Hello. I am new here. I've been with my husband for 10 years come April, married for 9 come July and I have two teens from my previous marriage (I was an obnoxious entitled WAW and had affairs and bailed. Luckily, we've put together a very wonderful family but my behaviour back then was utterly appalling). I also have two little boys with my husband who are 2 and 5.
Our marriage has literally always had a history of infidelity. My husband didn't have "affairs" with other women, he was an extremely frequent visitor of sex workers. He had... issues to say the least which could fill a book relating to family of origin and severe bullying as a kid (I'm talking stuff that I would call sexual assault but I don't put words in his mouth and he has never used those words). I stuck with him because he worked to try to stop that and sought therapy and owned it and frankly... it was obvious something was "wrong" with him. That he wasn't just a jerk. So I stayed. His last episode acting out that way was... gosh, probably around 3 years ago? I don't remember the last time, and I thought things were going really well between us. I felt safe and comfortable with him. I trusted him.
One of the things he used to do when he'd go visit sex workers was he would turn off his phone and be unavailable all night long. Without telling me. He'd say he was on his way home and then BOOM no answer straight to voice mail, and then he'd roll in at 7am looking all sad panda. As you can imagine this often turned into raging screaming glass shattering fights. Occasionally now, he will do the same thing... turn off his phone and not answer, and come home around say 2-3am, occasionally 6am if he's with his gambling buddies. I am NOT worried he is seeing sex workers again. I know his banking patterns and the money that costs and that's just not what is happening.
What IS happening is that he is doing MLC type stuff. He gets very close with his female coworkers (and no, I am sure he is not sleeping with them... EAs don't have to be sexual or romantic at all! You can be in an EA with your parents, your best friend, anyone, anything really) and then suddenly I can do nothing right. While he wanted me to stay home with our kids, he now resents the financial burden and feels that was ... not exactly "lazy", but that I was enjoying a "luxury" and should have helped him more. Then when I went working at his office part time (he is a private practice lawyer) to arrange things and help him and build the business together, nothing I did was right, and he didn't have time for me because he had things to do. I began furthering my education, and he didn't like that either because I became involved in various organizations and he felt my time was better utilized helping him (but....). I would ask to go out and have a pint after work together and he would sit there resenting the hell out of me barely speaking.... later he admits because he was so angry I was basically studying and having fun with students all day while he was working for a living (but.... he shut me out....and I was studying and gaining experience to build OUR business....). Then he'd hire these young, sexy, professionally ambitious successful women (strangely he never works with men) with no children to do all kinds of work for him and start giving them jobs managing projects that should have by all rights gone to me. In one absolutely horrible instance, he even put a 22 year old with no experience whatsoever in the project in question over me. As in supervising.
Later, he started a professional organizational consulting business with her. After telling me that he did not have time or resources to do the exact same thing when I had been begging for months. This was pretty much the bomb for me. An odd bomb you might think, but for me it really, truly was.
I did everything wrong at this point. I absolutly exploded. I demanded he cut her off cold. He told me that he absolutely would not and that no one was going to bully him or tell him what to do professionally. During this time, he would be out socializing during the work day at the pub with these young people, and I'd be war dialing, and they helpfully let him know I was controlling and abusive and causing him severe anxiety. I had a pretty stern talking to with one where I informed her she was a child and had NO idea what our history was and there was a REASON I would call and a REASON I wanted his backside home. I was tired, worn out, he was teaching evenings and working days, and the 2-3 days a week he wasn't teaching at night he was filling with meetings and socializing.
I decided to let it go regarding the business. I continued keeping on doing my own thing, working as hard as I could trying to foster closeness. He would complain the house wasn't clean enough, so I'd do more, he'd complain there was no place for him to work quietly here, so I turned a bedroom into an office for him ... he's used it approximately 10 minutes in the three months since.
I should add, the one problem we don't have and never have had is in the bedroom. We are extremely compatible and frequent. He has repeatedly said this gives him great comfort because to him that means all his not lost. We have also admitted it's one of the reasons we stayed together on many occasions, because the idea of giving one another up that way just sounded impossible.
In January I did something I swore I'd never do. I know my husband, and I know when he's being all snotty to me, it's because he's directing all his happy feelings and social and emotional energy elsewhere. Elsewhere usually being some 22 year old female he has a "professional" relationship with. These relationships are not, again, sexual (see above, that's not the problem) but he gets validation about how smart and hardworking he is, and well, frankly, they aren't nagging battleaxes like me always throwing a fit wanting him home and wanting some attention.
So I looked in his FB messages. And I found a long string of messages between him and the one woman he had an actual affair with many years ago (although they only slept together once... it was never that which was the issue... it was their constant texting and giggling and BFF type behaviour). I never said to cut her off. I don't believe in blaming young women (she was19) for the mistakes grown men (he was 30) make. Plus, professionally, it would have been quite awkward. And really, she wasn't relevant to the problems in our marriage. So I wasn't mad they were in contact. No that was not an issue. What I was angry about was the conversation was very flirty, very sexually charged. I wouldn't have blinked if it had been with someone else. But not with her. That was too much.
I hijacked his status and said "isn't it great when your wife reads your messages?" and then told myself to go to bed, and talk to him in the morning. It took all my composure not to go into total explosion mode. It was 143am. And then his phone rang. It was her. And I lost it. I chewed her up one side and down the other, then went on a very public and prolific two day facebook tantrum which several friends had to talk me down from. I later erased it all. We arranged for marital counseling (we've had MC for years and years, often SB, but frankly, he has hardly ever actually done anything he was supposed to be doing as his part of the solutions) a few days later. He showed up with a separation agreement. Because see he wanted to know how things would go if we split up, and didn't feel safe talking unless we had that done. I signed it because I wasn't about to let him use that as some sort of sticking point. So we are now financially separated.
I told him his EAs have to stop and he needs to focus time on US and OUR MARRIAGE and build some REAL transparency (he has always said he was far too busy and/or exhausted from work... but he has time for everyone else?) He responded to my insistence by saying he wanted a divorce. No not because he didn't love me but because I had embarrassed him publicly. I exploded more (privately this time) as I felt he had to absolutely be kidding me. (One of our big issues is him shaming me for being angry at him. He's more concerned I'm upset and angry than that he's pulling messed up stunts). However, I wanted my marriage. So I calmed down and told him listen I know I've done some messed up stuff, so have you, let's take a year and each work on our OWN stuff, and then we'll live together in peace and work on this issue in a year. I knew his defenses were way too high to think logically or get anywhere.
He agreed. We hammered out an agreement of stuff we'd work on individually, and behaviour issues we would abide by (I wasn't about to spend the year being Perfect Wife while he was still out partying like a rock star and building these super close friendships with young women and shutting me out). I've been... moderately successful on my end. I have a lot of work to do. However, as far as I can see? He hasn't done a single thing. I see no introspection, he's still socializing as much as before, still in super close friendships, etc. And so I'd explode and we'd fight. I'd ask when we could talk about a certain issue (no, not relationship issues, I mean I want his advice and help on some business stuff!) and he told me some ridiculous date like a week from when I asked, when everyone else gets him immediately. I was so furious! It's just so disrespectful!
But my temper is just killing this. It's making things worse. He's provoking me purely so he can justify being a WAH. He's managed to turn the whole thing into "I love you and want to work on our marriage, but we're traumatizing the kids by our fighting, so it's best if we split up" which gobsmacks me as my response is "how about you stop engaging in XYZ inappropriate behaviours instead?!?! He feels no matter WHAT he does I'm supposed to say simply "gosh husband that's disappointing" or leave him if it's that upsetting to me that I can't speak calmly. It's twisted!
I KNOW I have to stop. I KNOW I need to be following those 37 rules. But right now I am STUCK and having a hard time doing that, because to my husband? If I followed those 37 rules? And we were that detached from one another? Yeah that's his idea of a perfect marriage! We should both have our own thing going on, speak superficially about nothing, have sex regularly, make nice financial investments. That is simply NOT enough for me, it's NOT what I signed up for, and if I behave and detach to that extent? I will fall out of love with him. I will. I know me. Because I don't see at all where, if that's precisely what he wants, what that will do to give him any incentive to come back home (figuratively) and be the husband and father he promised us.
So I'm finding it very resentment building to do the 37 things... because to me that means AGAIN as usual my concerns and needs are swept away. I know I need to think long term, but I'm having a hard time believing he will ever come around because, again, that's precisely the interaction he wants from me!
me-39 H-36 MS 17 MD 15 Our Kids 5 & 2 Married 8 years, Together 10 H doesn't want a divorce, but would prefer we live our entire marriage by the "37 rules."
