Torn between what I want to do as a wife and as a mother.

[secretskillrelationships]

As a wife/partner, my DH has done something that I am finding impossible to reconcile with my personal values about relationships. As a bare minimum, I want space to consider my position.

As a mother, I want my children to grow up in a home with two loving parents. We get on well and I think the family works well together, certainly better than I think it would work if we separated.

Have considered him moving out but this raises two issues: with 3 DCs (12, 9 & 5) if he leaves, I?m not sure I would get the space I desperately crave as a wife to sort out how I feel. As a mother, I get left to cope with everything, particularly the DC?s distress etc, which will impact on my needs as a wife.

I was going to suggest that he ?works abroad? for a while but he?s now given up his job so, on top of everything, he?s around the whole time.

I have been going round this loop for some years now including 18 months with a Relate counsellor, 4 months with individual counselling etc. While there are enormous issues around his behaviour and lack of engagement during this time, the reason I keep going round in circles is about this internal conflict between my two roles.

Do I put my needs as a mother above my needs as a wife or the other way around. I have tried looking at it from both perspectives but neither seems to work. I need to find another way to look at it that is less either/or but can't seem to do that. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

A couple of things

1. You are a person and not just a wife or mother. You need to think about what you want regardless of the children. That may sound harsh, but if you at least know what you actually want for yourself that would help.

1. Wanting back what you had is a futile exercise. You will always have what you had plus whatever thing it is that has happened to your relationship recently, which will result in your relationship now. Sort of 1 + 2 = 3. If you can forgive and move on (I am not saying forget) and both learn from what has happened and reach a better understanding of each other from this then 3 could be much more than the sum of 1 + 2 iykwim. If you can't then there is no point in flogging a dead horse. Only you know if you have it in you to do that. DH will have to show his willing in actions rather than words for that to happen.

1. What does your dh want?

It sounds (to me) as though he had a drunken one-night stand - maybe not even full sex - and didn't own up at the time. Apologies OP if I am on the wrong track.
If this is roughly what happened, though, I agree with those who suggest you seek counselling for yourself. Because I can see that this might help more than relationship counselling as I think that maybe you are getting what he did all mixed up with what your parents did and your own issues. This is not to say that what he did wasn't wrong, but the thing is, nothing he can do now can make it not have happened, and if he decided (at the time) to deal with the guilt rather than burdening you with it, that was not a wicked decision. He may well feel that there is nothing he can do to make it right (ie it happened and that can;t be changed) and wonder if you want him to do penance for the rest of his life.

Thanks for your posts, not been able to respond as laid up with migraine and then DH hovering.

SolidGold you're absolutely right but I didn't really want to get into a he did this and then this thread as I suspected that if I did everyone would tell me to leave him! Or tell me to get a grip, and I didn't feel that either would help me gain insight. While I know most people would take issue with the infidelity, for me by far the greater issue is with him keeping it secret. Our therapist described it well when she said secrets create walls between couples and that, having taken the wall down we have to find a way to step into the space left behind. Having stood in that space for several years I now have to accept that he is unable or unwilling to meet me half-way.

He has adopted one of two strategies. Firstly, he listens in an open and engaged way, agrees with me, understands what I am getting at, and nothing changes. Or steadfastly refuses to discuss what we should do in a calm or rational manner. It's either my fault and I'm never going to forgive him or his fault and there's nothing he can do. I don't believe that either is true, if I thought it was I wouldn't be still here.

It feels as if he is absolutely pushing me to the limit so that it is completely my decision, ie my fault, should we decide to separate. I feel that I am being forced into a decision that I do not want to take because he is refusing to engage. This is what is pushing the buttons around my childhood. The sense of choosing between two options neither of which feels right because I am powerless to do anything else.

I believe that my DH is struggling to accept what he has done. While I have enormous compassion for the pain he is in, I am finding my pain compounded by his refusal/inability to engage. I believe that my childhood stuff has meant that I have allowed things to drift on for longer than I would have otherwise and failed to recognise the mismatch between what my DH says and what he does.

I don't believe that divorce is good for children, what one hopes is that it is better than the alternative. So it's absolutely clear cut in situations where there is DV, abuse or harm. But I don't believe it's so clear cut when parents are not getting on as well as they could be. In our situation, I strongly believe that the best outcome for everyone in our family is for us parents to find a way through this, regardless of anything else.

So this is where my dilemma has got focused. Is it bad enough that the children will be better in the long run if we separate? Or should I put up with the situation for a bit longer in the hope that DH can get his act together?

I have done quite a lot of work on my own stuff which is why I can recognise the parallels with what I am experiencing at present but, to be honest, my experiences have been decidedly mixed. My last therapist, in trying to persuade me that it was all about my response, finally made me face up to the unpleasant truth that, in this case, I have done as much as I can and am prepared to do.

In posting and reflecting I have finally managed to have a conversation with my DH where he has acknowledged that the relationship is not what he would like it to be. Having felt my demands were unreasonable he asked me what the relationship would be like if it was working how I wanted it to. I think that was a bit of a wake-up call for both of us. I asked him if he was happy with how things are at present (which he always claims he is) and he admitted that he wasn't but that he didn't think he could change.

So, unfortunately, I think we have come to the end of the line. I don't feel nearly as sad as I thought I would, but I guess I have been grieving for some time. It's not what I wanted but, as the saying goes, life's what happens when you're busy making other plans!

Dh and I had some similar issues, in that we found parenting small children very difficult (having two in 16mths was a little intense for us), both withdrew and what had been such a good relationship that I wondered where the children would fit in became deeply dysfunctional and stayed that way for several years. During which time dh had an affair. Then on discovery I basically refuse to accept that things were over and we hobbled along for another year or two. Finally he couldn't really cope, and insisted on moving out. I was very upset. But actually it really worked for us. He lived about 15mins walk away, the children lived with him for half the week and me for half the week (they were pretty small - probably about 5 & 7). It gave us both the space we really needed, and the option to be together by choice, not circumstances. After about two years apart we have now been together for 18mths or so, and things feel very good.

I'm not suggesting that moving apart will necessarily fix things in your marriage, but it was a workable way to do things, and took a lot of pressure off. We still co-parented, and living part time as a single parent and part time just as single was a good compromise. Other people found it a little odd that essentially my husband became my boyfriend, but then people are always a little odd if you say that you are keeping a straying partner I think - especially if you say that from a position of strength.

The children seemed to be fine with it because their lives were disrupted as little as possible. It was expensive though.

I guess I am saying there are compromises - you can go on being a great mother, and not have that totally all the time overwhelming, and it is possible not to completely lose your wife role (it might just be reinvented in a slightly odd way). Oh and that partners can do terrible stupid things and still be forgiven, and that that is OK sometimes.

Nooka, thanks for your message. I have also had thoughts along similar lines in relation to DH moving out. It has felt to me that it's almost as if we need to start again with our relationship so that we can really leave the past in the past (for both of our sakes). And, if I'm honest, I'm hoping that if he does move out that this might be a possibility.

Well done for making things work for you. You sound like you worked out exactly what you BOTH needed from the relationship. Great to hear an alternative to the stay/go debate that so often crops up on these threads.

I do think other people's opinions are difficult to deal with. In fact, it's one of the reasons I haven't talked much to people about this in RL. 4 years ago, DH kissed someone, came home and told me and, while I wasn't ecstatic about it, he'd told me and that was the important thing to me. I only spoke to friends once I was clear about how I felt. One friend I told thought it was absolutely nothing, not even worth a second thought which made me feel like I was over-reacting, and another was completely shocked and still hasn't really got over it!

It has made me realise that one person's relationship-terminating affair can be some else's drunken fumblings that don't really count and someone else's wake up call to sort their relationship out.

No problem My friends were all fantastically supportive, and even though they often said things I totally disagreed with it was great to know they cared, and sometimes them saying how they thought I ought to be feeling really helped me to understand how I was feeling IYSWIM. There were a few threads here loosely around getting over affairs which I also found very helpful - just in knowing it wasn't crazy to go on loving someone who had hurt you, that the way my dh reacted was quite normal (ie plenty of other partners did similar things) and that it wasn't crazy to think that we could come through things better and stronger. The only people I ended up not telling were my parents (too complicated)

I can't say what the future holds, but at the moment I have a very happy family, and that is very very nice. I do wonder what the children will remember of the difficult period, but I guess I will be able to tell them that hanging on to what you think is important can work, and that most obstacles can be overcome if you really really want to. The biggest issue for me was trying to persuade dh that that was possible (he was convinced he'd blown it and it would never work again).

It sounds to me as if you are over-focusing on one easily identifiable thing that you think is wrong with your DH and turning it over and over in your mind while in fact there is something much bigger that is not right with your relationship.

My DP is not perfect. I am not perfect. We both sometimes do and say things that are unfair to the other and some of our history would make a lot of MN posters shout and scream very loud indeed (and of course I do not post anything about it). But none of that is important because it was just a part of our growing to know one another.

If your relationship is going nowhere it is easy to get stuck on details that are in themselves not very important.