ILYBINILWY - OW - what to do next

[SJW]

Me 46 H 39
M 11 T 14
S 10 DO 8
ILYBNILWY 11.06.17
Separate rooms 11.06.17

Never in a million (NIAM) would I have ever believed I would be back here again after my first divorce 15 years ago and everything I learned here then. This is a bit of a long one.

H announces Sunday night ILYBNILWY but there is nobody else. He was very upset and kept telling me how much he loved me but that feeling just wasn't there anymore. I'm not sure if it was shock or disbelief or what but I said that perhaps we hadn't been on the same page for a while and basically made it easy for him. I asked what he wanted to do and he said nothing would change we would just sleep in different rooms. We then proceeded to have a normal conversation about the general election result (we're in the UK) and news generally, the kids and where I am at work (not great recently). He went to watch some TV and I don't know why but checked if he was online, he's not a big mobile phone fan so I was a bit surprised that he first took his phone with him and even more surprised to find that he was online on Whatsapp. He continued to be online for the rest of the evening and after he went to bed. I went into the other bedroom and broke down, he came in and offered tried to comfort me but I asked him to leave me alone, not aggressively just very simply.

A few weeks before this I had said to my best friend that I thought he was up to something with a girl at work but he told me not to be stupid and we laughed it off. The past few weeks we have been making plans for the future as our eldest starts high school in September and my H is due to leave the army next year and start University so big changes. We have also been looking at booking our family holiday as we do every year and things have been really good.

I kept checking Whatsapp and he was still on line an hour after going to bed I must have fallen asleep. When I woke for work at 4am I checked again and he has been last online at 3am. I arrived at work at 6.25 and he had last been on at 6.20, he continued to message until 7.35 which is probably when my DO got up and then was back on at 9am after the school run, he was on holiday on Monday. I got into work and broke down, I text my friend who had been through this a year ago and fortunately she was off work also, my boss sent me home and I went to her house to try and straighten my head. The whole time my H was messaging when he was supposed to be doing the garden. I got myself together and decided that I needed to let him know that I wasn’t OK with what he had said to me but it was his choice and I would respect that.

I arrived home at 1.10pm and he wasn’t there, hadn’t been on Whatsapp for an hour so I tracked his phone and immediately knew he was with her. I called him, him thinking I was at work and asked him how he was he said OK how was I and I said I would really like to talk to him. There was a lot of noise in the background so I asked him if he was at the supermarket, he said no he didn’t know what I thought I knew but he had had to go into work to speak to someone. I asked if everything was OK and he said yes nothing to worry about he just needed to speak to someone before speaking to me. I said was it OW by any chance and he asked how I knew I said I didn’t but I do now and how come it was more important to speak to her before me. He then said because I’m in love her and I need to know she feels the same way before I speak to you.

He was well over an hour away from home and was supposed to be picking the kids up from school at 3.30pm, neither of us get to do that very often and the children would have been very excited, I mentioned the school run and he said he would make it. He called me later and said he wouldn’t and could I get someone to collect them so we could talk. I was furious ad told him that he was out of order putting himself and OW before his children. I managed to get a friend to collect the children. When he got home he told me what he said was everything. Only been going on 4 weeks, nothing physical has happened apart from kissing but he is so in love with her and wants to be with her. Somehow I remained calm and matter of fact and focused on the children. He said he didn’t want them to know anything and us to carry on as normal if I would allow him to stay.

OW 28 married with S 4/5 and DO 3 she told her H at the same time. They are both in the army and have worked in the same office together for 8 months but went on exercise (they are both in the British Army) to Spain just over 4 weeks ago and prior to that they got on but didn't really have much to do with each other. In Spain they fell in love?? She told my H that another work colleague had been raping her for 6 months and she had got pregnant from this and had an abortion, she hasn't told her H as he would be devastated. My H now wants to keep her safe and protect her, she makes him happy and I don’t. He has tried to get it out of his system since coming back from Spain but he just loves her so much he can’t think of anything else.

That evening he said that her H had taken compassionate leave to go home and try and sort things out with her. Her H is also in the Army and was supposed to be away on exercise for 2 weeks. He didn’t hear from her at all that night. The next morning he told me that he loved me and said but not enough, he said OW had probably changed her mind as he had not heard from her and practically he had no idea how it work anyway. I asked if him that meant that if she didn’t want him he would want us as it wasn’t that simple, he said he knew that, kissed me on the forehead and went to work. Later that day he called me and said she had told him she had agreed with her H to try and make a go of things and even if it didn’t work out she would not go straight from him to my H as she needed to make sure it was right and not destroy 2 families. I asked what this meant to him and he said he wanted to wait for her as he loved her so much. He works late on a Tuesday night and stays at work but he was texting me quite nicely and although it was killing me I was being supportive and asking him how he was, he appreciated this and told me he did love me but wasn’t sure if he loved me enough but the children would always come before anyone.

Yesterday (Wednesday) he finishes work early as he works late on a Tuesday but instead of coming home early he spent the afternoon in the park near his work, I can only assume with her (yes I was tracking his phone torturing myself). Our nanny finishes work ay 6.15pm so I text him at 4.30pm about something for school the next day and asked if he was OK he said yes but was stuck in work, he was still in the park. You guessed it he was late for the kids but I managed somehow to hold back. I was away with work last night which was probably fortunate and he called I called to speak to the kids and he said he would call me back once they were in bed. He did and I asked him how he was as he had said the previous day (when she told him she was going to try with her H) that he thought he needed to talk to someone and would go and see his brother at the weekend. He said he was fine and didn’t really see the point of going to see his brother now so I asked if something had happened to change his mind and he told me that he had had a brief conversation with her and that although she had told her H she would try and counselling for when he returns from exercise she wants to be with my H so she is just going through the motions as she felt she owed him that. I asked my H if he felt he owed us the same and he said he would do anything I wanted him to do but I told him that unless his heart was in it there was no point and I understood how he felt about her and couldn’t change that so no point I just wanted him to be OK. He said he felt like he was having his cake and eating it but I reassured him that he couldn’t help that he had fallen in love with someone else and I understood. OMG I wanted to scream, shout, cry, rant anything but say it was OK but I think that was what we’re supposed to do with them? Later that evening I text asking him something totally practical nothing to do with the situation but he didn’t reply, he was online messaging until the very early hours again and when I text this morning asking if he had received my text last night he immediately replied to say ‘yeah sorry I’ll call him today’.

Today is not a good day and I will have to see him tonight which I’m struggling with. Any comments suggestions would be welcome.