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My worry is that this is yet another selfish act of self preservation, rather than a selfless act to protect your BH or your DD

I resigned because my husband made it very clear that he didn't want me working there anymore because our daughter and the OM's daughter would be there and for the OBS. We didn't want our daughter subject to any rumors or stares. We didn't want my husband or the other wife to feel awkward walking into to school or events. I respected my husband's wishes and quit. If that's being selfish, then so be it.

you should see an attorney to educate yourself as to your rights - and what's best for you and your child. Ask your attorney whether you living with your father could be viewed as abandonment (and adversely impact your custody).

I don't have an attorney nor have a I contacted one. That fear runs through my mind each day I'm away, but I know my husband would never pull that card. I have to believe that.

I am going to start taking my meds again. I know going off of them was selfish. I know I need to be a functioning person for my daughter, husband, and myself.

My apologies. I didn't know your BH wanted you to resign. I haven't been reading his thread. I wonder if he took your daughters best interests into account with that.

Did you tell the OM about the “lifestyle” that you and your BS participated in? And if you did, when?

No, I never told him. I never told anyone unless I knew they had been it or were wanting to try it.

wonder if he took your daughters best interests into account with that.

Of course he did. He asked at the meeting if our daughter could ever come back to the district because he knows it's a good one and feared that I ruined her chances of it. Our daughter's best interest is always first in his mind. If I'm coming off as defensive, it's because I am. I see your comment as an insult to my husband's fathering abilities. I'm sure that's not what you meant it, but that's how it came across to me.

LifeDestroyer, I know this thread is starting to go in a bunch of directions and it’s probably an apt analogy for your life right now. What to do for your daughter, your health, your career, your household finances, how to stop lying, how many people are negatively affected by your actions,, how to support your husband, how to heal yourself.

It can feel overwhelming and it’s very easy to get lost in the weeds.

Just try to stay focused on the big picture.

Take care of yourself. Take your meds, do some physical activity, try to sleep, don’t do anything self destructive.

Take care of your husband. Neither you nor he knows what that means right not but it will emerge. Until then, as a minimum, try to understand his feelings by reading SI BH JFO.

Take care of your daughter. She needs loving stable parents and some idea what is going on or she will fill in the gaps with a child understanding and make it her fault.

Stay honest.

Start to figure out your whys.

Use SI in a way that helps you. If you feel defensive, examine it and learn from it. If there are facts missing, it might help people if you supply them, but otherwise it’s ok if you need time to respond. Ask for help if you need it. Some of the kindest things I’ve read are to waywards who say explicitly I’m having a horrible day, I see how bad I am.

I’ve been in that frantic place. It does get better. Re-read what M1965 said. You will are your daughter grow. You will settle into some kind of relationship with your husband, as a co-parent at a minimum. You can learn to be a better person. Hold on to the big picture of where you are going and how when you start to get bogged down.

I applied for another position at a different district this morning. I'm off to enroll my daughter at a different district and then back to my classroom to pack up.

LifeDestroyer,

You are getting a lot of good advice, and I am sure it is overwhelming. About 10 months ago, I confessed to an affair I had when I was dating my husband 12 years ago, and it is still overwhelming. One thing I've been told multiple times that keeps me persevering through the darker times is that this is a marathon - not a sprint. Don't give up! Even if you end up D, don't give up on yourself.

You're going to have to dig deeper and work harder than you've ever worked to understand your H's pain and the parts of you that allowed you to betray your H, and then you're going to have to work even harder to heal those parts of yourself. When you fall, get back up and keep working.

What you did will never be justifiable, but it does need to be understood so you don't do it again. A common trait among us "waywards" is that we lie to protect ourselves, and often it's to avoid conflict or to avoid being perceived in a way that doesn't align with the image we want people to see. I was always afraid of conflict and afraid of letting anyone (even me!) see the parts of me I didn't like. I was terrified that owning my ugly parts would mean being rejected or abandoned. And terrified of rejection and abandonment because I didn't know how to love myself and relied on being loved by others to feel good.

Sometimes I visualize my heart as a tank that can only remain full with love that comes from within. For so many years I was trying to trick my own heart into feeling full of love from others, but the tank couldn't stay full because I didn't have enough love for myself. And when outside sources of love waned, I would find myself in a pit of self-hatred, believing that the only way out was for others to fill me back up with good feelings to numb and distract myself from pain and isolation and emptiness.

When you lie about your true thoughts and feelings to protect those vulnerable parts of yourself, you can start to build up resentment, and that resentment can fuel a sense of entitlement. And if you look outside of yourself for validation and/or rely on others to make you happy, you can start to tell yourself a story to rationalize your actions, even when you know they are wrong, just to feel good.

The last thing I'll leave you with - you can't change the past no matter how much you wish you could. But you can wake up every day and commit to being honest and being your best self and then do those things with humility. When you fail, spend some time to get curious about why, and then get back up.

Sending you and your H strength.

wonder if he took your daughters best interests into account with that.

There are other schools and she is a teacher. How exactly would a 5 year old be put at a disadvantage? IMO your daughters best interest would be at another district where you didn't cheat. If she stayed, she will eventually learn what you did and possibly get teased. There will be rumors and it will last a long time. My wife is a teacher and things change when a teacher oversteps their mission to do no harm. The blame doesn't go onto the parent, the blame goes on to the predatory teacher by the community. Talk at PTO meetings and then that is it. The community will start to dig. Rumors will start. Some true and some not. Hopefully no one in the district knows about your swinging past. Parents will not want their child taught by someone that didn't have good moral and ethical values.

If I were you I'd definitely be making an apt with a lawyer.

Are you in a teachers union? They can and will help you navigate this With your best interest. 🤞🏽🤞🏽🤞🏽🤞🏽🤞🏽

Are you in a teachers union? They can and will help you navigate this With your best interest.

Yes, I am in the union, but I don't know what they can do for me as there aren't any positions open as of right now for this district. I applied to a different district and will be applying to two more tonight.

THATS GREAT NEWS!!!! Your union should protect you should any of the things zug suggested DO happen. That may look like putting you in admin leave... I have no idea but they’ll help you. hopefully it’s a strong union. Have you spoken to the rep yet?

You won’t know how they can help until you reach out to them. My teachers union is strong and if they didn’t know how to help - they’d research ways so they could be of service.

My husband went to his union and was advised to take a stress leave to get his “house” in order. It was essential to me surviving those first couple of months post dday. He wouldn’t have known about the process without confiding in them.

I left a message with my union rep. Tonight is meet the teacher for our daughter's new school, and she starts tomorrow.

Some past history

Ever since I was a little kid, I had to appear strong. I faked my negative/sad emotions because I didn't want people to know. My parents were messed up big time. My dad was an alcoholic and my mom had extreme low self- esteem which caused her to be very paranoid with everything my dad did. I will discuss that at a different time. They were always fighting when he was drunk. I've had to call the cops to stop them, beg my aunt to come pick my mom up and get her out so she would stop yelling at my dad, I've had to pull a large knife from my mom's hands as she threatened to kill my dad, I've had to stop them both from slapping each other, I had to a lot of crap for a little kid. There was no one around to help because they chose not to. My brother would ignore my calls and my aunt wouldn't always come. So, I was left to make sure my parents didn't kill each other. I couldn't let people see that. I pretended that my parents were amazing and loving to each other. I didn't want my friends to know that my mom probably should have been in some sort of mental facility and my dad should have been in rehab. I couldn't let people know that my uncle sexual abused me, because no one would believe me (of course he gave me that line too and he was right because no one did believe me in the family).

When my mom passed away three years ago, I once again had to be the strong one. Not because I wanted to be, but because I had to. My brother was huge momma's boy. He may be 11 years older than me, but he didn't act it. Her death demolished him. The whole family rallied around him and gave him words of sympathy and shoulders to cry on, while they told me " You're the strong one, your brother can't handle this right now but you can." Uh no I can't. She was my mom too. I lost my mom too. Just because I had to be strong growing up doesn't mean I'm not falling apart inside. But I wasn't left with a choice. I also had to be strong for my daughter who was 2 at the time. I didn't want her to see her mommy crying all the time because she lost her mommy. Every time my daughter brought up her Mimi, I couldn't let her see the tears build up in my eyes or hear my voice crack. I had to hide in the bedroom for a few minutes to collect myself. My husband knew this. He knew that I always had to be the strong one. I had been doing it my whole life.

Tonight as we finished up meeting our daughter's new teacher and checking out her new school, we walked outside and I had to say goodbye to her because he would be taking her home. He just stared at me with this hurt look in his eyes. I stared back at him but didn't say anything because she was right there. I texted him because I needed to hand something over to him. When we pulled over again he stared at me and asked "don't you feel anything?" I told him that I feel everything all day long and all I do is cry but I can't right now in front of our daughter because that's all she has seen me do for the past two weeks. He doesn't think I'm feeling any of this because I'm not crying. My old instincts have kicked in and are forcing me to be strong in front of him because I don't want him to think that I want his sympathy or for him to feel bad. I am trying to be strong for him and be there for him because is the one with the undeserving feelings. I deserve to feel every single thing, I know that.

I know this is another thing that I will need to work in IC, but how do I stop that thing that I have done my whole life? Will he just think that I want him to feel bad for me, a woe is me feeling? I feel that sharing my feelings is selfish of me because his are the ones that matter right now.

BH here. I have one suggestion for you. Pour out your heart. Every once of it. Let him know exactly how you feel. Let him know how bad you want him and your marriage. Be open and vulnerable. If you truly love him, find strength in telling him that. Be sincere and completely honest. Tell him that you don't want a divorce. He needs to know that you feel his pain, your pain. So stop holding back and pour it out.

[This message edited by WilliamM at 8:35 PM, August 6th (Tuesday)]

^^i agree and I think you should not be apart. I feel like if you were home, or even spending set amounts of time together you could cover ground quicker.

He doesn't want me home. Trust me, I want to be home so we can try to work on everything, but he doesn't want that. He needs his space. I told him that I will stay here if that's what he needs.

I can only text him about our daughter. I did send him an email tonight expressing my feelings, but I don't know if he has read it. I will have to use email to communicate with him about us. I'm really hoping that he will let us have some time to talk tomorrow after dropping our daughter off at school.

Pardon my old style perspective on "writing"

Writing a letter - as many pages as you need - in cursive (I can't believe some schools not teaching how to write!!!) and take your time - bare your thoughts and regrets and show empathy - make it about "US" and him. Make it about healing, repairing, fixing your brokenness and working to become worth trusting again.

side comment: If he is like me - you will get to 99 44/100% trust with him but there will always be a "what if" - he will learn to live with that. He has to.

Once sent/delivered, a letter is permanent unless physically destroyed. Email can be gone in a microsecond. He can read it anytime without having to have a phone/pc/tablet. He can put that letter with things he has saved over the years of your marriage. And you can't take back what you have written so easily.

Maybe have it delivered with "male equivalent" of flowers and chocolates? (NO BOOZE) - um? maybe

a gift card for "Duffs Famous Wings?" (order off internet)

I know you are desperately trying to find magic words or think of something you could do to stop his pain. You can do so by consistently being honest and telling him over an over how you feel about what you want for your future. The rest of his learning to live with both of your histories is in the hands of time.

When the Mrs and I were working to restore our trust in each other and find our common ground - we started a journal and left it for the other to read and add and we went to and fro with our additions. Now it is a reminder of where we were and we can look back now and see if we were true at the time and if we have become better for each other. It helped us.

Hippo

I hand wrote him a note, sorry in print because my cursive is awful, explaining what he meant to me. I have also written him an apology letter that I wanted to read. I have been keeping a journal that I would love for him to read one day. I like the idea of having one we both write in. I will ask him what he thinks about that.