Husband signed up to dating website

[ShockedBeyondBelief]

I've name changed as I post a bit in other topics and don't really want mumsnetters or people in RL to know about this.

I found out at the weekend that my husband has joined an online dating website, specifically looking for sex. He says it was a stupid mistake, that he hadn't contacted anyone and he wasn't planning to.

But obviously even if that's true, I'm still pretty gutted, although am feeling a bit detached and unemotional right now.

I have held my hands up and said I'm partly responsible for this, as our relationship has been very up and down and sex life pretty sporadic since we had our 20-month-old ds.

What do I do now? I have no idea how to move on from this. I don't feel I can tell RL friends as I don't want them to hate my husband. Has anyone been in a similar situation?

morning shocked

glad you managed to have a proper talk

I hope you have both realised this is a major wake-up call and that he is suitably contrite for his ridiculously stupid actions.

Perhaps in a few years time you will look back and laugh at his idiocy ? He should always be very embarassed, tbh

I would also make it very clear that you have saved the day here

by not going completely off the deep end and telling family/friends/throwing him out of th house etc you have contained it and allowed the situation to not attain the high drama it could well have done....

"Perhaps in a few years time you will look back and laugh at his idiocy ? He should always be very embarassed, tbh"

If the OP wants to chase her DH away, that would be the way to go.

Relationships require forgiveness not one-upmanship if they are to survive through the years...

bonsoir, put it this way

if I had been caught out doing something as risky and idiotic as this, I would expect to be embarassed and have horrible flashbacks of "what the fuck was I thinking...

you are assuming my advice would be to lambast him on a daily basis and "never let him forget it"

I wouldn't need anyone else to remind me of it, or "oneupmanship", it would be within me, within my own conscience

and personally I wouldn't want to be with someone who didn't have a similar conscience too

My God, if I had horrible embarrassed flashbacks for every little mistake I had made in life, I would be nowhere.

A very integral part of moral conscience is understanding, learning and, crucially, forgiveness (of oneself and of others).

< goes away to examine my own moral conscience >

< yep, perfectly in place >

Just watch out that you aren't confusing moral conscience with piousness

AF there 's a lot of one-upmanship on MN isn't there? Some posters are completely immodest and up their own backsides.

Why can't we debate without someone always wanting to have the last word- instead of accepting that life is grey, not black and white.

We all have different values and no-one has a monopoly on the right moral conscience.

OP- I hope you can now move forward. I see your DH's behaviour as a silent cry for "help"- he is obviously frustrated, unhappy and feeling neglected. It is not the same as an affair- I expect he was testing the water and like a child, looking in the sweet shop to see what was in there.

perusing is one thing, actually using mutual funds to join a dating website is quite another... AND he didn't come clean- he was rumbled.

it's one of those situations where the female has already made up their mind that they won't end the relationship probably due to fear of the consequences, so has to somehow simultaneously punish the cheating partner whilst minimising the wrong-doing to justify their decision to put up with it.

feeling weak and uncertain after being betrayed is normal so i'm not judging the OP but i do feel that complete honesty is required here- the fact that he thought he was only buying a month's subscription is neither here nor there- the intention is the same... he's looking elsewhere for sexual gratification.

if you can deal with that and move on then good for you but by treating it like a minor misdemeanor or using it as leverage to get him to do more around the house is a huge mistake.

bonsoir, be careful your clever remarks don't get confused with smugness

agree with what you say blinks.

my own ex was curious (he says) but once the initial fuss of being caught died down,and he thought i'd 'forgotten and forgiven', i found he had developed quite a taste for it!!

it didn't end there....but i discovered much more over next couple of years. the op will probably end up looking for it,it never goes away completely. he was curious enough to 'look',eventually he'll be curious enough to 'try'....

well, it may only be because this particular bloke was caught, that he didn't escalate his "curiosity" to "trying"

and that's why, if he was stopped before he got to this point, he needs to acknowledge thet he owes the OP a lot of consideration for saving his sorry fucking arse

although, tbh, if that is what he has a taste for, he will do it again and she won't be able to stop him forever of course

but, if he is a decent bloke, he will realise he very nearly threw his marriage away

and that is why this is such a massive thing bonsoir, and not some "minor little transgression" to be instantly forgotten and consigned to history...

a lot of work (from both parties) is required here

do 'decent blokes' register on sex dating websites when married?

not in my experience.

God, there are some very pedantic people on here today!

I wonder if any of you have ever had counselling? Or are there any trained counsellors out there? (Their input would eb invaluable.)

If you have, you will know that the counsellor's role is not to judge, or apportion blame, but to try to allow the clients to see their options and discover what went wrong.

A little more of this type of response would be better on MN , IMO.

There is far too much judging, which simply reveals the posters' lack of compassion and occasionally, by presumption, life experience.

Didn't he shell out £65 to do it, unless he is a millionaire then that is quite a commitment to potential cheating

lighthouse why are you and others continuing to rub the OP's nose in it- do you think your last comment makes her feel any better?
It is not relevant any more how much he paid- £6, £65, £650- the point is why and what can be done about it now.

shocked hope you're feeling a bit better.
This happened to my friend and she worked through it successfully with her dp (she eventually fecked of with someone else so not sure how successfully actually but anywhooo)
the thing is that it's clear from the site that he was signing up for random sex with strangers
apportioning blame ime is always worthless and circular
better to live in the moment you are in and move forward and make decisions from there.

A relationship should be for better and worse imo and this really would be a dealbreaker for me
We all go through periods of stress lack of sleep exhaustion etc and sex drives ebb and flow as a result
For me if my dh didn't appreciate that fact and saw it as an excuse to have sex with someone else I'd seriously reconsider
I know that sounds harsh but it's how I honestly feel

I am not rubbing her nose in it on purpose that is not very fair PP. As far as I am concerned that it intent to cheat, if it was me I would be seriously hacked off.

Clearly my views on marraige and fideleity really are alien to everyone else. I don't get it.

well your insistance on reminding her of how much he paid- thiis far into the thread- when she has already said that they are strapped for cash, seems insensitive to say the least.

There's no point being petulant and saying your views on marriage differ to everyone else's- they don't seem to, TBH.

If you bother to read my post about 3 posts down,, you will see that what I was suggesting was less judging, and more "where do we go frm here"- in other words,leaving our own prejudices and "what we would do" behind, and focusing on allowing the OP to make her own mind up.

What each and anyone of us would do is up to us- it's not relevant to the OP as we aren't her and we aren't in her marriage.

I think it is very confusing for posters to read so many conflicting opinions, half saying do this, half saying do that.

The whole point of asking for help should be for us tofocus on helping the OP to discover what she wants to do- not tear her DH limb from limb, or be all moral about it.

Children, children, play nicely!

PP, I do think the proffering of differing opinions is integral to the OP's autonomy, given MN is not made up of counsellors but of people with varying life experiences, stances and morals.

No-one is demanding that the OP take any particular course of action but rather, suggesting whay they would percieve their own reaction to be in any given situation.

...which I think is entirely appropriate.

pp
that's what you get on a website, lots of different opinions expressed from personal experience
she will hopefully take something from all of them even if they are conflicting in their advice and make up her mind from there.
I fail to see how this isn't constructive

we'd have a fairly small community on mn if the answer to every question became
"I don't want to speak from my experience or give you my opinion on the matter but I suggest you try counselling"

arggghh eco xpost!

"we'd have a fairly small community on mn if the answer to every question became
"I don't want to speak from my experience or give you my opinion on the matter but I suggest you try counselling"

Ron- that is not what I am suggesting.
What I am suggesting is less of the "this is what I would do and more of the " well, how do you feel about this and what do you want to do now?" approach.

I just don't think that getting bogged down in a "Daily Mail" type of reaction to anything that remotely transgresses an absolutely "perfect" moral code is helpful to the OP.

lol at Daily Mail from pp