DP's bombshell

[AuntieMaggie]

DP has just dropped a bombshell... he slept with his female friend about 8 months ago. Now around this time we argued because I said he was spending too much time with her, didn't understand why he didn't want me to go shopping in the village she lived and found doodles of her name in his briefcase.

Well, I just feel numb. Don't feel angry, upset or anything to be honest.

Is this normal or am I just a mug?

He says he wanted to be honest with me as we've been tlaking about getting married. All day I've just been going thrugh the motions and not really sure what I should be doing. DP is going out later which I can't wait for because he keeps apologising.

Not really sure why I'm telling you or what I'm expecting you to say!

My exH had an affair or fling (whatever). And told me a year later, begging for forgiveness; he would do anything to make things better. I lost my respect for him, my trust in him, and felt nothing but contempt for his need to be forgiven, blah, blah. I thought it was the most selfish and incredibly impulsive, destructive thing he could have done, to tell me. Told me a lot about his general character and revealed to me exactly what he thought our partnership was really all about. It was about him, as far as he was concerned.

It took me a few years of giving him enough rope to hang himself, but hang himself he did, in the end, and we are now divorced. I didn't get over myself quickly enough, apparently.

I believe that someone who cheats and then tells is a very immature person, not long-term relationship material, and not someone who is really prepared to live with the consequences of his or her actions.

"When people talk about "good" men having affairs are they prepared to extend that kind of forgiveness to the OW? As in ""good" women can sleep with other women's husbands - one bad act doesn't make a bad person"."

Dittany, I assume by "people" you mean me! Yes absolutely. As I have often said on these boards, I've got friends who were (and are) OW. They are not bad people, but I'm always very clear with them that I think they are doing a bad thing. And when women have posted about their affairs recently (Tattoed Magpie, Jools, Amy, Popzie, VCAU et al) I have sympathised with their predicament and have never resorted to the "cheating scumbag" vitriol so often directed at male infidels. As far as I can tell (and this is an internet forum after all) they don't seem like bad people. But I've been very clear that I think what they are doing is wrong, because they are deceiving their partners.

Your confusion might have arisen because I have been very condemning of OW who behave horribly to betrayed women during and after the affair, but again such behaviour then lends itself more to my aforementioned pattern of cruel, nasty behaviour. The OW in my case had been unfaithful to her H three times in the space of a year, had sent wives spiteful anonymous letters (tho' not me) and when my husband ended it with her, posted a load of bile and spite about my H on the internet(which was fair enough) but the most vicious remarks were about me and my 11yr. old (at the time) DD. She had never even met us. I therefore rather suspect that this was not "someone doing a bad thing for a while" - and that being deceitful and unnecessarly cruel was more of a default position.

But no, I don't think OW are innately bad or evil, just as I don't think betraying spouses or OM are - so much depends on what else they do and whether their destructive behaviour is a habit.

Maggie - my H had an affair for 4 months in 2008, after 24 years of marriage and no previous episodes. Evidently I don't agree that once a cheater, always a cheater, for men or women, especially when the cheater has seen the pain it causes. What worries me in your case Maggie is that he did see the pain - and then went on to do something worse.

dittany - yes i do think that the ow can be a 'nice' person and in fact can be a 'good' person.

I think the reason she is rarely seen that way is that they do not ask for forgiveness in the same way as the husband does.
It is not easy to forgive someone who shows no remorse - whereas my h as many others have made real effort to ask for forgiveness and make amends.
For some people that just cant happen but for many it does.

Maggie - have just seen your update and so cross-posted to an extent. You do see that although this woman behaved badly, your partner is also to blame, don't you? It might well be true that she targets men like this, but your DP was a willing participant, wasn't he? Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your P was a victim at the hands of an unscrupulous woman - both of their scruples were woeful at the time after all.

As Dittany and several of us have said, the main warning bells in your situation are that:

A) It is starting to look like a pattern of cruel behaviour. He has hurt you after seeing your hurt before. I don't think you've told us when the texting incidents happened, but for some reason it sounds as though this was relatively recently.

B) This has happened after only 6 years and when you haven't got children competing for your attention.

I do know that if my H had done this at that stage of our marriage, or before we were married, my reaction would have probably been different.

It's not surprising therefore that you think this is a deal-breaker - in your shoes, so would I.

No I'm not blaming the woman in this instance, I was talking about the woman that was texting him a few years ago. She confirmed what a bitch she was by texting him in the middle of the night knowing he was in bed with me.

And yes I know it wasn't all her either.

I have been emailing his friend today. I know where she was coming from as I've been in her shoes before - just broken up with a serious boyfriend and ending up getting involved in something you wouldn't normally. She has since met someone else who she is really happy with and has been completely honest with me. So I would agree that the OW aren't necessarily all bad and I have in the past been in those shoes myself.

So the fact that he told me is a bad thing? I think it would've been much worse to marry me and then me find out later down the line. If I had have found out from anyone else, which is unlikely, then there would have been no discussion.

So you all think it's really that black and white?

I don't excuse him flirting over text and receiving pics of another woman, but I can understand why. At the time we had been living togther for about 6 months, which had been 6 months of hell in our relationship where we could barely look at each other without it turning into a massive row and I had flirted myself (though would never have sent half naked pics wouldn't have the guts for a start). The week we moved in together I had to have emergncy surgery for suspect lumps on a major organ, which meant I ended up in a spiral of depression and was a real bitch at times because of my hormones (I came off the pill which had been masking PMT) and another medical condition which came to light during this time that meant I could barely walk let alone do anything else. I'm ashamed of how I acted during this time and thank god it's over. The irony is I found the texts just as I'd got back on track.

Could it not actually be that he confessed because he does want to start the future on a clean slate? Isn't that the right thing to do? Maybe he genuinely did go through a huge wobble, made a big mistake and then regretted it enormously? Just playing devils advocate here because everyone seems to think that anyone who makes a mistake in their lives should be cast out forever. Agree that the 'two off' aspect is far from good but does he have to be an evil twunt who Maggie should run as far away as humanly possible from? She might be denying herself future happiness, or not, who knows - but I think it's dangerous to over simplify people.

hello i'm really sorry that you are in this position, particularly as which ever path you take from here ultimately the decision has to be yours (despite all the good advice!)and it'll probably be one that you will scrutinise for a little while to come.

From my experience I found the forgiving' part was easier in comparision to the forgetting' part - every row i had wih my ex after he cheated it all blew up again and again and again - i just couldn't let it go. I've come to realise that for me once the trust is gone from a relationship it takes alot work on all sides to get it back again -in my case it never did and I had to end the relationship for my own sanity.

good luck (sorry if my spelling is a bit rubbish!)

Hey Maggie, you've got a bit more information now haven't you? It sounds as though this woman reassured you and you also have empathy for her situation.

Only you know your DP - we don't after all. If anything, this thread shows that things are not black and white at all. I do think he was right to tell you and agree that it is better to know this now - from him - than years down the line when you've got more commitments.

My only worry before about him telling you was that he thought you might find out from someone else - and I shared Dittany's worry that he was passing the responsibility for the relationship over to you. From what you say, it doesn't sound as though his hand was forced in any way, so I think on this issue at least, he has behaved ethically. I see this as giving you choices.

You haven't said what he feels are the root causes for behaving this way - and perhaps you (and he) haven't got there yet. All I would say is, if you're willing to try again and forgive, do confront these issues, as they never go away on their own.

He says he doesn't know why he did it, but he has also said that he thought we were going to split up.

I know that whatever happens we need to know why. I have suspicions that his depression and attention issues have something to do with it. He is a classic only child mummy's boy whose mummy emigrated the minute he left home to live with me. She used to dote on him and I haven't got the time energy or inclination to dote on him in the same way.

As for him confessing - turns out thats my fault (though he didn't actually say that) apparently I said something in relation to something else that basically led to him confessing because he thought it was the right thing to do to own up to what he'd done and take responsibility and thought I would prefer it. Which TBH I do. One of the things I hated about my first bf was that everyone else knew what he'd been up to and i'd been the last one to know and had been in the company of them and the person involved.

I still don't feel a lot either way to be honest, and apart frm a few tears reading your posts I haven't really reacted in any way. Thats why I'm not making any decisions - how can I knw when i am so numb.

I wouldn't have found out unless he told me - not in the near future anyway and not unless she took it upon herself to tell me which I don't think she would've done.

He also said that it wasn't fair to marry me or have children with me and then tell me or let me find out when I might want to nd things because of it.

I don't believe there are any ulterior motives for him telling me, stupid as that might make me, and I think in our situation it was the right thing to do. Isn't that better than me finding out in 10 years time that he's hidden it from me all that time?

The OW has confirmed what he has said, and no he didn't know i'd been speaking to her.

He has still done an inexcusable thing - and although I haven't kicked him out it's not exactly a bundle of laughs here at the minute.

Its all surreal at the moment but I know that IF and its a big IF I stay with him there are going to be conditions to that - the first being him dealing with certain issues he has.

Thank you for all your input - I do appreciate the diffrent opinions even if I don't agree with all of them.

We talked last night.

Today I don't know, I'm a little upset but nowhere near what I feel I should be. I have however contacted my counsellor that I saw last year and hopefully will see her soon so I guess at least I'm doing something constructive.

OW sent him a message last night asking how his weekend had been - he knew that I'd spoken to her by that point so was like "wtf is she playing at?" and has also made me think she is still interested in him despite being in another relationship now. She has also been in contact with his best mate and told him (despite not really being that friendly with him).

Anyway, he has deleted all contact details for her on FB, phone and email although I realise I can't check his work computer. he didn't even hesitate when I said I wanted him to.

Having said that this morning I am edging towards leaving him but still feel I need to be sure. He's in the spare room at the moment so I've got a bit of space.

AM my h had an affair 2007/2008. He didn't confess - I found out. Tbh I do think it's a good thing that your p has confessed - though am not sure of his motives (only he knows). My h cheated on me after 18 years together. Afaik it was the first time. We worked on our relationship and are still together and I'm glad. However, your p knew you had trust issues and still went ahead and betrayed that trust. I don't know how you can move forward tbh. I also wonder why your p denied the infidelity at the time (didn't want to risk losing you) but has now confessed. You mentioned that he wanted you to know before you get married etc. Is he looking for you to sanction his actions or pass on responsibility for his behaviour so that if he cheats again he can say, well you knew I was capable. He offloads his guilt and you are weighed down with the pressure of his revelation and possible implications for the future.

I just don't know. I'm scared of ending it and it being a mistake I guess.

I've been thinking about my exes and yes I would say most of them would probably cheat time and time again - I just don't see that DP would.

When I told my friends about the text thing they were really shocked, everyone who knew him was. I have only told one person in RL about this and again she is really shocked and I don't think it's just because she's telling me what I want to hear.

I guess only he knows if he'd do it again and I have to decide whether it's worth taking that gamble.

He needs to change his phone number so she can't get hold of him, for a start.

Dittany, once again you've hit the nail on the head. AM, mummy's boys are to be avoided at all costs. They are not grown ups. Beware of that anger that lies not too far below the surface and the many ways it will reveal itself.

Also, a man will sometimes toss the hot potato of a confession into your lap because he really deep down wants out. Seems your man doesn't do verbal, direct and honest communication too well (because this requires a spine), so affairs and explanations after the fact may be his preferred method of telling you he's got cold feet.

like Dittany, I worry that he said he thought you were going to split up, that's why he did it - so what does that mean for the future? That every time you go through a rough patch, he'll feel vindicated in sleeping with someone else because he thought you might be going to split up?

Mummy's boys are definitely a bit of a problem - even if they don't have anger issues, they can be very demanding of attention, clingy, quite spoilt and often, as mathanxiety says, lacking in general "grown-upness" - a real PITA.

No his mother is wonderful - she did spoil him but is very supportive and very often on my side!

He can be demanding of attention and lack 'grown up ness' but not clingy or spoilt.

The main issue I see is that he and his parents were very close. Over the years he had also lived with other female relatives who he is very close to. This has it's advantages but also meant that when his parents emigrated he was left without any family close by and lost the attention he'd grown up with.

I like my space and am very different to his mother and don't have the energy to give him as much attention as she did.

I am convinced (although he won't agree with me) that he has issues around feeling abandoned by his parents when they left the country.

If he wants out he can go - he knows that I won't stand in his way.

As I think I already said IF we stay together there are certain things he will have to do - getting help to understand why he did it and dealing with any issues he has is just the start like his depression and low self esteem to name a few.

I had counselling after the text flirting incident, partly because I was having counselling for my health issues and family relationships too, and I've arranged to see my counsellor again to start dealing with this.

He did try to talk to me at the time - he said that he wasn't sure how he felt about us anymore. Maybe I could've taken him more seriously I don't know. We aren't great at communicating I know that and that's another thing that needs to change if we stay together.

I have made it perfectly clear that him thinking we were going to split up isn't an excuse.

Hi Maggie. Just in from work. I hope you won't mind if I respond to points on both your threads here.

The mother issues might be a bit of red herring, as it sounds as though he's always had good relationships with women.

From what you've told us, he is only 28, meaning that he got together with you when he was just 22. It takes some men an eternity to grow up and this could be as simple as he's not actually ready to commit to fidelity at this age. The difficulty for you is that at 33, your clock might be ticking and depending on what you tell us, you might feel that time is not on your side to make a decision about having children. So, if having children is important to you, do you cut your losses now and find someone else - or do you stay with this man and risk having children with him? Having children was for me, a far bigger commitment than marrying. I wouldn't have entertained the prospect if I wasn't sure at the time that my H would stick around and be faithful.

You might be able to clear up a nagging suspicion I have about something. You say you were in E mail contact with OW yesterday when she reassured you. How do you know for sure she didn't phone your DP after your first E mail? Given the fact that she'd supposedly learned only that day that their secret was out, a text after an 8 month gap asking him "how his weekend was" (when she knew from you it had been bloody awful) sounds bizarre. And telling his best mate? Very strange.

It's interesting that when the texts happened, you spoke more to your counsellor than you spoke to him, by the sounds of things. You raised a point on your other thread querying whether because you didn't deal with the issue then and the lessons weren't learned - could they be learned now? It's possible - there are so many threads about these texting relationships and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that these are never harmless and removing the third party from the equation never solves the problem.

It sounds as though every time he has doubts that the relationship is going to work, he dallies with someone else. This adds to my impression that he is very young for his age and therefore not great husband and father material. As you imagine, parenthood forces us all to grow up pretty sharpish and it's all about putting children's needs before our own. Could he really do that? You say you cannot give him the attention now that his mother gave him. Imagine how much less you'd be able to give him when all your nurturing needs are subsumed by a child?

It seems obvious to me that the reason he didn't tell you about the infidelity when you were suspicious all those months ago was so that he could carry on.

Telling you now therefore carries less weight, but I agree with you that it's good he told you. Whether his reasons for that are as altruistic as he says, are open to debate, but the effect is the important thing. He has given you a choice. I'd always prefer that, than to make choices in blissful ignorance.

It might help you to write down what you're most angry about, concerned about etc. If you're not good at verbalising things, this often helps.

"As you imagine, parenthood forces us all to grow up pretty sharpish and it's all about putting children's needs before our own. "

Well, you'd like to hope so but it's a big problem I have with my DH - I remind him of this several times a week but it still hasn't really sunk in. And he's 33. I object to being the only "parent" in the family, I really do.

Hi WWIFN

I don't know that she didn't phone him yesterday before the text message - but judging by his reaction when I told him he didn't know and then was thinking "wtf? why did she text me if she already knew?" To further the suspicion of her, she asked me more than once yesterday what I was going to do, asked him if we'd split up yet then text him again today to ask how we were and to tell him that if it was her she'd have kicked him out. So the actual details add up that she told me but her motives in my mind are that either she's really bitter or she wants him. Despite being in a relationship. In telling his best mate she said "I mentioned it to him, Ithought he knew..." I mean why would you unless you wanted to cause trouble???

I've twisted some of the facts because I didn't really want to be recognised but that's gone out of the window - anyone who knows me would recognise most of the story.

He is 26 and was only 20 when we got together, 2 weeks out of a 3 year relationship. Yes in some ways he is still young, and in others he is grown up. He's a bit of a geek really in some ways.

I think the mother issue is relevant in that he had a hard time with me not bending over backwards to please him when we moved in together. His mother would happily wash, dry and iron a shirt if he suddenly told her he needed one for the next day at 11pm or jump up and make him a cuppa if he asked. Me I think he's old enough to do that himself, and tell him so.

On the subject of children - yes I want children and feel my clock ticking. It's only because of my sensible side of obsessing about not having enough money that we were putting it off til next year. I have to say though that he is great with children. I have several nieces and nephews and have even taken some of them away and he is great at looking after them and helping me. I think he would be a great dad. If I didn't I wouldn't still be with him. I think that's partly why I'm struggling with this. He would be the greatest husband and father. I'm not the only one who says so. You wouldn't believe some of the things he's done for me over the years, especially when I've been ill. My friends certainly don't.

I think I might have already said this, but we moved into a new house, that was being gutted to have essential work 2 weeks before xmas and I went in to hospital for major surgery at the same time. I'm not making excuses but wouldn't that have been hard on a 22 year old? I was in surgery for 8 hours, called him hysterical from the hospital when he wasn't there because I was convinced I was going to die, whilst he was juggling working, tidying up after bulders and trying to get the house ready for me to come home and xmas. We didn't find out for 3 months that my condition wasn't life threatening. By which time I'd sunk into depression and felt completely hideous because of the scarring. It took me time to get counselling, and ironically when I did it coincided with me finding the text messages. During this time his parents emigrated, I was acting like a complete bitch and we couldn't do anything without arguing. He put up with it all even when I spent hours screaming at him on the phone when he was driving to a meeting because he hadn't washed up before he left.

We have just been through so much andI have to think about whats happnd no and what we've been through and what it all means and decide where, if anywhere, we go from here.

AM - Can I suggest that you both go for counselling (couple counselling). Given the trauma of your major illness and the impact that has had on your relationship, I think you would both benefit from talking things through with a trained counsellor. I hear what you are saying re. the stressors your dp had to deal with, but having sex with another woman when you were recovering from major illness imo negates all the good that he did. My h was messing about with another woman during a period when I was having m/cs, then pg again. You could say that the trauma of the m/cs made him want to escape somewhere (i.e into another woman's knickers) but what kind of double cruelty is that to the person who is already suffering and trying to get their life back on track?

To add - couple counselling was very helpful for us.

ONce again, you can't make someone love you. It sounds like he simply isn't that bothered about being with you but can't be arsed to make a break of his own initiative (also, a part of him thinks that if he's got away with sleeping with other women once, you will clearly put up with him doing it again and again and carry on doing the domestic servicing as long as he squeezes out a teardrop or two and brings home a bunch of limp flowers now and again).