who is a wife making excuses. It sometimes comes with derogatory comments about the physical attributes and the supposed mental aptitudes as well of the OW. I know it's not easy but the fault remains with the husband.

I've found the women who partake in being ap's tend to be common a garden bullies.

They have front and seem fearless to be found out and care little for consequenses from wives.

No different from nursery children who will steal other kids toys without thought.

The problem with EA's is the men in these friendships transfer their attention and loyalty towards the bully, so many of them take on the features of these other women and that can include their harsh personalities and driving selfishness, this isn't to take away any blame from the h's, but they can and do mirror the ap's in many cases.

This is the unforgivablness of it, a triangle whereby two bullies lie, cheat and gaslight an innocent third party and that third party is the wife. It happens in school yards, they pick on the weak one and it actually becomes part of the headonistic power play which bonds their friendship.

It's some nasty stuff, especially if the wife is a quiet nice person. The man who should protect has become part of the abuse team and in an EA it is prolonged and daily.

Incredibly abusive, destabalizing and dehumanising coming from the man you married, had children with and thought you were loved by.

Both sexes in the affair are to blame, it takes two to create this bullying club, it's not just about sex, love and kisses, it's about actively siding against a scapegoated wife and often sending them insane, and how you get pleasure out of that means you have some seriously f... up sadistic values.

@Thewookiemustgo slightly different in my case as we were not well off - although she possibly thought we were pretty ok as had a lovely house ( rented) and a business- but he did have status somewhat and was good looking for his age (41 at time) -she was only 21 and a student . I think she felt she had got one over on me for some reason. Although I only found out 11 years after whatever it was was going on, some things didn’t in retrospect sit quite right at the time( our phone bills for one with clearly a ton of texting) but I never had any proof and as she did bits of work for us too that included complicated travel arrangements the texting could have been seen as part of normal - I remember one night at the time it was happening commenting about this on our phone bills and he went white as a sheet , said it was just friendly texting and clearly the cogs were whirring in his head . A few weeks later I had opportunity to check his phone and noticed only a recent text was showing from her , not the hundreds before.

This is the unforgivablness of it, a triangle whereby two bullies lie, cheat and gaslight an innocent third party and that third party is the wife. It happens in school yards, they pick on the weak one and it actually becomes part of the headonistic power play which bonds their friendship.

However once the wife is no longer in the picture, for whatever reason, the nasty pair no longer have anyone to torment, and it’s not so much fun anymore. Or at least that’s what happened with my first DH