| Hi all, This is my first post here. I have been browsing for advice for a while and as i am still really struggling I thought I would try and get some advice. Sorry it will be long but is all relevant. Been married 13 yr together 18, since I was a teenager. I have always been 100% faithful and so had DH until 2 yr ago when he had a minor slip and again recently with an EA. I have to explain that ours is not an open and shut case. I have always had bouts of severe depression and anxiety but had well periods in between so it was not a huge issue. Then when I had DC 8 years ago I lost it and ended up on a psych ward with PND. Since then I have been on antidepressants which never worked very well. Then I was finally diagnosed with bipolar 2 last year which in some ways was a relief as it explained so much but in other ways it feels like a millstone around my neck. I also suffer social phobia and have not left the house alone in a year. I can go out if DH with me but not to busy places. I do everything i can to control my illness and the effect on my family is not huge as i am very good at smiling through the bad times. DH admits he blames my illness for many things but in truth when we look at it carefully it rarely is the bp causing problems.It's just a convenient excuse. I don't get dangerously high, just really happy and energetic, then I plunge into severe depression.It doesn't stop me though. I still take care of family and house no matter how bad I feel and plaster a smile on my face when around DH and DC. The one bad effect it did have was I had no sex drive and after an horrific birth in which myself and DC nearly died, follwed by a cancerous growth needing to be removed from my cervis, all on top of trauma following a botched egg harvest when we had IVF - I couldn't stand the thought of sex. The meds made me gain weight and dulled my responses so i will admit in the past 8 yrs, apart from when hypomanic, sex was hardly ever on the cards. Now however my meds have been changed, my sex drive is returning and things are looking up. Thank God it's not too late. So these are my faults and my contributions to leadingDH to stray. I hold my hands up and take my share of the blame. DH and I heave our email accounts together cos he can't be bothered reading through the rubbish and we were totally open with each other. We were honestly the closest couple I know after having been through so much and toughing it out. It brought us closer. Anyway, one morning 2 yr ago I got and email saying DH had a private message from a woman on facebook. It was covered in kisses and very familiar, so i had a look. She is a beautiful ex girlfriend. Slim and looks like a tough cookie, which DH loves. The messages made me feel sick. She was saying how her ex had left her and my DH was replying ' he must be crazy, you're gorgeous and any man would want to have you, if only I had the chance mmmmmmm, me tarzan you jane???' He gave her his mobile number and suggested they meet up sometime. Now to her credit, apart from the kisses, which were probably just friendly, she side stepped his advance by only replying briefly with a thank you and then changed the subject. When I discov ered this I was very unwell and it hit me hard. He swore he just wanted to test the waters and see if anyone would still want him. We both blamed our lack of sex life and I gradually got over it. It never went any further. Although I do have a permanent reminder. I wanted a new tattoo and DH suggested DC name on my wrist. WHen I found about about this woman I checked her fb pic and it showed her posing with her arm behind her head with, you guessed it, her child's name on her wrist - ouch! This time round DH started a new job and after a few weeks told me about this woman 6 yrs my junior, who had started working there. He told me she was in the bosses office and he didnt work with her. As the weeks past her name dropped into conversation quite often. A few weeks later DH was acting really cold and hard towards me, like jekyll and hyde! He was so distant I knew something was wrong and worried about him. He said my illness was ruining his life and our DC and he couldn't cope anymore, he deserved a life. HE asked for a break. I actually looked up local places he could stay for him but he changed his mind after many rows and tears. He declared it was a mid life crisis, nothing more and seemed to come back to me. I made more of an effort and we were happy. I sent him off on nights out so he wouldn't feel trapped. I started learning to do nails and was practising nail art and sending him photos of my work whilst he was at work. He told me he had shown them to her and she wanted me to do her nails. I said great i need all the practise i can get. Well cos of my social phobia he brought her round the night before i was going to be doing her nails so we could meet. I have never seen him look so uncomfortable when she stayed into the evening, well out staying her welcome. Nest day she came round, I did her nails and as we got chatting she told me strange things. Everything I told her, she already knew. She knew all about my illness, rows me and DH had been having and I actually told her I was jealous cos she is young slim and attractive, unlike me. Then she told me she is actually gay and i had nothing to worry about. She uses men and has half a dozen on the go at once but only for emotional relationships, she likes women for sex. Er ok, did I need to know that? It seems I did! She told me she hadn't told her colleagues cos 'men get so excited about me being gay, they all want threesomes' again, the alarm bells were dinging like mad. Again s he outstayed her welcome - by 4 hours!!! She knew I was not comfy outside so she took herself off into my garden for her nails to dry, this was at DH suggestion as i was a nice day. I tried popping out with them but there was such an atmosphere I left them to it. He was burning rubbish and said ' i'd have a bbq but I a the only one who eats meat' She piped up - Ido! He said 'no i have painting to do' She said 'i'll help' he said no need. He was quite curt with her and eventually she stormed out in a huff when we started to get on with our evening and she was made to feel unwelcome. She was so strange and made us both uncomfortable. I also found out whilst she was here that DH is in fact her superior, she is his assistant and he has been training her and she sits right next to him in his office! He had not told me any of this. I then got a call from my best friend asking if all was ok cos DH had told her DH he didn't know how much more he could stand of being with me when I am ill. I put 2 & 2 together and confronted him. DH said oh that was weeks ago, I was down and doing the mid life crisis bit, everything's fine now.I asked him about the insults he had been hurling at me lately about my weight and things and he apologised but said he wanted me to 'sort myself out'. It seemed that underneath it all he was still unhappy with me. So i confronted him with all I had been told by AP and best friend. He admitted they had a very close friendship and he needed her to be able to cope with living with my problems. She cheered him up, made him feel good etc. I asked various questions and found out they were texting 'occasionally' and he just liked her as a friend. I can't quite remember what happened next but gradually over the next few days I found out they were texting every night. I got really concerned then and asked to see his phone because he had not been leaving it lying around for weeks. It was clear, all messages deleted! I asked for the password to our phone account and he denied knowing it. I woke up the next morning and found an email stating DH had succesfully changed both the password and email address the account was registered too. I rang him up and he refused to give it to me. He said 'its bad I don't want youy to see' He then changed his facebook details too. He came home from work and we had a blazing row where he ripped me to shreds. Stuff like 'i need help to cope with being with you' 'i have so much in common wth her' 'she makes me feel good' I'm not giving her up etc etc. He then said he was leaving me. I am ashamed to say that after weeks of verbal abuse and lies I tried to kill myself. At this point he ended the EA and came back to me. I was furious, didn't want him back. Hated him for what he had done. He gave me the password to the account and it turns out he was texting her from 7am until they were in work and from6pm to 2am the following day. This was on a rolling cycle. 750 texts in 6 weeks!!! He was even texting her whilst bathing our DC. The worst was when i found out one of the nights i sent him out he sent her 93 texts!! I suppose at least that shows she was nt with him. I was torn to ribbons. He then backed down and said he had been horrible to me because he felt so guilty and it was easier to blame me. He said it was not my fault and all he had said had just been to hurt me. Not true at all. He said he got angry cos he was defensive. He knew what he was doing was wrong but had justified it to himself as 'just friends'. Apparently a few time (and the records show this) he did try and stop it, but she always came back with ' it's just texting, just friends, you need the support. It turned out she was not giving advice as he had hoped she would but telling how he deserved better, needed his freedom etc etc. He got an ego boost from this so found it hard to let go. The records show that once I tried to kill myself the texting stopped. Although he did text her to let her know he wouldn't be in work cos i was in hospital. Before I did it i did send her a text asking what she was playing at and the reply cam back f off with your paranoia and issues, I will do what i like! DH said when he got to work she ran out to the car park screaming at him that i had no right to text her as she can be friends with whoever she likes and he could f off. He told me the following week she said to him, after meeting her and liking her it makes her seem real, I wish the last 6 weeks had never happened. Don't know what to make of that, she wasn't worried about trying to take my DH from me! since then he has been very patient, answered all my questions. Assured me its me he loves and the only reason he wanted a break was to get her and me out of his head and get his act together. He says he feels relieved now it's over. he was feeling so guilty he lost a stone over those 6 weeks and kept losing his temper and saying he was leaving then begging me to forgive him and let him stay. He didn't knwo what to think or do cos she was constantly in his head with all the texts.He says he is glad it's all over as she was really getting on his nerves towards the end, they were even arguing. He says he was running from his responsibilites cos she made him feel he didn't have to answer to anyone but himself and that made him really unsettled and unsure. He says it's the worst thing he has ever done and will never repeat it now he knows what an EA is. He thought they just had a friendship until he realised she would not take no for an answer. He said at one point he was so unco mfortable he carried on texting out of fear she would tell me how serious their relationship was becomming. THere was never any sex or, he insists, physical attraction. He says he wanted someone to talk to and it escalated because she was always texting him. Then he started believing ehat she was saying about how he would be better away from his family and got really resentful of me and DC, then he realised something was not right with their friendship and tried to stop it but she would not stop texting. so rather than have a row he carried it on in case she told me and he justified his actions to himself that it was just texting. He told me he never really believed that just told himself so he could continue and keep his ego boost and not rock the boat. He is still working closely with her. His job is well paid and we could never manage if he left. He said he confronted her with the phone account and said look how extreme it was, no more, just business from now on, I am going to make things work with my family. SHe agreed. SHe did text once more but he told me immediately and refused to reply. When she asked in the morning at work apparently he told her that he would not answer any more texts. He has not text her in two weeks now. he comes home for his lunch now rather than eat in the office with her. He rings me when they have a smoke break rather than talk to her. He is still quiet with me but says it's cos he is struggling with the guilt of what he has done to me the past 2 months and it will take a while before he can live with himself comfortably. He is also emailing me a lot from work to show he is thinking of me not her. He says things like her perfume makes me sick, I hate everything about her. She got in my head at a weak point and turned me against my family. I am sorry this is so long and if anyone manages to read through it please get yourself a nice cuppa and some choccy as a reward:o basically I needed to get it off my chest and ask,have i done the right thing in forgiving him and working on our marriage? Or am I being a mug? I think I have done the right thing but am so scared he will do it again. He swears he has chosen me and will be more cautios with women in future as he did not set out for this to happen. It crept up on him when he fell for her flattery and the free life she was painting for him. He says he has realised he would hate life without us and is totally commited to total fidelity and honesty from now on. I think he means it cos the have a visitor at work today and are all going for a meal at lunch time. He told me he will let her go in first and sit down and he will sit as far from her as possible. It looks to e like he is really trying. Am i falling for a load of nonsense or should I trust him?? X O | |||
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