Something isn't right thread #2

[FourAndFive]

Thanks so much for all your help and support. I can't believe the first thread is full - there isn’t a huge amount to update on right now, but I am looking forward to the future with my head held high, whatever the outcome. I'll keep posting.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/relationships/5391850-something-isnt-right-emotional-affair-or-just-friends?page=1

I think the therapy has helped you pin point your boundary with precision and articulate it with clarity - which is an absolutely huge achievement in the context of his persistent and entrenched gaslighting, manipulation, self-serving self righteousness and emotional hi-jacking of your entire family (the suicide threat is emotional abuser big guns weapon of choice - just vile).

You have perfectly justified it and how this is so critical to your emotional health / existence.

You have given him time and space to see the light / feel the loss / come to his senses. He has not gone through this experience at all - if they have not seen each other it was not his doing and he is desperate to see her again and to drag you along with him to assuage his delusions.

Actions speak louder than words. He doesn’t hear you, you and your family are not his priority, he is not kind, he is not respectful.

Sit with your rage and observe it for all of the suppressed hurt, shock and betrayal it represents. Move on to solo counselling now to support you in understanding where you are now and what options you might have in the future.

There is no rush to any of this - prioritising tending to and protecting your own battered emotional health is very important right now (because you are getting zero from him).

Seems that you have had a significant emotional shift from the previous holding / hoping pattern.

I also think it’s not helpful for him to see the financial picture of divorce to jolt him into action. I wouldn’t want my partner to stay with me because of a financial stranglehold. It’s good to know @FourAndFive where you stand financially but I think you would hate knowing this is the reason he’s stayed. I think it’s time to get individual therapy for yourself. You keep opening wounds by going to couples therapy. It’s reached a stalemate as he’s not budging. This tells you everything that you need to know. I too would be furious that he’s puttting this to one side to get excited about an event and invite you to it like a friend!

@FourAndFive is he ND? Before people jump on me, I am absolutely not suggesting that as an excuse, but I am and I generally have fewer, but more intense, friendships. I know I would find it really really hard to let go of one of them. I still remember past friendships that have drifted and think about people that have most likely forgotten me or never found me memorable in the first place, I've always been this way and I accept it as how my brain works. I'm also aware of it now and cautious about being too intense and annoying people, or giving men the impression I fancy them when I actually just like them.

I'm absolutely not suggesting he doesn't need to end this friendship, or that you shouldn't be feeling the way you are, but this difficulty he's having might not be as selfish or as indicative of him seeing her as more than a friend as it might otherwise appear.
(or it might be, it's just a possibility)

It sounds to me like he is keeping his options open, one head nod from her and he will have a relationship with her.

He is now ‘separated’ from you so just one move from her and he will go in that direction.

Thats what’s happening.

He is lining himself up to be ready for her but keeping you dangling. She might genuinely have no interest in him. If she doesn’t he can always go back to you then.

Thats what he is doing. This is worse than an outright affair because he is like a gambler right now. The fucking cheek of him.

Very simply - he backed off, she had to take some time away (legit, I know the ins and outs) and things haven't resumed. I do believe him. He is very upbeat about it, he thinks it solves everything. He's happy with this new layout - with promises from him that it will never get back to how it was... Cake and Eat.

When we chat I ask him questions about whether he has heard or seen her. He told me he'd text her about something very specific (that I understood), she responded to answer, but nothing else, no conversation, no chat, no plans, no how are you's - he doesn't know what has happened, and knowing him as I do, he'll be very perplexed about it. But they are 'talking'. They will be friendly with each other.

He isn't getting in touch, so she has shut down. No more "have I done something wrong?" from her... just silence. It could come flooding back though - and I can't have that.

Edited to answer the actual question! (tending to waffle at the moment!)

This is tough. He is waiting you out. He has definitely not learned anything and won’t learn anything.

Do you think someone has had a word with her?

How has she understood him moving out of the family home? Maybe that put the wind up her and the penny dropped that his ‘friendship’ was predatory.

‘She’ isn’t relevant though - it’s his behaviours, intentions and actions that are important to you. He has shown you who he is, his capacity to follow his obsessive desires unhindered, dismiss your feelings, betray your family and marriage. Even if this is the end of ‘them’ - there will be another one for him to obsess over along any minute. No one could live with that. It’s degrading and exhausting.

Her mother, maybe? Otherwise we have no other mutual friends.

Perhaps they are both safe in the knowledge that their bond is so strong that any time that passes doesn't matter that they're not in each others pockets as they once were, they have what they have and that's that.

What a luxury they have, while I am in the sinkhole.

I guess no further proof needed that I will eventually go insane, right?

To me it’s way past the point of trying to re-establish what would be an acceptable level of friendship to you.
He needs to stop saying See? It’s ok now!” and realise its never going to be ok.
I’d never made demands about my husband’s career before his affair, we moved houses and I moved jobs to accommodate it, he’s always been pretty obsessed with it and loves it, I had been a SAHM after our children were born so (rightly or wrongly) allowed his career to take precedence over mine.
However, his commute to a new job in a different city was the catalyst and where the affair happened. Just ending the affair and getting a different job in that city was not enough of a gesture to me.
He had worked in the city where we lived for years and his line of work being central to that area was the reason we moved there to have kids, the idea being he could move jobs and progress without us having to relocate a lot and our kids have to move schools. Getting a job where we moved to and where and he is known and respected in his industry would be a piece of cake. The place he commuted to became a crime-scene to me and his accomplice was still there.
Giving up that city and a very good job he had applied for during the affair (affair job was a temporary contract) and was about to start, represented giving up the affair completely and re-committing to his previous life where we lived. The new job wasn’t enough, she was still up the road and he’d forfeited the right to stay in that city. I’m not daft, keeping people apart doesn’t stop affairs they don’t want to stop, and a marriage that only depends on that isn’t a marriage, they could still have communicated and carried it on, but to me, him giving the job and city up was symbolic to me of commitment and what he thought was the most important.
He didn’t hade to give up that career, just where he did it and with different people.
Your husband needs to see his hobby (put in an appropriate level of importance in his life) is not the problem, but he now needs to find somewhere else to do it and not with her. He’s given himself that difficulty by what he did, not you. Don’t let him shift the blame for his self-made problems onto you.

It really sounds to me like he is still prioritising himself, his hobby and the hope of a friendship/relationship with her over you.

Whatever you do, don’t romanticise their ‘relationship’, it’s just actually a mutual source of validation away from their real lives, nothing more. It’s no excuse but the people who are going insane are these two, people who do this are often in La-La land and until the bubble bursts can’t see how far they’ve gone. What they’ve ‘got’ is an innapropriate relationship. Love’s young dream it ain’t.

It sounds like he hasn't learned anything from this. He isn't taking it seriously? He's decided to wait it out and go back to the 'friendship' once you've stopped 'making a fuss'? It just sounds like he's not even in the same conversation as you are.

Have you told him what you really need to move forward and reconcile, that the biggest condition is he put a complete end to any involvement with his EA partner?

I agree with a poster above, he's playing a waiting game until he's recovered and is waiting you out to see if things can go to what he wants. Has he said straight our in therapy that he wants her in his life in any sort of position, whether "friend" at their hobby or what? Because that's still his goal from the looks of things. Have they been in contact recently?

He threatened suicide over you not agreeing to them taking an overnight trip. That's a very intense and very unhealthy emotional connection. If he did it with manipulative motives, that's not really something I think you're going to work past, especially if he wants to drag you to their hobby where you'll be seeing her.

I think you're at a stalemate with him trying to rugsweep his EA and other toxic actions. He dumped toxic waste into your marriage and thinks he can go on without really taking accountability for and addressing the ramifications of that with sincere remorse. He doesn't even admit their EA was inappropriate. It's time to add on individual therapy to work out your own tangles here. I would say he should, but I don't think he sees the need. He's missing the whole point, whether unconsciously or deliberately I can't say.

Say no to his request. You're separated because he had an EA and his EA partner will be there and you will not be having her presence in your life again hanging into it like a dark cloud. That's done and it's a ridiculous request that plays into his unreliable narrative nothing happened and it's all fine while his house burns down around him.

👏🏻 great! Does he know?

Be strong

Isn't he pretty much back at the start here- excited about seeing her at the hobby event and wanting you to go too, to join in the mutual appreciation society/ cheer him on/ validate their connection? Even with you both separated because of this woman, this hobby? Is he out of his mind?

How do you know all this? His words only or has he shown you communication? Could there be communicating secretly in any other way (apps or other) that you don't know of? It all sounds a bit too convenient and easy for him.

I'm sick of hurting myself while trying not to hurt him by waiting for him to come to his senses. Because that IS what I am doing.

You have been putting his feelings first, he has been hurting you for a very long time now. You have put the ball in his court and he has done nothing (as far as I can see?) to stop hurting you. It's like a slow death but this is the choice you have made?

The distance between them now is because of circumstances, but what if she had made a play for him? He would be gone.

I can't believe he is still thinking of going to the weekend event! Surely that's the final nail in his coffin?

Does he think taking you to the event will show her that everything's ok and they just start all over again?

He's used you before as convenient screening when you didn't know how close they were. Now you do.

I agree with ChippyDale my first thought was secret phone.

He'll continue to hurt OP for as long as she lets him, he has no concept of her feelings in this at all. That would be the end for me, but we are all different.
Edit for grammar.

Its not that event - the overnight. It's just an event. And he's excited about the event, no excitement about her - he's doing is best at being completely indifferent. It's very convincing. I just think it's extremely likely she'll be there.

If she came onto him, explicitly? Oh, he would never cross 'that' line, no way. "We are just mates, silly billy Four. You'll see." <EYE ROLL>

@Thewookiemustgo - thanks for the wobble. I will stop romanticising immediately. Thank you.x

@FourAndFive What is stopping you calling time on this whole thing?

No, he doesn't.

I've needed something for me to hold on to. Power, I suppose. He wont have expected me to do this at all. It's a good feeling, but wow it's heavy today.

Make sure you keep that for yourself. You need to fight in your own corner from now on. Self advocate. I know it’s a weird feeling after being married for so long. The fact that he doesn’t think you would do all this means he’s really not taking this seriously at all. He underestimates you. He really is a fool.