If you (single imaginary reader) have been reading any posts on this blog for a while, you’ll probably know I suffer from body issues and depression and I’ve used this site as a way to get my feelings off my chest candidly.
Just when I thought I’d hit rock bottom with the suicidal ideation, anxiety and depression, I was hit with another bombshell.
First, you need the backstory. I am a married man, I met my wife, Mandy for the first time on 21 September 2002. On 23rd September 2006 we got engaged, shortly before living together from October 2006. we got married on 6th August 2011 and although we’ve had our share of ups and downs, with my mental health often contributing to the downs, it’s been a wonderful life together full of happiness, adventures and a really strong bond. I was just about a teenager when we met (19) and she was 23 so now we’ve crossed the threshold whereby I’ve been her partner for a longer amount of time than I have been on this earth without her. I’m going to write up our full story in a separate piece but that’s enough to establish the background.
The miscarriage
In May 2021, we had a miscarriage. Prior to the covid situation I never really wanted children and I made that very clear up front when courting my now wife, Mandy. I didn’t want to become less important to my wife than a child. That broke my parents relationship and I found it very traumatic when they broke up when I was about 13.
My feelings changed when my sister in law and her three kids came to live with us at a time of crisis. I suddenly discovered this untapped paternal side of me that I never knew existed so we decided to try, and to be honest, I wasn’t really expecting for it to work. I just thought I’d have a fun time trying, but we got pregnant within three months and it transformed me psychologically very quickly. It was only a month later when all that hope and excitement disappeared when we were told our baby had no heartbeat at an early scan.
Then we had to wait for the actual miscarriage. It was such a difficult time having to watch Mandy essentially go into labour with our unborn child. Seeing her in so much pain and being so totally helpless was unbearable.
Afterwards, I felt like it was my fault. That it was the universes way of saying you’re not good enough to be a father.
Trying again
We did try again but with every passing month where she didn’t get pregnant, it just got harder and harder to deal with. There was one occasion when she was a few days late and I was absolutely convinced that this was going to be it. In the end I just couldn’t keep going through that process.
The sex wasn’t enjoyable, in fact I was faking orgasm more often than I was actually having one, which kind of defeats the point for making a baby. I eventually put two and two together and worked out that it was the anti-depressants that were doing it to me and that I essentially had a choice between being mentally more stable or physically able to at least give us a chance of conceiving. It made me feel like a total failure as a man, the very least I should be able to do is have sex with my wife.
By April 2022 I asked to stop trying for a baby. The truth is she resented me for giving her that hope and taking it away again but pretended that she was ok with it and my mood was all over the place, flip-flopping between relief and a yearning to have that sense of purpose and meaning from having a family. I would focus on other things like planning holidays or cars to distract myself and in the back of her mind she felt like I didn’t care.
Drifting apart
Following on from this we started drifting apart a bit. She would be sat on the sofa glued to her phone using tiktok and snapchat and I’d be glued to my laptop using facebook and youtube. We were in the same room but we weren’t present for each other. Neither of us intended to neglect each other but that was what was happening.
By August 2022 I felt really lonely in our relationship. She was spending a lot of time with her ear buds in and her hearing isn’t the best anyway so she wouldn’t hear me when I tried to speak to her so I just gave up trying. Her behaviour was changing with late night group chats that would sometimes go on until the early hours of the morning. It made me feel uneasy but at the same time I still trusted her with her new friendship group. Sometimes I’d overhear the way she would talk and she’d sound quite flirty, and that wasn’t like her but it was a mixed group.
Her new clique
Our communication got worse and she sent me an email to explain what was going on. She told me that she had been fundraising with friends from tiktok for the baby loss charity SANDS but it turned out the ring leader of their little club wasn’t actually sending the money on and was pocketing it for himself. She had given a couple of hundred quid to it. As a result of this, the other members of the group became even closer and were doing karaoke streams to raise money. She listed a bunch of people and they were all people with partners or far away. I didn’t really like it but it would have been hypercritical of me to complain because I would have late night calls with my friends too but they were both male and she’d met them in person.
Bereavement
Later that month my aunty became seriously ill and in hospital. My aunty was living with my mum and had been for the last three years and she provided companionship and support for her along with her carers, which released the pressure off of me in terms of worrying about my mum.
It came out of the blue when she ended up in hospital with covid and a perforated bowel. We had to watch her die slowly over a week. At the time I found some strength from somewhere and just did whatever I could to support my other relatives but I felt very unsupported by Mandy emotionally. She wouldn’t come with me to the hospital or to say goodbye. On top of this I was very stressed and unhappy in my job, we had a lot of financial pressures and it felt like it was always left up to me to sort those kinds of problems out.
By the end of the month I lashed out asking if we were done, spelling out how I felt we had become strangers and I felt she was just playing lip service with her responses, making more excuses for all the late night stuff, saying that we’ll try to do more but nothing really changed. I ended up off sick from work, although I didn’t tell her and she didn’t ask.
Resentment
She would resent me for being in bed all the time whilst she was going out to work and coming home and having to cook tea and I think I was suffering from a form of post traumatic stress from my aunties death. To be honest I’d given up on things getting any better and was resigned to taking my own life. It felt like I was on a slow countdown. It’s not fun being around someone that depressed and she continued to seek escape with her new social circle.
Signs of improvement
It wasn’t all bad though. I was socialising more through Andy’s Man Club and quiz nights. My mood did improve just by being off work and most of the time it did feel like Mandy and I were ok. We were being intimate more often and in my mind it felt like things were improving. We might not have directly dealt with the difficulties from the summer but it felt like we were both making an effort.
Making an effort
Every Friday, we hosted my mum and Mandy’s parents for an evening meal to get them out of the house and to make sure they had a decent home prepared meal. Normally, Mandy would cook, and I would wash up, but a couple of times, I would surprise her so that when she got home with her parents, there was already food on the go. Beef goulash was one of my specialities. It was my way of showing appreciation and recognising all the things she did for me.
Admittedly, it didn’t always go to plan and I managed to burn a mark into the kitchen lino with an overly full pot of goulash and to make matters worse, the pot managed to break in two in the oven when I opened the door after cooking. The food survived and we still had a nice meal but it was a bit of a clean up operation with the oven.
I was also trying to help out a bit more by feeding the cats. We have four of them and traditionally Mandy did it as she was first up and first home. That’s why she did the bulk of the cooking too, I used to work late so it just made more sense. She also did the laundry. I handled everything financial and the bulk of decision making. We both contributed but in different ways, we delegated to the things we were most comfortable with. Mandy hated ringing people up, whether it was the doctors or sorting out a phone contract or whatever and I had a bad back that meant anything involving a lot of bending was very difficult for me. I drove, Mandy doesn’t so I’d offer her lifts whenever she was going out, it made me feel useful.
There was friction from time to time. I’d sometimes leave the washing up for a few days if I was busy and it didn’t bother me. To me, as long as we had enough plates and cutlery, it didn’t matter if there were a couple of plates waiting in the sink. I would do them, but on my terms. The way she was viewing it was I was at home all day and could have done it and she was out working and came home and still had to cook and I hadn’t done anything. That’s why I started trying to do more to help her.
Depression robs you of energy and motivation. Some days I could sleep for 20 hours and still wake up tired. It’s hard to understand if you haven’t had that. How could she understand it when I didn’t myself. I didn’t know whether it was “just depression” or whether there is something physically wrong with me causing the chronic fatigue. I noticed my heart would sometimes be irregular at rest. Mum has had very similar cardio issues too.
An egalitarian relationship
Our relationship has never been one where I expected her to do everything or vice versa. We always looked after each other in different ways and at one point when I was at Uni, it was me doing the laundry. She is a primary school teacher, I’m a software engineer. Her job is very hard but predictable, my job can change frequently, sometimes working incredibly late to meet a deadline, I’ve worked a 24 hour shift before, and other times more 9-5. We both have pressures, but different pressures.
I’ve always enjoyed cooking for Mandy at the weekends. It was easier for me because it wasn’t after the working day and so I’d make things more from scratch. There are a few different recipes we both enjoyed, chicken jalfrezi, spicy pork rice, a dish I called beansprout surprise that was a cross over between spaghetti bolognaise and a stir fry, cottage pie.
I honestly didn’t see what happened coming. It’s not like we were bickering or fighting. Things seemed on an upward trajectory.
First warning signs
In the October half term holidays she mentioned meeting up with a friend called Kim and that it was going to be a late one. It wasn’t unusual for her in the holidays to go out and see different friends, although that name didn’t really ring any bells. I thought very little of it at the time. She was out a lot that week and I didn’t mind. We’ve never been a clingy couple, we both would do our own things. Absence makes the heart grow fonder after all.
Finally ready to make a change
By the end of November I’d actually reached a point where the suicidal thoughts surrounding my 40th birthday in January weren’t going to come to anything. I knew I had to do something about work and on the 1st December I reached out to work, explaining what had been going on with my mental health and asking for help. I just wanted to get through December and my birthday, which were always tricky periods for me, then try a change in role or scenery. I still had suicidal thoughts but also an acceptance that I couldn’t bring myself to act on them.
Christmas stress
That time of year was always tricky for me. I loved buying presents for people and having some time off work to see friends and family but I also find Christmas stressful. We used to alternate Christmas day, one year at home with my mum for dinner before going to Mandy’s parents in the evening, the next year spending the whole day at Mandy’s parents. I actually got on better with her family than my own so this was no hardship but since the first covid lockdown things have been a little different.
During the locked down Christmas, 2020, we had Mandy’s sister and three kids living with us. It was an intense period but really nice to have the little family things like thinking of different things to do with the Elf on the shelf. It was the best Christmas I ever had, spending it like that as an extended family, even though my mood at the time was very low, it was a really happy time.
Christmas 2021 should have been introducing our new baby into the world, he or she (I always thought of the baby as a little boy, a mini Jon but Mandy thought of the baby as a girl) but instead we had to focus on different things.
Mandy’s mums health had deteriorated rapidly over lockdown, her memory was getting worse and she lost a lot of weight so we had Christmas dinner at her parents. My mum had my aunty Mary with her and my brother and brother-in-law cooking so she was ok and we saw her on Christmas Eve. Mandy managed to scold her ankle cooking Christmas dinner due to a faulty oven cover and a pan of boiling vegetables. We spent Boxing Day with her sister, which has become the new tradition and I was very excited as we got the kids some great presents and for Mandy and her sister I’d paid for a holiday to New York, just for the two of them. I felt they deserved it after both going through so much the previous year and I knew it was something they wouldn’t have been able to do themselves.
Christmas 2022 was different. I was torn between my mum and Mandy’s parents. My aunty Mary passed away in the last three months so mum was living alone now. My brother and brother in law had been living with them whilst searching for a flat but they had found a new place and wanted to spend Christmas with just the two of them, understandably but they were pressuring me to take mum.
I knew Mandy really needed to be with her mum. With her condition, we don’t know how many more she will have that she can remember. I offered to take mum with us to Mandy’s mums but that’s 15 people, including 7 kids. It’s lovely but it can also be overwhelming and I knew mum wouldn’t be comfortable there. She doesn’t like lots of people. She will make excuses to get out of family events, even her own family. I got quite annoyed with her as Mary was dying because she kept asking to be taken home and I just felt she owed it to Mary to be there for her after all Mary did, plus it was taking me away too and I wanted to be there for my cousins.
I was trying to weigh up whether I should split the day between Mandy’s parents house and my mums but mum was making out to people that she was going to be on her own on Christmas day, which would never have been the case, so she went to her sisters instead.
Boxing day was still lovely with our extended “Gregbert” (an amalgamation of Mandy’s sisters surname and ours) family but this year there was no big exciting surprises, I had to slash my budget dramatically due to financial worries. I know that the kids and my sister in law just valued me and us as family, we had gotten very close and it wasn’t just money and presents they were interested in but I still felt guilty for not being able to do the things I wanted to do for them. I get my generous nature from my mum. I tell her off for doing the same things, but I can’t help it. When I see someone in need, I want to help.
Alarm bells ring
Out of the blue Mandy mentioned that she was going to be meeting up with her friend Kim again but this time stay overnight in town for a couple of nights in December. I told myself it was fine but it niggled at the back of my mind and for the first time ever in our relationship, I began to have doubts about whether she was telling the truth.
It was unusual for her to see a friend again that she saw a couple of months earlier. Mandy didn’t really have any close friends, other than her sister who was also her best friend and I could understand staying over in town for one night, but two? I put it to one side and convinced myself I was just being paranoid and got on with things.
It was very unusual for us to spend two nights apart. It used to happen when she was on a school trip to euro Disney in Paris with work, but other than that it was quite rare and I felt lonely.
Keeping myself busy
To keep myself occupied on the Friday night she was away, I decided to try making some new recipes I’d done before. It was cucumber riata, tomato salsa, baked onion bhaje’s, lamb rogan josh and garlic naans. I made enough for 3 portions so she could try some when she was home. It took all night to do but it was nice cooking everything from fresh, raw ingredients and it distracted me but I still had those niggling doubts in the back of my mind.
Paranoia or instinct?
So, I did something I had never done before. I logged onto her laptop and went through her sent emails and browser history for any sign of something dodgy going on. I even sent her a WhatsApp message at one point saying “How’s your secret affair going?” jokingly, to which her reply was just “????”. I didn’t find anything to be honest and thought to myself, “You’re just being paranoid.” I felt bad for looking. It was an invasion of her privacy.
It didn’t get rid of the doubt entirely though, I knew she used SnapChat a lot. I did consider getting hold of her phone, even installing a hidden key logger so I would be able to see what she was sending without her knowing but it was only a fleeting thought.
The next night was the England vs France world cup game so I stayed home on my own again and watched that. I had a bit of a cold. I don’t get them very often and this was the first time since covid really. She also had the sniffles so I think I must have caught it from her.
We were messaging each other, not all the time but I was asking what she was up to and if she was watching the football and I was still getting the usual “love you” messages from her. Everything seemed normal.
We were both feeling unwell at the start of the week from 12th December. I took her to work to make life easier but I thought she should be off sick and I told her on Tuesday evening that she needed to call in sick. I look back in hindsight and wonder how much of her feeling crap then was down to her cold and how much of it was due to what I would later find out.
New Years Eve
I was much more excited by New Year than Christmas. I love making cocktails, I love karaoke (even though I can’t sing). It brings back memories from my childhood of everyone being together. It’s ironic really because as a child I was very shy so I hated New Year. Lots of my relatives smoked, but smoking would trigger my asthma and itchy eyes but the older I got, the more New Year became important to me as our thing.
I remember the very first New Year I spent with Mandy. We went to my aunty Mary’s and stayed in her caravan over night. It was the first time she met my wider family. I got so drunk on cheap alcopops that I decided to “spin” to make myself sick to feel better. The fact that she was there with me and I could show her off to my family made me feel so proud and so happy. She was the one!
This year I decided to go all out so I bought lots of decorations, helium balloons, banners, a smoke machine and new karaoke machine. To me this was my tribute to my aunty. It was a really good night. The Gregory’s were staying over just like old times, as did my friend Chris, and it was nice to spend New Years Day together just chilling.
Feeling unwell again
However, by the evening I started to feel quite feverish. I’m convinced it was covid. It was a really bad cold that meant I hardly slept for 3-4 nights and a cough and I lost my taste and smell afterwards.
Mandy decided to sleep in the spare bedroom that whole week, partially because my coughing and sneezing was keeping her up and to give me more space. I like to lie diagonally when I’m ill. I know, it’s weird but that’s me.
The way that the Christmas holidays had fallen this year meant she broke up quite close to Christmas and had the whole week after New Year off. She did tell me before Christmas that she was planning to use that week to visit some friends but she was out from early to late every day and when she came home, she wasn’t going up to see me, she was sitting downstairs on her own then going straight to the spare room.
The doubts become a realisation
By Thursday I was still sick and fed up with being abandoned. Those niggling doubts were festering. Was she really with a different female friend every day? It just felt very odd and convenient.
Her response to me asking what time she would be home or if she was abandoning me all night again was defensive, “It will prob be late again. I’m going to Sonyas for tea after our walk. I’ll keep you posted. I did say I was busy this week. Its the only time in the hols I can see ppl as everyone’s busy between Xmas and New year x”.
That felt like a very cold, defensive response. There was no “I love you”, no sense that she wanted to spend any time with me. I was getting the same vibes I used to get from my previous girlfriend Charlotte, when she started to ghost me. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
The conversation that changed everything
I started drinking. I know I shouldn’t but I didn’t care anymore. I drank over a litre of whiskey between Thursday 5th January and Friday 6th January. It was my 40th birthday on 10th January and we had plans to go out to a nice restaurant with her sister Jo and the kids on the Saturday and for family to come round on the Sunday for the usual presents and cards.
By 0215 on Friday, I cancelled the booking and sent her an email saying Saturday is off and to cancel family coming round on Sunday.
Her response was just “OK x”. No concern for my well being, no asking why, she just accepted it and wasn’t bothered. It told me everything.
Again, in the morning, she left the house without checking on me or saying anything. There was no morning message and she is normally very consistent with those messages regardless. I told her My heart was broken.
All I got back was question marks again. I told her that I thought she didn’t love me anymore and her response wasn’t to reassure or to deny it, it was just “What do you mean? Where’s this come from?”
I replied with “it’s the truth, you’re not even trying to deny it! you don’t care”. I was very drunk and full of anxiety and felt like I’d already lost her. I know it sounds melodramatic, but it was how I felt, and it was intense. My instincts were correct, and the denial I had, the belief that Mandy would never do that to me, had gone. I didn’t know the extent. I didn’t know whether she’d fallen for another woman or whether it was a man or just that she didn’t love me anymore, but something had shifted, and it was terrifying.
Her response to that direct challenge? “I’m nit [sp] getting into this in a WA conversation that’s why x.
That was the arrow right through my heart. Up until that point, it was still conceivable that I was wrong, that I was being paranoid but I knew she would have reassured me there and then if there wasn’t anything to worry about.
So I asked her directly, is there someone else? be honest. 29 minutes later no answer but I can see she got the message, I can see she’s online and she’s not responding. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach and it wasn’t just the alcohol.
By this stage I’d already got in touch with her sister to see if she knew anything. She hadn’t but she offered to talk with her and see what’s going on.
I messaged Mandy again telling her that by not answering, she was essentially confirming it and she just replied again saying she wasn’t going to get into it over WhatsApp.
I asked when she would be home and where was she.
She said “I will be home when I’m done. Mum and dad are round for tea later x”
I told her that wasn’t a good idea, that we needed to talk and that I needed the truth. I was physically shaking.
By 4pm she replied saying she would be home in about half an hour. Do you want to talk at home or somewhere else.
I told her I couldn’t go anywhere. At 1626 she was home. I asked her to come up and be honest. I saw enough lies with my own parents.
Hearing it in person
I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t really want to hear what she had to say. It was like an out of body experience, watching your own car crash right in front of your eyes. She admitted she had seen someone else. The rest of that night was a bit of a blur. I was in floods of tears. I wanted to know everything. Who was he? How long had it been going on? Did she want to leave me for him? She said she didn’t and she still loved me but I was just so confused, I didn’t understand it at all. To be honest, I still don’t. Just reliving those memories is terribly painful.
At one point I tried to hold her and begged her to fuck me and she reacted as if I was going to rape her, which made me feel sick. That’s what she thinks of me? I’ve never laid hands on her. I was so sensitive to her consent that I wouldn’t even have sex with her if I felt she was only doing it to please me. I could never force her into anything.
Why was I the one pleading?
The next few hours felt like I was the one that had cheated, not her. I was begging her to give me another chance for the sake of the 20 years we spent together, everything we’d been through, everything I’d given her. It just felt so wrong. She should have been the one in floods of tears pleading with me not to kick her out.
She eventually agreed and we talked and I told her she needed to be honest with me. I’d never been someone that found it easy to talk about my feelings, to hear the words actually come out of my own voice. I would bottle things up until the point I could no longer cope then I would shut down then I’d write it all down. That’s how I dealt with my problems. I have never talked so much and so honestly as I did over those next couple of nights.
The story she told
She told me that it was a guy she met through the baby loss stuff and that they first met up in October to have a ceremony where they released some balloons to honour the babies they had lost.
The thought of her grieving over our baby with another man was really hard. Why couldn’t she have done that with me? It was my child too.
She said there was no intention for anything romantic to happen but that it was emotional and they ended up kissing. I still don’t believe her about the intentions. He was from London, it’s a long way to travel to meet up with someone who is just a friend and to stay over in a different city over night. I told her that I thought she was in denial and not telling the full truth.
She told me that they met up again over that 3 day period in December and that she wasn’t planning to sleep with him. They went out for meals and to explore the Christmas markets, they visited media city, that they both had booked separate hotel rooms and that the first night they slept in their separate rooms and nothing happened, other than kissing that she admitted to.
She tried to downplay it as something that just happened, caught away in a moment. She said they were sat in her room on the bed, watching the football and just chilling and then were kissing and stroking each other, that they had sex with a condom and stayed together. She admitted that he gave her an orgasm with his fingers and that she gave him oral sex over a condom.
She said that she regretted it afterwards and blocked him a few days later.
The questions in my head
That night, I couldn’t sleep. The whole thing just kept replaying in my mind. It wasn’t the things that she said so much as the things that sounded too convenient where I thought she was lying.
I asked her how she felt when I sent her the message about the secret affair? If that was me and I got that message I’d have had to have got out of there but she didn’t. That was the first night. She could have left, come back to me and apologised for what she’d done or said nothing and although she’d essentially already had an emotional affair with him, she could have avoided the sexual one but she clearly didn’t feel guilty enough to stop. She must have really wanted him.
I kept thinking what would have happened if I didn’t confront her? Did she have future hotel rooms booked? If she could get away with it would this have been a regular, exciting booty call? Was she in love with him? Was he in love with her?
All these questions run through your head and it doesn’t really matter what she says because she’s lied through her teeth to get to this point so how can I believe a word she says without evidence to back it up.
Whilst she slept, I started writing down questions. I noticed that she had started shaving her genitals again recently. She hadn’t done that for years because I told her she didn’t have to do anything for my benefit and that I loved her body no matter what. Was she shaving for him? I remember seeing her wearing a pair of underwear I hadn’t seen before. Was she buying special underwear ready for her trip?
Was she having phone sex with him? Suddenly all those very late night calls where she’d be on her own in the spare bedroom, were they with him? Were they sexual?
What about other previous times she said she was seeing “Kim”. Was Kim a real person? Was that him every time? There was another date in August she was with “Kim”. What about the proceeding week and all the different female friends? Were they real or was her carrying on with him? How did I know she wasn’t going to do it again?
I wanted to see her phone. I wanted to see all her messages with him. I started looking up ways to access her deleted SnapChats. I wanted her to ring him in front of me on loud speaker and tell him it was over. I needed to hear his voice and find out how deep this went and whether he loved her.
At one point I was even thinking if she wanted one last time with him to get it out of her system. I quickly realised that this was probably not a good idea but my head was all over the place. Everything I ever thought I knew about my wife was in question
Rant Over 