It's me now

[LifeSurvior]

I am ten years on from a very traumatic experience of my husband cheating.
It took me into horrendously dark places,,suicide, drinking, hospital admission to mental health facilities.
I am so much better now with my mental health wellbeing, I'm stable, I cope okay with my life, I'm a good Mum, I sorted myself.
But the anger, the disdain, the sheer fucking how on earth could he have done this to our family feelings are still here.
He came back after I had to be in hospital.
I still look at him and think, you only did that because your family were horrified. He has never come clean with his family, he told them I had a breakdown, I was suicidal, I was the nutty one.
He has never, ever told them he met another woman in hotel rooms for sex.
He still now can not abide me saying the reason I don't like you is because you fucked an other women behind my back and gaslightied me it was my fault.
He thinks I should just shut up, be okay, shag him and be silent.

Why are you still with him then?

That sounds horrendous and it sounds like you have done an amazing job to get back on your feet BUT i cannot fathom why you are still with him. Is there a reason you cannot leave? It sounds like you and he would be happier apart?

This.

why haven't you told his family, I would have.

Why haven’t you told his family the reason you had a breakdown was bc he cheated? Why should he get away with it?

You need to end this toxic mess.

Some couples get over infidelity, some don't.

If you're in better mental health, now's the time to do you with a favour and split up. You'll probably find once it's over properly, your mh will improve further.

*both, not with

Why haven’t / didn’t you split up?

The relationship is toxic and unhealthy, neither of you can be happy with how things are.
It’s not good for your children either… it just shows them what they should expect / tolerate from their own relationships in later life.

Your mental health is fucked because you're trying to live in cognitive dissonance. You've been trying to get over his betrayal for ten years when you should have left him and you'd have been recovered by now. What's holding you there?

👆 This, this, and this again.

Everyone is asking you the same thing, @LifeSurvior: why are you still with him? Please, don't just dismiss it as rhetorcal.

Because I watched my own Mum leave and then it was a shit show of other men coming and going, toxic ups and downs whilst she navigated single parenthood, me and my siblings struggle at school,she had no idea about our schooling, no money for uniforms, trainers, just one long childhood of poverty because my Dad decided not to provide because he wanted to hurt my Mum and shag around.
My husbands parents were no better, multiple affairs on both sides, both met new partners and didn't give a fuck about their kids..
This is one of the reasons why I'm furious, sad and haven't left. We actually talked about how shit our parents were and we would never inflict that on our own.
He obviously forgot that when his dick was being serviced.
He now obviously says different.
But when it mattered he wasn't there.
I suppose why I am still here is a bit of fuck you, you won't make my children have our childhoods.

Your children will have a better happier childhood if you split up. It’s no fun being in such a vile toxic atmosphere. And being a single parent doesn’t mean you have to be a shit parent, nor do you have to parade boy/girlfriends through the house.

I’m a single parent, and I find it quite offensive that you think the home life I’ve made for my kids would be better if they had a father who I hated living with us, so they could grow up surrounded by anger and resentment.

And before any nicely married woman comes at me with the usual, oh but they see it anyway.
Yes my children have seen things I wished they had not. Angry voices, banging doors, probably me crying.
But it's nothing, absolutely nothing compared to what I grew up with with my Mum. Strange men she met and invited over.
Asking me to search down the back of the sofa for pennies because my Dad had withholded the maintenance money and she was distraught because we had to go to school the next morning and didn't have any milk for our blue stripe cornflakes.
My husband's Mum sitting in the Spoons all afternoon because her boyfriend was behind the bar, getting drunk on cheap lager whilst her 14 year old son was locked out of the house.
We actually bonded on these horrific stories of our lives, I thought we were on the same page, I thought we were in it together and we would never be our parents.
I am now not my parent.
I stay because my kids don't need random step men in their lives.
I stay because i don't t want him to meet a random woman not liking my children and causing havoc and hurt In their now nice,settled okay lives.

It may come as a shock to you, but not all single mums drink all day and bring random men home.

It's not a shock. Obviously I don't think that but it was my reality.

Please split up with him. He is destroying your self esteem

Your kids lives are not nice and settled.

Anyway I’m not posting any more on here. You clearly think single mums are drunken whores!

Hence it's why I was so, so upset when my husband did the one thing we both said we would not do.

Oh do stop! And yes don't post anymore 🙄

You seem to be saying that, were you to split up with the husband you hate, you'd invite strings of strange men over for sex and be unable to provide your kids' breakfast.

Why would you act this way?

You don't have to turn into your own mother, you know.

Why not split up with your cheating husband and then NOT have loads of strange men over?

But you don’t have to be like your mum.

My mum had many boyfriends coming over, some moved in, lots of alcohol etc.

I don’t drink and my children have never met anyone I’ve been out with. And I’ve only had a few brief relationships while they were children. They probably think I’m as naughty as Mother Theresa, and that they had a really boring childhood 😂.

My husband's Mum sitting in the Spoons all afternoon

And I’ve also never been to Spoons. Apparently they have nice carpets though 🤷‍♀️.

You obviously haven't understood what I am saying.
I'm saying my and his formative years were shaped by these experiences.
I'm not saying I would do that, obviously I would not.
But it makes me reluctant to put my children in the same situation.
I stay because I don't want to leave it to chance..
I know he would do the same as my Dad did. He would meet a woman and would prioritise that woman over his children, just like my Dad did, and his Dad as well.
Why is it awful I don't want that?

Your husband is already meeting and fucking random women and could leave you for the next one.

You don’t have to bring a string of random men home like your mum did. You can focus solely on your kids, which they will love, or you can have a boyfriend but keep him entirely separate from your children.

If you’re worried about money, focus on getting a better job. Living with internalized rage and resentment will give you an autoimmune disease (voice of experience speaking here).

I think it's being derailed because it's not actually about me if I found myself single. Obviously I wouldn't sit in spoons and ignore my child's needs like my MIL did.
My point of this thread was why did my husband do something that he said he would never do, that he hated, and why I accepted it.
I accepted it because I trusted him. He told me early doors he would not do it.
When he did it I obviously felt awful, bereft.
I suppose what I need to get from this thread is I have learned all the awful lessons from my childhood but he hasn't.

He always said and made the most noise about how awful his Mum was,
I've heard it all, she was a slag, she had other men over, she left him for the pub.
We actually bonded over our awful parents.
He definitely has rage towards his mum, I sometimes think that's why he cheated, he saw first hand his Dad's reaction but thought, I know I'll blow it all up.
When I asked him about why he did the one thing that he knew would blow us up he said "because I could" no remorse, no accountability, just because I could.