Category Archives: Diary

I started competing in a pub quiz at the King George pub in Hale on a Sunday evening in 2022. It started as a social event with fellow Andys Man Club users.

The pub was just a short walk from where our meetings were held, and it gave me something positive to focus on.

I had become quite socially isolated. My social life used to revolve around work. I used to organise poker evenings in our office, but covid tipped all our lives upside down. I was spending far too much time inside the same four walls, and that wasn’t good for my mental health.

Andy’s Man Club was helping. It gave me somewhere I could talk freely about my anxiety and fears, but I knew I needed to make an effort to do something else.

The quiz was good fun, I wasn’t the best at it, but between the 6-8 of us that regularly turned up from AMC, we did quite well. It was just a nice night out and we had a good laugh.

The pub started getting a bit more rowdy on occasions, and that put off some of our guys but I still enjoyed it and persuaded one of my friends to join me. He was in a similar boat, trying to find ways to meet people and socialise.

I started to get my confidence back. I was starting to see a chink of light. Covid disoriented me and plunged me into a place where I had crippling self-doubt and depression but bit by bit, I was rebuilding and starting to feel like the enthusiastic, bubbly person I used to be. The puns were back. The challenge was to come up with a different name each week to make people laugh (or cringe).

My wife had been encouraging me to go out to AMC and the quiz. I assumed for good reasons, but it turned out she was using this time to start several cyber-affairs with men she found through tiktok and instagram.

One of the darkest moments in my life was when I was sat in the pub, doing the quiz and I had managed to track down the person my wife was having an affair with.

He was sending me picture after picture of their conversations, the lies she told him (she made out she was single), and explicit images. I completely shut down that night, and if it wasn’t for the lads around me, I could easily have ended up doing something stupid.

We tried to fix things, we went to marriage counselling and we tried to spend more time together. She started coming to the pub with me for the quiz, after I promised her nobody would say anything to her.

We did the quiz either as a couple or in a three with my friend, and we were quite successful. I always thought she should do catchphrase. She was very good at the 6 I felt the bond coming back. I was still traumatised by what she had done, but there was hope.

That hope evaporated when I caught her in the act again. In hindsight, I should have kicked her out but she begged me not to leave her and I took the pragmatic decision that it was better to stay with her, and not lose my home and half my family but it was clear she didn’t respect me and it was clear that I could never trust her again.

She decided she no longer loved me, and her behaviour deteriorated into more attention seeking and deliberate provocation. I decided to take back control, so I filed for divorce, and I gave her the option to buy me out or let me buy her out.

Living with her was hell on earth, but I wasn’t going to let her get what she wanted, a rise out of me. I spent as much time as I could out of the house socialising.

The King George quiz changed from a Sunday night to a Thursday and that didn’t suit me, but I knew the quiz master did other pubs, including one much closer to me, so my friend  and I decided to switch to The Parrs Wood Tuesday quiz.

Having that social routine kept me sane. At one point we even branched out and tried three different pub quizzes run by the same quiz master, who we regarded as a friend by this point. We had dreams of winning at each of the pubs to achieve a grand slam, although that turned into a pipe dream.

My friend was very competitive and would get annoyed with me when I spent half the time flirting with girls on dating sites when I was supposed to be doing the quiz. A few of those girls turned out to be scammers, but I did have fun turning it around and enjoying a laugh at their expense.

The quiz has been a little bit of consistency and entertainment through the most painful chapter of my life. It’s seen me at my lowest, and it’s helped get me through.

I’ve met some wonderful characters and people I admire and respect through doing it. It’s important to have something you do just for you.

For a couple of hours, I get to forget about work worries, financial pressures, family problems, health etc. I get to be Jon, the idiot that randomly shouts out inappropriate answers to make people laugh,

Jon, the guy who gets way too excited when he actually knows he’s got a question right (rarely happens). Jon, the guy who tries to bribe the quiz master with shortbread and Jon, the guy that tries to come up with team names, the quiz master can’t or won’t say.

It’s more than a quiz to me. More than faster finger first on a tablet. It’s part of my recovery journey, a journey that continues, and I cherish the friendship, laughs, and camaraderie.

Laughter is indeed the best medicine for melancholy, although victorian doctors’ treatment for hysteria comes close too!

Until the next round my friends!

I’ve had some good years and bad years, just like anyone else but 2023 is going to stand out as my annus horribilis, and worst still, it taints the previous years too including the good times.

It’s 31st December, 2022. 2022 was another difficult year, still trying to re-find myself after the covid pandemic and subsequent isolation of working from home plunged me into a crisis of confidence, imposter syndrome and spell of deep depression.

I had made strides over 2022 though, I started going to Andy’s Man Club and I had a plan for a change in role at work. When you’re in the mire, sometimes you just have to do something, anything to provoke a change because stagnating isn’t going to solve anything. I at least had a plan for how 2023 was going to be better.

I bought a smoke machine and a karaoke machine. I decorated the house with bunting, stocked up on spirits, ready to celebrate the dawning of 2023 in style. It was a great party, surrounded by friends and family.

As a kid I was socially awkward and didn’t enjoy the fuss of being surrounded by lots of people, even people I knew, but I had grown to value having friends and family around. This New Year was not just about me, it was a homage to my Aunty who passed in August 2022. New Year meant party’s at my Aunty Mary’s and Uncle Brian’s. A full house with laughter, alcohol, smiles and lights.

Little did I know that my world would completely collapse within less than a week of that party.

January

On 6th January, 4 days before my landmark 40th birthday, I found out that my wife was having an affair after 20 years of marriage. For her 40th, she got a party of a lifetime, I got cheated on. It didn’t seem fair. It wasn’t fair. That was the last time I drank alcohol. I knew that alcohol was a depressant and that if I didn’t stop, I’d end up as just another suicide statistic and I didn’t want that.

She did nothing but lie to me and every time, I unpicked her lies until she had no choice but to tell the truth. I wrote about it extensively at the time so I’m not going to go over it in detail again. I was devastated. She knew full well how I felt about infidelity, it caused a lot of suffering for me in my own childhood but I never believed she would do this to me, I had total faith in her, and besides, it’s not like she wanted for anything in our marriage. I gave her everything and it was a good marriage, despite the lies she now tells herself to justify her own actions.

Still, I took vows for in sickness and in health, for better for worse, forsaking all others and I took those vows seriously, so I carried on, desperately trying to save our marriage. The affair ended by the end of January all the lies were exposed. I spoke to the man whom had no idea she was married. She told me that as a child she would make up stories for attention and I told her that she needed to seek help.

February

We went to couples therapy. I was still traumatised by what she had done. It completely disoriented myself and I ended up cutting myself to cope, not deep enough to leave a scar, but it was a release. I knew I had to find a better way to handle things. We talked a lot and things got better, but every time I was intimate with her it repulsed me. I couldn’t think of anything else than what she had done and I had to physically force myself to do it.

With all this going on, I couldn’t concentrate on work and I didn’t perform well but I was lucky work were patient with me, something I am very grateful for. I could easily have lost my job as well and my marriage and home.

March

Things had improved between us. We were going on date nights and she showed some signs of remorse but I was still traumatised and fragile. Her affair made me feel very insecure about my body and it made me make stupid decisions. I still felt like she was lying to me and that she cheated because of my body. I came up with this stupid idea that I couldn’t get over the affair because it was all behind my back and that somehow I’d feel better if it happened in front of me. I guess I needed to know whether she really wanted to sleep with someone else still so I came up with the idea that I’d ask her if that’s what she wanted and I made out that I was ok with it. To my internal horror that was what she wanted and now I’d put myself in a position where I thought I couldn’t back out. It wasn’t just an open relationship, there were strict rules.

One day I caught her half naked video calling some guy. I confronted her and she pretended it didn’t happen but I had the evidence. She was shaking. I made her hand over her phone and I could see the messages. This was someone she’d done this with before. It wasn’t just a one off. The guy was a married teacher and she was gloating to him about her affair. It wasn’t just one affair, it was three different men, albeit only one face to face.

I was so angry I threw my wedding ring on the floor and started thinking about divorce. She begged me not to leave her, promised she’d do anything. I was completely disgusted by her but I didn’t want to lose my home, so in the end I decided to give her one last chance but this time there was zero trust. I installed an app on her phone, with her consent that meant she couldn’t lie to me anymore.

In hindsight that wasn’t a good idea. If I could go back, I wouldn’t have given her another chance. She’d already proven that she didn’t care about me or respect me. She was selfish and a pathological liar. She could look me right in the eyes and tell me something I knew was a lie, and it didn’t matter to her at all. To her, the truth was just whatever was convenient to her to believe. I realise that now but when you are so heavily invested in someone, when you’ve spent more of your life with that person than without, it’s a very difficult decision to walk away.

April

Things were deteriorating because there was no trust in the relationship. How could there be, she let me down every single time I showed any faith in her. She was taking sexually provocative photos of her cleavage and I had no idea who she was sending them too but the only possible reasons for photos like that were for sexual attention from men. She couldn’t see why this was a problem and when I confronted her behaviour she acted like I was being unreasonable and controlling.

It wasn’t just me that noticed her behaviour had changed. I was getting messages from other family members that had seen some of her photos, questioning her behaviour and what was going on. That was actually a relief. If other people were noticing it too, her attempt to gaslight me and pretend that she was being normal failed.

May

As part of me agreeing not to end the relationship, I told her she had to go and get counselling and as usual in this relationship, I spoon fed her. I organised the counselling through the my work BUPA cover that I was paying for. She had to ring them up, but I gave her the number and told her what to say and then I looked up a list of therapists in the area for her.

Unfortunately, some therapists are better than others and the one she picked started ringing alarm bells when she told me her therapist had told her that when women cheat, it’s ok, because it’s because they’re not getting an emotional need met but when men cheat it’s because men are bad. I’m paraphrasing.

If our relationship was going to be fixed it required her to take genuine accountability for her behaviour and address it, not look for excuses that make her feel better. Of course, a relationship is about two people and I realise that I played a role in the failure of our relationship. However, no matter how bad things were between us, I would never have gone off with another woman.

At the end of the day, she’s an adult and it is her responsibility to communicate with me if there’s some kind of issue. She is responsible for her actions just as I am mine but it’s so much more soothing and comforting to pretend you’re a delicate leaf blowing in the wind being acted upon and therefore a helpless victim. I wouldn’t let her get away with that. I held her to account, and she didn’t like it.

Her language started to change. Her new found internet friends were a bad influence on her. She threw away her upbringing and values and replaced them with a fantasy life. She was not the woman I married anymore. That woman would have been ashamed and appalled by her actions but new Mandy only cared about herself.

I listened into one of her therapy sessions via our cctv, an act completely out of character for me but it confirmed what I thought. She was playing the victim. Lying, telling half truths and missing out vital facts to make herself sound good and to make me look bad and her clearly feminist indoctrinated counsellor was lapping it up, telling her what she wanted to hear.

I ended up in hospital with a high temperature caused by gall stones that were affecting my liver. To other people she was putting on a pretence, talking about missing “her Jon” on facebook whilst being incredibly reluctant to come and visit me in hospital. Then she was sending me messages saying she missed me and couldn’t sleep without me.

As soon as I was out of hospital I got the “I love you but I’m not in love with you” bullshit. She created a toxic, hostile environment for me with silent treatment, depriving me of affection (it’s funny how if a man does that to a woman it’s considered abuse but when a woman does it to a man, it’s his fault). It got to the point where I couldn’t tolerate being in the same house as her. I went away, I spent as much time out of the house as I could.

I was in limbo. I didn’t know whether I had a relationship to save or not and the penny hadn’t yet dropped that she was not worth it. Everything I tried backfired. Talking to her resulted in her treating me like a piece of shit on her shoe. Not talking to her was not much different. I knew she was just waiting for an excuse and making her escape plan.

She dismissed my feelings as if I meant nothing, yet if we were in public, pretended things were normal. I was a nervous wreck. I had enough. I just wanted it all to stop. I made plans to take my own life but the thing is I’m a fighter. I knew I needed help. I’m so used to trying to solve everyone elses problems and suppressing my own but this time I needed support. I turned to my best friends and my aunties. I took the decision to go to A&E when I was at my worst. If I didn’t, I would have been dead the next day. They sent me to a crisis centre for a week. The first few days I could do nothing but cry. They put me on diazepam to help me calm down.

I had one on one sessions with the staff and they told me the brutal truth, she wasn’t worth dying for. I deserved better. My esteem was totally crippled. Just doing the most mundane things became a challenge but I signed up to online dating apps and got talking to people. Online dating is a nightmare. When you’re a man, you get no attention whatsoever unless you have a scattergun tactic and approach everyone. I remember talking to a mental health nurse, which was amusing given where I was, and a solicitor. Nothing came of those interactions but I started to get my confidence back a little. I believed that nobody would ever want me and that I would be on my own for good but it wasn’t true, I just had to shift my mindset and remember that there were reasons why my wife was attracted to me in the first place.

After a week in the crisis centre, I felt a bit better but I was also on edge about going back home. I just needed to know if my marriage was over. Everything was telling me that it was. I told her that I believed she’d already made up her mind and she denied it but then a few days after I came home, we went for a walk to the park to talk and she came armed with a book of all my sins. So much for someone that was pretending she hadn’t made her mind up.

It was all bullshit. She had clearly been rehearsing it all. She had completely twisted our relationship and reinvented the past to suit her own narrative, skipping over all the good times we had. She told me that there was a pattern and made out I was abusive and that I was “lovebombing” her, buying her presents after we had fallen out. Love bombing is when a partner puts someone on a pedestal and idolises that person, overwhelming them with gifts and compliments then when they do something that displeases the other person, they suddenly turn. You’re either Satan or a Saint.

That does not match our relationship at all. Have I bought her gifts? Yes, I’ve consistently been a romantic partner and made an effort for her. That’s the way I am, I get it from my mum. Back in February there was an incident where we went to Asda and there was a guy in front of me at one of the self checkout tills and he was literally counting pennies to pay for a loaf of bread and some soup and it didn’t look like he had enough, I twigged and just swiped my card. I didn’t make a big deal of it. I just did it quietly, without a fuss. There was no post about how wonderful I am on social media. It was just the right thing to do, a small act of human kindness to a stranger because that’s how I was brought up and she told me this was one of the things she loved about me but now that she had a guilty conscience to appease, that kindness had been pathologised into something it never ever way.

I’m not saying I’m perfect by any stretch of imagination. When I have been deeply depressed, I shutdown, I stop communicating and that was always very hard for her to deal with and I go through these blip periods of depression but that isn’t the normal Jon. Normal Jon is enthusiastic, witty, kind, loving. A good person. A caring person. A very moral person and a selfless person.

I was only 19 when I met my wife, she was 4 years older but I’d been through a lot more, I was already living on my own. She would often make out as if I was the older person. It suits her to see herself as the one acted upon, as if I took advantage of her when in reality I was in a vulnerable state when we started dating and for her to make out now as if I trapped her in the relationship was quite far fetched and very hurtful to me given how hard I worked to be a good partner over the years.

I’m not going to do what she’s done and pretend that she was a bad wife throughout our marriage. We had a very good relationship and it turned very quickly. I am angry at her disloyalty. I’m angry at her dishonesty and I’m angry at how she has treated me.

If we want to talk about patterns, a common theme was her lack of faith in me. Whenever I approached her with an idea her instant reaction was that it would be something bad. Anytime I didn’t finish food she had made, she assumed it meant I hated it so I had to either pretend to like it or I had explain it. It was exhausting. When she told me that she wanted to end the relationship, that she wasn’t happy, I wasn’t sad, I was relieved. A penny had dropped. She contributed to my depression. She wasn’t responsible for it but having to deal with her insecurity on top of my own feelings was tough.

One Christmas, I was convinced she would be better off if I were dead and her reaction to this was all about how it would affect her if I killed myself. She was more concerned about what would happen to her spotify playlists if I left her than she was about me.

She accused me of deliberately not getting her pregnant after she had a miscarriage. She told me I would never change but finally I could her for what she was and that wasn’t the sort of person I wanted in my life anymore.

June / July

When Mandy decided she didn’t want to be in a relationship anymore, I could have moped and felt sorry for myself. I didn’t do that. I found genuine strength, not what she called being strong, which was basically attention seeking, but I remembered who I am and what I am. A fighter. A survivor.

I leaned on my family and friends for support more. I went out more. I kept myself busy, I started losing weight again and I was active on dating sites. There was no way I was going to let her and her toxic negative perception of me win. I was going to live my life. I was going to rebuild.

She tried to provoke me. Posting things on Facebook and WhatsApp but hiding them from me. Photos of her in the bath, or dancing around a street lamp looking absolutely ridiculous. She was drinking regularly but the more she behaved like this, the more pathetic she looked in my eyes. She put photos of her and a friend that she met through tiktok on our kitchen notice board as she knew I would see it there but I didn’t react. I just laughed at how sad it was. She wanted a reaction and I wasn’t going to give her what she wanted.

I put more effort into online dating and started talking to a girl I really liked but it turned out she wasn’t real, she was a scammer. That could have broke me but it didn’t, I turned it into a laugh, scammed the scammer, tracking her down and having her profile shutdown.

It’s amazing how fast I managed to bounce back from the height of despair in early May to feeling confident and happy for the first time in a long time.

Life at home was uncomfortable, I was trapped living with a woman who hated me and the feeling was mutual but I had to do what I had to do just to get through. I wasn’t unpleasant to her, I wasn’t going to lower myself to her level. I was civil.

August

By the middle of August I was talking to three different girls, one in Rugby, one in Salford and the other in Manchester. I’d rediscovered my ability to attract people. It wasn’t easy. 99% of people reject you when you’re a man but I kept going, threw caution to the wind and met up with the girl from Rugby. She was way too keen but after months of being treated like the devil incarnate, it was nice to get some affection from somebody. I stayed over night with her 3 times and we were intimate and that helped build back my body confidence, which had been completely destroyed by Mandy’s behaviour.

I decided to take charge. I think it took Mandy by surprise. I applied for divorce and I told her we had to announce things because it was very close to our anniversary and I didn’t want people sending cards etc. I could have slagged her off and told people the truth on social media but I chose not to. I was going to be the bigger person. I wanted to tell some close family in person, we went together and I took charge and told my nephew and nieces that we were splitting up but made it clear that nothing changed from my prospective in terms of my relationship with them. It was very difficult but it was what I needed to do.

September

When I decided to divorce Mandy, I gave her two choices. Either she could buy me out of our home or I would buy her out.

This was actually a big shift from my initial position, which was she wasn’t going to keep the house at any costs but I got to the point where I didn’t really care, I just wanted to be away from her. She didn’t even understand that it would be cheaper to buy me out than rent somewhere. She’s never had to do all the financial stuff because I always sorted everything, by her choice. I looked at house prices, I looked at mortgages and I worked out that there wasn’t a big difference either way and I looked at both our finances and worked out we both could afford it.

I made her a spreadsheet showing all the maths as she really didn’t have a clue. I could have just made an offer and put her in a position where she had little choice, but I’m not that kind of person. She chose to stay, so I began looking at houses in the area.

Within days, I found a couple to look at and was ready to make an offer.

One of the girls I was talking to was reluctant to go into a relationship with someone who was still technically married and living with his ex after being burnt previously, so maybe that accelerated the timing a little as if she felt like that then others would too. That relationship was a bit hot and cold, with her changing her mind about whether she wanted to be in a relationship with me or for us just to be friends. I knew she liked me. It was very passionate when we were together and in one sense a non-serious relationship suited me at that point given I was dealing with divorce, buying a house and rebuilding my career at the same time. The less attention I gave her, the more interested she was in me.

I decided to stop seeing the girl from Rugby due to the practicality of the distance and also because I felt more like her counsellor than anything else. I’d gone from being the unstable one in a mental health crisis to being mentally strong and resilient. Not taking anti-depressants, a very busy diary and having choices.

This was not what Mandy expected. She started posting stuff feeling sorry for herself because I had moved on. That annoyed me. What did she expect? You can’t tell someone you don’t love them anymore and expect them to just sit around pining. Of course I was going to move on. My mindset totally shifted. The gloom had gone. I was doing things I’d have never have done in the past, being an extra in a music video being one such example.

I had a date with a third girl but to be honest, when I met her I was still considering the other two so I didn’t put a lot of effort in when we met and I wasn’t disappointed when nothing came of it.

October

October was mostly taken up by work and buying a house. It wasn’t straight forward. First there was an issue proving my deposit, which required Mandy getting her arse in gear and applying for a mortgage. By that stage a second and third party put bids in so I had to pay £5,000 more for it.

Then the local authority searches revealed a moderate to severe flood risk, which I investigated myself and challenged the report. The risk was downgraded to moderate. Next came the surveyors report, that suggested a whole host of possible problems so I had to get specialists in damp proofing, who asked am I sure they visited the right house. Then the buyer for another house in the chain appeared to pull out.

It was a lot of stress but I handled it well. I negotiated a divorce settlement with Mandy as she was going to be keeping the majority of our stuff and to settle our debts. I was back to my best, confidence, in control of the situation, finding solutions to problems and being cool headed.

November

November was again dominated by moving. It was a very difficult process. You accumulate a lot of stuff over 20 years. There were delays getting jobs done and it was quite stressful. It wiped out all the money from the divorce settlement but now I have something that’s all mine.

It’s smaller than the old house, but it’s also in better condition, not perfect but definitely an upgrade and I’ve been able to get things exactly how I want them here. I’ve created a home that is full of my personality, not that the old house wasn’t, I picked most of the furnishings there too but this place has a more masculine feel to it. I don’t have that nagging voice telling me I can’t do things anymore. I don’t miss that.

December

By mid-December, I had really settled in and it’s at this point that I’ve had a chance to think about this last year. I’ve either been in survival mode or planning mode for most of the year so I haven’t had a lot of time to ruminate, which is a good thing but I do still feel quite angry about how I’ve been treated by my ex.

I had plans to maintain civil contact with her. Maybe friendship would be pushing it, I have no respect left for her, but at least recognition that she’s suffering too and that had fait have played a different set of cards and had she not had a miscarriage, things would have been different. It’s no excuse for her appalling behaviour, but she has had a lot to deal with, with her mum being ill and she just isn’t really built to cope with that. I had no choice from a younger age. I didn’t have the option of seeking validation from members of the opposite sex as a distraction from the harsh realities of life, I had to live in the real world, not a fake one and she is going to pay the price for her mistakes, whether she has the self awareness to realise she brought it all on herself or not.

I am angry that now I will be paying a mortgage until I’m 70, having put us in a position where we would have had a comfortable retirement and have been mortgage free in 8 years. I’m angry about the way she’s twisted things and lied, not only to other people but worse of all to herself and I’m angry that I invested so much in our relationship for her to show zero loyalty.

I believe in karma. I know I’m a good person. Perhaps a little too honest and open for my own good (the complete opposite of her). I know I will be all right and will find love again.

I do miss the female company, particularly at night sometimes. I don’t just mean sex. I mean having someone to cuddle, someone to talk to, someone to love.

Looking forward

Sometimes you have to look back to see how far you’ve come, but it’s also important not to rubberneck on life’s highway too long, or you won’t see the car crash right in front of you.

I’ve learned to let go of the things I can’t control and instead to focus on the things I can. Next year is going to be about getting back on track with my weight, I was doing so well until the stress of divorce and buying a house took my attention. I’m going to focus on my career. And the rest, relationships, well, they tend to happen when you least expect it.

Whilst 2023 was very painful, it was also a great lesson. It taught me that I’m stronger than I thought I was, it’s taught me to be grateful for and appreciate the things you do have because one day those things will be taken away from you. It’s taught me to live in the present. To stop myself catosrophising about bad things that might happen or a yearning for the past. The past is gone, but I’ve got today to make the decisions that tomorrow’s Jon is counting on me getting right!

If nothing else, I have plenty of material for a book!

So, it’s been a while since I last updated this blog, 4 months in fact. A lot has changed. Circumstances haven’t changed, just like for everyone else, life is still hard and full of challenges and obstacles but now instead of over thinking and catastrophising all the time, I’ve completely changed my thought pattern back to how I used to be. A risk taker. An adventurer. Someone that made things happen. The street fighter was always in there but sometimes you need that punch to make you feel something, to bring you back to life.

I was on the ropes, I had little hope. My life had gone very quickly from being highly successful, everything going well, a good social circle through my work, earning more than I had ever earned before and being highly respected and trusted but still feeling like an imposter inside. I had the work-life balance, nice holidays, family, friends. Then covid happened and I lost my social network from work and I lost my confidence and self belief. I saw problems everywhere I looked. This sense of foreboding had completely taken it’s grip over me.

I’m not going to dwell on what happened but it’s fair to say I was treated very badly by the one person I should have been able to trust. I could have pressed the self destruct button. I could have been just another male suicide statistic but in a strange sense being abandoned at my time of greatest need was actually the best thing that could have happened because I’m at my strongest when I’m at my weakest. I’m stubborn. I don’t give in, especially when there has been an injustice.

I realised I couldn’t change the world. The only thing I could control was my reaction, so I did. I rebuilt my life, starting with my family and social life. I’ve always been the person that other people turn to when they have issues. The strong one. The dependable one. The problem solver. The man. I realised I couldn’t fix this on my own, it was just too big. I needed help.

I leaned on my friends. Three or four people that stuck by my side and were there for me no matter what. I wasn’t easy to deal with when my head was in a dark place, I needed people that believed in me. People that came to visit me when I was in crisis point despite having problems of their own to deal with. People that I had conversations with often late at night when my head was stuck in a loop. When the shit hits the fan, you find out who really cares and who doesn’t.

I thought I had nobody but it actually turned out I had a lot of support, and I’m very grateful for all those people. There were lads from Andy’s Man Club that arranged to come out and meet me at a moments notice and made sure I got through the darkest times. They didn’t give up on me so I couldn’t give up on me either, and so the rebuild started.

I was always much closer to my ex partner’s family than my own but my family were amazing. They all supported me. My mum, my dad, whom I’ve become a lot closer to as a result, my brother and his partner, my aunties and uncles. They’ve all made me feel like I’m not on my own.

I started to see things in a new light. There was no reason to fear anymore. Sure, I couldn’t do anything about the storm I was going through but I was still the captain of my fighter jet, I still had control of the yoke and I’d been through storms before and had a 100% success rate of getting through it and thriving, not just surviving. I refocused. I filled my days up with activities that made me feel better. Walks. Pub Quizzes. Andy’s Man Club. Spending time with friends and family. I put a plan in place to get back to work as I was off sick. I started dating again.

I learned a lot very quickly. At first I just seemed to attract scammers but I was still proud of myself for not letting that destroy the new confidence I was building. I met with three different women, two wanted a relationship with me. All that fear that nobody would ever want me was nonsense. It wasn’t easy and dating is still a bit of a nightmare but the tables have flipped and now it’s me deciding whether or not I want a relationship right now or not.

I don’t need another woman to make me happy. Happiness comes from within. It comes from keeping the promises I’ve made to myself, not other people. Maybe my current girlfriend will become something more, maybe she won’t, but I’m not dependent on anyone else for my self esteem. I’m just focusing on being the best version of me I can be.

The scarcity mindset has switched to an abundance mindset. If one door closes, it frees me up for other opportunities. I have to back myself and believe in myself because I’ve never let myself down, I get knocked down, but I come back up again, to quote chumbawumba.

I took control. My wife decided she didn’t want to be with me. I realised her negative perception of me was actually holding me back and so I actually felt relieved when I realised it was over. I took control of the situation. I filed for divorce. I gave her the option of either buying me out or buying her out. I was fair. I did not treat her badly but I was also firm. She chose to buy me out and within days of her making that decision, I found somewhere else to buy. I wasn’t scared about living on my own, in fact, I embraced it. Jon in full project mode is Jon at his very best. It put me in my element. I worked out all our finances, I got our house valued and I’ve managed to do the divorce without any nastiness or bitterness.

When it came to telling our closest family, again, I took control of the situation. I did it in a way befitting of the person I am. At times my wife has tried to provoke me with attention seeking moves and I’ve just risen above it all. The more stupid crap she did, the more it made me realise I’m better off without her. It didn’t go unnoticed by our friends and families though. They would tell me what they thought and I just kept it to myself. Why stoop to her level when I can just be the better person, maintain my dignity and focus purely on myself!

You only get one life and sometimes people will let you down. Sometimes it’s malicious, sometimes it’s not. I don’t think my wife is malicious, she just has her own issues and I forgive her because the alternative is bitterness and bitterness just destroys your own heart. My heart is too big to allow it to be poisoned so I choose to just move on and be happy. I’m excited about a new home and a fresh start.

It’s very easy for us to get caught up in everything that goes wrong in life but whilst we’re doing that we’re not focusing on the gifts we do have, the people in our lives that are there for us and that matter. One day those things will be taken away from us and so it’s really important to make the most out of every single day. Be grateful. Be humble. I’ve got so many good things going on in my life, mostly the company I keep. I’m very grateful for everyone that has played a role in my recovery.

I’m genuinely not depressed anymore. I’m not taking anti-depressants. I’m not reliant on therapists. I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time and it’s not a fragile confidence because it’s coming from within and knowing that I alone can improve my life. Nobody can stop me being happy or successful, other than me. I should never have given away that power but life is a journey. Nobody gets it right all the time. We learn from our mistakes, not our triumphs. I’m nothing special, but there’s something special in all of us.

The old Jon is back.
The tanks are refuelled
The missiles are loaded
The guns are armed too
The mission, decoded
I’m back in the air
Where I belong
Doing barrel rolls and figure eights
Into the sun
I’m locking onto my target
I’ll out-manoeuvre my foes
This captain ain’t retiring
He’ll take the highs with the lows
The roar of my afterburners
As I break through the barrier
Vertical take off
Just like a harrier

I’ve been told I need to “work on me”, it’s one of those nebulous phrases counsellors use that seems very vague, a bit like a horoscope that can be bent to mean anything those on the receiving end wish to interpret it to mean. It goes along with the “you need to put yourself first for a change” message it’s always paired with. Feel good babble designed to make you see your problems as external rather than internal.

Having said that, there is some merit in it. For far too long now, I’ve been paralysed to make decisions that are good for me because of the ramifications for other people.

I’m stuck doing a job I hate because leaving it means a much lower salary and the removal of benefits for my significant other as well as myself. In the meantime, I’m just losing confidence and self-belief. I know I need to make a decision, but I don’t have a crystal ball, and I don’t enjoy change. It scares me right now.

I can’t let fear control my life. I’m lost right now. I don’t know whether I just need a new employer or a new career completely, and the only way to find out is to take a risk. I know I’m not happy being so isolated and working from home. I know I’m not going to get any support from home either now that the woman I love has decided she no longer wants to be my partner.

That’s another difficult situation. She expects me to just wait patiently in limbo whilst she decides what she wants. I’ve placed all the power in her hands, but now that stops.

Actually, I get a say, too. The relationship is not just about what she wants. It’s not been a good relationship since she cheated, and I am worth more than that. I have let her destroy my self-esteem and sense of value as a partner.

I need to remind myself that I have a lot of valuable qualities and that if she won’t value them, then someone else will. I’m smart, I’m funny, I’m kind, I have a big heart. I’m great at research and planning, I’ve achieved so much in life despite having a really tough time. I have determination and a spark. At the minute all these qualities have been buried under an avalanche of depression, but when it thaws, and it will thaw, all these things will still be there and I will make a great partner for someone that deserves me. Someone loyal, kind, and loving. Someone who appreciates me.

Working on me means rebuilding my confidence and self-esteem, and that’s going to be hard when the blizzard is still falling. I need to lean on my mates, who can see the qualities in me even when I can’t see them myself. I’m going to have to fake it until I make it and accept that I need help to get through the trauma I’ve been through.

The first step is getting back on an even keel and just coping. I need to be able to handle living with someone very hostile towards me and not let her be able to dictate my moods.

I need to go out and find joy in things again. Continue the weight loss journey as that will give me a boost. Do the pub quiz, maybe find a support group with other people going through traumatic breakups.

Then, I need to make positive decisions about work. Maybe start with giving things one last go where I’m at with one eye on other vacancies.

I need to stop worrying about things I can’t control or things that haven’t happened yet. I need to stop caring about what people think about me. If they don’t like me, fuck them, they’re not worthy of capacity in my thoughts! I should only care what I think and what I want right now.

I need to surround myself with supportive voices, people that get me. People who see the good in me and ditch anyone else.

I will get through this. I didn’t think I’d get past over my ex Charlotte, but I did, and I made a better future, and I can do it again!

I can’t rush to the finish line, patience is not my strong point but I need to take things one day at a time, accept the rough with the smooth but know that the sun will shine again and there will be a beautiful rainbow waiting for me!

I’m going through the worst mental health crisis of my life right now, and I’ve realised I can’t do this by myself.

It’s not one cause, it’s been the perfect storm. It started with COVID flipping my career upside down. Back in 2018 life was good. I was thriving in my job, on a good salary that meant I could make things happen that were never possible before.

I had nice new cars, I could treat friends and family and I organised a massive surprise 40th birthday party for my wife in the same venue we had our wedding reception. We went on the trip of a lifetime to New York, flying on A380s in business and first class. We stayed in 5* hotels and experienced the high life.

We also had a short trip to LA again, flying in first and business class on an A380 and 747. It was a dream of ours fulfilled.

At work, I was thriving, respected, a leader, and organising social activities like poker nights. The future looked bright and happy.

My relationship with my wife had never been closer, we were going to the cinema every friday night, and the short commute and lack of regular overtime meant more quality time.

Then I found out my brother in laws business was struggling. I felt very guilty and helpless to help him with the scale of the problem. I watched as he lost his business, his marriage collapsed, and they were losing their home. I began to worry that if that could happen to him, it could happen to me, too. I know that sounds irrational, but it’s how I felt.

At work, I was asked to move from the Altrincham office where I was happy to a new office in Manchester city centre, which meant a much longer commute and instead of working with my best friend at work they wanted me to work on a project on my own that was unfamiliar to me. That’s not unusual, you have to be adaptable in my industry and I’ve taken on lots of new projects before.

It was a lot of change, and I was apprehensive. A couple of weeks later, lockdown happened, and we switched to working from home.

We always had the ability to work from home if we needed to, for example, when I was expecting a delivery or had workmen. I find it harder to concentrate at home with the blurred boundary between home and work, and I never really adapted to it.

I discovered, and it surprised me, that I’m actually a people person and need the office camaraderie. Working from home felt completely isolating. I started to panic about not being good enough. It was much harder to get hold of people for advice and support, and it got to the point where just the thought of opening my laptop was causing panic attacks.

My boss was great, I’d worked with him for a long time, we had a great relationship and mutual respect, he even came to my wife’s 40th. Work reassured me my job was safe and let me have time off and were flexible when I came back from sick leave.

Whilst I was off, I focused my attention on my sister in laws situation, making sure our house could accommodate her and her 3 kids so we could take them in once their house sold.

They moved in for 6 months, and it was intense but also amazing. I felt like I was part of something, the family I never had.

It coincided with mental health decline caused by the work situation and personal fears and anxiety. I felt I was going to lose my job and that my wife would be better off with me dead, particularly with the large death benefit she would receive. I reached a desperation point where I took a small overdose of blood pressure tablets and anti-depressants in November 2021. It wasn’t a suicide attempt, I knew what I took wasn’t going to be fatal. I could have taken paracetamol. It was self-harm to release the feelings I was going through.

I got counselling and started anti-depressants, but things weren’t really getting better, and I was starting to give up, making detailed suicide plans. This put a massive strain on my wife. It must have been very scary for her. I wanted her to have support too so I organised counselling for her.

I was having an identity crisis. I judged myself by my utility to others, and I saw myself as a failure, letting them all down. It took me years to retrain for this career, and suddenly, I felt out of my depth, burnt-out, useless and financially trapped.

I also hated my body. In 2013, my wife and I both went on a health kick and lost a lot of weight, but she managed to keep most of it off, and I couldn’t. I was very proud of her but also felt like a complete failure. She never made an issue of it, and she supported me every time I tried and failed to lose some of the weight again.

I also have a rare condition that no man would want to have. I did some research and found out it was entirely curable and treatable if it was dealt with as an infant, but now there is nothing that can be done. It destroys my feeling of self-worth and esteem. I don’t feel like a man and it’s not something I can easily talk about with anyone. The comments people make are very cruel.

I spent a night balling my eyes out to my wife talking about it and she reassured me I was the only ever man she slept with so had nothing to compare me to and that she loved me and it didn’t matter to her. She said she would never cheat on me, and as bad as I felt inside about my body, her reassurance made me feel a lot better.

Living as a family with my sister in laws kids changed the way I felt about kids. I had always been scared to have kids after my own dysfunctional childhood, but I was effectively a father figure to these three beautiful children, and it made me feel I could do it.

We decided to start trying. Honestly, with my wife being over 40 and my health, I wasn’t expecting it to work. It was more a case of lets have lots of fun trying and see what happens. I had taken a fertility test, and the results weren’t great, which added to the sense of being a failure as a man.

To my shock, within 3 months, we were pregnant. That day we took the test was one of the happiest days of my life. My depression just disappeared, and I went into planning mode, learning everything I could about pregnancy and new borns.

I rubbed her tummy and talked to our little bean every night. We decided to have an early scan at 8 weeks. We went to the clinic excited and full of joy. There was a couple picking their photos in the reception area. We were called in, and it seemed to take a long time, but we didn’t know if it was normal or not. They moved us to another room and told us our baby’s heart had stopped beating. It was the right size, so it must have been recently. I just couldn’t process it.

I hoped they were wrong. We had to go to hospital for a follow up scan to confirm but there were still covid restrictions so I wasn’t allowed in to wait with my wife but they did let me be with her for the scan itself and discussing our “options”.

It was either waiting for nature to take its course, a hospital procedure to remove our baby or a tablet. The latter options felt like abortion. We couldn’t do that, so we went home and waited. It was devestating to see my wife in so much pain, essentially going through labour, and there was nothing I could do to make it better.

We decided to try again, and every time her period was a couple of days late, I would get excited and devastated when it didn’t happen. I felt like such a failure. I was struggling to do what I needed to do. I ended up faking it, which wasn’t going to get her pregnant. It turned out to be the anti-depressants, so I had to choose between having a baby and anti-depressants, and I chose trying for a baby.

It still didn’t happen, and I just got to the point where I told my wife I wanted to stop trying. It was just too emotionally painful. She made out she was ok with it, but really, she was angry at me.

Our communication started failing. I dealt with the miscarriage through distraction, throwing myself into planning happy things like holidays. She got involved with tiktok and a group raising money for a charity called SANDS. She thought I didn’t care about our baby, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.

I didn’t know it, but in March 2022, she started seeking sexual attention from men online. It was escapism. Someone making her feel good when home life was so hard.

This escalated to a full-blown affair from May 2022 to January 2023. Her personality changed, she spent a lot of time talking to this group and stopped using facebook. She was distant with me, and I challenged her on it in August. She didn’t even acknowledge our wedding anniversary. My aunty died in a horrific way, and she wasn’t there to support me, she was seeing the other man instead.

When I found out about her affair in January 2023, I was absolutely devastated. It was the very worst thing she could do to me with my body issues.

She still kept lying, though, and I kept discovering more information. It destroyed the trust in the relationship. We did marriage counselling. It was tough, but we did make progress and started communicating better but she had cybersex with a married teacher again in March 2023 and it sent me into a very paranoid state and from that point I couldn’t cope at all.

I haven’t been functioning. The black clouds descended, and I had no esteem left at all. No hope. No belief in myself. Just despair.

My wife told me she was unhappy and that she loved me but wasn’t in love with me and that she needed space. She moved out of our bedroom and into the spare bedroom. It was such a shock to me. I just couldn’t handle it at all. My anxiety went through the roof. I wasn’t thinking clearly and kept making things worse by trying to get through to her.

The thought of her not being in my life after 20 years of being together was just too much, too big for my brain to deal with.

I tried to distract myself, leaning on friends and family, but at night, when I was alone with my thoughts and fears, the dark clouds rolled in. I couldn’t see a future, and I wanted to end my life. I was convinced I’d lost everything, my job, my home, and my wife. I felt so alone.

I don’t have close family that I can lean on. My relationship with my mother is more like me as parent and her as child. I don’t get on with my dad. He’s not empathetic anyway.

I have a few friends but not many and they can’t be there for me all the time. They have their own lives and problems.

I feel suicidal most of the time. I just don’t know how to fend off these thoughts and feelings. I was thinking about hanging myself or jumping off a motorway bridge or suffocating with helium. I purchased a helium canister with the intention to end my life yesterday but then I sought help, contacting the crisis team and they have put me somewhere safe away from the pressure pot that is home and dealing with the fact my wife no longer loves me or wants to be with me.

They tell me I need to focus on myself and forget her, but I don’t know how. She’s been the centre of my universe for 20 years. I can’t just turn off my feelings for her like a tap. I love her. I feel abandoned, and I don’t know how to fix myself. I’m in tears all the time. I just can’t believe my life has come to this. It’s so sad and so tragic, and I can’t see a future.

I need people to give me hope as my brain isn’t working. I need a reason to live and a way to a more positive future. I want the old Jon back. Funny, kind, loving, happy, making things happen, but that seems a long way off right now. At the moment, it’s just about survival.

The photo above is from my wife’s 40th surprise birthday party. It was in a venue very close to our hearts as in August 2011 it was the venue for our Wedding reception.

Everything was going well back then. I was thriving in my job as a software engineer and finally making good money, good enough to final repay the woman of my dreams for sticking by me through all the hard times as I rebuilt my life and career from the ashes.

All her friends and family were there and she had so many we needed the same biggest room in the venue as we had for the wedding. It was so exciting planning everything in secret, the conversations going on right in front of her nose, the secret shopping trips for a special dress and the lies to cover up what was really going on that night.

Four years later and it was my 40th but her idea of heaven, all that attention and fuss is my idea of hell. Well, actually, my real idea of hell is exactly what I got.

She too was planning a very big surprise for me, sneaking around with lies and secret rendezvous. Four days before my birthday and she was in a hotel room, being sexually intimate with another man who had absolutely no idea the woman he was with was actually a married woman.

If I hadn’t become suspicious of the amount of time she was spending away with a female friend I’d never heard of before and the odd distant behaviour, her affair may still be carrying on to this day. She had absolutely no concern for my feelings and seemingly little fear of being caught given her behaviour.

Since I found out on 6th January, I’ve had to pick through an avalanche of lies, one by one, almost constantly discovering new information. At first she told me it was a brief situation that started in October 2022 with her meeting up with a friend to release some balloons in memory of our baby that we lost in May 2021, followed by another meeting in December where she almost accidentally fell on his penis. It was far too convenient, too obvious a lie and it started to unravel pretty quickly.

Soon I found out that it started as long ago as May 2022 online with sexual messages, images and phone calls being exchanged from our guest room as I lay sleeping in the room next door and the affair hadn’t ended when she said it had. In fact, there was a whole other life she was leading that was exactly the same as her real life except I didn’t exist, I was her “abusive ex”. That’s why she was removing her rings, instead claiming it was because her fingers had swelled up.

In the end the only way I could get the truth was to speak to the extremely shocked man that she had an affair with and compare notes. He left his previous girlfriend to start a relationship with her. That night, he sent me through picture after picture of the images she sent him. It was unbelievably painful. See for yourself and imagine how you would feel if this was your partner.

I actually ended up feeling sorry for him because she had gas lit him. She ended it with him, telling him it was because of his controlling and jealous behaviour, not because she had been rumbled. She had him excluded from their mutual friendship circle.

In June 2022, I sent her and her sister to New York as a special treat for both of them and during that time away she was messaging him. In October he came up and spent several days with her in a seedy cheap hotel chain just a few miles from our home, our friends and family and in fact my niece saw them together and told my sister in law but she wasn’t aware of the context.

In August, my aunty was dying in hospital and my wife was not there to support me, she was too busy meeting up with him again just days after my aunty passed away.

There were more visits in December and January until I uncovered it all. Friends were telling me to leave her, including her own sister and best friend but I couldn’t, I loved her. We’d been together for 20 years and I was only 19 when we first started dating so my life with her was longer than my life without her. I couldn’t just throw it away, given that she showed remorse and seemed willing to seek help for her behaviour.

It then turned out that he wasn’t the only man she had been sexually “flirting” with. There was a married teacher she met via instagram and had cyber sex with as early as March 2022 and another man from tiktok between May and December. The notion that it was just an accident and falling for someone with a shared emotional connection completely fell apart when you realise there were these other men too, albeit not in person.

Still, we worked on things, we went to marriage counselling and we improved our communication and worked through some issues. It got to the point where we didn’t think we needed the marriage counselling anymore.

Things weren’t perfect. I couldn’t get the images of her and him together out of my head and I made a really stupid decision. I decided that the issue was all the deception and that now she’d already cheated once, the best way to confront it was to tackle it head on and allow her to have sex with another man once but this time in front of me.

I know most people are thinking why would you do that? Why would you let your wife cheat on you again? It all comes down to my incredibly low self esteem and body issues.

My body is not normal. I have a weight problem I’ve been fighting all my life, mostly failing but with the occasional success. My wife too has a weight problem but back in 2013 we both went on a health kick together and both lost a lot of weight. Whilst she was able to maintain at least a large chunk of the weight loss, I couldn’t.

I think a lot of her behaviour is a bit of a midlife crisis. She didn’t get much sexual attention from anybody other than me in her youth so now she’s addicted to the attention she’s discovered she can get and by allowing her to feed that, I put petrol onto the flames.

Anyway, my biggest body problem is not the weight. I was born with some kind of testosterone deficiency so didn’t develop normally. Functionally my body is perfectly fine but it places me into a category no man would want to be in.

For a large chunk of my life I was oblivious to this and I had my wife and she always said she loved me for who I was, it didn’t bother her and we still had a good sex life, particularly in recent years since we started trying for a baby.

In 2021, I did some research and found out both how rare my condition is and also that it was 100% treatable had my parents tried whilst I was an infant, but they didn’t and now it’s too late. I remember spending a night balling my eyes out to my wife talking about this stuff. It was just so painful but she reassured me it didn’t matter to her, that she never wanted anyone else and that she wouldn’t cheat on me so when she did exactly what she said she wouldn’t, and told this other man that he had made her orgasm in ways she never had, it totally destroyed any self worth I had left and I ended up self harming with a kitchen knife. She later claimed it was digital penetration but I don’t know whether that was just her attempt at making me feel better.

Letting her cheat to get it out of her system seemed like a way I could try to find acceptance of the situation by confronting my worst fears and let her do the things she couldn’t do with me.

When I suggested it to her, I really expected her to turn it down, tell me not to be stupid and that I was enough, but that’s not what happened. She really liked the idea. At first it felt like a game and I thought to myself other people have weird and wonderful sexual relationships, why couldn’t we?

I actually felt in control. There were very strict rules and controls. It wasn’t an open marriage. I effectively had the final say at every stage and in a way she felt subservient to me in a strange way but just a few days in and she completely broke my heart again.

Mr married teacher created a new profile on instagram and contacted her again. She picked up when she left off and I discovered her half naked in the living room, playing with her breasts whilst watching him masturbate over a video call. This was nothing to do with our arrangement, it was completely outside of all the rules. She handed over her phone and I read the messages whereby she had been gloating about being unfaithful, talked of having sex in cars (the person she had an affair with doesn’t drive and has no car), and she talked about not being able to go up to the bathroom to strip as hubby was in the office and might hear.

It took me to a point where I simply couldn’t see any other option but to divorce her. At the same time though, that meant losing my whole life. My home, the woman I loved and the chances of ever finding love again seemed absolute zero. She begged me all night long not to leave her, she threw up into a bin so after thinking on it the whole night through I took the pragmatic decision to not leave on the condition that she install an app on her phone that meant she couldn’t hide anything anymore. I loved her but I couldn’t trust her. She had persistently let me down, every single time I had given her a chance.

I allowed her to continue the arrangement and whilst I was on holiday in Portugal with a friend, she had cybersex with four different men on consecutive nights and I actually encouraged her. It still felt like a game and I was de-sensitised to what it was I was seeing. Towards the end of the trip though, my faculties started to return and I kept prompting her, is this what you really want? Are you sure? hoping she’d get the hint and back out but she didn’t.

She arranged a first date with one of the men she was having cybersex with for the day after I returned from Portugal. I felt I couldn’t back out. I actually drove her to where she met up with him with knots in my stomach. She met him and told me she snogged him with tongues. That night I had to physically force myself to kiss her. Even though it was me doing it, it felt like it was against my will. I lost all desire to have sex with her.

She arranged a second meeting where it was expected to take it up a notch further and again I was encouraging her as if it was what I wanted. I told myself that I needed to do this, that I needed to see it happen but a couple of days before I got cold feet and wrote her an email asking to abort but never sent it, I was scared she’d be angry if I pulled out as she was still adamant that it was what she wanted.

The next day I sent her a WhatsApp, asking to bail but I deleted it before she read it but finally on the day itself it was just too much and I asked her to pull out.

To my relief, she wasn’t angry and was actually a little bit relieved herself. She was getting nervous about it. That night we went out as a couple instead and it was such a big relief. She did make me do the contacting to cancel and the guy was understanding.

Things started to deteriorate again between us. The communication had gone backwards. I felt we never really dealt with the incident with the married teacher and the app we installed was making me paranoid. It was just little things like the sexualised selfies she was taking designed to show off her cleavage and breasts, there was an image of an anonymous card that turned out to be completely innocent but looked very suspicious.

She had arranged to meet a couple from the same online friendship group that were involved in her affair and she didn’t tell me, I didn’t know anyone in her circle lived in the same city. That made me very uncomfortable. I just couldn’t trust her.

She was having counselling, effectively paid for by me as I was paying £800 a year for her to have private BUPA cover through work and she told me that the counsellor had told her that it was ok for women to cheat. When we had marriage counselling the counsellor tried to insinuate that both of us were equally responsible for the affair and it made me very angry. Whilst I accept that I was partly to blame for the communication problems in the relationship, I was not responsible for the affair. It didn’t matter what she did to me, there’s no way I would have done what she had done to me to her. It went totally against both our sets of moral values. My father had two affairs and it screwed up my teenage years. She knew exactly how I felt about that and she felt the same about cheating, she was brought up with the same Christian values.

I have witnessed this same anti-male, pro-female bias in the psychology arena before. When men do something bad, they’re monsters, when women do it, it was probably a man’s fault somehow. It made me worry what else the counsellor was telling her so the next time she had her counselling session I listened in. It was online counselling and she did it in the living room, which has cctv, whilst I was in bed, quite ill with a high fever.

It was a bad thing to do to invade her privacy like that. What I heard (only Mandy’s side of the conversation) re-enforced my concerns. I had written Mandy a letter explaining how it felt to be me. I sex swapped us and asked her to imagine if she had been through the same stuff as she put me through and how she would feel. I also did the same with her and imagined what it felt like for her.

At the end of the letter I suggested a list of things that would make me feel more secure in our relationship, for example stopping using snapchat, an app designed perfectly for concealing adultery which was exactly how she had used it in the past and removing herself from the groups that were connected to her affair and to stop taking sexualised selfies.

This did not go down well. She ignored every positive thing I said. She ignored anything related to empathising with my feelings and just honed in on the suggestions, which I even said were up for negotiation. I do regret that section, well the whole letter really, and I do realise now that for a relationship to work there does need to be trust but I also feel that given the things she had done it was completely understandable that I felt the way I felt.

Of course, with the counsellor, she missed out all the context so it made me look unreasonable and like an abusive controlling partner. She didn’t mention what she did in March and it sounded unlikely that her counsellor knew about the other men. The whole reason I asked her to have counselling in the first place was to deal with that attention seeking addiction and the compulsive lying. She told me that when she was a child she used to make up stories. The way she described it made it sound like she had some kind of personality disorder but there had been no sign of that in our marriage.

Very shortly after, I ended up in hospital. My temperature was shooting up and down between 36°C and 39.6°C all week and antibiotics weren’t doing anything. I spent a week in hospital on IV anti-biotics and having scans and blood tests. It turned out my liver tests were “deranged” and they suspected it was a gallstone blocking a bile duct but it had cleared itself. They said I needed my gallbladder removing but surgeons were unlikely to want to do it because of my size so they sent me home.

When I first went into hospital my wife was reluctant to visit and I had to ask her to. If it was her in hospital, it wouldn’t even be a consideration, I’d be there for her. Then she started messaging me saying she missed me and found it hard to sleep without me but as soon as I was back home, the atmosphere changed completely and she was incredibly angry about the letter I sent that we never had time to discuss.

She refused to talk so I wanted to reassure her that I wasn’t going to force her to do anything and that I wanted her to uninstall the app from her phone. This wasn’t because of what she said in her counselling, although that did re-enforce the decision. I’d already come to the conclusion that the app was causing more harm than good. It was all muddled up with wrong timestamps, it was impossible to work out who was saying what in conversations and it was repeating clusters of messages from days before so it was not very useful and was actually making things worse.

She asked me if I had listened to her counselling session and I could have done what she did on numerous occasions and lie through my teeth, but I didn’t do that, I admitted it. She said she felt very uncomfortable. She told me she loved me but wasn’t in love with me and that she needed space and wanted to sleep in the spare room. It was devastating. I did understand why she was upset. I recognised that what I did was wrong but by the same token, it was all driven by her behaviour and she was refusing to take responsibility for why I was paranoid in the first place and it wasn’t so much to do with the initial affair but the drip feed of information and what happened with the married teacher in March, just two months earlier.

Listening into a private conversation is hardly a crime on the scale of having an eight month affair, especially given the things we had discussed previously. She said she would have never have listened into my sessions but I’d never have had an affair. She let me down in really serious ways on numerous ways and each time I forgave her and gave her another chance, yet she wasn’t willing to give me the same chance.

From that point on I have been living in pure hell. Every single thing I do has been misconstrued in the most negative light possible. I go to the doctors and I arrange counselling and I’m told that she’s “bewildered” that I’d waited until she was upset, which is completely hypocritical as it took her ages to organise counselling despite me spoon feeding her and it’s not like she sought help before she was caught out with her affair, she knew what she was doing was seriously wrong but she didn’t care one bit. The guilt only came after.

She claimed that she was annoyed because she was “working on her” and I was only just working on me but that’s not what I’ve witnesses at all. I’ve seen a lot of her being in denial and going backwards. The deception hasn’t stopped. The sexual attention seeking hasn’t stopped. She’s regressing in terms of taking responsibility. She’s drinking heavily, I stopped drinking for good the day I learned of her affair. She claims to be feeling “stronger” and “more confident” but these are not the actions of someone who is confident. She’s deeply unhappy and a lot of that is her own guilt and she’s projecting it onto me as being my fault.

As for the “I love you but I’m not in love with you comment”, the “in love” feeling is something you only have in the first few months of a new relationship, we’ve been together for 20 years. Love matures to a different level. It’s no different for me. As I’ve said, there are times when I’ve felt physically sick touching her and repulsed by her but you can work through that, I did.

One day she’s being reasonable, the next she’s angry and biting my head off. I don’t know what to say to her. I’m scared of my own wife to the point where just the thought of being in the same house as her with this toxic environment she’s created for me is causing panic attacks.

My mental health is in a worse place than ever. Every hour feels like a day. Every day feels like a year. I can’t concentrate on anything, I can’t even watch TV. I’m crying all the time and I feel there is no hope left at all. She’s not going to forgive me or give me a chance. I just want us both to wipe the slate clean, let go of our past mistakes and rebuild a new future that’s happier for both of us but I’m left in limbo. It’s been two weeks already and things just keep getting worse, I’m running out of time. My mental health can’t sustain this feeling of being hated by the one person you love the most in the world. I see no future, only death and right now death feels like it would be a relief.

She went to Southport on her own for a few days to clear her head and came back with a giant penis candy, then she took a vibrator with her whilst spending a night at her sisters, then she posted another sexualised selfie to her WhatsApp status and hid it from me. She’s using me. Getting me to do things when it suits her but treating me like dirt at other times, ignoring my messages, posting passive aggressive posts on Facebook, telling me it’s not about my feelings as if I don’t matter at all and only she does. She’s says she’s always putting everyone else first but now needs to put herself first. Was she putting everyone else first when she had an affair? I have put her first throughout our relationship. I’ve stayed doing a job I hate because if I leave she would have to take more financial responsibility and would lose the BUPA benefit.