devastated as husband been "cheating" on me

RuthnJasper

paulineb wrote: »

How do you know it would force a conversation? He might just remove them and still say nothing.

As for having the high ground, yes she might still have it and yes they need to talk, but printing out the emails and plastering them all over the house is childish in my view and wont achieve anything apart from more upset and possible confrontation.

They have been together a long time, even if this is going to end, hopefully they'll try and do it amicably and if necessary with the help of professional people.

Im aware there are people who cheat and its a lifestyle and thats the life they choose and they dont care.

But if this man hasnt strayed before or the OP doesnt think he has, perhaps they can actually, with help if necessary find out why he did what he did and get to a place where they can both move on and get on with their lives.

Also, if they are going to have to spend weeks, months together until one of them finds somewhere else to live, I dont think putting emails all over the house is going to help, you are still going to have to see that person every single day

Hes done wrong, no doubt about that, but do people have to be punished? It wont change what hes done.

Yes, it was my inner child coming out with that one - apologies! I don't like violence (e.g. kicking someone in the knackers) so I have tended in the past to go for petty acts of "revenge" rather than resorting to fisticuffs. But you're right, it isn't a very sensible thing to do... x

warehouse

tinkerbell28 wrote: »

This is not mumsnet.

No, but it's fast turning into it.

Would like to hear back from OP as she's gone a bit quiet today.

duchy

Can't say I blame her

tinkerbell28

One would hope, she is safely tucked up with her friend having a good old face to face chat so is too busy to come back here for now.

Maybe she will when she has made her decision, whichever way and needs an anonymous sounding board.

paulineb_2

tinkerbell28 wrote: »

It can also mean, sanctimonious in a sense. In the sense that I am holier then thou, so can take a moral high ground of virtue. Kinda thing. I saw how she meant it and I kind of agree. It has nothing to do with ops issue, grilling another poster on why she said what she did. Then telling her the wrongs of it.

I dont think anyone has been grilled to be fair.

Lets put it this way. We sit here behind a pc and we give out information, advice, call it what you will.

But we are dealing with pretty raw emotion here. Someone who has just had their marriage possibly fall apart at the seams on the click of a mouse.

Sometimes people feel so sorry or aggrieved for the OP that they say things like, wont be the first time hes done it (when we dont know thats the case), go and get an STI test, when she said in the beginning they hadnt actually slept together.

Im sure everyone thinks their advice is productive, but some of the advice is going to be poles apart, because we all bring our own experience to the table as it were.

But in the space of a few pages, on the basis of a few paragraphs, this persons husband has turned into a pretty awful person.

He might be, he might not be. As I said before, there are threads on here where peoples partners have strayed and theyve stayed with that person, gone to counselling and worked out their issues and decided to stay.

And yes on other threads people have said, you should leave.
But Id be advising caution against anyone making a decision to end their marriage based on the advice of a few people on here in the timescale since its all happened.

Unless someone has posted that they are seriously at risk. Because when the dust settles in 6 months time someone might look back and think, people on an internet forum thought I should leave this person but I miss him etc etc.

We all have responsibility when we post on here. I dont give a flying hoot whether anyone thinks Im holier than thou or pious.
People dont know me and I dont know them. And in real life, many people are much different online than they are offline. But I do think sometimes we need to take a step back and realise that sometimes, what we post might really be taken to heart by a poster on here, who could already be in a vulnerable state. Ive seen threads where people have openly stated they left a partner on the advice given on here. And maybe thats a positive for some people, if their relationship is truly hellish. But marriages can and do survive affairs, it might not be what I would do or whatever percentage of people on here who have advised the OP to leave.

But like any other thread on here where someone wants to leave and then possibly struggles to do it, people should be supported no matter what decision they make. Even if some of us on here think its a rubbish one.

If she wants to boot his !!!! and print all the emails out and stick them all over the house, fair enough.

It wont undo whats done. Its normal to feel hurt, angry, upset, like you want to punch someones face in.

However finding out why hes done what hes done, whether theres a bigger problem with the marriage or whether hes just a creep who has done a good job of acting like a nice guy all these years, people generally show their true colours in time.

She has to find some kind of peace with whats been done and that might take some time, how she finds that, well thats maybe where people see it differently.

GirlFromSussex

Dear Rocket Queen,

Something similar happened to me when my husband cheated. Its so nasty it makes everything seem doubtful and you feel you are grieving for someone who passed away and you are really doing that you are grieving for the man you thought he was and not the man you found out he was.

I found out my husband was cheating on me nearly 4 years ago. We met when we were young I was at school with his younger sister and we started dating when I was 15 and he was 19. We had a break for a time when he was at university and then dated again after a year break and then married when I graduated from university so when I was 21 and he was 25. Then we had two beautiful girls and we were trying for baby 3 when I found out we had been married then for near 10 years.

This is going to sound so stupid but I first read a text on his phone while my husband was in the bath and it beeped and I saw a text from his sister and below that was a text from a woman I didnt know who said she'd see him next wednesday. The stupid bit is that I wasn't worried about it and forgot about it thinking that even if he was meeting someone that next wednesday when I knew he was staying in London for work then it would be a colleague or business reason.

Then about a month later we had come back from holiday and I was jet lagged and couldn't sleep and for some reason I remembered it and looked up the name which I didnt even know I'd remembered on facebook and luck had it she had an unusual name. And there was an enty of her wall which said that she was meeting her sexy blonde man for a dirty night in a hotel in London.

I felt like punched in the stomach and woke my husband up crying at him and he told me he had met up with her and was going to have sex with her but that he couldn't get it up because he found he loved me so much.

I thought about that for a couple of days and then I told him straight I didnt believe him. He said he'd met this woman twice and the same thing had happened both times and it just didnt make sense because twice? Who would do that?

I said I was going to phone her then and there and ask her and he broke down and said they had had sex which is probably obvious reading this but still hurt and surprised me so bad that I almost couldn't breathe.

A long story after that but over the next days I asked him lots of questions about how he met her, what attracted him to her. I would say this obviously but she was a right ugly slapper even the photos on facebook she looked terrible and people choose their photos for the best of them on facebook not the worst.

He said he didnt really fancy her or find her attractive and in the end said the attractive thing was that she was available.

Thinking some more I thought it didnt make sense this was the first time he would of cheated because there just didnt seem much of a reason. He was away for work for 4 days not in London this time and I was glad to have the space to breathe. I wrote him a letter saying that I was 110% positive he was lying and he had one chance to tell me everything and if he lied about anything ever once more then that was it, our marriage was over and nothing more ever between us.

He wrote me a long letter over the 3 days and basically admitted to several affairs over the whole time we were together before and after we married and told me everything about it in writing. Affairs isn't the right word really because there wasn't love or even emotion or interest he was just using it for casual sex.

He had also told me about the first one I found out about that he had used a condom but later admitted he hadn't and hadn't with most of the others so I said he had to go for tests for STIs because we'd been trying the last month before I found out for a baby.

He did and was clear but it was so important he did get checked out.

Im writing this because I feel for you and remember how it felt to be set loose as if the whole universe was swinging on itself and everything was different and the whole world was wrong.

We are still together and not because of the girls because I wouldn't stay in a broke marriage just for them I don't think it would be good.

So what I'd say from my experience of the pain of cheating is that it can be mended but it hurts more than anything else and you have to accept that it happened. I heard someone say once that forgiving someone for something is giving up hope of changing the past and accepting really accepting what happened.

I think it is really really important not to make rush decisions because you don't know which way is up at the moment.

My own sad experience is that a cheating spouse will lie and lie and lie until he cracks if he ever does. We went for marriage counselling and the counsellor talked to him about it and said that every cheater tends to lie until they are caught and then change the lie to accept whatever fact it is but still lie. That was her experience she said.

I know how you feel as I felt your pain and can empathize. Please don't think that what you know is all that happened maybe it is but probably it isn't.

I don't think cheating means marriage over and it didn't for mine. But my husband had to look really hard at himself inside to accept what he had done and now says it feels like thinking about someone else's actions that he can't understand.

For me what worked is him answering every question I asked even if I'd asked it before and really accepting what he'd done and eventually his language changed from silly little things like him saying he was so sorry "for everything that happened" to him saying sorry for "what I did". That seems a really small change but really I think its a very important one because nothing happened and he was just there in the way of it happening he made really bad choices and decided to do things which were terrible but not only for me but also for him.

So I think you shouldn't make any quick decisions but really wait to see what happens. My husband thought it was over and I would leave him and never be with him again and he knows now that if he ever looks at another woman funny then its over and I believe now that he feels that and is horrified that he risked me and our marriage.

My husband didn't make mistakes he made terrible choices and hurt me in every way I could think and I wouldn't ever ever have thought he would do it. But he did do it and it was very hard for me to believe, but I had to accept it.

The first thing he did was delete any messages or emails or contacts or anything like that and he promised to let me know if he ever had contact again.

We also decided together in the counseling that we would not have anything to do with two close friends of his again because they weren't "friends of our marriage". Both knew he was cheating and in one case my husband and the friend who was also married went on the pull together and I knew both friends well and had them in our house and to meals and I couldn't bear to see either of them ever again.

That sounds harsh because they didn't cheat at on me and my husband did but at the end of the day I couldn't bear ever to have them cross my path again.

The friend he didn't go out on the pull with wrote me an email saying he knew I knew now and he was really sorry and it wasn't him cheating and he couldn't tell me and cause trouble. I replied once saying that it wasn't that he hadn't told me he'd never even said to my husband what are you doing? are you mad? And he'd carried on coming to my house and playing with my girls knowing that my husband had been cheating on me.

I don't think that people always cheat because there's something wrong in their relationship and they don't love their wife or husband. Sometimes that might be true but in my husband's case it was more that he needed attention from girls to feel any confidence. He had to fix himself so that he didn't need attention from ugly slappers to fill a hole in himself.

Netwizard

A great post ^^

I'm not sure how people stay together after things like this, especially if the same person cheats multiple times.

I would be gone without a moments hesitation. They make their bed, they can dam well lie in it

rocketqueen

Hi everyone

I'm staying at my colleagues now and thought things were getting sorted out in my mind as I've been at work a lot, but now I've got this morning off and my heads going round and round again and I feel upset.

My colleagues been brilliant listening to me go on and on without actually telling me what to do. But I'm still no clearer.

I had a really bad day at work yesterday (unrelated to any of this) and all I wanted was a hug from husband but at same time I didn't want him near me. It's all so confusing.

I haven't retaliated in any way against him, its not really in my nature - tho when I've been angry I have of course been tempted.

Thank you all for your input I will keep you updated.

itsanne

Thank you for posting today.

RQ, I'm sorry yesterday was a bad day on top of everything, but really glad you're telling people.

Just do what feels right for you. Take care of yourself.

FBaby

Great supporting post GirlfromSussex and nice to hear of an instance when staying together has worked out.

One thing you said really stroke a cord to me

For me what worked is him answering every question I asked even if I'd asked it before and really accepting what he'd done and eventually his language changed

It is hard to say what we would do in such situation, but I am pretty sure that this would be key for me, my hubby accepting that his cheating would lead to 1000s questions firing in my mind, not far from paranoia, and that the only thing that would make me feel a little better would be him accepting to answer them all, even if they are irrelevant, even if it seemed that it was taken us nowhere, even if it was the last thing HE wanted to do. It would be my way of getting all the build-up confusion out of the way to allow me to then think through the situation more rationally. It would be the way he reacted to this that would probably decide for me whether to give it a chance or not, that is how much he would be prepared to go through the last thing he would want, ie. reminding him constantly of what he did and admitting things he would want forgotten, just because that's what I was asking.

rocketqueen, you are bound to still be all over the place. Don't put pressure on yourself that you have to know what to do there and then. Some people take decision impulsively and others need more time. No right or wrong. How has he reacted to you moving out? Is he showing a bit more concerns towards your feelings?