Hi everyone! I have been following here for awhile, but just became brave enough to post myself. My H and I have been married for 13 years and have four children under the age 11. Our marriage, while not perfect, has been the type of relationship that all our friends and family look up to. We were great teammates, loving, supportive, affectionate, loved our children and spent time appreciating what we had built together and each other. We run a business together that requires lots of travel (for H, although we travel a lot as a family as we are dual-continental) and lots of time running the ship at home (me, both in business and household/children). The past few years we have gained a lot of success in our business, but it has taken a huge toll on the amount of time we have been able to spend together as a family.
After a family tragedy and the birth of my 4thchild (4 kids in just over 5 years), I lost my spark. I had a tough time losing the baby weight, was sad about the family tragedy, no sleep from so many tiny humans and the escalation of our business meant that I was home dealing with everything alone. In retrospect, I was slightly depressed and took out my frustrations on the only adult in the room (when he was actually there). It became a SSM and I definitely had resentment for being left behind while raising our family alone. He would make a comment or two here and there about my weight or sadness. But then we would have breaks, or time together and things would quickly go back to our usual, loving R. Or so I thought.
Early on in our business venture, there was a woman that H has since worked with 3-4 times a year. Traveling to exotic locations and living a ‘work-hard, play-hard’ existence for a week or two. I have always had a slight ‘ping’ about this person, but my H treated me like a goddess and kept telling me she was nothing compared to me. And because he was so loving and committed to our R and our family, I believed him.
About a year ago, he came home from a work trip and things felt ‘off’ but it was easily explained by constant travel and stress. Fast forward to Oct 2019 and his distance and scorn for me started to get really intense. I kept asking what was wrong (we have always been good communicators) but he would brush me off or snap at me about how stressed he was and how demanding I was. I discovered shortly after that he and this woman were in the midst of an EA. He promised to end it (though he kept telling me they were just friends, I was being crazy) and to go to MC, but the whole time I felt that he wasn’t really ‘there’. I changed, went to regular IC, kept up with the MC, lost a ton of weight, started antidepressants, validated and GAL’d like crazy.
He was still checked out. Things started to get worse in the New Year and I kept pressing him to work on us and he kept pressing on how confused he was, then kept saying how miserable he had been for so long. In March, he finally said he didn’t want to be with me anymore, seriously wanted a D and was moving out, although we would ‘nest’ for the kids. I was devastated, but tried to keep DBing. We had a moment of reconciliation in the past month, but he immediately went back to his ‘confusion’ and has since double-downed on his meanness and dismissal of me.
Like a lot of other situations I have read about on this forum, he has completely re-written our history. It’s been 13 years of misery, he never had that ‘spark’ for me (complete BS), ILYBNILWY, etc etc. All amidst this pandemic and now homeschooling 4 kids. We maintained a schedule where we were both in the house during the day, but one of us would sleep in a different home at night.
This weekend, I discovered that the EA is still going strong and that ‘I love you’ and pet names were exchanged. He keeps saying they are just friends. I am back to feeling hopeless and devastated. And once again, he has doubled down on the spewing, hateful meanness.
I am trying to be hopeful, but it feels so far gone right now.
