Talk me off a ledge- other side of the world and just discovered cheating

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

Re: the drinking- there were several spaced out instances (months apart from each other) where he was either drinkng more than he said or it was a weird circumstance surrounding drinking that otherwise didn't add up. I actually just went back through the depths of DCUM and found a post I made about it and almost all the replies tell me he's likely cheating. Dcum knew a year before I did. Feeling like an idiot.

Link for that post?

Look at yesterday's posts (01/18) at 14:03. That person posted the link.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

If by shouting you mean, "Ugh, I wish you guys would put your shoes away! I keep tripping over them! [pause] I'm sorry guys, I didn't mean to shout. I'm grumpy but that's not your fault" then OK this happens in every marriage. If you mean more than this, then no, it doesn't.


+1. I have never in my life shouted at my kids or husband. My father has never once shouted at me. Have I said things people don’t want to hear? Have I dealt with conflict? Yes, but it is not necessary to shout or be aggressive. Doing so is just an intimidatory tactic

Shouting when you are at a breaking point with stress is not a surprise. OP’s DH should have handled things better and told her calmly what he eventually told her, but I don’t think the fact that he shouted means he is abusive - especially since OP said it was the first time in 15 years that had happened.

Once my husband lost his shit and shouted at me when he was at a breaking point. It was two sentences and then he walked away. He came back a minute later, apologized, said he couldn’t believe he did that, and that he was going on a walk. I won’t opine on whether or not OP’s husbands actions were abusive but I think they were extreme.

[Anonymous]

One time the housekeeper shrank my husband's favorite jeans and he howled like a wounded animal. It wasn't pretty, but it also wasn't directed at ME, or even the housekeeper. What OP's husband seemed to do was express all this repressed rage, which is a sign he's conflict avoidant and lets things fester and build. It's OK to have big feelings but if you feel rage towards your spouse or kids when they haven't done some unspeakable thing, then it's an issue of emotional regulation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just read the drinking thread and I am amazed at how insightful this poster was (04/03/2022 at 23:03):

"Six months from now you will be kicking yourself for not taking action NOW. Definitely alcohol abuse. Likely affair induced. It is a thing, OP, and he’s likely using alcohol to cover the guilt and self-loathing that accompanies his adulterous encounters. You need to take action NOW: check his texts, review credit card statements, hire a PI, nail down all assets, lawyer up."

Wow. What's the plan going forward, OP?

[Anonymous]

Op here. Really appreciating all of the discussions.

I don't think we had the most perfect marriage, but we were always kind, calm, and present with one another. Definitely thought I had the marriage I've always wanted and felt thankful every single day.

I do agree that being together since we were 18 isn't ideal at all for finding our individual selves and needs. I've thought about that many times especially during our 22-28yo phase I knew there was a real chance that we could grow apart instead of together because so many life changes happen during that period like starting careers, getting into the "real world". The thing was- letting him go to explore myself was just never on the table because I always thought he was the BEST partner. When I went to college, I dumped by HS boyfriend and had the huge burst of "I'm going to focus on myself during college, not going to have a boyfriend for these 4 years". I called my best friend and told her all of this and then I literally met DH the next day and was like sh-t, this is my person. Cannot pass the moment up. Now I'm just in the process of combing back through my last several years and rewriting history in my mind to reflect the truth instead of my perceived experiences. It's been really hard to even start to process.

I did address the drinking with him and he assured me that it was an unhealthy outlet for his work stress. At the start of the pandemic more than 50% of his work team was laid off and he absorbed all the work. He was working 7am-5pm, helping with dinner, bath, and bedtime with the kids, eating dinner with me after they went to sleep, then working again like 8:30-11pm every night (I know this is true). This aligns with the start of the affair and the first drinking instance. After we had the conversation, there haven't been any more drinking circumstances so it just wasn't on my radar. We have wine with dinner on the weekends usually or a couple beers if we're playing cards or sitting on the porch together after the kids go to bed but there wasn't anything beyond that that I knew of. I do admit that I wasn't fully zoned in or watching him at all times- I work FT and have 2 little kids. I guess I just took him at his word because I didn't have a reason not to. We were in a pandemic with a toddler and newborn, both working from home, kids were home ALL the time due to exposures/childcare closures, I was nursing a boob obsessed baby, his job was killing him.

I agree that rereading that thread was wild and some of those PPs were just so dead on it's shocking. It was also oddly comforting that so many other people have had the same experience.

My head is screaming at me to leave, but I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. I have not given him a glimmer of hope yet. I keep telling him I'm done, we're divorcing once we have a separation plan. I made it clear in our first marriage counseling that reconciliation was not necessarily my goal and I screened out 3 other therapists on initial calls that seemed surprised to hear that. A PP here said something about if I am going to try to work it out, I have to give him hope of this. I'm currently mulling this over. I feel like I don't have hope to give.

Re: the no shouting. We just....don't? We don't yell at each other, we don't yell at our kids. When we disagree or have a heavy topic to discuss, we've always picked a time to do so (like can we talk tomorrow after the kids go to bed) and then we talk it out. I guess our kids are little and healthy so we haven't been faced with major parenting issues yet. I don't know what else we would fight about. DH carries his weight and then some around the household and parenting, he's a fantastic dad, he cooks, cleans, does laundry, takes on some of the mental load of ordering the next size of kids clothes/shoes, scheduling doctors appts, planning trips. He's extremely handy and fixes anything plumbing, electrical, heating/AC, or car related. When he would travel for work, he suggested an agreement that his first full day home would always be a "day off" of kids and household for me. There just wasn't really any built up resentment about anything and I can't think of anything obvious we would fight about.

I am taking everyones thoughts to heart and appreciate you all sharing your own experiences and insights.

[Anonymous]

Forgot to touch on conflict avoidance. My in laws are the WORST with conflict avoidance. They literally are professional rug sweepers and the amount of family conversations I've spearheaded when something is going on and they're all ignoring is crazy. They never address the elephant in the room on their own.

DH's brother and SIL are in marriage therapy for that reason.

[Anonymous]

I don't blame you for not being interested in reconciliation, OP. He lied to you not just about the affair, but about drinking. The said he was going to stop secret drinking, but did it again. Now he says he's going to stop sexing other women, but how do you know he really will? It might not even by lying necessarily, just making promises he can't keep. In both cases this could be compulsive behavior / addiction.

[Anonymous]

And, I'm sorry OP - this might be harsh, but I call BS on "I did discuss the drinking with him and he assured me it was because of work stress."

I re-read the drinking thread. You describe drunk driving, gaslighting, slurring, stumbling, not helping you with a baby, lying to your face and those are just the instances you knew about. Posters were telling you to go to Al-Alon. If your conversation about that was a 2-sentence - I'm sorry, I've been really stressed with work - then you didn't even really discuss it at all.

[Anonymous]

I just want to say, OP, that you seem like a really thoughtful, considerate person. I'm really sorry you're going through this pain. You deserved better. Wishing you lots of strength and courage. Hugs.

[Anonymous]

For OP and PPs - I am the person that mentions shouting as abuse. As a person who has gone through two abusive relationships - one which was emotional that in the end turned to physical threats and one in which cheating and other forms of emotional abuse were present. Neither relationship involved actual physical violence, and I am a very strong, well-educated person so it took a long time to understand how the emotional abuse in these relationships shaped me and counted as abuse even though it wasn’t physical.

I just want to highlight that, when considering abuse, it is wrong to look at the shouting as “it only happened one time”. The shouting happened along side another major form of abuse - the cheating, which is in and of itself, deeply emotionally abusive and manipulative and involves other forms of emotional abuse - active lying and lying by omission, gaslighting, etc. Also, it’s very common for abuse to be part of a cycle - tension builds, tension is released and then there is a good period. There is always good - otherwise why would women get sucked into these relationships? And, all abuse begins with a single act. Part of getting and staying out of abusive relationships is recognizing that abusive first act and treating like the true red flag that it is instead of normalizing it.

So, the question isn’t really is the shouting happening repeatedly - and if not then it’s just a justified one-time slip. Or is the shouting the “kind” of shouting that is “abusive”. The question is what is the dynamic of the whole relationship?

Ultimately, to successfully address the cheating, IMO, you and your DH have to acknowledge that he abused your trust and manipulated you emotionally. You have a lot of pretty, rational reasons why he cheated (stress at work, family upbringing, alcohol, etc.) but at the core of all of that, is that he choose to handle that by taking advantage of you in many ways.

That is the underlying reason why a post-nup us so important if you stay, because he abused your trust and manipulated your understanding of your reality.

I also disagree with the poster who said you have to give him hope if you expect him to stay. What the cheater decides to do about his own violations has to be motivated by his own insights about himself and his desire to change and improve, rather than an instrumental set of actions he will only undertake if he thinks she might stay.

IMO, the cheater has to understand that he needs to work every day for the rest of his life to be the kind of person that is in a healthy relationship and that he is offering her a healthy relationship. He has to know that she has the power to walk at any time. Previously, he didn’t want to give you that power - that is why he manipulated you into staying. He knew that if he was honest with you, there was a danger the relationship would be over. He didn’t want to give up control of the relationship. And that, is the core of all abuse - control.

I’m not saying OP has to stay or leave, but I don’t think it’s helpful to at this time to minimize abusive behavior. That’s the kind of rug-sweeping that DH and his family have always engaged in, and OP has gone along with in some ways.

[Anonymous]

Just one more thing to my extremely long (apologies) post.^^.

One way to look at this, OP, is that the marriage you had is dead. The post-nup is a way of acknowledging that. If you two are going to move forward, this is a time when you are each going to use individual counseling to re-examine who you are, what you need and what kind of life you want to create and whether the other person is the tight partner for this next stage. The marriage counseling is the way that you communicate and negotiate about that - that’s why it is secondary to IC. In a way, it’s like dating again, but in a much more mature realistic way that doesn’t rely on butterflies and fairy-tale narratives.

This actually means your DH has some power too (as it should be) - he might not want a partner that insists on change, or transparency instead of rug-sweeping or a relationship where his mistakes are present instead of in the past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For OP and PPs - I am the person that mentions shouting as abuse. As a person who has gone through two abusive relationships - one which was emotional that in the end turned to physical threats and one in which cheating and other forms of emotional abuse were present. Neither relationship involved actual physical violence, and I am a very strong, well-educated person so it took a long time to understand how the emotional abuse in these relationships shaped me and counted as abuse even though it wasn’t physical.

I just want to highlight that, when considering abuse, it is wrong to look at the shouting as “it only happened one time”. The shouting happened along side another major form of abuse - the cheating, which is in and of itself, deeply emotionally abusive and manipulative and involves other forms of emotional abuse - active lying and lying by omission, gaslighting, etc. Also, it’s very common for abuse to be part of a cycle - tension builds, tension is released and then there is a good period. There is always good - otherwise why would women get sucked into these relationships? And, all abuse begins with a single act. Part of getting and staying out of abusive relationships is recognizing that abusive first act and treating like the true red flag that it is instead of normalizing it.

So, the question isn’t really is the shouting happening repeatedly - and if not then it’s just a justified one-time slip. Or is the shouting the “kind” of shouting that is “abusive”. The question is what is the dynamic of the whole relationship?

Ultimately, to successfully address the cheating, IMO, you and your DH have to acknowledge that he abused your trust and manipulated you emotionally. You have a lot of pretty, rational reasons why he cheated (stress at work, family upbringing, alcohol, etc.) but at the core of all of that, is that he choose to handle that by taking advantage of you in many ways.

That is the underlying reason why a post-nup us so important if you stay, because he abused your trust and manipulated your understanding of your reality.

I also disagree with the poster who said you have to give him hope if you expect him to stay. What the cheater decides to do about his own violations has to be motivated by his own insights about himself and his desire to change and improve, rather than an instrumental set of actions he will only undertake if he thinks she might stay.

IMO, the cheater has to understand that he needs to work every day for the rest of his life to be the kind of person that is in a healthy relationship and that he is offering her a healthy relationship. He has to know that she has the power to walk at any time. Previously, he didn’t want to give you that power - that is why he manipulated you into staying. He knew that if he was honest with you, there was a danger the relationship would be over. He didn’t want to give up control of the relationship. And that, is the core of all abuse - control.

I’m not saying OP has to stay or leave, but I don’t think it’s helpful to at this time to minimize abusive behavior. That’s the kind of rug-sweeping that DH and his family have always engaged in, and OP has gone along with in some ways.

I totally agree with you and you beautifully articulated a lot of my feelings and what has been bothering me the most. It's honestly not even the cheating itself. It's the taking away my agency to make informed decisions about my life, the deception, the avalanche of lies this required.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Re: the no shouting. We just....don't? We don't yell at each other, we don't yell at our kids. When we disagree or have a heavy topic to discuss, we've always picked a time to do so (like can we talk tomorrow after the kids go to bed) and then we talk it out. I guess our kids are little and healthy so we haven't been faced with major parenting issues yet. I don't know what else we would fight about. DH carries his weight and then some around the household and parenting, he's a fantastic dad, he cooks, cleans, does laundry, takes on some of the mental load of ordering the next size of kids clothes/shoes, scheduling doctors appts, planning trips. He's extremely handy and fixes anything plumbing, electrical, heating/AC, or car related. When he would travel for work, he suggested an agreement that his first full day home would always be a "day off" of kids and household for me. There just wasn't really any built up resentment about anything and I can't think of anything obvious we would fight about.

Minus the kids, I was in a marriage like this. Got together at 19, together 22 years, never fought. We just knew how to communicate respectfully and we rarely disagreed on anything. But my H also had a big unhealthy secret -- he was hooking up with men, which forced us to divorce. But what you describe in the paragraph above is so incredibly rare. It's rare to find someone you get along with to that degree, who you also want to have sex with. Being divorced sucks. It's lonely. You no longer have "your person" to share mundane thoughts with, go to dinner with, play cards with, travel with. My ex's family was MY family, and yet they completely disappeared when we divorced. Same with most of our intertwined group of friends. I can't fathom starting over with a stranger I meet online, someone who has secrets just like my ex did (who's currently dating a woman he met on bumble). You have a marriage worth saving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For OP and PPs - I am the person that mentions shouting as abuse. As a person who has gone through two abusive relationships - one which was emotional that in the end turned to physical threats and one in which cheating and other forms of emotional abuse were present. Neither relationship involved actual physical violence, and I am a very strong, well-educated person so it took a long time to understand how the emotional abuse in these relationships shaped me and counted as abuse even though it wasn’t physical.

I just want to highlight that, when considering abuse, it is wrong to look at the shouting as “it only happened one time”. The shouting happened along side another major form of abuse - the cheating, which is in and of itself, deeply emotionally abusive and manipulative and involves other forms of emotional abuse - active lying and lying by omission, gaslighting, etc. Also, it’s very common for abuse to be part of a cycle - tension builds, tension is released and then there is a good period. There is always good - otherwise why would women get sucked into these relationships? And, all abuse begins with a single act. Part of getting and staying out of abusive relationships is recognizing that abusive first act and treating like the true red flag that it is instead of normalizing it.

So, the question isn’t really is the shouting happening repeatedly - and if not then it’s just a justified one-time slip. Or is the shouting the “kind” of shouting that is “abusive”. The question is what is the dynamic of the whole relationship?

Ultimately, to successfully address the cheating, IMO, you and your DH have to acknowledge that he abused your trust and manipulated you emotionally. You have a lot of pretty, rational reasons why he cheated (stress at work, family upbringing, alcohol, etc.) but at the core of all of that, is that he choose to handle that by taking advantage of you in many ways.

That is the underlying reason why a post-nup us so important if you stay, because he abused your trust and manipulated your understanding of your reality.

I also disagree with the poster who said you have to give him hope if you expect him to stay. What the cheater decides to do about his own violations has to be motivated by his own insights about himself and his desire to change and improve, rather than an instrumental set of actions he will only undertake if he thinks she might stay.

IMO, the cheater has to understand that he needs to work every day for the rest of his life to be the kind of person that is in a healthy relationship and that he is offering her a healthy relationship. He has to know that she has the power to walk at any time. Previously, he didn’t want to give you that power - that is why he manipulated you into staying. He knew that if he was honest with you, there was a danger the relationship would be over. He didn’t want to give up control of the relationship. And that, is the core of all abuse - control.

I’m not saying OP has to stay or leave, but I don’t think it’s helpful to at this time to minimize abusive behavior. That’s the kind of rug-sweeping that DH and his family have always engaged in, and OP has gone along with in some ways.

I totally agree with you and you beautifully articulated a lot of my feelings and what has been bothering me the most. It's honestly not even the cheating itself. It's the taking away my agency to make informed decisions about my life, the deception, the avalanche of lies this required.

I'm a PP who has been replying on this thread (conflict avoidant DH had affair 8 years ago with an OW very far away, we are still together).

Yes, exactly this^. You can understand how things snowball into affairs on a human level, but the deception and manipulation involved in maintaining that secret are so deeply hurtful and unfair.

PP who explained about abuse, thank you. I hope that people who are normalizing yelling will take heed. Sure, we all yell "Sh*t!" when we stub our toe. But we don't all yell hateful things at our loved ones. This isn't understandable or OK.

OP, I could understand the "give him hope" advice if this were a chess game and staying together was the ultimate goal, but no, I wouldn't give someone false hope just to keep them invested. He broke the marriage. If he can't muster up the investment on his own without you giving him gold stars for making tiny efforts at cleaning up his own mess, then you'll be rebuilding on shaky ground anyway.

I'm just curious and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but I'm wondering if you've asked if this was his only affair, what his answer was, and if you believe him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For OP and PPs - I am the person that mentions shouting as abuse. As a person who has gone through two abusive relationships - one which was emotional that in the end turned to physical threats and one in which cheating and other forms of emotional abuse were present. Neither relationship involved actual physical violence, and I am a very strong, well-educated person so it took a long time to understand how the emotional abuse in these relationships shaped me and counted as abuse even though it wasn’t physical.

I just want to highlight that, when considering abuse, it is wrong to look at the shouting as “it only happened one time”. The shouting happened along side another major form of abuse - the cheating, which is in and of itself, deeply emotionally abusive and manipulative and involves other forms of emotional abuse - active lying and lying by omission, gaslighting, etc. Also, it’s very common for abuse to be part of a cycle - tension builds, tension is released and then there is a good period. There is always good - otherwise why would women get sucked into these relationships? And, all abuse begins with a single act. Part of getting and staying out of abusive relationships is recognizing that abusive first act and treating like the true red flag that it is instead of normalizing it.

So, the question isn’t really is the shouting happening repeatedly - and if not then it’s just a justified one-time slip. Or is the shouting the “kind” of shouting that is “abusive”. The question is what is the dynamic of the whole relationship?

Ultimately, to successfully address the cheating, IMO, you and your DH have to acknowledge that he abused your trust and manipulated you emotionally. You have a lot of pretty, rational reasons why he cheated (stress at work, family upbringing, alcohol, etc.) but at the core of all of that, is that he choose to handle that by taking advantage of you in many ways.

That is the underlying reason why a post-nup us so important if you stay, because he abused your trust and manipulated your understanding of your reality.

I also disagree with the poster who said you have to give him hope if you expect him to stay. What the cheater decides to do about his own violations has to be motivated by his own insights about himself and his desire to change and improve, rather than an instrumental set of actions he will only undertake if he thinks she might stay.

IMO, the cheater has to understand that he needs to work every day for the rest of his life to be the kind of person that is in a healthy relationship and that he is offering her a healthy relationship. He has to know that she has the power to walk at any time. Previously, he didn’t want to give you that power - that is why he manipulated you into staying. He knew that if he was honest with you, there was a danger the relationship would be over. He didn’t want to give up control of the relationship. And that, is the core of all abuse - control.

I’m not saying OP has to stay or leave, but I don’t think it’s helpful to at this time to minimize abusive behavior. That’s the kind of rug-sweeping that DH and his family have always engaged in, and OP has gone along with in some ways.

I totally agree with you and you beautifully articulated a lot of my feelings and what has been bothering me the most. It's honestly not even the cheating itself. It's the taking away my agency to make informed decisions about my life, the deception, the avalanche of lies this required.

I'm a PP who has been replying on this thread (conflict avoidant DH had affair 8 years ago with an OW very far away, we are still together).

Yes, exactly this^. You can understand how things snowball into affairs on a human level, but the deception and manipulation involved in maintaining that secret are so deeply hurtful and unfair.

PP who explained about abuse, thank you. I hope that people who are normalizing yelling will take heed. Sure, we all yell "Sh*t!" when we stub our toe. But we don't all yell hateful things at our loved ones. This isn't understandable or OK.

OP, I could understand the "give him hope" advice if this were a chess game and staying together was the ultimate goal, but no, I wouldn't give someone false hope just to keep them invested. He broke the marriage. If he can't muster up the investment on his own without you giving him gold stars for making tiny efforts at cleaning up his own mess, then you'll be rebuilding on shaky ground anyway.

I'm just curious and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but I'm wondering if you've asked if this was his only affair, what his answer was, and if you believe him.

I've asked him at least 20 times. He says it was his one and only. I've extensively dug through phone records, credit cards, bank statements, Venmo, email, his airline account, social media, and anything else you could think of and haven't found anything pointing to another one. Obviously I don't take his words at face value anymore. So far, everything he has said and the thousands of questions I've had him answer (though insanely painful) have aligned with everything I can see and piece together from the timeline.