Mental Breakdown led to affair

Hi everyone. I’m new here, first post.

I’ve been reading this website nonstop for the last couple of days and decided to post my confusing predicament as I don’t have anyone else to talk to this about.

Will likely be long, I apologize. I’ve been dealing with 6 months of hell and unfortunately it’s very relevant to the affair.

General background: Me, BS (29) and husband WH, (31) have been together for 12 years and married for 7. We have two young kids.

Relevant background is that before we were married I was violently sexually assaulted by a stranger, had trouble coping, broke up with my then BF and moved home to be with my parents for six months before we got back together and got married.

The situation:

My husband and I have always had a really good relationship. He has always been an amazing man who has put me and our kids above all, supported us well while I’ve been a SAHM. We have a son with severe autism and I am his caregiver. We both know that I will never be able to work because of this. That has been some strain on our marriage but overall, he has truly been a great husband and especially great father. He puts his relationships with our kids above all else.

May 2023: In May, my MIL called him one night (I was on speaker phone) and dropped quite a few trauma bombs.

She told my husband that his father had suddenly left her and travelled to Russia to marry another woman. She told him that he had taken all of her money. She told him that he had been a serial cheater throughout their entire (common law) marriage.

But worse, she confessed to my husband and his siblings that his father had abused her. He had forced her into prostitution while she was a young mom and would take the money. There was no question about her honesty, her voice and emotion told us it was the truth.

She also told him that his eldest sister had confessed that his father had attempted to molest her as a child/teen because he was convinced she wasn’t his child.

All in all, my husband’s idea of his father being a good man was shattered completely.

I was quite worried about this information because he had already struggled with his childhood. I urged him to seek therapy and tried to be there for him as much as possible. He would talk about it with me on a surface level (yeah I can’t believe it, my poor mom etc) but mostly, he buried it deep down and tried to avoid dealing with it.

June 2023: In June, we moved into a new house. Nothing really notable happened in this month, except that his erratic behaviour started to peak its head. He bought an insanely expensive new truck, and poured money into a new business that he was really intense about. I had a great level of trust for him at this time because he had never let me down before so I didn’t meddle much into these decisions.

July 2023: For most of July, things were fine. My husband was incredibly affectionate. He has always verbally expressed to me how in love with me he is, written love notes, text messages that told me how important I was to him. These continued as normal.

In the middle of July, my life completely flipped on its head. He called me one day and told me that he didn’t know if he was in love with me. That he wishes he never married me. He resents me and our children. He said he was exactly like his father and he didn’t want me to turn out like his mother.

Of course, I had no idea where this was coming from. We had many conversations for the next week where he would flop from saying he wanted to leave and he would stay and fight. I was a mess.

August: In August, he dived head first into the mental breakdown. He quit his high paying job, but didn’t tell me. He told me he was leaving for work away for a week but basically just left and abandoned us. It went from "I don’t know if I’m in love with you," to "I hate you. I wish I never met you. You ruined my life. You’re a horrible person." He barely spoke to his children. He barely spoke to me. He was spending money irrationally. He was saying things that made no sense. He had no access to the savings accounts and defaulted on all his bills that were under his name. His family all reached out to me and said told me the erratic things that he had said to them, that he needed therapy, they were concerned for his safety.

Of course, I asked him repeatedly if there was another woman. He told me no. He was hateful to me in these weeks he would tell me anything that he could to make me upset or angry. He told me that he wishes he cheated on me or there was another woman so that I would leave him alone. He really did hate me at this point. Everything he was angry about was my fault, I was his punching bag. I believe that there was no other women at this point, he would have told me to get me to leave him alone.

I could see this all quite clearly for what it was. I knew that he wasn’t mentally okay. He had given me so many years of knowing who he was and I had no doubts that even if he believed truly that he didn’t love me, he would never behave this way especially towards his children who he values above all else. There was nothing that I could really do except focus on my children. I was struggling extremely.

September 2023: September he came back for a bit, but he was like a different person. Did not care to have a relationship with me or the kids. Still very erratic behaviour.

In September I found out that my father has stage 4 terminal cancer. I lost my mind, trying to cope while I was already going through extreme stress.

For an example of how erratic and just insane his behaviour was- the night I found out about my father I had a panic attack on the bathroom floor, screaming and crying and begging God to help me. He walked away and fell asleep on my bed. The next morning he left and returned in the afternoon. He asked me for 4000$ from our savings to pay back money he stole from his employer, then immediately told me that he was leaving again. No concern for me or my father, who he knows and loves. He then told our oldest that we were getting a divorce, completely blindsiding me (we never discussed telling our kids) and my poor daughter. She was a wreck. Two hours later he told us he changed his mind and he didn’t mean it.

Just absolutely erratic and sociopathic behaviour that I had never, ever, ever thought he was capable of or experienced from him.

October and November: these were the worst months for me. He moved out completely without telling us. One day I woke up and his stuff was gone. He didn’t tell the kids. Just left. He didn’t see the kids except for a few random days here and there. My grandma died and he didn’t care. But, there would be random days when he would come home for a night or two and act like everything was okay. Tell me that he needed space and this didn’t mean that he wouldn’t come back. Some nights we would sleep together (I know. I was just a mess. I was not myself. I was weak, borderline suicidal, and terrified.)

December: the end of November/ beginning of December, his behaviour began to change. The erratic behaviour stopped. I felt like he wasn’t a stranger again. He quickly became the father he always used to be, came back home. It was slow, not romantic geared but family geared. I was hesitant, but I was so exhausted by this point I didn’t fight it. Everything was pretty good.

January 2023: He began expressing romance towards me again. I was cautious. I was confused. He was the man who I knew again.

On New Years Ever he opened the floodgates. He told me that in early December he had gone to the doctor because he knew something was wrong and gotten on meds. He went back to work. He told me that he had a mental breakdown and that he was struggling immensely with his parents. He told me that he was having trouble comprehending everything that happened, it felt like someone else was driving his body. He says it was all foggy, he didn’t understand his own actions. That he knew he had a horrible mistake and he was ashamed and embarrassed but he was committed to fixing the mess he made in our family. Hearing this was great for me. It affirmed everything I had been thinking. I had understood that he mentally wasn’t okay for a while now but wondered if he would ever realize it.

January 4 2023: D Day. On Jan 4 he called me and told me that we needed to talk. He told me that he had slept with someone else in his breakdown. He told me that he couldn’t sleep or eat without telling me, because I needed the information to decide if I want to fix our marriage with him, but he was scared to tell me because he knew I would leave him. He was incredibly remorseful. It was someone he knew as a teenager. He told me he reached out to her at the end of August, slept with her in October once, and he ghosted her in the middle of November. She lives 6 hours away. He told me that when he slept with her he truly had no intentions of ever getting back together with me and was sure that he wanted a divorce, which he had communicated to me at the time very frequently. He told me the last time he spoke to her was December 11, where he called her to tell her to stop messaging him, he had made a mistake sleeping with her and that he wanted to fix his family.

I went through the phone records. They match what he was saying. He was transparent, he answered all my questions.

Now here’s the part where I’m supposed to say I never saw it coming, I was blindsided. I can’t say that. I am not stupid, and I had many, many, many nights thinking that he was with someone else for the last six months.

Here’s where my feelings get tricky. He told me so many times that he didn’t want to be with me when this happened. He was explicit. He told me he wanted a divorce, he wanted to get a legal separation, that we were no longer together. I know that he truly believed it at the time. Hell, there were weeks during these months that I truly believed my marriage was over too.

But, throughout this he had never truly cut it off. For weeks at a time, maybe, but then he would say he would come back, or try again, be intimate with me.

When I left him while we were dating, I truly believed that we would never be back together. I casually dated. I don’t think I was wrong for doing that. However, I didn’t string him along as I did so. I know he had grace and understanding for me when this happened.

I waver between understanding, and not understanding. I truly do believe he was in the midst of a severe mental break. He hasn’t been diagnosed but I am not sure if he’s bipolar, or it was just a stress, trauma induced breakdown. He’s committed to seeing a psych, IC, etc. He told me he already got tested. I haven’t yet confirmed the tests as he’s been away at work.

I am truly suffering right now, and I’m not even sure if it’s just the knowledge of the affair or the complexity and compounded trauma that I’ve been through for the last six months. I feel so betrayed emotionally, abandoned. I’m grieving the marriage that we had and the safe person he used to be to me.

I’m struggling knowing that he had sex with another woman and our marriage will forever be tainted by this. I’m struggling knowing that when I could barely get out of bed or eat, he was having a relationship with her. I’m struggling with feeling like I can’t even blame him because I know he wasn’t in his right mind. I’m grieving the blind trust that we had that’s now completely gone. I’m grieving the security I felt with him.

I am thankful he told me. I never would have found out. I had my suspicions but I was too scared to confirm. I also wasn’t sure if I had a right to all the information considered he told me repeatedly he wanted to be separated and to not be with me.

I’m sad this all happened. I’m sad for our daughter especially because she had to witness me be a complete mess for six months.

How do I get over that he was physically intimate with someone else while I was at the complete lowest of my life?

7 comments posted: Saturday, January 6th, 2024