If you actually read this, thank you. If you don’t read, that’s okay too! I just wanted to put it out there. I did not know about this forum until over 2 years past DD. Thank you and sorry if some of this doesn’t make sense as an outside reader and apologies for errors!
We started dating in 1990, married 1997, one child in 2002, one in 2006. Starting about 2020, I felt like things were not the best, nor not the worst. I think the transition from needing to be a more hands-on, child-raising mom role, to a spouse that had more alone time with my husband was hard to make. Meaning, when the children didn’t need constant watching, able to stay home alone, etc., it was hard to resume the life that we had before kids. Hard to explain.
He was a police officer (now retired), he worked a fair amount of OT to help us out financially. I currently work in a school and take care of most everything around the house, and I mean most everything; he has since picked up some more of these responsibilities. Housework, bills, car maintenance, kid appointments, most yard work has been done by me. Our oldest is on the spectrum and we had many appointments/therapies for years as he grew up. I cooked, cleaned, and raised 2 boys. I was exhausted. He has many hobbies, I have none. When the boys were young, my evenings were spent making/cleaning up dinner, bathing children, making lunches for the next day, reading in bed with the boys and then mostly, me falling asleep from exhaustion. Then I’d have to face my husband, who was waiting for me so we could have "alone time", and him being mad because I’m too tired. It did not happen every night, but quite often. It was a fairly constant battle that lasted for YEARS. I loved being a mom to my boys, and (wrong or right) I put them first. Before I worked full time, I was happy to shoulder a lot of the other responsibilities because he worked a lot for us to have what we needed and I worked less hours at that point. But as the boys grew up and didn’t need constant care, I felt he should have picked up some of the household duties. At least not make more of a mess for me to clean up.
The limited amount of household work that he did was always frustrating. I felt like I shouldn’t have to tell a grown man what to do. He started criticizing me about what time I went to bed, woke up, clothes, underwear, my hair, and it was intensifying. I was feeling worse about myself and feeling more animosity towards him.
In early 2021, I started noticing that he charged his phone downstairs instead of the charging dock upstairs (we live in a ranch, everything we use on a day to day basis is upstairs, downstairs is a basement and his band room). He eventually removed me from Find My Friends and claimed not to know why and said he didn’t get my request for location sharing again. He always claimed he didn’t know how to get it to work. In the past, he had always said he hated passcodes on phones, they were stupid, then he suddenly had a passcode on his phone. He started texting a lot, his phone went everywhere with him, he would try to hide who he was texting with a blanket while we watched TV. It sucks to think my H was texting his fling while we were sitting together watching a movie.
Around Christmastime that year, he bought candles from someone at work, came home and said "some lady at work was making and selling these for the holidays so I felt obligated". Then proceeded to burn them in front of me. Then I found some in my house a few years later. And I assumed they were from her, and eventually learned that I was right.
Life was kind of crazy, and being a police officer was tough, most people hated police at this point. He hated his job. He was off work at 5pm, then to gym (I think), home for dinner, a little TV time, then sleep. I usually went to sleep before him. I typically went for walks without him, he rarely went hiking with me. We skied together, dinner out, movies out, shopping out occasionally. Otherwise, I just did my chores and moved on with life.
The affair started when he went on light duty for a work related injury. He was put in the office with the office gals to do paperwork. And so it began. I could really tell he enjoyed his time in the office, he always seemed happy when he came home. His light duty ended and he quickly requested another light duty stint as his injury "wasn’t healed yet".
Life just kind of continued. We took a family trip in February and I took the boys snowshoeing and he stayed behind at our lodging place saying he was not feeling great. All I can assume is that he was texting her.
In the past he had been so adamant about not going to out-of-town training for work, to the point of coming up with excuses to give his employer on why he couldn’t go. Then strangely he was very excited to go to a 3 day training about 3 hours away with his coworkers including the office staff for his assigned unit (this included her). I thought it was strange. He seemed so happy to be going on this trip. He had NEVER been on an out of town training. And actually at this time, I could still track his location. The training was at a mountain resort. While gone, he texted a normal amount of time, and sent me a pic of him in the training. It was kind of weird, like he felt like he had to validate this training. Then when he came back he had this story of him and his co-workers having dinner in the restaurant and there was an altercation at another table and they had to step in to help. When he first told me, there was something about this story that wasn’t right. Couple weeks later, we were hanging out with our neighbors and he told the story again, and he kept trying not to say someone’s name and gender. He kept glancing at me. I knew something was not right, but didn’t know what. About 1-½ years later I learned that this was their first time having sex.
Life continued on; I had feelings something wasn’t right, but no proof. One day we were sitting on the couch downstairs and I went to bed before him. I went upstairs but had to take my dog out for a potty break. The dog and I went outside from upstairs and then down the outside stairs and onto the lawn where I could see him sitting on the couch, his back to me. Unbeknownst to him, I could see his phone, he was looking at a picture of a woman. It was too far for me to tell who it was, but it wasn’t me, and I now know it was her. I was suspicious at this point of something, just had no concrete proof. I wish I would have confronted him then, for some reason I didn’t.
My feelings were growing stronger that something wasn’t right. I tried to log into his phone during the middle of the night. (yes, I did that) I figured out his passcode. I saw only a text from "someone" asking about going for a walk the next day during lunch or something. I started looking through our phone records, and googled numbers associated with messages, and finally found a woman’s name I didn’t recognize. Though I wasn’t sure, I assumed it was her. At this point I was feeling pretty bad about things but could not prove anything without him knowing I was snooping. I did not believe sex was involved at all. I never thought he’d do that to me.
He started becoming more critical of me, snarky comments. My underwear wasn't sexy enough, why did I wear sweats and jammy pants (not in public, but around the house), my hair was too short, etc.
We started a kitchen remodel project and deep down I felt like it was a mistake, a waste of time and money. But I just couldn’t prove anything. I was slightly injured while we did some of the work ourselves. His sympathy didn’t feel quite right.
I am a very calm and non-confrontational person. I am perhaps too laid back and not very outspoken. I tend to close up and ponder and think and either talk myself out of whatever the situation, or just pause and think, before speaking. I do not argue very well since I can’t think on my feet fast enough! Ugg!
During the holiday season, we went out for dinner and cocktails. We went to a favorite place, a small lounge and sat at the bar. The "date" seemed strained. I wasn’t feeling good about our relationship, but didn’t know what to do, or how to proceed. As we were sitting and chatting he became more and more critical of me. As my usual self, I held in my anger. He kept getting worse, which is very uncharacteristic of him. Then, suddenly, something I’ve never done before, I snapped. I started telling him how I felt and how he was treating me, he kept trying to get me to stop, but I was not having it. I got louder and louder, not yelling, but loud enough where other people could hear something. Not my intention, but I saw red, and just went off. Tears flowing, anger, sadness. I finally just walked out, leaving my cocktail and him. I had the keys (I only had 1 drink, promise) and walked the few blocks to our car, crying. I very much thought about heading for home. It only would have been about a 2 mile walk for him. But I sat there (I’m too damn nice). He finally came. And then as we were driving home, me crying, him apologizing, I asked him about the picture I saw on his phone that day, probably a few months earlier. He said nothing, he didn’t know, said probably a pic of someone he arrested. Hmmm….
Life continued. Early 2022, he retired from police work. What should have been a huge celebration, a party perhaps, was just a dinner out with our boys at a no-frills pub. I could not bring myself to celebrate a man who was exhibiting some strange behaviors and I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was happening with him and a co-worker. It was kind of sad.
When he retired I was very hopeful that he would then take care of things around the house more and also get a job, something, part-time, whatever. At 50 years old, he needed something. He did not look for a job, nor do anything around the house. I was so disappointed. I understand needing a break from a stressful job, but jeez. He would go to lunch on occasion with his still-working co-workers. One time he went and I happened to look in our bank account but didn’t see any money spent anywhere. I asked him where he went for lunch and he said some place, and I asked how he paid - he never carried cash - he said he did pay cash and he and his friend split the check. Seemed out of character for him. So the next time he went to "lunch" with his friends, made sure there was a restaurant transaction in the bank - at McDonalds. Which was out of character for him and his co-workers. But these were not lunches with past co-workers. He was meeting her. He also went skiing a fair amount, she lived on the way to the mountain, so there was a stop there also.
Since I work in a school district, I am off for the summer. I thought maybe we’d get a lot of stuff done around our house. Nope. Me doing stuff, him …. I don’t even know what he did. I was getting more and more pissed, but good ol’ me, held it in, bit my tongue. I needed concrete proof.
In late May 2022, I was not feeling the best, I was premenopausal, and wasn’t sure if I was having some symptoms of that or what. I would tell him about the pain/discomfort, sit on the couch with a hot pad on my abdomen. It continued and in early Junish, I finally went to the doctor thinking it was a UTI. UTI was negative and the doc I saw that day asked if there was any way I thought my husband might be unfaithful, and holy shit, my brain said yes, my heart said no, so I said no. Went home with advice for menopause and waited for urine culture. I texted H telling him what the doc asked me, his response was, "hmmm".
Fast forward to DD, Aug 7, 2022. I was doing some deep cleaning around the house, he was acting very strange, not doing ANYTHING! Just sitting inside or outside. Continued all day. Our youngest son said he was going to the river to swim and H basically forced our older son to go with him. It was weird. The boys left. A few minutes later he came and got me and told me he had to tell me something. I knew it. Damnit. He was very upset, said I was right when I asked him about a woman when I left him at that lounge 7 months earlier! I was in shock and walked away. I came back and said God knows what, grabbed my keys and walked out the door. Texted him after a bit, told him to tell the boys when they get home, then leave. I could not stand to be in the same house as him. We had a party planned for our son’s 16th birthday about 5 days later. Told him he had to tell his family and cancel the party. He later left and stayed with his parents for about 2 months.
THEN, that abdominal pain: I made an appointment for the next day, and was told I had chlamydia! The asshole didn’t always use a condom! I was so pissed. I really don’t know sometimes why I agreed to R.
