Yes it's another cliched 'he's having an affair' thread - HELP!!!

[MaggieMuggins]

So, after trawling MN relationship threads for the last hour I can see that everything I am about to say is so 'classic' it's untrue

DH and I have been together for 14 years, married for 4 and DD is 15 months. I became suspicious that he was having an affair before Xmas - we have had the 'I'm just not very happy at the moment' conversation - and after a bit of snooping and a few pennies dropping I confronted him last night and told him that I knew there was something going on with him and his teaching assistant. (An interesting take on the boss-secretary cliche, no?)

I also told him that part of the reason that I'd been able to work it out was because the year before we decided to have a baby one of my own work colleagues had told me that they had fallen for me, and I had an emotional affair with him. Nothing really happened, and I worked through it all alone (it was the year that DH was doing his teacher training and I was at a really low ebb, very flattered by the attention but ultimately it was never going to go anywhere).

Anyway, he admitted that they had grown close (says they haven't kissed, but 'sort of' told each other that they have feelings). He also admitted that he had met her on Saturday when he went out for the afternoon, but says that they just met up and wandered round the shops. I think I believe him.

Anyway, DH and I have had a crap sex life for years and never really dealt with it. We are like two best friends sharing the same house/parenting. I have tried so many times over the years to talk to him about it but he's just buried his head in the sand, told me he loves me, ignored the problem. I would desperately love for us to get that spark back, and I can't cope with the lack of physical affection for much longer.

He says he doesn't know what he wants - before Xmas he was convinced he wanted to leave, but now he's not sure. Doesn't know how he feels about this OW. I've told him that he MUST talk to a friend, that's the one thing he has agreed to do. I told him I want to go to counselling but he said he needs time to think first.

I feel completely bereft and terrified of losing him. I am also angry that he has done this to me when I need him so much right now (am at threat of redundnacy at work, just to add insult to injury) and I am feeling physically unattractive and knackered from working full time and dealing with motherhood and trying to get to the gym and trying to have a social life and trying to keep the house nice. When we had DD I thought I had everything I wanted. What a complacent fool I have been.

Dont believe a word he says for a while yet.

Also dont back down on your conditions - he will try and tell you how 'impossible' it is to not work with ow - tough!
The counselling although important is not so vital straight away the important thing is he shows YOU real commitment now and really does severe ALL contact with ow.
Good luck and stay strong.

My h dithered for about 3 months - i dont think a thing a he said in that time was truthful either to me ow or in fact himself. And he attended counselling too - which he lied in of course.

Slowly does it but make sure you get what you want now.

Well he did agree to a counselling referral last night but I am still feeling very cautious. I said that I would need him to sever contact and he said that he understood why. I think he is very worried about telling her (said he wanted to talk to me first and hadn't said anything to her yesterday) which I suppose I can appreciate; he is still on the spare bed and said he will move out for a bit if that's what I wanted (but he doesn't want to). I don't really see the point of him moving out now?? I also said I was going to need to see some evidence of his loyalty to me and that he would need to come clean to his headteacher and deal with the work situation.

He is going to see a very trusted mutual friend for a drink tonight, so I am going to speak to her today and explain what I need from him. She won't lay down the law to him but I know she will understand where I am coming from and hopefully help pave the way for his accepting that my conditions are essential.

PS What's a keylogger??

Maggie - having been lurking here and am delighted that he seems to have 'got it' - so you do now have the chance for damage limitation and DD will never need to find out about it. As others have said - you need to know waht is said and that it is final and not just a fudgy 'need time to work on my marriage for the sake of DD' which gives her a glimmer of hope that it might revive, adn you would be feeling you were always on probation with her as a backup if you go thru a wobbly patch - like all marriages inevitably do at some point. So it has to be final, and he has to say things to her that will appear to him to be cruel - eg - he loves you, has never loved anyone else, wouls be devastaed if he lost you -e YOu, not DD, but you and theirs was just a maeningless fling etc I would actually insist they go in an email so that a) you can see it, and B) you can ensure it will be unambiguous.
Very best wishes!!!!

Oh! Just googled it...no I couldn't do that. If we are to rebuild trust then I don't think that's the way forward, tempting though it is!! I may ask him to give me his email passwords as a gesture of trust; if he can't do that then we have problems. I don't think I'd even check his emails if he did, although I would check that the passwords worked!

Hmmm..... I think I understand the mindset you are in Maggie. It's still more habitual for you to trust him at the moment, because to an extent you are still in shock and a trusting habit is like any other - hard to break. However, what Happy Woman and others say is absolutely right. Your H has had at least 3-4 months to break the habit of being open and truthful (assuming he was those things beforehand) and believe me, all sorts of lies will come out of his mouth for quite a while yet.

Transparency on his part is absolutely essential at the moment - and to be blunt, you are going to have to break your trusting habit and snoop too. I know at the moment you feel that trust cannot be restored if you continue to do this, but please see that it is horribly unlikely he has gone from being lying and deceitful to open and trustworthy in one weekend.

My situation was different to yours in that my H didn't fall in love with OW and the relationship was more or less over at the point I found out. On discovery, my H would have done anything to repair our marriage, but it didn't stop him minimising his own culpability for the affair, telling lies about when the build up to it all had really started - and he also tried to underplay the emotional connection he had once felt to OW.

I therefore had to break the habit of a lifetime (I'd never once snooped on him, in 24 years and even the affair discovery was purely accidental) and do my own detective work. I uncovered all sorts of facts that contradicted what my H was saying. There were various omissions; "well-intended lies" to minimise my hurt, "self-preservation lies" to minimise his blame, lies he'd told himself and umpteen lies of omission. Our recovery was hampered by this, but to this day I bless my instincts to find the truth for myself, as what I believe now about my H's affair is very different from what I believed in the days after discovery.

Your H is in a different place to the one mine was. Yours still has an emotional connection to OW and as such, will want to minimise her hurt. He will also want to minimise the flak he gets from both of you.

How can you be sure he's not playing for time here? Clearly, the prospect of leaving the family home terrified him, as did going public with the situation, but I'd be a bit worried that he's coming out with a line to OW that "it's not the right time yet, wait for me while I sort it out", especially since she has presumably burnt all her boats at home.

So he's planning to go into school today and tell her - at work - that despite the fact that she has binned her marriage for him, he's now got cold feet and won't be leaving after all? Can you imagine the eruption that will cause? Given that he's clearly also terrified of there being collateral damage at work, does that really sound plausible?

I'm also amazed he's going off to see a friend tonight when you two should really be hunkering down, shutting the world out for a few days and talking until you are both hoarse.

Like HW, I don't necessarily think that counselling is a good idea at the moment, unless of course you feel that you cannot communicate without it. I think counselling is best when the shock and urgency of the situation has passed and you are dealing with the painful aftermath. Since I'm also convinced he will still be lying (to himself as much as you and OW) the value of counselling will be impaired.

Well this has given me a lot to think about. I just don't know what to do next. I think he should still go out tonight, it was an arrangement he made before the weekend and I think talking to her will put things further into perspective for him.

I asked him what he was going to say to OW and he said he didn't know. Obviously what I wanted to hear was, 'I'm telling her it's all over, was a big mistake and love my wife'

But I appreciate what someone said much earlier about him having to mourn the loss of his r/ship with OW, even if it was all a fantasy. It's such a delicate situation right now, isn't it? I don't want to drive him away but I do need him to start taking some responsibility for repairing the damage.

oh dear maggie - i dont really know what to suggest for the best. I too think he should want to cancel the night out - a good friend would completly understand.

Be prepared for a lot of flack from the ow - she has given up everything for him and will want to fight you now. You will be seen as the person who is standing in the way of her happiness now. She too will be playing a carefully thought out game.

I bet she will seem all sweetness and light and she will say something along the lines that she does not want to split you up but that she will be a friend to him.

My ow also left her h for my h and it took him a long time to see the game she was playing - she played victim to make him feel sorry for her - i remember him saying he felt sorry for her as she had given up her family for him - of course he could also pile the guilt onto him to make me feel sorry for him (i too thought he needed to grieve for his affair).

Please believe me they must not work together - she will be looking to undermine him all the time and that is just not healthy. The sooner he sees that the sooner you can get your marriage back on track.

Get ready for a rollercoaster of emotions over the next few months and dont feel bad that you cannot support him through all this.

Good luck

Maggie - according to your H, he is going to have one of the most important conversations of his life today. Yet he doesn't know what he's going to say and, at a time when you will want to know everything about that interaction - the words used, the tone, the body language - while it is fresh in his memory, he will be out.

You see, I really do understand this. My discovery happened shortly before my H came in from work at 2a.m. After the initial confrontation and admission, I let him go to bed and was in so much shock I carried on doing normal things and didn't query that he had taken his phone to the spare room. The following terrible day, he assumed he would be going to work as normal that evening - by that time I was thinking more logically and insisted that he took some emergency leave.

In shock, we find comfort in normality. Your line about tonight being a long standing arrangement for your H is testament to that. You're still thinking that it would be bad form to break an arrangement, when honestly, this is a crisis situation and normality to some extent has got to stop.

I honestly think you need tonight to sit down, for as long as it takes and find out what was said and how it was said. OW will be using every trick in the book. Before my H spoke to OW to end things, I had to step into her shoes and imagine what she would do and say - and I was right. I prepared him for all this prior to the phone call. She begged, pleaded, offered to send him a spare phone, tried to convince him that life with me would be hell on earth as I would never trust him again. He was resolute throughout, but he was still trying to be kind and gentle - and not to hurt unnecessarily. He's since admitted that he was also playing the "victim" card with her a bit - and agreeing that his life over the coming months would be difficult, but that it would be worth it if it meant staying with me.

She followed up with essays on E mails (which he showed me), texts, answerphone messages and phone calls. Only when he told her that if he didn't manage to repair his marriage, he certainly wouldn't come looking for her - and would spend his whole life trying to win me back, did she get the message. This was really over.

I understand why he wasn't cruel at first. I understand why he couldn't say "I never loved you" and why he didn't go overboard about his love for me (although he did say he now realised how much he loved me). Kind cowards find this honesty impossible, but Mrs. Guy is right. There needs to be no room for doubt in OW's mind that your H is staying for you - not your DD, not the lifestyle, not the status quo - he's chosen his marriage because of you.

Hmm, but I'm not convinced that he truly has chosen me yet. His body language last night was not good and he didn't touch or kiss me. It was like he was saying all the right things but has yet to demonstrate that he means them. He left for work in a foul mood and I am in a much worse state emotionally today than I was yesterday - at least yesterday I knew what was going on and could made small plans and take control. Today I am left in a state of uncertainty and am feeling so vulnerable and scared that the glimmer of hope he has given me will be taken away again.

I've just read some of Not Just Friends and I think he needs to read the chapter about throwing in the towel or not. And I WANT him to go out and see our mutual friend, because at the moment he is completely isolated and self-absorbed, and I think she might be able to knock some sense into him. I don't think he's happy with his choice yet, and he needs to be - I'm not convinced he will tell the OW today, either. So I am trying to keep my head straight and not get too carried away just yet.

Still keeping his options open do you think?
Understandable that you are feeling worse now, the uncertainty is sickening. It's worrying that he is not trying to kiss you or touch you. Stick to your conditions and don't let him drag this on. He needs to sort things out and show some committment. But you know all that. Thinking of you.

Ah Maggie, I understand. It feels like a bit of the control you'd gained has gone again.

Have you said he doesn't have to move out on Friday? I hope not.

If he doesn't tell OW today, or if he gives her any manouevrability, the plain facts are that he is continuing an affair with her while under your roof. You don't want that, do you?

This is going to take all your strength my love - but you have been so strong up to now - and remember, it is working, this strength and resolve of yours. If he doesn't tell OW today, can you tell him that the plan for him to move out has not changed? Can you insist he phones her tonight - in front of you?

Don't let him play for time Maggie.

Yes, he will be conflicted at the moment. He will even be angry that a choice has been forced on him. I'm not in the least surprised at his foul mood - he will blame everyone and everything but himself for the dilemma he now faces - and he hates confrontations, doesn't he?

He will be desperately searching for a compromise that will give him more time and will be clinging to a mistaken belief that this can all be resolved with the least amount of pain and with him not coming out of this looking like a bastard. He's not facing up to the responsibility of this mess he's created yet.

He's only just starting to come out of the insanity, remember. Had you not taken control, he would still be in that place. I'm also not terribly surprised at the lack of affection for you - somewhere in him, he's blaming you for bringing this all to a head, when he'd rather have carried on pretending that things "would have worked themselves out".

This situation is a man like his's worst nightmare. Two women urging him to take action, when he'd rather pull teeth than have all these dramatic confrontations. He has to blame someone for forcing him to do something unnatural - in time he will in all probability shift some blame on to her.

It doesn't mean he doesn't love you and doesn't want to commit to your marriage. What it does mean is that he's got a lot of growing up to do. Being a grown up means taking responsibility for one's actions.

Stick to the plan Maggie, stick to the plan. It's all going exactly how we predicted up to now, isn't it?

Maggie, I also meant to say that various women on these threads have gone on to say that further down the line, their husbands thanked them for having the balls to fight for the marriage and wake them up out of their delusions. They all admitted that had it not been for their wives' strength (and self esteem) they too would have lacked the courage to do what was right.

Different situation, as I've said, but my H now says he is profoundly grateful that I persevered with my determination to get to the truth. He would never have confronted his own behaviour and denials if I hadn't done so. That was painful for him - and forced him to confront things about his personality that he would never have done before, but he now knows himself so much better than he did - and he has added respect for my "bullshit" detection qualities.

One of the things that might help you is to focus on your righteous anger and your own self esteem. It will really help you at the moment if you stick to a bottom line that you will not be "played" and that you have every right to the conditions you are imposing. This will also help in terms of restoring respect for you in his eyes, whereas over the past few months he has been seeing you as an unknowing victim - and treating you with the utmost disrespect.

He won't fall in love with you again (and he needs to) if he doesn't renew his respect for you. That means staying tough and uncompromising - and insisting that you won't stay with him untih he grows a pair.

Wow. Don't know what to say - thanks so much for all of the good advice I just want this rollercoaster to stop now, and I know it's going to be going for a long time yet.

Reading all this is taking me back.. these few days are the most crucial for you. WWIFN is right as ever, you have to stand really firm about what you will and won't tolerate.

You do need some kind of proof that he has ended things with OW, can't stress that enough. I trusted that H had had the conversation with OW, but I don't think he really did, and the whole miserable saga rumbled on until I eventually caught them out again.

Really thinking of you today, this bit is utterly foul, but it will get better..

Maggie, information is power. It's not up to you to blindly trust now, with the little sop of having his current e-mail passwords (there's nothing to stop him creating new secret accounts) the ball is squarely in his court to work all day every day for the rest of his life or until you decide he's done enough, to earn back your trust. Don't hand it to him on a plate. Verify, verify, verify. Get that keylogger. Knowing the truth saved me so much of this rollercoaster business my ex was able to look me straight in the eye and lie so well I gasped when I learned the truth.

Any news Maggie? How did things go last night?

How are you today Maggie?

Has he told you what, if anything, he is going to say to the head about having her (or him) moved from the classroom (would have to be school for me I'm afraid!!).

What's next?

Hi everyone, thanks for tuning in for the latest installment...!

Well things last night were a little better. It finally seems to be dawning on him what he's done and the mess he's created, and how it's affecting me. He actually said sorry, didn't mean to hurt you etc, and gave me a hug, which is a first.

But he is going to go away this weekend (says he needs space as can't think at home or work) and so I've said that if he hasn't told OW yet, or sorted things out at work, that everything is still the same as far as I am concerned. He thinks it is best if he moves out for a bit. I have made it clear that this is his choice, and am standing firm on my conditions. He can buy time if he wants but I won't be budging.

I'm fed up with thinking about it at the moment, to be honest. Had a nice day with DD today and am going to throw myself back into work for the next couple of days, feeling really isolated and emotionally drained, and just want some semblance of normality for a bit...

Maggie - you are holding together so well, by standing firm re him moving out till he has sorted out his head. The cold light of reality is likely to strike him hard, and by keeping your dignity you are putting yourself in the best possible position for negotiation when either he comes to his sesnses and comes begging you for forgiveness, or, if it is the end of your relationship and he goes off with OW ( statistically VERY unlikely but could happen in the short term) for a civilised arrangement and stability for DD.
We are here for you! MANY of us have been thru' this and come out the other side, ironically with better marriages, and calmness in dealing with the DH is key (endless tears, screaming in private and with trusted friends is essential outlet, but totally counterproductive with men.) OW (the bitch - we all hate her) will be all sweetness and light and 'understanding' - you don't have to match that - you are are justifiably angry and upset and viscerally hurt and he needs to know that BUT calm with it and able to think and act for the best overall outcome).
Was thinking of you last night (the power of MN to make us worry about complete strangers we are here to help - use us!!!!!

Hmmm... not sure about this. It doesn't sound to me as if he is moving out on Friday, as was the plan - and I thought it was your choice, not his, that he does move out? Part of the regaining control is that he cannot make choices where you are concerned, any longer. The reason he went away last weekend was to come to a decision and a choice. on Monday, he appeared to have made that choice, but has done precisely nothing about it - and is still all "woe is me" and "needing space".

As I read this, he chose OW after the weekend, then reneged on that and chose you - and yet still hasn't told OW or really re-committed to you and sorting this out, preferring to go away again this weekend to get his head straight.

If he feels he can still vacillate and that you won't physically kick him out, he will play for all the time in the world.

Thanks MrsG! Hearing you say these things is doing me the world of good. And I can't believe you thought about me last night...

WWIFN, he is moving out at the weekend. I have given him a choice of doing as I ask OR going - no inbetweens, no compromises. He will not be sleeping here come Sunday night, and that is HIS CHOICE. I am repeating that to him, as I won't put up with him saying that I 'kicked him out' or 'wanted him to go'. I keep reminding him that I want him to stay but that if he does so there are conditions. Believe me, I am standing firm!!

Sorry if I've misunderstood something Maggie, but has he changed then from his position of Monday night - that he definitely wants you and to commit to the marriage? What has been saying to OW since then?

I'm glad he's moving out for a while, but in your shoes I wouldn't want him to think that you will necessarily be waiting for him should he decide to return.

I'm glad you're standing firm and I understand why you don't want him to put the responsibility on you for making him leave, just as long as he doesn't think he's got all the time in the world to sort his head out.

where exactly is he going this weekend ?

Seems he hasn't said anything to the OW?

And what did he think would happen, if he didn't mean to hurt you? And what was the hug for?

I know how much you crave normality, but don't fall for any more hugging.