affairs

System

You dont need to know who the woman is (unless she is a friend). Its him thats betrayed your marriage. She isnt married to you.

Well thats how i see it anyway.

moneybags13

Im so sorry for what you are going through.

My previous partner cheated on me and we tried to make a go of it after I found out, and lasted a year, but ultimately it destroyed our relationship.

What might have saved it was if I felt that he was being completely honest with me, and had taken actions to make a chance to our relationship that would make me feel like I could start to trust him again.

Instead, he almost expected me to continue as if I have never found out. That just made me think that it would happen again.

Fortunately we had no children together, so that made seperating much easier. I can completely understand why you are trying to work things out, as there are many many reasons why people cheat.

I knew who the other woman was, which made things easier and harder at the same time. Easier because I had someone to focus my anger on other than my ex partner, and I could also keep track of her / him to make sure they weren't in contact. Harder, because I was constantly comparing myself to her. What was special about her? Why would he pick her over me? Was she prettier / sexier / nicer than me? And worst of all, I could actually imagine them together, which was horrible!

My advice is, get through this in the way that you need to. Tell your husband that you will need a long time to move past this and trust him again and that he needs to give you the information you need to do this, and be as open and honest as possible, even if that means telling you something you don't want to hear. I suspect that he is not telling you who it is, as it wants the subject done and dusted and is worried that telling you more and talking about it will make you reconsider things. I really think that marriage conselling would be a good idea.

Ultimately, although I completely understand your desire to find out about this woman (and believe me, I would be the same in your situation), at some point you will need to except that it was not the other woman that caused this hurt, but your husband. He was the one who betrayed you, not her (unless she is someone you know of course!). I am not excusing her actions and think women like her are scumbags, but it will take you facing the truth to start the road to recovery.

I wish you all the best, and really feel for your situation. I hope you find peace soon xxxx

j.e.j.

Judi wrote: »

You dont need to know who the woman is (unless she is a friend). Its him thats betrayed your marriage. She isnt married to you.

Well thats how i see it anyway.

.. and I guess he could have told the 'other woman' that he's not married / getting divorced / doesn't love his wife, etc etc.. the sort of things people say when they're embarking on an affair.

It might help the OP if she knows who the other woman is, or it might not. But at the moment he's in control by deciding for her that it's better if she doesn't know.

Still, Facebook being what it is (!!), I suspect in any case it's only a matter of time before she finds out ..

blossomhill_2

mrs_angry wrote: »

i have asked the hubby to tell me her name but he refuses saying i dont need to know, that hurts because it feels like he is protecting her, i told him i need to draw a line under this and finding out about the other woman the woman who caused all this hurt would help me but he still wont tell me, all he has told me is that she is 52 (he is 41) and has 5 kids and lives in the town where he works, although he said he doesnt work with her he said they met through work.

OP - what a situation, any part of this could be a lie - it could actually be a man, more than one woman, your best friend, she could be 21, living next door, met on the net...the possibilities are endless, so I think you are wasting your energies on wanting to know "her" details, it's him you need to work out how to trust, not her to blame

I'd start by terminating the phone contract, frankly. It will make it hard for him to keep carrying on and might also help bring him to his senses.

Nothing to stop him getting a new £1 SIM and putting it in his phone when he can, or keeping a disposable mobile in his sock like a guy who lives near me

The point is that liars don't just lie about one thing - they are liars

mrs_angry

thankyou for all your kind replies, im still unsure how to move forward on this one, and i do want to move forward, need to move forward, but i dont think i will untill i know who this woman is, i dont wish to know for revenge because thats not the sort of person i am, and if that had been the case i would have rang her by now and vented my anger, i just need to know what sort of woman my husband chose over me and his family, i think it may well help me understand the situation a bit more, i know some people are saying he may well have lied to her, but trust me he told me she knew he was married and knew all about me, so i feel like she knows the facts and i dont!! curriosity makes me want to know what sort of woman has an affair knowing there is a wife and kids at home.

most of the things i want and need to know will never be revealed and maybe for the best.

i do hope my marriage and my head will heal from all this, it has helped hearing peoples comments as having another view other than mine is good, i will post back at some point to let you all know how this pans out.xx

heretolearn_2

'what sort of woman has an affair knowing there is a wife and kids at home.' a female dog, there, now you know :-)

I can totally understand your need to have all the information and I don't think your husband has the right to carry on keeping secrets from you or to decide what you need to know. You need to tell him that this is making it impossible for you to move on and make the fresh start you both need and presumably want. If he refuses to cooperate with you (he should be doing everything he can to make up and convince you of his good intentions), then I would suspect he is still carrying on with her. This doesn't mean he is, but it would be running through my mind all the time so true or not it would destroy the marriage. Try pointing this out to him. You don't need to just blindly 'trust' him right now as he has proven he isn't trustworthy.

I also wonder if it is someone you know.

I'd have to know who it was just so I could monitor better if it was still going on.

balletshoes

mrs_angry wrote: »

thankyou for all your kind replies, im still unsure how to move forward on this one, and i do want to move forward, need to move forward, but i dont think i will untill i know who this woman is, i dont wish to know for revenge because thats not the sort of person i am, and if that had been the case i would have rang her by now and vented my anger,
i just need to know what sort of woman my husband chose over me and his family, i think it may well help me understand the situation a bit more, i know some people are saying he may well have lied to her, but trust me he told me she knew he was married and knew all about me, so i feel like she knows the facts and i dont!! curriosity makes me want to know what sort of woman has an affair knowing there is a wife and kids at home.

most of the things i want and need to know will never be revealed and maybe for the best.

i do hope my marriage and my head will heal from all this, it has helped hearing peoples comments as having another view other than mine is good, i will post back at some point to let you all know how this pans out.xx

you know, finding out who she is (ie her name) isn't going to tell you any of the stuff in bold that you want to know.

And you feeling like the other woman knows all the facts and you're in the dark, is completely down to your husband, no-one else. He cheated on you, he has the relationship with you, she didn't.

animalhouse

You are going through such a foul time and I feel for you. I haven't any advice over what's best with regards to knowing who the other woman is/was, but you might find the following useful with regard to talking about what has happened.

Many years ago DH had a brief affair with a friend of ours (she was a femme fatale and it had been a standing joke that she only ever went out with married men, which wssn't quite so funny when it started happening to us). DH's excuse was that he loved me but that she was 'glamorous and exciting and she felt sorry for him being married to someone as fat as you - not that I think you're fat...' That still makes my blood boil, even now! BTW I was a size 16.

She boasted to me that it had happened and I confronted him.

We rowed for days, then decided to give the marriage another go.

We cut her from our lives and even avoided those of our friends who were close friends of hers.

The way we got through it was by talking, talking and more talking - we set ground rules, the first of which is that I would tell him when I was getting upset about the situation (every day at first) and needed to talk. We set time aside and went out to the pub, or for walks so that we were unable to row / I had to keep calm. (I know some people can shout in public, but I can't). We sat or walked side by side so that we didn't have to make eye contact when hard things were being said. He wasn't allowed to change the subject, and had to listen while I asked the same things again and again in different ways/on different nights. I needed to know why it happened, why he had made those choices, that each move closer to having sex with her was a decision by him - it didn't happen all by itself... By him having to explain why he decided to hold hands, take her out instead of taking me out, etc., it shone a spotlight on how shabby and deceitful as opposed to exciting and glamourous, their behaviour was. On my side I wasn't allowed to be verbally abusive to him and had to let him have his say without interupting.

It took time, but I'd say that after a few months it gradually became easier and I could move on.

It's important that you can be sure that this woman is completely out of your lives and that your husband wants to commit totally to you and your well being. You are not in the wrong and he needs to put his own discomfort aside to look after your battered emotions.

If you need to know, then he should tell you why he chose her over you and your family - he probably won't want to tell you, but that's not his choice. This is what I mean by hard conversations....if you ask the questions you will find that you don't like the answers and he won't like telling you either.

You may find that you need to be reassured time and time again that you are the number one in his life - that is normal too and he mustn't feel hard done by because you are hurting.

I do hope things go well for you, and that your marriage ends up stronger if you do decide to stay together.

x

rokchic

I too would need to know all the details ........ personally for me I would want to know why and where in our relationship that I was supposedly failing enough as a wife / partner for him to even think about looking else where ...... then I would want to know who and its the age old thing I suppose ...... what has she got that I havnt ......... I know its cliche to a point but thats just me ........ I would just want to know all the reasons / excuses that my partner found to stray because if I even wanted to put things right ..... ( which btw I wouldnt !!! to much lies and deceit ...... leopards and spots ) !! I would need to know what it was that was going wrong !!

mrs_angry

we have obviously discussed the whys, his answer was our marriage had gone stale, no we didnt have much sex, but that was because he treated me like a slave, didnt help with anything and decided that he would do what he wanted when he wanted, this made me feel like i didnt love him and so yes our marriage suffered, but we had always spoke about this situation cropping up and i was quite open in saying if he ever felt the need to stray he must tell me and then maybe things could be put right, before something like this happened.

i cannot tell you all how much this hurts, my heart feels like its been ripped out of my chest and i just wish there was a pill to take to make me forget.

i dont doubt that he is sorry and that he does love me, but im a talker, i prefer to know the facts, he doesnt talk never has!!

to be honest what hurt does he feel? whats changed for him, nothing, he still has his wife/kids/life whats changed for me everything, my marriage as i knew it is over, the man i trusted with my life betrayed me and im left in turmoil, sometimes i wish he had just gone because that would be a line drawn over things, and other times i dont want him to go because i love him and want to spend my life with him, do you see how it messes with your head, of course i want to forget and forgive and make things right for us, but its going to be a long long road, and although i know that time will help heal i dont think i will ever get over this, funny because i spoke to a friend of mine who had a similar thing happen to her, this was over 10 years ago and she said hearing from me bought back up all the hurt for her, so i dont think it goes away, it just gets pushed further back into your head, affairs are so very destructive, i couldnt do that to someone i loved as he said he did still love me at the time, the sex he had with her means nothing to me sex is sex, and he is a bloke who thinks with his ???? its the feeling side of things that hurt the most