Should I stay or go?

I am a 29 year old female and have been married for six years now. We have two wonderful daughters. Our oldest daughter is not biologically his but he has been in her life since a very young age and calls her his own. I have had two previous long term relationships that both ended due to infidelity. I do have trust issues and explained that to my husband when we first started talking. I also suffer from depression and anxiety issues which makes things worse. I went through a period of time of severe depression last year. During this time my marriage suffered. I did not want to do anything. I don't like to talk as far as our sexual relationship there really wasn't one. My husband doesn't understand depression or how it works he always claimed I was just lazy and needed to snap out of it. At the end of the year I found out he was talking to another woman, granted she has about 1500 miles away. Though it was just conversation I feel they were extremely disrespectful towards me. They were just talking about how their days where there was "I love you" and etc. I did kick him out of the house. We were trying to work things out I let him come back home. He was home for a day, when I found out he sent her money for Christmas. So again he left. We have still been trying to work things out but he continues to talk to this woman. He says that it all started depression and I was not there. I did not give him enough attention or sex. And she was just somebody to talk to. Which I can understand but I feel like It should end. He says they were just really good friends they've been talking for a year and a half now. I know I didn't look at his stuff I would not know when it would not hurt. But I can't. He says I'm crazy that this is not cheating but I feel like idiots because I feel like it is an emotionally cheating. I need advice from someone outside of my circle. He is truly the love of my life and we are very happy together and have a great time until I see that they have talked. Do I allow it to continue and stay or does this prove he does not really love me and I should leave? I would love to have some advice from a man's perspective.

Hello I think you should talk to him i mean not fighting or making decisions but just talking slowly and know if he have feellings for her cause maybe the time when you was we can say " less here " he felt alone or something and he knew her and they where talking is ok for me is not a big deal but he should have feelings for you only and she should be just his friend. And if you just try to talk to him about depression too and how he should be in your side. Maybe i have not big advices to say or a big ideals but for me i think before any decision just talk but not scream and stuff just talking about everything feelling thoughts all I wish you the best

Thank you so much for your response. We have talked normally and I kept my cool on so many occasions I can't even count anymore. He says he loves me and does not have any feelings for her even though he tells her Vice versa. He says that all of the things he tells her are just words and that he shows me actions. I honestly do understand the reasoning of it starting because I wasn't there but it has been eight months since I found out and he has moved out and he still hasn't stopped. He tells me I just need to stop looking and I won't be hurt.

'Doesn't understand depression'? In THIS day and age? Oh, come off it - that's just his 'get out of jail free' excuse for why when the sh*t hits the fan and things aren't as much FUN any more, he reveals his deeper-down, hitherto undiscovered 'Me-Me-Me, It's All About Me & Always Was (& Sod You)' attitude. For better OR WORSE. It's not like you, depressed, is all he's constantly ever known since the start, is it? Or how else did he manage to get to proposing? So NO, is the answer to that one. You're clearly not a cat-kicker, which means, you take things out on yourself whereby it collects then expresses physically in the form of ailments. Reactive depression, in other words. Here's a theory: maybe you and your extra-extra hope and determination for this relationship's success SENSED something were up, whether established-ly or as a precursory climate, and, overly disillusioned, not least through an unspoken embargo against any self-helping enquiry and discussion, hit serious despair? What I'm saying is - you have only his (worthless) word that it's been going on ONLY for a year-and-a-half, have you not? ("I asked the liar if he was lying and he insisted he wasn't"). He didn't WANT to understand it - hence, 'stop being lazy, just snap out of it' (oh, be still my beating heart, I feel SO valued and cherished!....NOT). Not that one even NEEDS to understand it. You can leave that part to the doctor(s) and just do YOUR bit - as loyal husband and no. 1 staunch supporter and *not* fair-weathered merchant (banker). The truth is this: as soon as the marriage for the first time featured distinctly 'worse', he was basically off. Maybe not with his feet (that way leads to serious upheaval and halved wealth and assets). But certainly with his mind. "I love you" etc. The only adult woman he's supposed to utter those sentiments to or accept them from IS YOU. You should be getting his words *and* actions EXCLUSIVELY. You know that. And so does he. And, fyi, that money he sent her was half yours (so how dare he!). Damn right it was an emotional affair, no two ways about it. But it was no mistake; his needless and exacerbative lies upon discovery and then abjectly disrespectful refusal to end it, i.e. continue the affair PRACTICALLY/TANTAMOUNTEDLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU, prove it (- I mean, how effing cruel can one get?!). So what you have here is him relying on - i.e. EXPLOITING - your hopes, dreams and understandable fears and incredible reluctance to have to call this third serious relationship quits. I understand you'd want to buy into his excuse(s). That way allows you to ignore what's what or buy yourself more thinking and deciding time. But if a man lets only his mind wander whilst his feet stay put, it's usually either because he's too lazy to end his marriage and routine lifestyle or because he has considerable wealth to protect against legal division. Or both. So do *not* waste time. Get to a solicitor, if only to be prepared as well as fully confident and hopeful about going it alone again *if* it comes to it. Methinks there is probably more gold in them there 'secret squirrel' hills than you realise...unless he gains enough of a head-start (via your delay) for hiding it from prying court eyes that are constricted by forensic-investigative time-limits (6 months to 2 years, depending on type of account). You CANNOT work it out if only you are rowing the love & reparations boat because you'll get nowhere aside from round and round in circles as can eventually lead to a vortex (sssllup!, in, under and down you go!...or 'further', should I say?). So saving your marriage is not an option and you'd best get out sooner rather than later if you don't want him to drag you down with him on this destructive trajectory of his. No, he is NOT truly the love of your life. No love of your life would ever DREAM of treating you like that, least of all when you were ALREADY depressed! What was he trying to do - finish you off?! Come off it. If he loved you (rather than loved being loved by you full-stop) but not her then there should be zero to think about and zero hesitation when it came to getting rid of largely-immaterial her, because it would be a case of Gold (for life) versus Nickel (durability unproven/unprovable), i.e. not remotely Sophie's Choice. He is basically protecting his relationship with her whilst drip-drip-KILLING his relationship with you (by kicking the love out of you again and again). Who/what does he love and/or want more? Answer patently obvious, CASE CLOSED. If he's *not* trying to position you into letting him have his cake and eat it then he's trying to stay on your lilypad until such time as he's agitated the water enough for her own lilypad to come closer, whereupon he can leap fairly seamlessly and non-disruptively from yours to hers without worrying about having to get cold and wet. Sorry. :( But *not* sorry because...the thing about (so-called) marriages like this one (as the evidence automatically proves was never much cop when you get down to it) is, the victim eventually comes up smelling of roses with an unexpectedly big, fat grin on her face whereas the perp just keeps sliding downhill. Oh My GOD!...I've just read this bit: " He tells me I just need to stop looking and I won't be hurt." Gimmie the effing gun!!! *Please*, accept you married a rhymes-with-punt (or arsey-cyst, more like), despite whom did a convincing impression of Mr Nice Guy during the chase, woo and capture phase, enough that you said 'I do' (- don't they all). Yeah? Well, now he's shown his true colours, i.e. what he's like the minute HE'S done thus lacks any incentive to be remotely nice, it should be a case of, 'I'm done!'. I know it's a headf**k of the highest order akin to 'invasion of the body-snatchers', and that it's oh-so-HARD to so quickly get with the nightmare-ish reality programme when you were for so long convinced you *weren't* just dreaming and *had* hit the jackpot, but that's what's going on here, meaning, you're going to have to act on behalf yours and your daughter's *future*. That'll last far longer than this mere phase, that's for sure. Plus the quicker you dump and take time out to recover and focus on getting your daughter through this (as well as teach her never to take any sh*t), the quicker you'll be ready to bump into a genuinely nice guy at last. WHICH YOU WILL. It's how it goes when you've finally (finally!) had enough sh*t where before you (evidently) hadn't, not quite. (However, 'this' time, give him a much longer, much more thorough test-drive, just to make sure that's what he truly is *and* to set the lasting standards as a hard-grained habit.)

Sounds like you know what you need to do, you just need the extra push to get it DONE. Nothing says "I'm Done" like changing the locks and seeking legal advice to end your marriage. Close all joint bank accounts NOW! Consider securing any valued assets (like jewelry) at a location other than your home. Hopefully this is the push you needed. Time to take you and your daughters future seriously.. Hopefully when you're through he won't have any money to send to some "On-Line RANDOM". LOL :0)

Good advice about closing joint accounts. Unless...is he the bill-payer, still paying them/still maintaining you and the kids? If so, I'd hold off for now and keep your lip firmly zipped. Plus are there any costly house repairs needing doing or vital purchases (furniture, for example) that have been put off and could affect how much you'd get if it came to having to sell the 'former marital home' or give you an initial fiscal head start to your maintaining it if it gets awarded to you in your settlement and possibly thereafter consider renting out a room to a lodger for an extra regular income? If there are, I'd keep my powder dry until *after* they've been done and fully paid for (asap). If he says anything about the sudden expenditure, tell him it's helping to cheer you up a bit and keep you more positive about everything...."you know, darling - retail therapy (I'm a barbie girl, in a barbie woor-oor-oorld)". ;-) You've got to be devious and cunning from here on in, keeping all cards close to your chest and playing dumb as uck. Because if he's had a whopping year-and-a-half of priming her to be ready to take him in, and you've not taken strides to divorce him or seek court-ordered Interim Maintenance for 8 long months, he might well be busy shuffling the savings and any liquid assets around 'just in case' you do finally, inevitably snap and issue divorce proceedings, so that the total pot on the table come the formal financial hearing, out of which your one-off or monthly settlement and child support will get set, contains or seems to contain far less than it ought. Saying that, if you're the lion's share breadwinner then, yes, do close all joint accounts and secure assets without delay. Another tip (again, if he's the breadwinner): you probably won't be shopping, eating or socialising as much or as frequently as you used to before you started sensing or found out (and same for your daughters if they know or can sense something's badly up). Try concertedly to increase your expenditure, starting from now, so that said monthly Interim Maintenance payment that your solicitor gets the court to order him to pay (if applicable) prior to the eventual settlement hearing will be based on your healthier level under normal circumstances at least. Again, it'll be taken as the basis for 'maintaining the lifestyle to which you've become accustomed' during the marriage, permanent settlement level-wise, and which the courts try to match as closely as possible. Oh, and when you raise the divorce petition with your solicitor, do ensure to cite Adultery as your reason, won't you. Solicitors, barristers, and especially presiding judges - they're all only human, but obviously exceptionally moral and victim-protective with it. It affects their decisions whether they like to admit it or not. Apologies if these tips feel too-much-too-soon, but time is of the essence now, given how he's said 'she may get my words but you get my actions'. It's BS, obviously (considering that monetary gift and who knows what else), but it at least it's (whoopsie-daisy) an admission on his part of how he already sees it that you are now SHARING HIM with this (tell it like it is) mistress. In other words, he may be sneaky and duplicitous but evidently he's not exactly a genius with it (thank goodness). We're here if/when you need us. :-) PS: Always log-out properly and delete us from your history.

Thank you all for the responses! I have kicked him out he has been gone since the day I found out. I changed the locks on the doors and took money out of his account the night I found out. We do not have anything really. We live pay check to pay check. The house we lived in together is my grandmothers that she left to my dad when she passed. We each have our own vehicles. No shared bank accounts and neither of us have more than $200 in. So there is no motive to him dragging me on due to that. He makes more money than I do but not by much and since we first got together we have always kept our money separated and slit bills all bills in half. As far as the other woman, she is also in a different country but is where he is from. I know he will never move back there again but I know at some point he will go back. You can only go so many years without seeing your parents and they are not getting any younger. And she could never come here. She has four children and is also married but they are separated. This is why he insist that there is nothing for me to worry about. That they are just words and a way for him to vent. But I know if/when he goes to see his family there is no way in hell I could trust that nothing would happen. I know financially, even if he wanted, me and the kids would not be able to go as well. But I do feel as if I am sharing him. We always was able to talk about everything until I went though my bad depression stage. Then I quit. But I quit caring about everything not just us. Now he talks to her about things. We grew up on opposite sides of the world and extremely different circumstances. So we have always had different outlooks on things due to that. That's another thing they talk about, is things that he says I "find stupid". Which I have never said other than in regards to raising our girls. I have said things like well we are not there (in said country) and times are different.

"I changed the locks on the doors and took money out of his account the night I found out." Well done, you're obviously nobody's fool! However, this time you're in uncharted territory so you're going to have to take into account your understandable ignorance or blind spots. Bear that in mind. "So there is no motive to him dragging me on due to that. He makes more money than I do but not by much and since we first got together we have always kept our money separated and slit bills all bills in half." There obviously *is* a motive, though or - given how he seemingly can't bring himself to just tell this woman who 'means barely anything to him' that their continued acquaintanceship is inappropriate and must cease forthwith for the sake of keeping his marriage - why hasn't he just left you and gone to her already? So - theories based on known, common scenarios: 1. He's all along been earning far more than he's had you believe (which impression would have been relatively easy, what with separate accounts), i.e. has secret savings or shares, which obviously wouldn't remain secret in a divorce under prying, divvying court eyes, meaning, would get liquidated and halved at least....unless he's had time to hide and/or spend a lot of it beforehand, thanks to this erstwhile delay. (Some spouses 'gift' their secret savings to their parents or siblings under the mutual understanding of it getting 'gifted' straight back once the Decree Absolut has been issued. If the transfer's happened too closely to the divorce petition, however, it gets 'gifted' straight back into the divorcal pot by court order.) 2. He doesn't have a savings account but (ref dad's house) realises he'll be the one financially worse off 'if', meaning, is trying to keep you just hopeful or unsure *enough* when it comes to daring to bite the bullet in raising a divorce petition in order that you'll let this situation drag on for so long you become so desensitised to it or so badly chipped away at in confidence that once the truth becomes clearer, you're by then incapable of taking any real steps to change or extricate yourself from the soul-destroying situation and spend the next however many years or decades putting up and desperately turning a blind eye (- it happens), in the process becoming so worn down that you can't even muster the insistence about wanting marmalade, not Marmite, on your toast. By not having to leave the marital home and pay rent elsewhere (and suffer a status demotion in terms of no longer being a house-owner), he can then afford to keep wooing her/the next one. 3. Ditto the above but is just waiting until he's woo-ed this woman to the point where she inevitably starts to want him full-time and invites him to leave you and move in with her, whereupon, suddenly, seemingly out-of-the-Blue given all his prior insistences about it being 'nothing' and 'perfectly harmless', it's - "I've realised I *am* in love with her, actually, so now I want a divorce". 4. He just doesn't want to face any upheaval in his bid to play away. Plus, knowing he still has you to fall back on (with just a bit of persuasion) should any budding relationship fail, suddenly, is what will be keeping him capable of giving off a chilled, patient, more gentlemanly, i.e. all-round impressive and net-worthy impression. And let's remember: he's said 'just stop looking if you don't like being hurt'. He's treating you like would an enemy (supremely shoddily and disrespecfully). Ergo, that's how he sees you now. Ergo, that's how you should see and treat him, believing NOTHING he claims nor, frankly, anything that comes out of his mouth that isn't or can't be backed up by actions/evidence. "As far as the other woman, she is also in a different country but is where he is from. " THERE IT IS (and you 'know' nothing because, let's face it, neither did you believe *this* would ever happen, did you)! You may have gone through a phase where you FELT as if you didn't care about anything, but the fact that your feet stayed put rather than leave or have an affair yourself says otherwise, as has the fact you've since recovered. And you didn't CHOOSE to get depressed so - "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health" - that is no excuse on his part and nothing for you to feel responsible over. There is never any excuse for seeing bad times as free license to start a romantic relationship with someone else despite still legally, firmly ensconced in another...Ever....And nor does cultural differences in raising kids count - particularly when HE was the one chose your culture over his own (and yours is the one those kids have to practise getting a handle on and thriving in.) After all, by that non-logic, one could say you yourself have carte blanch for taking a lover, now, and yet - are you? NO, is the short answer to that one. Why not? There you go. You know why not - because it's stupid, cruel, unnecessary, not to mention self-destructive - and more to the point, so does he and everyone. This isn't about thinking oneself justified, anyway. Rarely is. (In fact, more often than not there doesn't even have to *be* any problems in the marriage per se for certain types to stray.) It's about, I want/sod what she wants and now let me look around to find my socially plausible-sounding grounds for remaining reasonable-looking to myself and my general public. Anyway, the upshot is this: despite you've shown him you won't take being treated that way by having chucked him out, it's not done the trick to make him dump this "woman of no matter" or ask you to accompany him to counselling with a view to his moving back in, so, as I said above, that's that, remedying not possible, and it's divorce time. Even *if* as an outside chance, he needed one of his own countrywomen to talk to (although - money gift - it's not just talking, is it), the fact is, he knows this acquaintanceship is unacceptable to you to a huge degree and unacceptable to society as a whole, and should instead be choosing your welfare/his marriage (and finding a native countryMAN to chat to) over carrying on with her and losing you. He obviously doesn't mind losing you but DOES mind losing her. Ber-bom. And anyway, why *can't* he and someone from his country just chat? Why do it to a level where it proves intolerable to your spouse or involve monetary gifts? Answer: he's INVESTING in her. He either intends already or is toying seriously with the notion of going back home but, not wanting to have to go 'backwards' by at his age living again with his parents and thereby dumbing down his eligibility through being some sad old 'Malcolm' figure, is busy readying/feathering a new nest. Either that or he hasn't put *any* thought into *any* of this and is just an idiot, living *intellectually* hand-to-mouth as well, and ricochet-ing off and breaking all the furniture. However, ultimately, if perhaps it's that he felt emasculated and is enjoying his petty revenge, just because you had 'this country' on your side during his illogical and points-immaterial bids to assert his "authoritah", then... he's not exactly man enough to be a match to someone like you, is he? So...you chucked him out and are living independently. Now what? What's the plan, Stan?