SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

What do you do when you know you’re done but you have 2 really young kids, a mortgage, a joint account, family holidays booked for this summer, you can’t afford to move/rent/buy…my heart is breaking for my kids. For me. I didn’t want this. Now I will have to have shared custody and only see my kids every other week. That will kill me. But I can’t stay just for them. I deserve to be happy and deserve to be with someone I trust.
My trust didn’t come back after the last time. Throughout our entire relationship he’s secretly messaged other women (one particular ex fling in particular…but other women too).
Each time I find out, he begs for forgiveness, tells me he won’t do it again, love bombs me, tells me I’m amazing and he loves me so much, he doesn’t want to lose me. Tells me he will change, he will go to therapy. He hasn’t changed.
I got asked at therapy recently what I need from him, i said I need him to communicate with me. Tell me what he needs from me. Tell me when he’s messed up, tell me what is missing in our marriage.
Fast forward to today
My daughter had my phone, i wanted to call my mum and asked my husband if I could use his phone to call her. He got all shady and was faffing on his phone. I looked over his shoulder and he was trying to quickly close something. I asked what he was doing and he then said that that same women had messaged him….from what I could see on his phone he was blocking her. Because he had messaged her 5 mins before I asked to use his phone saying ‘hi, how are you?’ So was clearly shitting himself she would reply as I was using his phone. So thought to block her…there were no previous messages on his phone. I asked how he got her number and he said she had messaged on Thursday. Well those messages aren’t there…so he clearly deleted that conversation. So god knows what they talked about. He said she messaged saying she was going to a concert and he had told her to have a nice time. Seems pretty random?! She was saved in his phone as ‘X’.
I’ve spent a lot of this evening crying, mainly for my kids :-(
I don’t know what Im looking for. Maybe I needed to get this off my chest.

I’m Sorry for you. You deserve better.

You don’t need to D him immediately. Get a plan in place. Start detaching. Stop being his wife. Implement the 180 and consider separate bedrooms when you are ready to make that move (before physically separating).

I'm so sorry MemoryLane. It's hard when you're done but living in limbo. You've given him more than enough chances. It's okay to let go for your well-being. Nothing changes if nothing changes.

Your first step should be, as The1stWife said, to start practicing detachment. Remember the acronym (Don't Even Think About Changing Him), accept that this is who he is, and work on letting go of any feelings of love. Aim for indifference. Anger, cruelty, and sadness are all feelings that still engage with attachment. It will take time before your feelings really start to disengage, but you'll get there.

The next step is to talk to a lawyer or three. Many will do free initial consultations. Find out what you can expect in terms of custody, splitting finances, keeping vs. selling the house, etc. If you truly can't move right now, you can start saving up in a separate account. You don't have to tell your WS about that account until you do your financial disclosures during the divorce. As for the summer holiday, you can wait to file for divorce until after. Even after you file, you'll probably be under the same roof for some time.

It might not go as badly as you fear. Check out the Fear vs Reality thread pinned to the top of this forum.

Divorce is really really hard. I can't say any of it is enjoyable or easy, but I will say that I have so much more peace now, and even though I'm sometimes sad about seeing my kid less, I'm able to be so much more emotionally and physically present for her when I do see her. I feel worse about the years I spent in my head, depressed, crying every night - all that energy spent on my issues that I could've poured into her instead.