If you are a woman with kids who divorced at 40+, how are things?
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Anonymous
| OP, I am so sorry you are going through this. |
Anonymous
| I'm so sorry to hear this update OP. I have friends who successfully reconciled after an affair and have a strong marriage 10 years later. I'm one of the PP, and I tried to get my cheating spouse to reconcile. Spouse tried, promised to reconcile a few times, but always went back to the other woman. It's okay to take time to decide what to do, whether you try to stay together or you leave, your true options will become clearer with time. I'm glad to know that I did everything I could to save my marriage, but I'm happier now as a single mom than I was when the ex and I were together. (And dating has been a lot easier than I thought it would be) |
Anonymous
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OP I'm so sorry that you are going through this. It sounds absolutely heart wrenching.
I read the thread, and you mentioned a couple of times that your marriage pre-cheating was rocky, yet you did admit some culpability. Do you think that if you were to make a commitment to ending your part in your prior conflicts that your marriage could improve? Do you think your husband is a fundamentally good guy who got swept up in a rosier seeming situation due to alienation at home? Unless you have reason to believe that your husband never loved you or is fundamentally a shitty person, then if I were you I would spend the next months really improving myself in the interpersonal department. Do it to be a better person, not to hold onto him. If he is responsive, maybe your marriage can truly improve. If it's just a matter of him not wanting to be with you anymore, then you'll still be in a better place. Many of us have emotional issues when it comes to very close relationships. You can take this time to try to work on yours. Btw, this would also be excellent for your children to witness. Take care of yourself. |
Anonymous
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Also OP, maybe visit the marriedmansexlife.com website. It is not only for men, and the admins in the forum give very good advice about how to handle a cheating spouse if you want to try to save the marriage.
The main insight is that an affair can be very much like a drug, and someone caught up in it can behave very much like a drug addict. You need to take some precautionary steps to make sure that the affair is truly over. I am not an expert in this process, but I have read several threads about it in that forum, and I think you should give it a look and tell your story there. I personally think it's a good sign that your husband ended up in an emotional affair with the OW and is not just an unfeeling philanderer. It kind of suggests to me that he was feeling like something was wrong at home, and looked elsewhere to find a solution. Not a great thing to do obviously, but again, in my view, a lot better than if he was just a womanizing POS. Good luck!! |
Anonymous
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Hang in there, OP. Look after yourself and do what is best for YOU. You can't stay in a bad marriage just to protect your kids. From all your posts, it seems that you feel a lot of responsibility for your marriage not being perfect. I hope that you can now see that your DH was often angry with you for reasons beyond your control (he wanted to be with another woman).
In my experience, men often mistreat their spouses when they are having an affair. I think they need to demonize you in order to justify their own moral failure. In other words, if they convince themselves that you are a bad spouse or a bad person, they will feel better about breaking their vows. It sounds like he has affected your self esteem over the past few years. I am not saying that he is an abusive asshat, but the anger, the complaints, and the way he minimized your needs and efforts contribute to your feeling "less than". When I left my cheating husband, it took me several years to understand the full impact of his actions and the way that he treated me. It definitely becomes emotional abuse -- but when it is subtle, it is hard to see. I always thought of abuse as something far more sinister -- and it often is. All this is just to say that you are in a hard place right now. Know that no matter what your marriage was like, cheating is not acceptable behavior. Take your time. If you want to work on your marriage for a while to see if it can be salvaged -- do it! You won't regret trying to save it. If you decide it can not be saved or is not worth saving, then you can move on without guilt. I'm 50, divorced now after exDH cheated four years ago. There are plenty of men who are happy to date women with kids. Some are single dads; others have no kids and don't want any of their own. I've had three men who wanted to marry me since starting dating. Until now, I haven't been ready for that type of commitment. There is definitely life after divorce! |
Anonymous
OP again - I totally agree with you. We did have issues before the cheating. I completely, totally admit them and am responsible for my part in them. I have been working HARD to overcome them and have made amazing strides. I have been doing this since the baby came because I want to be a better person for my kids, for me, and for my husband. It takes two people to have problems in a relationship and I can honestly say I have given 100% to working on my end of things and my husband even admits that the things that I did that absolutely contributed to our problems are basically gone and he can see that I am really, really doing a good job on myself. He also admits that he basically turned a blind eye to all of this during his affair because it did not suit his view of me and our relationship and he in fact would be angered by my improved self probably because it undermined how he justified his behavior. I have no regrets about my behavior while he was off having his affair because I was really working hard on myself and I do have a therapist now and I am willing to completely own my own role in the problems in our relationship, which is actually very hard to do, to take a really analytical eye to yourself and have the courage to improve. If my marriage doesn't survive, at least I know that I am a better person and that he cannot take my internal progress away. I am proud of the person I am these days. Even though this is anonymous, writing that I am proud of myself is extremely hard yet liberating. It is a spot of pure happiness in this mess - that I can look myself square in the mirror and like what I see. BUT - I did not deserve what he has done. He alone is responsible for having an affair. He could have come to me and talked to me about his unhappiness. He never once talked to me about it. He never once tried to think about what role he might have in our problems. He did not tell me he was unhappy, I could just tell by his behavior. Hell, he could have left me. He did, and still does to some extent, blame me for a whole host of things and is just now realizing that he was an equal partner in our troubles. When things started getting rocky, my approach was to try to work with him and work like a dog to improve myself. My approach was to tell him that I loved him and our family and I wanted to make things work and that he was so important to me. His approach was to betray me. He let me go through months and months of begging him to give our marriage a chance and doing everything in my power to improve myself and he ignored it and spit in my face by having an affair. This is extremely hard for me to comprehend and I am not sure I will ever understand how he could have continued and in fact made his affair worse while I was giving my all. I do not know how you could treat a dog like that, much less the wife you took vows with. Okay, time to step away from DCUM for a bit 
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Anonymous
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Hugs OP, the PP here. I completely get everything you just said, and I know I'm just a rando on the internet, but I am proud of your courage to look yourself straight in the face. Best quality a person can have in my view. Keep up the good work.
I think the reason they say that working through affairs can make couples stronger than ever is because of the extreme emotional balancing act that you need to go through: keeping your commitment to self improvement AND working through totally legitimate feelings of betrayal and bewilderment and anger. Best of luck to you. |
Anonymous
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Hi op- hang in there! I've posted this before but will share again.
My parents divorced when I was just a bit older than your kids. Mom had custody, dad had visitation. Dad was not abusive but basically a jerk and not a good father. Fast forward 20 years- mom is remarried to a wonderful man who is not only better suited to her but more caring and more successful. She is very happy, lives a in a beautiful home, travels internationally often and has a great relationship with my siblings and myself. Siblings and I are all professionally successful and have loving long term marriages and relationships. I know it must be really scary but I would just say do your best for your kids. Good luck |
Anonymous
I have try a few diets to lose weight with mixed success. Should I try divorce? |
Anonymous
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sorry OP, I suspected an affair earlier, from the way he was determined to shut you down. I'm sorry you had to discover it, and that he did not come to you with it. It must be extremely painful to have tried so hard and made yourself so vulnerable to him, all the while he was with someone else and projecting a lot onto you so he would not feel the guilt and shame he inevitably feels.
there is no need to make any kind of decision now. Give yourself some time. Do you want to try therapy with him? Maybe it would help, maybe you are not 'there' yet. It is normal for your feelings to change dramatically during this time--moment to moment, from DTMF to having makeup sex, and back again. Try to maintain equilibrium in actions, even if your feelings are all over the place. marriages can and do survive affairs and get stronger. But not all do. The most important thing is that you have maintained your integrity throughout all of this, and you will be ok regardless of whatever happens. in practical terms, do not tell too many people about this. Its hard enough to know what to do, harder when you think others might be judging or will be voicing their opinions. No one else's opinions matters but your own (and your kids). stay strong. |
Anonymous
Yes, you should. Divorce is the ultimate weight loss plan: Lose ~200lbs of worthlessness (the man) and regain self esteem that powers you through shedding pounds off your own figure. |
Anonymous
Instead of casting blame, you will do better in life by adopting some personal responsibility. Want to know what causes weight gain? Too many calories and not enough exercise. Who is responsible for doing that? You. Want to loose weight? Eat less and exercise more. Who is responsible for doing that? You. |
Anonymous
| I replied above (similar situation), one practical tip. When I found out about my spouse's affair and didn't know if we would reconcile, I moved half of the money in our savings into my account that the spouse did not have access to. The other woman was someone I knew with a really bad financial history, and I was worried that spouse (now ex) would just take off with her and all our money. |
Anonymous
^^200lbs of worthlessness. |
Anonymous
OP back again. Thanks about the recommendation. My retirement and savings are in separate accounts with only my name on them, it's just the way they have always been structured. Right before I confronted my husband, I did call the banks and tell them that my husband did not have the authority to make any decisions on how to invest the money or to withdraw or move the money. It was pretty embarrassing but I just had no idea how he would respond or if he would try to just leave immediately with all of the funds and run off with the other woman, so I did feel the need to protect myself. I have told him that I did this and he says he understands. There is really no adequate description of how this whole thing has upended my life. He keeps telling me things about the affair that make me sick, of course in response to my questions. One of the things that really gets me is that he was not giving me any leeway and always thought I had ulterior motives when I did not, but his description of interactions with the other woman indicate that he was willing to overlook huge problems on her end and put her on a pedestal. |