Another First Love appearance after 18 years!!

[plum36]

It seems to be the theme on here at the moment and Im afraid ive joined the club too!! You may want to read my other posts for background, my husband has been very controlling over the years and I fell back in Love with my first love after 18, after I went looking for him. Ive looked for him for many years and been rebuffed and lost him but this time he recriprocated my advance and yes I appreciate they should have been warning signals to get out of my marriage then however about a month ago, my first love starting to get cold feet and was extremely worried we would get found out and what that would mean to my 6 year old so started to cool things, not too mention his girlfriend had started to snoop around what he was doing too. I was feeling ok with the affair at this point and if Im honest was helping me to cope with life at home. I did not have any feelings of guilt towards my husband, how could I, I just couldnt face the fallout of leaving him. And he had already threatened I wouldnt see my son and he would make him hate me if I did.

 

Then about a fortnight ago my first love made the classic schoolboy error and left his phone unattended and failed to delete his messages, he still doesnt know if his girlfriend has read them but decided at this point to make a decision that we should either be friends only or go no contact!! I decided that we would be friends but in the meantime it has actually turned into NC as i cant stand the non-loving txts he sends. However rather than me concentrating on my marriage its actually made me see that Im not happy in my relationship with my husband and I have asked my husband for a separation and we have talked endlessly about our past and where we went wrong, we have discussed everything about the marriage allbeit not the cheating. He is beginning to understand my decision. He does want to try again at some point and we are good friends and I havnt ruled this out if we start from the very very beginning, dating etc. But at the moment i cant even stand him near me, he disgusts me at the moment, I spent years sleeping with him because he said it was duty and he used to continually moan at me to dress up or he would find somebody else who would or trade me in. I come to the point where I couldnt stand another day of waking up next to him. I do believe i was truly in love with the other man and would have ended my marriage probably at some point for him had the affair continued, or at the very least may have gone on to cheat again. So my question will I always be in love with my first love and just have to accept these feelings and that I will never have feelings as strong as this for anybody else and stop looking for something that isnt there or have I just been in the wrong relationship for 15 years which I feel too trapped and unconfident.

 

By the way my husband is still convinced I am making a mistake and i will be sorry when Im alone in my 40's single with a child in a gotty old flat with nothing!!!

[cherrymoon]

What is wrong with all ye first loves Why do ye need to come into our lives and upset what has and is taking all our effort to keep right.

 

Seriously though you have just answered my fear of discovering my Husbands first love contacting him.

 

When you went looking for him you were looking for the ideal that was young love.

 

When my H and i separated and I moved home I wondered would my Ex and i bump into each other and life would be put right.

I heard he was getting married and that was enough.

You Husband is the one who has stayed by your side. i know what it is like to be abused mentally and emotionally by my partner but that did not justify me going off and having an affair.

 

you owe it to yourself and your child to fix your life and not with the clouded judgement of another man.

 

Keep up no contact and fix yourself and then see how you and your husband can fix your marriage if that is what you both want.

 

Why did you go looking for him?

[Dexter Morgan]

You are cheating on your husband, but I'll play devil's advocate since you are painting him as an abuser, so i'll have to take your word for it.

 

But you are messing around with someone that has a girlfriend that doesn't have the balls to tell her and set her free. So he is cheating on her.

 

You are cheating, he is a cheater. So hopefully you two get together since its a perfect match. And hopefully he tells his girlfriend sometime soon so she can be free of a cheating jerk.

[quankanne]

will I always be in love with my first love and just have to accept these feelings and that I will never have feelings as strong as this for anybody else and stop looking for something that isnt there or have I just been in the wrong relationship for 15 years which I feel too trapped and unconfident?

 

yes.

 

because you're miserable, then yeah, your first love is going to be all sparkly and shiny and something to be desired. But the reality is that he's not the person you've imagined him to be, he's real, with faults and idiosyncracies that aren't attractive, just like the rest of us.

 

instead of looking for greener pastures with another man, why not work on getting to a happy place within you? Because until you learn to be happy on your own and to love/like yourself, you're never going to be happy in a relationship with the opposite sex.

[plum36]

Cherrymoon why did I go looking for him, probably cause I never got over him. Even or a few years after the initial split when I was younger I kept in touch with people who we knew, only when he married did I decide to close the chapter, then a couple of years later I was curiously looking at a reunited website and his details came up, I only looked out of curiousity and thought that I was over him. I suppose initially I thought it would be nice to see what he was up to, give that we had spent 5 years initially together and had a bit of history behind us. I saw he was divorced but thought I was safely married and that it wouldnt be anything more than friends, yes you may think I was niave but I didnt think that all of the old feeling would come back the way they did.

 

And I am not looking for any greener pastures, apart from the ones with myself and my son. If it works out well in the end and he does come back for me once I have divorced my husband then all well and good. I dont see a way of saving my marriage after years of being treated as a sex slave, abused verbally and put down, even to the point of telling me I am emotionally unstable, I really dont see how I didnt cheat on him earlier.

[Owl]

This is simple...painfully so.

 

Tell your husband the WHOLE truth...no more half truths or lies by omission.

 

Tell him about reconnecting with your "first love"...tell him you went looking for him. Tell him about the ongoing affair.

 

Then tell him (don't ask, tell) that you are NOW SEPERATING.

 

And make it happen. Either you move out, or he does. Start seperating your finances, etc...

 

And file for divorce immediately.

 

I just don't understand what's stopped you from doing this already?

[plum36]

What stopped me was his unpredictability, believe it or not. He doesnt give much away, and when I did hint at divorce his immediate reaction was lets get your son and tell him that he cant have a daddy anymore because his mother doesnt love me. Believe me he is pushing for a confession because he is looking for somebody else to blame, what an easy situation, he could say he was the perfect husband, father who just happened to marry a tart! The exact same thing he said about his previous wife. He had already gone down the route that I have been treated for depression and he would sight this and get custody of our Son!

[Owl]

3/4ths of America has been treated for depression...that's not going to get him much play in court...heck...the fact that you're being TREATED is a positive...not a negative.

 

Again...as long as you stay in this situation, nothing will change.

 

So he's unpredictable...that doesn't matter if you're leaving him, right?

 

File...make it happen.

 

Then it won't be your problem anymore.

 

But...having an affair while you're living with someone that is so unpredictable is far, far worse than divorcing them.

[cherrymoon]

Sorry Owl

 

Plum No way tell your husband what has been going on. I am 100% serious about this.

 

If you are telling the truth about him being abusive.

 

My Husband can and could be so unbelievably cruel, The name calling for no reason the hurt the threat of violence was all there. it wasn't constant far from it but when an arguement arose I always felt like I was really gonna get burnt.

Over the years it wore me down i lost all self confidence. Oh I could stand up infront of people and come across as being so in control so confident. in the work I do i have to be.

However I saw myself through his eyes when I was with him, I just wasn't good enough.

I was a whore.

I was stupid

I was a fat lazy C (yeap I stayed off work (worked 2 jobs and was in uni) while on university holidays to mind our kids and not pay childcare)

 

 

Everything was my fault, my family were a waste of space and I was just like them.

He needed to hurt me to make himself feel better. We never fell out over things I did. But if he messed up and I got upset about it then he would take off.

I don't really want to go into it but my family let me down badly when I was young and I really needed them, this has left me with a huge sense of not believing that people love me, that i am just one fault away from rejection. I am just not good enough.

Years ago my husband let me and the kids down we were supposed to go for dinner after he went for a drink with his friends after work, he never turned up. He fell in the door after closing time and of course I was fuming we argued and he started, I remember curling up in a ball in the garden in my PJ's he was standing over me spitting on me and saying, how was he supposed to love me when my own parents couldn't

 

He has said things to me that have made me physically get sick.

I know part of the reason i had an affair was (this is what the counsellors say) was a passive way of beating the crap out of him.

Yet at the same time the man i had an affair with was kinda like my dad (no seriously my dad is a wonderful man and so not a cheater or a selfish pig) he had that protective thing that I just wanted, I wanted to feel safe.

 

I never stopped loving my husband, I just hated the cruelty of our relationship. twice he had physically pushed me (some may not see that as a big deal but when you fall over or get a bruise on the back of your head that is quite a push).

When he found out about my affair he went ballistic and I got very very hurt.

I understand it was the insanity of finding out but I didn't deserve that.

I would fear the same for you.

I had over a year of mental abuse awful name calling in the street, text messages phone calls you name it I got it.

It has destroyed me, My self esteem is beyond low, I question myself continuously, I am as close to having an eating disorder as one can have without actually having one:confused::confused:, i lost 4 stone when we split and have only gained a stone. Went from a size 14 (uk) to a size 8.

 

He told everyone absolutely everyone what i had done (my kids also)

He shacked up with a young girl and parraded her around our city he posted his love and sexual antic on the internet.

He went for huge amounts of therapy and we are back together and doing ok but I am low on a self value scale. I am so ashamed of what I have done, I will never tell people what he has done so I live in the shadow of his ex and their amazing sex life, I live with the fact that every one knows I F'd another man. It makes everything so difficult.

 

I do think your H can change but so have you. You enable the abuse, just as I did, that has to stop. If you want to save your marriage it will take a lot of work and he will slip back into it. A few weeks ago my H went right back into abuser mode, I didn't react and I let him spiral out of control. when it was over i photo'd the evidence because i didn't know what else would happen. He saw the photos at the weekend and he fell apart.

Some think I am mad to come back but earlier today I had a moment of insecurity and he was there for me. I love the good in him and I love him more now then I did before.

you might be better to leave your marriage but I beg you not to do it with the support of this man and to do it because you truly believe you deserve a better life.

I wish you the best keep talking