How to make the decision

My WS has asked me to decide very soon whether or not I want to continue trying to R or separate.

For some background, he has a ONS at the beginning of the year, I found out a few days later, and things have obviously been very up and down since then. We are very different people, and I often wonder if maybe we just weren’t very compatible from the start.
He cheated while working away, I have asked him multiple times now to quit/take a break from that job as I’m struggling with it and he has said no every time. He has made some concessions around the job in regards to his behaviour, but ultimately the trust has gone and those small concessions are not enough to put my mind at ease. I have had quite bad anxiety and depression for the last two months in particular. I’m finding it hard to function. There is still love there on both sides and he doesn’t want to leave, and when I initially asked him to leave right after DDay, he begged to come back.

Now, he’s said he’s struggling with the not knowing what’s going to happen, feels constantly on edge that I’m going to kick him out at any minute, and just wants me to make a decision. This is coming after another request that he stop working away for a while, which he’s refused.

The problem I’m having is that I am 90% sure that the best thing for both of us right now, is to separate. It is not working, we are constantly butting heads and can’t make sense of the way the other one thinks or feels. While I feel I’m entitled to lay down what may appear to be extreme boundaries right now, he feels that his actions don’t give me the ‘right’ to tell him what to do. (I’m not telling him what to do, I’m expressing my feelings and discomfort with things that he does).

How did you get the courage to call it quits? If I take myself out of this and look at it from above, obviously we should separate. It’s been almost a year, we’re not getting anywhere, I have nothing else to give him right now. It makes sense.
But I just feel so guilty about actually pulling the plug. I feel like I’ve tried my best, but I can’t live like this, so what other choice do I have.

I just can’t get over the guilt of being the one to say ‘I’m out’ and the fear that I will regret not trying or that things will be worse. My brain and my heart are having a full on battle and I feel like I’m just standing in the middle not sure what side to take, getting hit from all angles.

9 comments posted: Wednesday, December 4th, 2024

Trial Separation

Has anyone here tried a trial separation?
I’m considering suggesting it to my WS, but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. I just feel like I need a break from everything to think clearly.

6 comments posted: Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024

Just Need to Rant

My WS has had a problem with drinking too much alcohol/staying out late/lying about it until the next day for quite some time now. After his ONS we made a deal he wouldn't drink anymore, especially while away. This has been broken a few times while away and has obviously really upset me.

Last night it happened at home. He finished work late (day job in our city), said he was going to a friends house straight from work, which already annoyed me because we'd had a big argument the day before about me having to take on most of the household responsibilities, but said he wouldn't be back late. Time was getting on and I had no word from him. He came back at 1am drunk.

I don't have it in me anymore. I am drained. So much so that I can't even face the energy it would involve for separation. I feel so stuck, both ways suck, I just want peace and calm and to not feel on edge wondering when the next lie will be, what he'll do next. Why can't he just be a good partner? Why can't he just do what he needs to do? I'm so frustrated and honestly just really, really sad. I am so sad all the time. I can't seem to gather the energy to make this better for myself and do what I need to do.

11 comments posted: Saturday, November 30th, 2024

Confused

Hi,

I’ve been reading these forums for a while now but yet to post, I didn’t feel ready.

I’m 9 months out from DDay. My partner had a ONS while away for a work, a job he’s still in and refuses to leave. It involves a lot of travel, mostly 1-3 days here and there, but sometimes longer, one trip this year was six weeks. He loves his job, it’s hard to get one and the same field that doesn’t involve travel. He did look but I didn’t like the amount of travel that came with the jobs he found, they seemed worse.

Aside from this he’s taken some actions on improving himself, has changed the way he behaves while away for a work in that he no longer involves himself in social activities, just works and returns to the hotels afterwards, he’s stopped drinking, he calls and texts a lot when he’s away, he’s putting in more of an effort at home, and has taken on a second job that is more steady and local and helps more financially.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and ‘soul searching’ I guess and this has been up and down. I feel like I’m always realising something new about myself/our relationship that I hadn’t noticed before.

We tried MC immediately after DDay which was an awful idea but she did point out some things I hadn’t noticed, like how he makes big decisions that affect me/the kids without me.

He won’t allow me full access to his phone/laptop, although he does tell me the code but he doesn’t like me looking through it because it’s an ‘invasion of privacy’ and says he has a right to have private conversations with his friends. I wouldn’t like him reading my messages with my friends either so I wavered on this and said I can ask to look at who he’s been messaging any time I want. I haven’t actually done this at all yet, but one night last week, I noticed him delete a message thread on WhatsApp so I asked who it was. It was one of his friends (female but I have no concerns there) so I asked why he deleted it. He said she’d asked how we were doing (she knows about everything) and he had said that I’d been really mad at him that week and then he thought I might get mad that he said that so he deleted it. Thing is, I wouldn’t have asked to read those messages. If I looked at who he was texting, I’d only be looking for questionable people, ie females that I don’t know or would have reservations about.
So that’s spun me out.

Another thing is I asked him to book the whole month around our DDay anniversary off working away (which is totally doable with notice). He’s booked one trip off, in which he’d be returning to the country of where he cheated and would be on DDay. Although he left that a while because ‘I hoped you might change your mind’.

He has another trip at the beginning of that month for a week far away, which is also the week of my birthday, and he said that seemed like over kill.

My dilemma now is, I can’t decide whether to keep trying, whether to dig my heels in about these things that are bothering me, whether to just accept the good that he is doing and take that for now. I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’ve seen a lot of people say they feel they didn’t know their WS, that they looked at the differently after. Thing is, I tried to block this out, but I always felt like this would happen one day. I always thought his boundaries with women were a little skewed and that he was always looking for something else, like I was never enough. We’ve been together fifteen years, and over that time, I’ve counted nine women he’s been involved with in some way or another (mostly when we were younger and off and on, but four of them since we had kids - one an EA (which he still refuses to accept), one an inappropriate friendship, one a girl he met on dating apps while we were broken up for a short time and slept with, and the ONS). Throw in some alcohol and drug problems, I feel like he’s always looking for something more.

Yet he won’t leave. He doesn’t want to leave and when I made him leave, he begged to come back. Swears he loves me, can’t live without me.

And I’m just very very confused and honestly very very depressed lately. I’m at a complete loss at what to do. How do I make such a big decision? We have three kids aged 7-14. I just feel so stuck. One minute I think oh he’s trying so hard, cut him some slack and the next I’m raging about not only the ONS but stuff he did years ago that I should probably be over by now but I clearly just rug swept at the time.

I’m so overwhelmed by it all I can’t think straight anymore.

20 comments posted: Friday, November 22nd, 2024