1. It turns him off of you 2. It drains your energy 3. After about six months of that you will start getting ill
My reccomendation is for you not to contact him at all, have a third party do the protesting. Your father may not be the best choice if he can't control himself.
I often recommend spouses to go into protection phase and isolate themselves from their spouses... no phone calls or anything.. or if it has to be done it should be the least direct method (ie: email preferable to a phone call).
You want time to process what is being said, AND you want the most passive exchange from them you can get. Yes email hurts but not like being blasted right in person.
You can try to wait out the affair. If he's having $$ trouble and YOu aren't talking to him, he WILL take that out on OW instead of you. He will need a punching bag for his bad luck.
His behavior early on in your marriage is not uncommon. And yes to a degree you allowed it to happen by not speaking up. Successful marital partners learn to negotiate their conflicts and minimize their effects. Being silent while your partner takes advantage of you isn't helping him or you. He acted like a child, but you in part enabled it to happen. It is very common.
Many men don't like being married early on. Or they claim to, but they grumble about it at home in private to you. They feel immasculated, tied up, and otherwise only half-alive. 4luv's husband I think is a good example of this problem. Many men want to be married but still feel and live like they are single. So they try to do that as much as they can get away with - to the detriment of their marriage.
None of this excuses infidelity. He has a child and a spouse, and therefore has obligations that FAR TRANSCEND how HE FEELS right NOW. He needs to man-up. The challenge is partly distance, but it is partly his own maturity level. He had maturity problems BEFORE the infidelity began, otherwise he woudlnt' have strayed in the first place.
What can you do right now? My advice is to organize a small support team to protest to him and negotiate on your behalf. Isolate yourself from him completely. This is for the benefit of YOUR health and his memory of you. If you keep pressing him his fondness of you will decline. So, have someone else press him to grow up.
You have done well without him, but it sounds like you ARE dependent on him financially. I would reccomend you spend as much time as possible finding the means to support yourself and your children without him. He isnt' reliable and you do have a responsability to these children. Go to school or work on a business plan or whatever you have to do to become a full person without him.
This may also attract him back.
But, the main reason is to ensure you are able to support your chidlren without his help. I honeslty can't see his infidelity lasting long term. It was based on a lie and hurting other people... That never lasts. Phil McGraw says on his website that affair couples success rate long term is less than ONE PERCENT.
So, his affair may last a year, it may even last two years (doubt that based on the sounds of things) but it will end. They almost ALWAYS do.
Hope he will come back, but work and live as if he isn't. That's the best choice you can make for your children.
I have every confidence that this affair will end, but I don't reccomend you put all of YOUR time into it. Put a support team togehter to deal with him and protest to him on your behalf while you focus on building and supporting your family.
