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?

I can't believe so many people are so blase about their husbands looking for sex outside their marriages.

You must all be a bunch of mugs if your husbands have managed to convince you that that sort of behaviour is perfectly acceptable

PP, when put like that I do understand more of where you're coming from ...but even within counselling, self disclosure can be a healthy part of the process.

why are you lolling at DM from me Ron? I am not remotely DM.

fibi, I actually think there is only bonsoir who is trying to minimise the seriousness of this...

And she does live in Paris, after all; this is par for the course there, I believe.

i'm sure a mini army of counsellors shall be along shortly to whip us all into shape.

how DARE we offer personal opinion! and on a discussion forum!

shocker.

Eco- I am glad we are not so far apart in our thinking as we initially thought. However, you said this: "PP, when put like that I do understand more of where you're coming from ...but even within counselling, self disclosure can be a healthy part of the process."

If by self-disclosure you mean that the counsellor reveals something of themselves and their morality- that is not what I understand.

I have trained in work akin to counselling and been advised not to tell anything about myself- not even whether I am married, have children etc etc. If asked, I would answer honestly, but it is not something I'd volunteer, as givng out information or opinions immediately prejudices the client's view of you and what you can do for them.

I love mumsnet Extreme views, passionate debate - love it! You're all cheering me up no end!

AF, he is contrite and says he's glad I found out as it is a wake up call for both of us - he used those exact words

LOL at the idea of telling friends and family. MIL is a Daily Mail reader and also a bitter divorcee so DH would go down about a million points in her estimation.

PP, you talk sense - the sweet shop analogy is exactly what he was doing.

Blinks, I'm not staying because I fear the consequences of leaving. I'm a strong intelligent woman with supportive family - I would be off in a flash if I thought he had actually been shagging random women.

And don't worry, I'm not guilt tripping him into doing more household stuff - he has voluteered and that's been part of an ongoing process over the last few months as we've been gradually working through some of our issues and frustrations.

He is a decent bloke - he knows he has screwed up big time.

Ronaldinhio - a few years ago this would have been a dealbreaker for me too, but we've built a life together and we have a child. I would be mad to throw all that away when he hasn't actually been unfaithful. I've made it clear to him if he ever cheated it would be over - I stick to my marriage vows so he has to too, or he shouldn't have made them.

I'm so pleased that you are feeling and sounding more positive! Keep going with it!

What is important is that he was looking into the sweet shop through the window- he had not yet gone in and sampled the pick and mix.

Looks like you have lots to build on.

Yeah, I feel more hopeful today.

Still feel like we have loads of stuff to talk through though. I'm still struggling with the fact that he did this at a point when we were working through our problems and things seemed to be improving. I just don't get it.

What's the point of giving an honest opinion of how you view the cicumstances then?

Of course there will be polarised views, the OP knows how she feels and was trying to gauge the severity of his actions by the response of the good people of MN.

I'm at one end of the spectrum with my "it's a marriage destroyer" stance, others feel it's only a minor hiccup.

If people learned to communicate properly and sort out issues before they reached critical mass, the divorce lawyers wouldn't be so busy at this time of year.

If a man can't cope with a sporadic sex life after having babies, the relationship won't get very far imho. That's what happens in the real world, sex takes a back seat when you are raising young children, perhaps men should be told this at school.
There is no excuse for him doing what he did, I hope he realises that and is suitably contrite.

my point too malificence...except i had a dh who did this also....dont see anyone else here who has lved through this.

we tried to work through....i was too suspicious,he had had a taste of it...it didnt work. he did it again...it wasnt quite THAT black and white,but that was the end result

shocked, it sounds like you are really communicating and that is a good sign

and you can be a decent bloke and also do a stupid, idiotic thing

the decency is in admitting it and acknowledging you had a large part to play in it

horrible, abusive blokes (and I have read a lot of examples on here) would blame you entirely

Mal, I think you're right about children being taught these valuable life lessons, by us as parents as well as at school. I wouldn't confine it to one gender though - we are trying to give our son and daughter the same insights into sex and relationships.

I understand where PP is coming from - she is saying that it's often not helpful when posters respond with "bin him", "I wouldn't forgive" or "he's a cheating, lying scumbag" type comments. Posters are often in a very delicate state when they pluck up the courage to post on here and some of them are also very young and haven't been round the block as much as us old-timers . So while I think there is value in getting different approaches and suggestions, we have a duty of care to help the poster work out what it is they want - and perhaps suggest how they are going to achieve that.

However, because we aren't being asked to adopt a counsellor role, we sometimes see that our own life experiences will help - and this is where some self-disclosure can be enormously helpful to a person in distress.

When I first came on here almost a year ago, trying to recover from my H's infidelity, it helped enormously to hear from people who had forgiven and had created happier marriages in the wake of disaster. I will be forever grateful to those posters for their insights. It made me feel less alone and more confident of the route I had taken.

Shocked, I'm glad you feel better today. You realise that a wake-up call is just that - you need to analyse why this happened and you need to have a very honest conversation about infidelity-proofing your future relationship.

What ever your DP might say about window-shopping (and he might really believe that) the truth is often far more complex. Normally, it's not just sex that's missing from a relationship to cause these things to happen, it's other needs such as being fancied in the first place, being valued etc. The problem is that once that attention starts coming a person's way, it becomes intensely addictive and so many barriers have already been broken down, that the act of sexual infidelity loses its impact.

In truth, your DP cannot say with any certainty that he wouldn't have acted on it. He simply doesn't know how addicted he would have become.

Stopping the behaviour doesn't deal with why it happened - so it could happen again, in another guise perhaps. Getting to the root of it and being honest about your relationship is the only sure-fire way of preventing it again. Good luck with that very necessary conversation.

Shocked, glad you are feeling more positive now. Sometimes these things in a marriage can be a force for good/change. Because of how this thread was taking off, I asked my DH what he thought and why a man would do this. (BTW my DH left me for an OW for 6 weeks at beginning of last year so he knows all about lies and deceit). He actually said if he used the joint a/c knowing you handle all the finance then he was wanting to be caught if that makes sense. Whether to effect change in the marriage or as an excuse for you to kick him out. As he put it, he could have got a prepaid credit card to do the deed with.

He obviously wants to use this to move the marriage forward in a more positive way and maybe that's how you should see it (if you want to). Have some counselling if you think it would help (it got us through the worse time of our lives (so far)).

Good luck, it is your marriage and nobody elses.

WWIFN- I think that is a very good post.

OP it is very interesting that you say that you felt things were getting better and why has this happened now.

This often happens- I know many couples who have said he same thing. Perhaps this could be the starting point for your discussions?

I think what often happens is that on the surface things appear to be getting better, but the dissatisfaction is so deeply engrained that the old bug-bears still exist.

For example, you might think your relationship has moved from a score of 1:10, to 5:10, whereas your DH might feel it is still just 2 or 3:10.

If he wanted sex 5 times a week and you are for instance now having it once a month, and it was one every 6 months before, then you might think things are a lot better whereas he still thinks it's crap.

There is a saying/belief that women need love to have sex; and men need to have sex to feel loved.

I am not saying that you should take the blame for what has happened due to no-sex, but by your own admission, things have not been good between you for almost 2 years. Somewhere along the line your closeness has been lost.

The dating site is a symptom of that; it is not the cause.

I hope that you can both talk calmly about what is missing, for each of you, in your relationship. Then you can work out how to fill those gaps and move forward.

Really useful posts, thanks. You're really helping me figure out what we need to discuss. Sometimes it all seems so huge I don't know where to start.

The good news is we've booked our relate appt- initial appt in a couple of weeks then a 6-8 week waiting list.

Countingto10, it wasn't a joint acct. I open his statements very occasionally to check his overdraft balance as he has been quite bad with money in the past. He had said this was ok but would almost certainly have forgotten I do this. Ironically, if he hadn't been so shifty when I went to open it I would only have looked at the balance, not the transactions.

did you re-check his past statements then?

£65 he must have been very serious about it because thats alot of money nappies, formula 2 pairs of good shoes from Clarks. Dont blame yourself ive got a 21month old after running around after them you are good for nothing else but sleep so i say naughty man

blinks, yes, he is happy for me to have access to everything. There is nothing else.

chubbasmum, we have moved on from the £65 as I believe that was a genuine error (see earlier). at £65 for formula- I had no idea it was that expensive.

chubbasmum, thanks for empathising. I think we both have things to work through, although clearly he has made a major error of judgement, to say the least.

We had another good chat last night, about what we want out of our relationship, and about what has gone wrong in the past. Still a long way to go, obviously, but moving in the right direction.

Not sure how I will cope next week when he is away for work (a rare occurence so really bad timing) but he knows I will want lots of contact and we'll skype so I can see his hotel room [grimace at my new found suspiciousness emoticon]

sorry hun im abit slow the best of times goodluck to both of you xxxxxxxxxx

Shocked, I searched for another post I once did in response to someone who had found their H engaging in a text relationship with another woman. Having re-read it, it doesn't entirely fit the bill here, but I just wanted to reiterate that it is terribly important for you both that you don't fall into what can be a very comfortable trap of concluding that since nothing actually happened, nothing would have happened.

I know it's different, but there were definite stages in the build-up to my H's affair and we have since discussed what he would have said if I had discovered what was going on at the various points. The stages were: friendly innocent E mails, friendly innocent texts, sexually explicit and loving texts prior to the first assignation. All of this was over a 12 month period, with a gap in the middle when she gave up trying to persuade him to meet her.

In the early stages, they had what could have looked like a very innocent exchange of E mails between two old colleagues who hadn't seen one another for years. Except this woman wasn't just an old colleague - she had tried unsuccessfully to get my H to have an affair with her 13 years previously - and he hadn't seen her since.

This time, she was married and purporting to be happily so. My H reckons that if I'd found out about this alone, he would have been embarrassed (that he hadn't mentioned it) but would have insisted that it was all very innocent - he says he even told himself this at the time.

What he wasn't acknowledging though was that he had started to look forward to the contact, especially when she filled her E mails with how wonderful he was in her memory.

The question he didn't - and wouldn't have asked himself was "what am I getting out of this and why am I doing this?"

We have agreed that had I found out that there was contact between them - at any of the different stages - my H would have tried to convince me (and himself) that this was just him being "a bit silly". Even if I'd come across one of the pre-assignation texts, my H would have told me (and himself!) that he never really would have gone through with it and would have come to his senses before actually doing anything.

The proof was in the pudding though. He didn't come to his senses at all and got immersed in a full-blown affair. I think it's telling that he didn't start to feel terrible guilt and stress until he couldn't "pretend" any more. It's amazing the bargains we all make with ourselves.

I don't think I'd have bought any of this for a second, but I shudder to imagine that I might have. I know we would have had the showdown from hell, but I might just have "bargained" with myself that a crisis had been averted and as long as he hadn't met her, it was all going to be fine in the long run. This just wouldn't have solved the problem though.

Your H might be comforting himself that he would never have gone through with any of this - the most important admission he can make to himself (and you) is that in all probability, he definitely would have met women for sex.

That's going to be a tough admission for both of you, but it's so necessary, Shocked. He might insist till he's blue in the face that he wouldn't have done this, but like I said before, he simply cannot know how addictive and pleasurable it would have been when he started receiving replies from women who were willing to meet him.

WWIF: I don't think that's helpful as it itsn't true. WHat your H did is one thing, your H is not the OP's H, they are different people, not windup toys who will all respond to the same stimulus the same way. I think that encouraging the OP to regard her H as a man who would have had an affair if she hadn't found out about his initial internet activity is going to make her feel constantly suspicious of everything he says and does, which isn't good.

You know if there is one iota of comfort that the OP can take from her DHs actions it is this:
the site he signed up to is called Forget Dinner- it is about sex only.

IMO it is better - splitting hairs- to look for sex alone if he is sexually frustrated- which he appears to be- than to get emotionally involved with another woman. It's the modern day, web equivalent of visitng a prostitute- but without having to pay and possibly less risky.

WWIFN- did you discover your H's affair- or did he feel the need to blurt it out? Do you think he might have just allowed it to fizzle out eventually, or do you think they were thinking of making a go of it? The reason I ask is that sometimes, ignorance is bliss- the fling happens, it ends and both parites move on.