How could my lovely husband betray me so cruelly?

By Bel Mooney for the Daily Mail

Published: 17:19 EST, 10 July 2015 | Updated: 17:19 EST, 10 July 2015

DEAR BEL

Six weeks ago I discovered (after finding a secret email account) that my husband of 15 years has been conducting an affair with a work colleague. 

They’ve been on holiday (work pretexts) twice.

I’ve been reeling ever since — sick to the pit of my stomach thinking of his deceit. To say I’m totally devastated would be an understatement.

I thought we had a happy, fulfilled marriage with a great sex life — that I was his best friend and confidante. To my knowledge he has never even looked at another woman, until this affair.

We have moved to Dubai and the change was about bettering our lives. I’ve loved the experience, though he’s had work and financial pressures.

We’ve always shared values — so I’m constantly asking why he’d behave like this.

Has he seen me in a different light now I don’t contribute to family finances (I gave up my business to move) or is it the new environment that’s changed his feelings?

'I thought we had a happy, fulfilled marriage with a great sex life — that I was his best friend and confidante. To my knowledge he has never even looked at another woman, until this affair'

He’s lied to me about the length of the affair and I’m wondering just how deep it is. He told me it was the thrill and that she flattered him, but that they are no longer in contact (though I don’t believe it).

What shocks me most is that his own father (estranged for 13 years) was a serial philanderer and so he’s always been highly critical of unfaithful men, particularly where children are involved.

His behaviour since I discovered the affair has been very strange.

After first crying and begging for forgiveness, he moved out and will now only communicate about practicalities via text.

He’s literally cut me out of his life as if he wants me to disappear. This has made me so angry and I’m ashamed to say that I resorted to damaging some of his possessions and sending the odd vitriolic text to him and his mistress.

On the one occasion we came face to face he told me I’d never be able to trust him again and my family would hate him for ever, so it could never work out.

This behaviour hurts more than his affair. I can’t get any sense out of him regarding future plans.

It’s likely that the two children and I will have to move back to the UK, but when I question him about issues involved he just ignores my emails.

I know I should hate him, but what do I do with 15 years of love and laughter?

How he is behaving isn’t consistent with the lovely, dependable faithful man I shared my life with.

Can people just change and want a new life, shedding their old one — and, if so, how do we deal with this new person?

SALLY

The answer to your final question has to be a blunt ‘Yes — I’m afraid they can.’ And do.

Men (and women) fall in love/lust; have a mid-life crisis; feel a desperate wish for change; lash out in guilt; tell lies of justification; and become like strangers to the ones they have hurt most.

It happens all the time (see today’s second letter) — and it always has.

Over the past few weeks I have been having conversations with two middle-aged women I know whose husbands ended their marriages because of an affair, one five years ago, one very recent.

Both women are distraught, even the one who has had (in theory) time to ‘get over it’ or ‘move on’ — to use those hopeful cliches.

Both have reminded me of the sheer disbelief that the man you thought you knew inside out can be like this. Notice that I don’t write ‘behave like this’ — because what we’re talking about feels like a complete personality change.

When we ask ourselves why the husband we thought we knew and whom we most certainly loved acts like a stranger, one way of coping is by repeating that it’s not our fault.

Devastated as you are, you search about for reasons — for example, you wonder whether giving up your business might have something to do with it. Of course not!

A man who is feeling down about his own work and is also in a challenging new environment develops a passion for a work colleague and starts an affair.

To do so he tells lies (of course) and then, when found out, retreats into a state of furious denial. Of course he ‘can’t deal with’ you! He’s being as cowardly as most men are when found out and the only way he can cope with his guilt is by being cruel to the woman he has wronged.

Do you think it would have made any difference had you been working?

Don’t torture yourself by searching for mitigation. To be honest, most women reading this will cheer the damage of ‘some of his possessions’ and the ‘odd vitriolic text’.

Why shouldn’t you show him how much you’re hurting? But don’t make a habit of it, because it won’t help in the long term.

You’ve tried hard to keep in contact, but now I fear that the only meaningful response to his silence is a solicitor’s letter.

You have to make huge, vital decisions about the future of your children and since he is ignoring that need he must be shocked into confronting the issues.

Obviously, moving back to the UK will be an enormous upheaval — or, since you like living in Dubai, you might even think of re-starting your own professional life there.

The effect would be to keep your children close to their father — which might be the best thing for them.

But whatever you decide, you do need to contact mediation experts as soon as possible; looking online, I judge it shouldn’t be hard in Dubai.

What can you do with the memories?

Store them safely within the part of your mind where the man you knew still lives. They were true. Refuse to let them go.

My daughter's ex has ruined our family

DEAR BEL

My daughter's husband — no, ex — walked out on her and two young boys aged eight and six, without any warning, just an email to say he wouldn’t be coming home because ‘they hadn’t been getting on’.

It was news to her — apart from the usual family banter. She pleaded with him, tried to tell him of the damage to the boys, but to no avail.

Five traumatic years later, she is getting her life together — years in which we, her parents, had to watch her go steadily downhill, have counselling, be put on antidepressants and reach the brink of suicide. Some days she was hardly able to get herself out of bed to see her sons to school.

Boys so need a dad — to take them fishing, to rugby, footie, cubs or just to mend a puncture. All those things Grandad does to help our beloved daughter, who is run ragged at weekends trying to fit everything in after working full time all week. 

Their dad sees them every other weekend — although the kids don’t want to go as they don’t like his partner (the woman he left them for).

Their dad tells them: ‘You’ll forgive me one day.’

How dare he presume that! Rejection is so damaging.

I struggle with this idea of forgiveness, but as a Christian, I do pray for the strength to forgive him. His selfish actions affected the whole family.

Sometimes, at Sunday teatime, my husband and I sit in the local pub garden and watch as numerous separated parents meet on the car park to hand over children after weekend visits: tots, toddlers, teens, all passed on with their belongings to the other parent, neither of whom talk, or sometimes even look at each other.

It’s so sad — and makes me fear for the next generation. How can one come to terms with these feelings?

SAD MUM/NANA

Although my habit is to attach a pseudonym to letters, I chose to stick with your own touching ‘signature’ — because it says it all.

So does your sentence, ‘His selfish actions affected the whole family’ — an important reminder of how we are connected by ties of love, so that he who wounds my child cuts a piece out of my heart and she who is nasty about my dear friend will have to take up arms against me.

Behind the divorce statistics are stories like yours — ripples of sadness spreading out, and affecting, for example, even the teachers who have to deal with unhappy children when they are at school.

Yet what can be done? Nothing. We can wear ourselves out struggling against the tide that is human nature, but it is always a futile endeavour.

You paint a vivid picture of those children being passed between warring and resentful parents — and I remember a colleague telling me once how each time he picked up his daughter, his ex-wife stood at the door and yelled abuse at him until he got the child into the car.

It goes without saying that he’d been unfaithful and broken up the marriage — but whatever the circumstances, we can readily imagine what effect that bitterness had on the little girl.

Like you, I worry terribly about the undercurrents — like, for example, children reaching adulthood without knowing what settled, loving and responsible relationships are like.

You ‘struggle with forgiveness’ and I understand that. But maybe you shouldn’t expect too much of yourself since all your energy is needed to take care of your beloved family.

Your daughter may have had her life ripped apart by the man she trusted and loved (see, also, today’s main letter) yet how blessed she is in her parents.

Five painful years on, she’s managing to get on with her life and I am sure that wouldn’t be the case without you and your husband.

Those boys have their fantastic hands-on grandfather — so perhaps you should focus on that wonder, instead of mourning their lack of a good dad.

The only way to come to terms with bad things that have happened to us is to try to flip them — seizing on any scrap of good on the other side of events.

You can’t apply a sticking plaster to the sadness of others; all that’s possible is to continue giving the love and help that has been needed for the past five years.

Oh, what am I saying? It’s been needed since your daughter was born — and that underlying muscle called family love gave her the strength to get out of bed when she didn’t want to.

So, put an emotional fence around your family, stop watching the lives of others, forget forgiveness and focus on active love for those who deserve it. Including yourself.

And finally... Feeling lucky after taking a tumble

My husband and I rarely take time off (it’s hard to with all our obligations) but found ourselves, on a glorious sunny day, in Hereford — spontaneously visiting Wye Valley Reclamation en route from Ludlow to Stroud.

We both love pottering among ancient, weathered stones, railings and other old architectural features.

However, that day I turned into a static old relic myself — because I took a tumble on the rough ground, went down hard, severely skinned one gravel-filled knee and sprained the other ankle.

How I yelled — ow! My right foot ballooned, so we went to the supermarket for frozen peas, bound them to my foot in a plastic bag and rushed home. 

A week on, I’m still hobbling — and curiously put out by the minor mishap. 

So I must list the positives:

• Obviously it could have been much, much worse. We all know people who’ve put out a hand to save themselves — resulting in a broken wrist.
• You have to rest a sprain: a perfect excuse for lolling about reading.
• Tea in bed.
• Because it does hurt, I’ve already cried off one of those standing-around parties I don’t want to go to.
• As an inveterate wearer of heels for social occasions I can relax in my one pair of pink flatties.
• The skinned knee won’t tolerate jeans or any close-fitting trousers — so I’m slobbing in baggy garments I don’t often wear.
• It was wonderful to lie on the sofa for nearly an hour while my granddaughter (not yet three) sweetly ministered with her doctor set, even if she had to be told a toy plaster stuck on the nasty wound wouldn’t be good.
• I do everything much too quickly and tend to become impatient when people are a bit slow (though not elderly people, I hasten to add). So I’m vowing to stop darting and start gliding.
• Which leads on to thinking. Mindfulness is very fashionable, and with good reason. We all need to live much more in the moment and count our blessings — which is what I am doing now.

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