My husband was my soul-mate and someone I trusted with my life. I was wrong to believe this. We have known each other for 22 years, were friends for 6 years and in love and married for 14 years. We adopted a 1 year old baby together in January 2006 and in June, I found text messages from his girlfriend (19 in total) all in the same vein, our sex was so good... I love you so much...
Things hadn’t been good for us from the time we adopted – great as parents but as the two of us, he was detached and just not the same. I ignored it as I was exhausted and just trying to be on top of my new life with our child. Indeed, before we adopted he was getting panic attacks and really stressed and he put it down to the adoption process but I now know it was because he was leading his double life. You see, he has been doing his degree in fine art for the past 5 years, all funded by me and fully supported and encouraged by me. This is where he met his now love-of-his-life. A woman (American actually) who was bored by her public school educated boring upper class husband and had embarked on her new bohemian artist life (whilst still being a full time mum to her 3 public school educated children) and my husband was highly attractive to her. He obviously felt the same.
Anyway, when I found the text messages I was in shock and felt a kind of relief to understand his change towards me – and it all started to fall into place – our marriage was over. I know that sounds extreme but I knew in my husband’s case he would never be with anyone if he didn’t believe it was over and I could not go back—I could not trust him again and for me a marriage without trust was no marriage at all. I didn’t say anything to him for 2 days as I needed to sort it out in my head and when I did it was about ‘Our marriage is over and how we were not going to let down our daughter’.
I have to say, my focus throughout has been our daughter. I am so glad that that has been the case because every thing has been with that thought uppermost in my mind. And his. Now 11 months on we are separated, financially independent (we sorted out it all through mediation) and living 4 blocks away from each other. He looks after our daughter 1 weekday and takes her to and from nursery 2 days a week while I work 3 days and takes her at the week-end either a full Saturday or four hours on alternate weeks. He is a brilliant partner as a parent and our daughter is thriving. We support each other in every aspect of parenting and our daughter knows she can’t use one against the other as we are united!
All I can say is the fruits of our labour are now evident. By putting our daughter first we have a strong parent partnership.
Of course you can be assured I still am grieving for the love I lost (he lost his love for me a lot longer ago than I thought) and I still have anger that he betrayed me and resentment for his girlfriend’s involvement... but his commitment to our daughter and to me as her mum is second to none. So it works – it works well.
My advice for anyone that find themselves in a similar situation—if you have children, think of their well being in the demise of your marriage, put them first and then your new relationship with your partner can grow in a new, different and positive way.
