Yes I had a fling but why's my husband being so cruel to me?

DEAR BEL Two years ago I had an affair — discovered by my husband. We tried to mend the marriage, going to a counsellor together and separately.

I’m still going, trying to find a way either to live in my broken marriage or have the courage to leave. Either option looks like hell.

I want to stay married mainly because we have t hree wonderful teenagers and can’t bear to see their lives blown apart. My husband says he loves me but cannot live with someone who has betrayed him.

He won’t leave as he doesn’t want to hurt the children but says he will leave when they’re grown up. I’ll then be in my mid-fifties and will I want to start again?

Throughout our marriage my husband has regularly smashed things, sulked and ignored me for months. I wanted to leave when the children were small but my courage failed.

A friend once said: ‘He treats you as if he despises you.’ Yet he is also funny, generous and a fantastic dad and I do love him. He punishes me all the time — ignoring me and excluding me from activities with the children. We have told them we’re separating but neither of us does anything as we cannot face breaking the family up.

I feel I’m wasting my life. He makes me feel small, lonely and marginalised.

The stupid thing is, I did this to myself and am punishing myself as a result. Because I love my children so much, I don’t l eave. My husband has threatened to tell them I had an affair and I couldn’t bear them to hate me. I couldn’t face taking them to rented accommodation and seeing them sad because of me.

We are both in constant turmoil and two weeks ago once more made a decision to separate. Since then he’s been nice to me, so I am thinking — shall we give it another try for the sake of the children?

I asked him and he says he has given up thinking about that, but will just hang about for ten years. This is mental torture.

Over the past two years I have tried SO hard. I drink too much and cry nearly all the time.

Shall I stay, enabling my children’s lives to be uninterrupted and happy? Or leave, making them hate me and carry their parents’ divorce forever? Please help. I can’t find a way.

ANNA

THere is much cruelty in this sad story — an old-fashioned tale of sin and retribution. Your longer letter reveals that you are truly tortured by ‘crushing guilt’ at your infidelity, which happened because your husband hadn’t spoken to you for three months and the other man was ‘so kind’. that said, anybody can understand your husband’s hurt and fury when he found out.

But no one will persuade me that a life sentence of misery is a fitting punishment for a fling.

Nobody likes to be betrayed — but either forgive (although we never forget) and move on, or end the marriage. What you two have settled for is an entirely unsustainable situation, without honesty or genuine l ove or care f or your children’s welfare. Most of all, without courage or maturity.

Let me spell it out. the pair of you have already ‘broken the family up’ as surely as your husband smashed things in his famous tempers.

You deceive yourself that by continuing with t his t errible stalemate you are ensuring that your children’s lives are ‘ uninterrupted and happy’. How can that possibly be, when you have already shattered their stability by talking of separation and made them unhappy by the terrible atmosphere at home?

I used to believe that parents should do all they can to stay together ‘for the sake of the children’ but now I am not so sure. the children of parents with severe relationship issues suffer terribly and the effects can last a lifetime – as bad or worse than a divorce in the family. One study found that children raised in an atmosphere of marital hostility have seriously elevated levels of stress hormones, which show in behaviour and in school results. I warn you that by continuing in this situation of mutually-assured destruction you and your husband are storing up problems for the children you profess to love so much.

Your husband says he will stay for ten years until they have grown, settling for a decade of misery. You say you ‘love’ him (really?) yet long for a new start with somebody who might display loving kindness to you. He threatens to tell your children about the affair. What l oving Dad would make such a wicked threat?

YOu might consider telling him quietly that you will sit down with them yourself and have a proper talk about how your marriage went wrong. that might take the wind out of his sails. the whole thing is unbearable — and since you have tried counselling and failed, surely you have to call time on this unhappy marriage?

I think you should take advice (try National Family Mediation) on how to work out the ramifications of a separation in terms of the home. I am no legal expert (the NFM people are) but I’m thinking that a court might deem it better for you to remain in the marital home with the children.

It seems to me that in this matter the moral guilt is shared. You may have sinned but the implacable retribution i s your husband’s responsibility and it cannot continue.