dh having affair

[husbandhavingaffair]

Just found out dh having affair with my best friend.

Says she makes him feel loved.

we have two babies 15 months and 2.5

been married 14 years.

she is part of the babies life day in day out, even calls herself the nanny

What do i do?

Afternoon. Today's the day that questions will begin to get asked. Yesterday could be explained away but things will get more difficult from here on in in having to explain ourselves.

Feel like we living in limbo land. With no counselling yet sorted and no word from hierachy as to what comes next.

Have had to go out and do some work today, tried to avoid people if i could but ended up bumping into some people coz i spent longer in a place than i should. Nobody asked but I guess they all wondering.

I still very up and down. Feel quite philosphical one min and distraught the next but tiny tiny steps is the way we will play it.

Keep in touch you've all kept me sane this last few days.

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If this situation is forcing you to do all the work while he sits around at home then he should be running the household, shouldn't he? It would be very very healthy to get him to do that. It would give him first hand experience of what you normally cope with and renewed respect for you, as well as filling his time so that he cannot sit around moping and brooding all day. Not only that but it will strengthen his bond with the children, which can only do him good at a time like this.

Oh yes ggglimpopo is right. If you just say 'a family problem' most people imagine you mean your extended family and don't pry further.

Hi HHA..really hope you get through this and are able to trust and enjoy life again

Morning all. That's just what i've done. I've sent him to toddlers and made him walk. While i tidy the house.

He seems to be genuinely sorry, and at the minute i seem to be doing alright. Mind you don't suppose i will this afternoon when i have a funeral to contend with but there we go.

Right time to polti the floors and the spilt coffee.

C u all later and thanks for all your support and encouragement it has meant so much.

Keep talking to me

Why are you doing the floors and spilt coffee when you have a house-husband to do it?

I'm glad that at least he seems genuinely sorry. This might be the beginning of a long road to recovery

anorak, it's easier to send him out with the babies than leave him at home and then i moan that he's not done it well enough.

Anyway limited to amount of physical work he can do coz his shoulder dislocates, 62 wk waiting list to see consultant. But he is a brilliant cook, and think our menu would be rather boring if I threw him out. So another good reason to keep him. lol

Yes this is going to be a long road to recovery, but i do feel a sense of peace that it is going to be ok.

Then again maybe by the time i finish this afternoon i will be saying something very different

Yes. The road to recovery from this sort of thing is full of peaks and troughs.

I getting a bit worried about myself. First funeral i ever been to tht i've not cried. Almost as if i've turned my emotions off.

Is this normal?

Anything is normal and nothing is normal at the moment. You handle things the way you can.

One of my uncles died and I sobbed for weeks. The other died while my dd was deeply depressed and a couple of days later she took an overdose. I didn't cry. I loved both of them equally.

My theory is that I was so busy looking after my daughter that I was operating on automatic pilot. I couldn't dare allow myself to think about it all or I wouldn't have been able to function, and she needed me to function.

oh well i've now fallen apart. Been crying on and off for the last 2 1/2 hours.

Realising that practicalities are that we will have to move, but no decision will be made until at least August and dd2 starts high school in sept but actually has already started as they take them 6 weeks before the summer to teach them welsh as it is a welsh high school and she has gone to english speaking primary.

She will be so devestated if she can't go.

We will have to start again with no support network imediatly close and will have to build up links within the community again.

Of course the other alternative is to resign, then left with no job, house, car.

what he has done is the hight of selfishness and if my kids suffer because of it I am afraid that i might resent him, blame him, hate him.

Thought I was doing rather too well today to last.

Any way i'll stop rabbling on now shall i

Feel for you HHA. It hurts so badly doesn't it? Lies and betrayal hardest to cope with when it happened to me. So many people knew and hadn't told me and I felt such a fool. So humiliated. I kicked him out (literally!!) for a cooling off period and to work out if I wanted him back. Actually, I already knew that I did but I couldn't let him know. We wrote huge long letters to each other saying everything we wanted to say (which is great as no-one can interupt). It was total make or break honesty, warts and all. Then we met at a hotel (nuetral territory) and read the letters out in turn with no interruptions. He detailed his affair which was deeply painful and really hard to listen to but necessary if I was ever to trust him again. I hurt more than ever before but after that night the recovery began. It was slow but worth it. That was 7 years ago. We've just had our 15th wedding anniversary and I want to grow old with him. As for the woman, I never think about her. At the time I felt violent at the very thought of her but, actually, she's nothing to do with it any more. It was between him and me. This is doubly hard for you with her being a friend, but I think your h, father to your d's, is clearly far more important. As you say though, you've been together 14 years and presumably at least 13 of those have been good ones. All the best.

i think i can get over the affair, it's the implications it has on all our lives that really gets me.

I want us to appreciate each other, to start to see the good in each other and be able to work together. Thing is we work so very differently and i think that causes stress like no other, our work and personal lives are so intertwined that it gets very difficult to seperate the two.

The girls have seen me crying this eve and not asked what the prob is.

What are we doing to our family

MY dad had affairs and my mum never cried in front of us. It meant that, when they finally split up, it was like a bolt from the blue for us kids. It took me 20 years and counselling to work it out. My mum thought she was doing the best for us by hiding it from us, but I remember feeling coldness in the house I couldn't understand. By contrast, dh's parents used to fight and scream at each other in front of him and his brothers. Not advisable of course, but after they broke up they became friends again and now have a healthy relationship. Also, dh in no doubt about why his dad left. Neither way seems healthy but then we're all human and can't deny our emotions.

just all seems such a mess.

Just trying to gather the other womans stuff together (think shes been moving herself in recently)

I want to go see her, see whether she is sorry or whether she falling apart. I know she hasn't told her husband and i want to tell him, but if I only want to tell him to hurt her then it's for the wrong reasons.

I just feel doubly hurt by the both of them.

dd2 got it in the neck coz she wanted to take babies out for walk and they were moaning coz they were tired. This isn't fair and i can't see any winners

It is a mess, and you will be angry, and you will have some (maybe lots of) resentment. Some days your emotions will be completely turned off, and some days any little thing will get you going (and sometimes both may happen within hours).

I have very little of ?the other woman?s? stuff here, but there are a few things she gave the children and dh, and if I see them I feel quite violently angry (hate the Lion King ? well tbh, I disliked it before, but there you go ). I wouldn?t recommend having any contact at all with her. It will only make you feel worse, and stir your emotions up even more.

I don?t think that there are ever any winners in these situations, and the problem is that our dhs just weren?t thinking at all when they embarked on their affairs. Having said that, if they had then I think that the marriages would definitely be over.

I?m not sure what should be said to older children. When I found the old e-mails last week, I called my parents to come over and take the children. My dh was out at the time, and unfortunately arrived before my dps. He wanted to know what was wrong, and got quite upset when I refused to talk about it whilst the children were there. Rang up my mother a couple of days later to apologise for the false alarm, and she said that my ds (6) had told her very matter of factly that mummy was angry with daddy about something, but that he thought that daddy hadn?t done it. In the circumstances, that was about right.

Can you think of some way to ask your older two for support? From your posts it seems that they are probably aware that there is something wrong. You might want to think about some way they could feel that they are supporting you ? is there anything nice they could do for you in some way? Otherwise they may either imagine things are much worse than they are, or possibly feel resentful at being excluded.

Anyway, all my wishes are with you. I hope tomorrow is a better day.

Have jsut found out that she telling people in work including names and who we are.

she works in a pharmacy department in a fairly large hospital.

Had only just stopped crying from earlier.

Have sobbed my heart out.

Can't believe someone can be so evil.

So much for being a friend

HHA, I really feel for you, the roller coaster is on full throttle at the moment. I know that feeling of wanting to make trouble for her but honey if she's telling people you won't have to tell her dh someone else will, be sure of it! You owe her nothing but you do have the moral high ground and people are not stupid if they know your situation dh, the friendship, your kids, really, no matter how much they know her they will see her for what she really is selfish and now stupid.
I did go and see HER (but my situation was different to yours in that she was a complete stranger to me)....couldn't get my head round how a complete stranger could cause so much pain in my life...what had I done to her? I went to see her, then as it turned out her parents and eventually her dh (he knew before me)I did it to bring some reality into the situation because she did not know me at all, infact it was so much easier for her not to know me...fantasy land doesn't involve the wife in the same room as you.I was very civilised (on the outside) I refused to be hateful and dishonest after all that's what she was doing and it would have made it easy for her to hate me. In the whole sorry saga I can truely say I was completely honest with everyone involved...which was much more than could be said for most of the other parties. In the end her selfishness and her lies put the final nail in the affairs coffin and brought my dh back to earth and to his senses.
We'd been married 15 years when this happened and I know will be together in 15 more years(God willing)At this moment this time of trauma will seem to dominate every thought you have- it's normal believe me. Gradually as the healing starts you'll get days where you don't burst into tears when you get a moment to youself. or you realise you haven't thought abut the affair for a whole day!
I was told in counselling a tip that helped me. When I was desperate to be hurtful to her or to my dh for tht matter ...to write a hate letter- make sure you never send it- just let it all flow as it comes swear, call names , be as harsh , blunt etc as you like. You feel much better after. then tear it up (so your not tempted to send it)Give it a go it really helped me.
Does she have children?
What's her marriage like (before this)?

Hold in there you will turn a corner and get stronger.

She has a 13 ds who is friends with my daughter which is a worry.

Her marriage is a marriage only by words, They have slept in seperate rooms for years and even before that they hardly ever had sex, so in that respect can see why she jumped at the chance, but that does not excuse her behaviour.

I have now cut contact with the person who is her friend and also mine. I was finding out too much info about what she doing and we need to cut her out of our lives totally. And she totally understood that, she is really worried that the other woman has a self destruct button that she has well and truly pressed. She says she spreading it round work and its almost as if she is proud at what she has done.

Well a new day, will see what it brings, prob ups and downs. going to have coffee with a friend.

baby been up since 5 so will be tired all day.

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Just found out we got an interview with personel next Fri. My stomach is turning. This will be crunch time as to where our future lies.

Was doing quite well today, but now quite not so sure.

Good luck! I'm not sure how I would have coped if dh's affair had affected my work. It was my safe haven and my distraction throughout the whole thing. Having said that it may well have been a factor in dh's affair - not that I'm going to feel bad about that.

Anyway, I do think that everyone is right. Be yourself - the nice person that you know you are. The angry person is someone you have every right to be, and you should make sure that you express it not bury it (writing a letter might be good - I used to have all of my angry thoughts cycling up a steep hill on my way home from work). Make sure that you don't do anything that you will feel bad about later - you will have more respect for yourself, and from other people too.

Hope you have a better night tonight! I am full of admiration as to how you are coping with two little ones as well as all the pain.

Feeling depressed today.