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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
As for you, LW, if he isn't going to be faithful, there's no reason for you to be either. If you want a monogamous relationship, leave him now.
"I had brought up the possibility of having an open marriage, but he wasn't into it"
Dan may tell the LW she's already in a open relationship by default but she's really not. It sounds like her husband wants extramarital sex but either gets off on the sneaking around and lying OR he can't bear the idea of her getting some on the side too. Persuading his cheating self into an open marriage might be more drama than she is up for.
If she honestly thinks she can Duchess through this, she needs to inform him with nuclear deterrants that he doesn't ever again bring his conquests home or introduce them to his kids (which also means no fucking their friends' moms/sisters/nannies, et c.) If he immediately goes out and breaks it, then you know he's getting off on every rule he can break, and I'm not sure that's a hounddog anyone wants sleeping at their fireplace, no matter how expensive a fireplace his Dukedom affords.
We've been together 20 yrs, legally married for 2.
I've cheated on her with more men than I can count. But no women.
Cheaters cheat.
* why does he fuck people who report to him? (ie, how self-destructive is he?)
* why is he attending sex addicts meetings? (ie, does he believe he has a problem?)
* why did he turn down an open marriage? (ie, can he tolerate you being non-monogamous?)
* why does he desperately want to make it work with you but can’t be honest with you (ie, why hasn't he admitted anything that you didn't figure out yourself first, when that would be the best way to start rebuilding trust?)
I would not bother discussing why he "used all the same lines and moves on her that he used to seduce me" – those are his lines. That's him. He can't be someone else.
I don't think there's much chance this will work. Turning down the open marriage was a shitty shitty move. But if he works hard in therapy then maybe. Of course he should be in his own personal therapy as well, to really start being honest with himself, which is the first step to being honest with anyone else.
By the way, more crap will come out if he takes this seriously. Be prepared.
Eh, I'm having a hard time dredging up much empathy, as the LW knew exactly what she was getting into and made some huge leaps to not see anything she didn't want to.
So what are those lines and moves? Thanks.
Leave him and make sure you get the house. At 35 yrs old, you are still young. He, he is just pathetic.
I don't think the LW mentioned what his profession is, so I'm hoping it's Evangelical Celebrity Preacher.
So which of those hoarders of other people's money is 50 and has a 35-yo wife?
The Duchess wanted a stable "home base" relationship, and the Duke was good for that. The LW wanted the suburban dream happily ever after, but this dude is not good for ever after.
(LW, I guess this sounds calculating because it is, but how likely is it he cheats again before your daughter leaves home? In your heart, what are the best odds you could give? And the non-calculating side of it is, you're still living intimately with someone you don't trust and can't possibly trust, even if he never cheats again.)
And it sounds like the Duchess got basic respect: to know at least tacitly what the deal was, rather than him refusing an open relationship and then bald-faced lying.
LW, I'm sorry and I can't truly even imagine, but what do you want the next five years out of your life to look like? The next 25 years? And as you say, for your daughter.
Also,when you say "got pregnant on purpose", can you clarify? It reads as you getting knocked up when this man didn't want a baby. If so, you're a manipulative dick. Let's all hope this shit show doesn't involve more children and that the one you have now won't be standing under the fan when it hits.
Like Mr. Savage said, you have two choices: divorce or Duchess. If you do divorce,make sure to secure the house and child support for your poor child. I have no sympathy for you nor him. Oh, please don't breed unless you two figure this shit out.
By the way, exactly how do these Lotharios manage to charm so many women? He really must be a handsome, witty guy. Probably why she's considering staying, even after all this.
Don't have that second baby, LW. If you're going to Devonshire it, do it 21st century style - keep your career up, use his money to send the kid to daycare and go back to school in something bankable, or maintain your career well. You could be a single mom soon.
And kudos to you for not throwing up and not questioning everything about your identity just because he went out for some strange (also in olympic class fashion). There's no need for you to put up with that, but honestly, that's about him, not you.
If you want to have ill will towards someone, it should be your husband. He's the one cheating on you. Don't set yourself up against other women.
You sound like you're not that jealous, you just don't like the lying. You're basically the perfect wife for this guy, if he can stop being an idiot about it.
That said, I don't like rewarding assholes, so my main tendency is to tell you to nuke this relationship from orbit. :P
LW: Why not leave him before all that happens?
For what it's worth, I'll put another ten bucks on him having more than six affairs; those are just the ones you found out about.
I disagree with Dan; I don't think she has the Duchess option, because like other commenters said, that only works if he isn't the kind of guy who leaves his wife for one of his cheating partners, and you know for an absolute fact that he is.
And yeah, try not to externalize anything onto the 23 year old. She's you, a few years ago. In a few years, she'll be you, now.
The answer to your question is: no, he will not change. You are young enough to start over. That you have your own career and do not depend on him is a huge advantage. Get out now!
best of luck to you, truly.
So what I think what Dan meant to say was - can you accept that this is who he is? Is the rest of what he offers you worth his infidelity? Can you live with knowing he will be on the prowl for the rest of your lives together? If you can take this relationship for what it is and not what you want it to be, then go forth and do so.
But I think what Dan is missing are the two things that would make it a no-go for me: a) there's no reason to believe he won't trade you in at some point, likely when you're much older, sadder, more damaged, and less likely to find a good partner and b) he's a liar. He's absolutely a liar and there is much more you don't know. He didn't take the opportunity you have him to come clean and he won't stop hiding things from you. These situations don't work very often, and never without a piercing desire to be honest, deep examination of why dishonesty is his go to, and intensive therapy to retrain his default (lying, decades of lying) into radical honesty. And bringing his side-piece into your home and letting her hold the baby you were nurturing while she was fucking your husband? He's a whole nother level of brass balls - and she definitely ended it because he'd been promising to leave you and your kid made her see the light.
Be honest with yourself, at least - don't you think this mess is fucked up enough? Do you want to add five more years of hyper-vigilance and broken promises on top of it? And the big one, for me - do you want to drag your shattered trust into the next relationship? You deserve to be with someone for whom honesty is not a Herculean effort, and who respects you. Best of luck. And stick with therapy! You'll learn why you picked him and why you'd consider staying and you'll learn your own patterns so you can defeat them.
Firstly, let's get something out of the way - the husband won't change. His dick might not end up in any other woman, which would be a titanic achievement on it's own, but he'll still be eyeball and brainfucking many other women. You'll never be the Sole Object of His Desire, no one will. He's not built for monogamy.
Secondly, watch your dang rhetoric. You were 28 and started dating a married 42 year old man - and you are giving this younger woman a hard time because your husband is so much older than her? Have some perspective and humility.
Thirdly - you were dating while separated and got pregnant "mostly on purpose". I'm reading between the lines and seeing a classic Honey Trap. What are the odds hubby thought you were on birth control?
No, that doesn't work like a charm. This confirms my theory that some guys must just smell right or something.
You have three main options:
1. Break up
2. Stay together and accustom yourself to being cheated on
3. Unilaterally officially open the relationship
1 and 2 have been discussed a lot, so I'd like to focus on 3. As others noted, you're already in an open relationship, so you can just make it official. If he doesn't like it, then break up with him. IMO, no one is so wonderful as to be worth the feeling of being made a fool.
You sound intelligent and clear-sighted, so only you can decide if you can live with this for a lifetime--or less, as he may well end up leaving you for another of his conquests down the road.
Honestly, I'm getting really tired of Dan using Deborah Mitford Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire as an example of how to make an open marriage work maturely. It's an anachronistic and dysfunctional paradigm and doesn't apply to 99% of us.
For one thing, she stood to lose her title of duchess if she divorced her philandering husband. And she liked having that title. For another, she belonged to a generation and a class of English people that believed in stiff upper-lipping their way through life. In actuality, she was known to be very unhappy with her boorish husband's near constant dalliances, which actually humiliated her (her "divorce is such a bore" attitude/comment is an example of the stiff upper-lipping). Lastly, this wasn't an open marriage: this was a married couple that lived almost entirely separate lives for years and years, something that is a lot easier to do when you have enough money to have multiple houses in multiple countries.
These days, thanks to digital photography and digital scanners for photos that predate digital photography, there's no need to divide up photo albums.
The Duchess of Devonshire is not the poster child for open marriage that Dan really, really wants to make her out to be and I don't know why he insists on using her as an example. There are lots of better models of open marriages.
In this case. They'd both be having quite the laugh about his manipulative darkness inflicted upon her. Ha ha! What a situation to bond for life over, as the wife babysits his new girlfriend's children-to-come.
Having had two LTRs with liars, I think she really nailed it with "do you want to drag your shattered trust into the next relationship?". The longer you stay with him, the more your next relationship (or capacity to have another one at all) is going to be affected.
You know he's a lying piece of shit, you know he won't/can't change. What are you waiting for?
He's not your friend and doesn't want a consensual open marriage, so why aren't you out the door already? Are you waiting for him to divorce you for the babysitter already?
He doesn't make the decisions that spare anyone anything and that cause the least drama, he feasts upon those that cause the most for everyone.
Honestly, he sounds like a sociopath - intelligent and charming with no remorse, great at manipulation. You've already admitted that you don't trust him - you wouldn't have read his personal email if you did. Considering everything he's done, with you and to you, do you truly believe you'll be able to trust him again? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life waiting for the other shoe to drop?
News alert: It's not 1950.
Best comment so far. I just wouldn't worry too much about his rules or concerns. Just tell him how it's going to be.
This man is 50 yrs old, you are 35..
Leave him. Doesn't matter if he can change or not, he was carrying on when you were pregnant, he's a big big Liar. I've no idea why Dan would even suggest pretending you are some Duchess.. Liars are liars.
Get out while you still have a chance to meet and be with a good man. Enough of your life wasted on this.
Why would he respect these rules? If you can't trust him to not lie, this is a foolish attempt to gain control over a manipulator.
I also agree with your post @66. This guy will break any rule, no matter how reasonable (like "don't fuck your subordinates at work.") He gets off on breaking rules.
The only thing the LW should *not* divorce here, is the "caring husband" side from the "lying cheater" side. Because whichever of the two motivations above is true (very likely both), each of them is an enormous, billowing red flag that lots of ugly disappointments are in store from a man whose extreme lying and cheating are only symptoms of a rotted infrastructure underneath that put-together, caring exterior. Duchess schmuchess. Forget the "sex addiction" and the "will he cheat again" for a minute and just make the obvious damn character judgement: before her stands not a good husband or father, but a tragically weak, cowardly man who, when it's do-or-die crisis time, will never have her back or their child's back if it means any risk or inconvenience to himself.
I'm not saying that there isn't a model for a marriage of this type but isn't there a better example?
@73: "for her the imperative was to keep the estate together and to keep being called "Your Grace" above all else."
Maybe the Dutchess quip should be reserved for LWs with land and title concerns?
Manipulators like her husband blow smoke up regular people's asses and make them think things are normal when they aren't, and encourage poor decisions. Hopefully they stop when she knows this isn't "normal" and he isn't either.
@75 Yeah, I meant the lying as a means of permanent control, not a means of acting out to get caught. No, he definitely doesn't sound like the weepy sinner/redemption cycle type, not with a six-year sinner phase. This guy's just about control, although I wouldn't call that a "kink" either in this case; it's not that interesting.
@76 Way too harsh, but props on the honest screen name, AND good points about "grown" men who fuck their young subordinates, and the need for LW to get her kid out of there (rather than allow the kid to be raised by someone who'll no doubt eventually reveal himself as the compulsively avoidant, sneaking, sniveling, non-father jackal he is, to even greater damage in the future).
I had an affair with a married guy once, was really into him - he was my professor in grad school - and he told me he was a womanizer and slept around, basically. Similar to yours, in a powerful position with a younger woman. The wife was another academic who put up with it. I was 28, he was 43. Don't marry cheaters. They aren't good husbands in the traditional sense. Their penis comes before the family and the kids.
If the 23-y.o. was into it, she'd leave you too. He's just a bit TOO old for her in real life. Lucky you. Accept that he won't change and make up your mind.
I don't know much about the duchess. I understand the criticisms as using it as a model. In defense of Dan, perhaps the point is that you can make a cold calculated assessment that the marriage offers enough perks (and a title) to make turning a blind eye the best choice. I wouldn't choose it; as the duchess herself said, We Americans like divorce and your husband has no issue with it either.
The question of "once a cheater always a cheater" doesn't enter into the equation. You already took that gamble and lost. He is a cheater. Does the status quo work for you or not?
I'm sorry. I was the cheater myself and I have walked the straight and narrow for ten years. A man worth your time will be honest with you.
Final question: how does he treat his kids from the former marriage. That tells yiu right there whether he is a good father.
You sound somewhat shitty mocking her in that she was lied to moment one from this creep.
And even if that wasn't the case that she presented, making a mistake once wouldn't make her deserve this level of nightmare to put up with.
And although I generally agree with Erica P and love her commentary, I have to disagree with the proposition at #57 that you can help him become a better person so he can be a better father to his child. That's not your job. Your job is to support your child in having the healthiest relationship SHE can have with her father. That may sometimes be no relationship.
Admittedly, my views on this are coloured by being the adoptive mom of a child who endured two years of shitshow courtesy of her birth families, before arriving in my home at age three. I can't fix her birth parents, but I can help her know them and interact with them in as positive a way as possible, when it's in her best interests.
Mr Cheatsalot turned down an open marriage for one of two reasons: Either he gets off on the thrill of cheating; being allowed to shag other women, with permission, wouldn't be the same. Or he wants sauce for the gander but not the goose. Either scenario is inexcusable. If you can tolerate it, WITW, perhaps a don't-ask-don't-tell arrangement would allow him to feel like he is cheating, but he really isn't because you know it's happening, if not the details. And by all means, if you want more or different sex too, please do indulge in some sauce for the goose. You deserve it!
Her life was probably less miserable, and her clothing was definitely more comfortable. Both husbands may have been dicks.
Are you really so sad as to make this this up?
"He told me they were essentially separated (living in different bedrooms) though I no longer know if I believe this."
I'm not saying it isn't wise to wait until someone is officially single before entering into a relationship with them, but LW was not responsible for destroying his marriage.
That he did get divorced before they got together seriously would indicate, from outside appearances that he wasn't lying. Now she knows, and your continued nasty chuckles suggest you have some weird issues with women you ought to address.
When people are separated, they are usually physically separated: Separate living arrangements,with temporary custody agreements for kids, etc. He sounds like he has plenty of cash to throw around for whirlwind sexcapades in hotels across the country, so he and his wife most likely weren't "essentially separated/living in separate bedrooms" because they could not afford two living situations.
Let me reiterate my original advice: Stop deluding yourself. Get out with your kid. Grow up. I don't think it is bad advice.
I also don't think it is a bad thing that I point out the ways in which she deluded herself -- falling for easy cliches that give you a veneer of deniability; continuing to protest that her husband is an excellent guy: kind, caring, smart, stable; not noticing his pattern of hitting on much much younger women, etc. If she really is the naive little victim that you claim in this scenario, she's got a lot of growing up to do, and it would not hurt her to have expressed a little insight that this "nightmare" that she is living is pretty familiar to his first wife and children.