Marriage and Cheating: I Think my Husband is Having an Affair at Work
Dear Ms. HeartBeat:
My husband and I have been married for a little over one year. Things have been really rocky here for about the last month.
My husband seems to spend all of his time at his new job and seems very interested in a certain individual of the opposite sex that works there. We also have an 18 month old child. We have gotten in numerous arguments over the fact that he never spends any time with his family, and when he does, he doesn’t put forth any effort to act like he loves me and enjoys being with me!
I have tried everything I can think of to try to make him happy, but I have run out of answers. I really love him, but it doesn’t seem like he really wants this to work even though he tells me he does. It has gotten so bad, that we don’t even have an intimate relationship at all any more. I need help!!!
My doctor has placed me on a double dose of anti-depressants and I am also on a medication for panic attacks. I am really confused, an don’t know what to do. I keep thinking about taking my baby and leaving, but then I think of how much I still love him!! I want my child to have a father. If you have any advice for me at all, I would appreciate your help.
Signed,
Confused
Dear Confused:
Hope is what is keeping you there bumping your head against a brick wall. Hope has a way of making people close their eyes so they can ignore the reality staring them in the face.
By ignoring your husband’s ACTIONS vs. listening to his WORDS, you are able to waste your time HOPING that things are magically going to change, HOPING your mate will start loving you, HOPING that the relationship you fantasized about will become reality, HOPING that somehow, magically, you will open your eyes and things will be different. You keep HOPING that he will change and that you won’t have to deal with your fears of being alone and starting all over again as a single woman with a child.
Please wake up.
I also have to consider the probability that he married you just to shut up a woman he got pregnant. Perhaps it was important to his family that he legitimize a situation you two created with a child he really didn’t want in the first place. Though I am a big believer in men being accountable for their actions and responsible for the children they create, men like him are not likely to be picture perfect husbands. They didn’t really want to be husbands. They didn’t want to be fathers either and are often angry at the woman that they feel “trapped” or “tricked” them into the responsibility of marriage and parenthood.
They then figure they married you, that is what you wanted, now shut up and get off my back while I live the life I should have been living if your ass had been on birth control!
Women kill me with this taking drugs stuff. You swallow pills to continue to keep yourself in a fog and not take the drastic, decisive steps you need to take. You swallow pills to keep your anger at bay, your fear under control, to have something to blame your situation and lack of action ABOUT your situation on besides yourself.
You know what you need to do here, you just don’t want to do it. So you swallow pills.
My suggestion: cuss that muthafucka out, file for child support, and get on with your life girl!
Worrying about whether or not your child has a father is stupid. He will always be the father (albeit a sorry ass one), whether he is there with his child or not. But that is what family court is for, to establish visitation, child support, physical and legal custody.
Anyway, in your fantasy version he would be such a wonderful doting and attentive father that you wouldn’t want to leave and have your child miss that relationship. But from what you wrote that isn’t the case at all, and as such, your child will probably not even know he’s gone.
MsHeartBeat
Dating expert and advice columnist since 1993, writing as Ms. HeartBeat. Author of the hilarious street smart dating guide "Sucka Free Love - How to Avoid Dating The Dumb, The Deceitful, The Dastardly, The Dysfunctional & The Deranged."
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Category: Dating Advice
