Busy Bee’s story

I’m new here and thought I’d share my story with you. Apologies in advance for the length of it!

I met my SA at secondary school and we started dating aged 16. Looking back he treated me badly even then. We’d go to a party and he’d spend all night talking to another girl, but I didn’t have the right to complain because he hadn’t actually DONE anything. He’d let girls flirt openly with him and not walk away – he loved it. Again I had no right to complain because he hadn’t DONE anything. My mum remembers him making snide comments to me and then apologising – but he’d got his point across by then.
We married at 23. I remember having serious reservations a few days before the wedding but went ahead – I thought I was lucky to have him. The first few months were good. I got pregnant after 6 months and apart from the fact that my husband would not have sex with me while I was pregnant, everything seemed fine until I was 8 months pregnant. I woke up late one night to discover my husband was not in the bed beside me. I could hear him downstairs talking and was suspicious. I crept down the stairs and listenend at the door. I could hear him talking in a flirtatious way on the phone. I walked in as he hung up. He claimed it was work and acted like I was being paranoid. I chose to believe him – I think as much as anything because acknowledging he might be cheating when I was about to give birth was too hard to contemplate. I had my first son in December 1996. All seemed good, except I had post natal depression. In August 1997, I discovered I was pregnant with my second son. I was very anxious, as I had PND and wondered how I’d cope. He was not reassuring at all – just looked shell shocked when I told him. My second son arrived in April 1998 and it was shortly after this that I first discovered proof of the SA.
I realised I had not seen a phone bill for a long time, so rang the phone company to ask when a bill was due. Whilst on the phone she gave me the balance of my account which was extremely high. This set alarm bells ringing and I investigated further. I looked in my husband’s briefcase and discovered he had run up £6000 of debt on two credit cards, which I knew nothing about. At the time I found this my husband was working night shifts and was asleep in bed. I confronted him and was told he was too tired to talk about it and I shouldn’t have brought it up then! When he did finally talk about it he claimed to have invested the money to try and give us a better future (what a saint!) and lost it when the markets crashed. I went to see my parents and spilled my heart out. My dad didn’t believe a word of it and went round to see him with my brother. He quickly caved in under pressure and admitted it had gone on phone lines – but claimed it was just chat – nothing sexual. Something he maintains to this day. I asked him to leave and he lived with his parents for the next six months. During this time I investigated further and found the extent of the problem. One quarterly phone bill was £1500. The month that bill arrived he had lied to me and my family that he hadn’t been paid as the company he worked for was failing. My Dad gave him £1000 to cover the mortgage and bills, but of course he WAS paid and the money was used for the phone bill. i went to his parents’ house to confront him about this and, hopefully, get their support in encouraging him to get help for his problem. He got aggressive and swore at me – how dare I disturb an important world cup soccer game to confront him? His parents would not back me up. He didn’t need help. He had been found out and that would now be an end of it. He told them how he had needed to talk to someone because I wasn’t there for him. Sometimes he came home and had to cook his own tea, or the washing up hadn’t been done. I’m the first to admit I wasn’t coping with housework – but I did have PND and two babies under 16 months old! We went for couples counselling which he didn’t mind agreeing to because that gave him a chance to get his gripes with me across, however, he soon started to say he couldn’t get the time off work and the counselling stopped. He started laying on the charm again and (stupid me) after 6 months we got back together. 6 months after this we relocated to a town 150 miles away for his job. At this time things seemed ok, but shortly after this money got tight. We hadn’t sold our house and were still having to pay the mortgage on our house as well as contributing towards rent. I looked after the children during the day while he was at work and worked an evening job in a pub while he looked after the children. Every SA’s dream! He was left alone most evenings to indulge his phone/computer habit. I remember one evening when I wasn’t working and we decided to have pizza. He went to the shop and didn’t return. Time went by and still he didn’t return. Phoned the shop. He wasn’t there. Eventually phoned the police to enquire if there had been an accident. Eventually he turned up home saying there had been a mix up with the order and that’s why he had been so long. When I said I had rung the shop he claimed he had been there all the time. From then on, periodically I would find unaccountable transactions on the bank account/credit card statements. He would always claim he didn’t recognise them or if he ever did admit anything it was only the minimum and only once confronted. His favourite line was ‘It’s not your fault but……..’ Or ‘I know I shouldn’t have done it but you weren’t there for me’. He had more therapy at my request but it was pointless because he didn’t want to change. Things continued along with other lies such as buying things, but claiming he had won/borrowed/been given them. He would claim to be going on a work night out and that he had to stay over because he works in another town. I found his hotel receipt and it was for a double room. He claimed he had shared a twin with a male colleague. Needless to say it was a mistake! He wouldn’t do anything around the house or the garden. His anger steadily got worse and worse. The sex got less and less. I couldn’t understand this as I didn’t realise about sex anorexia and thought ‘how can he not want sex when he’s a sex addict?’

One day we were at a play area with the kids when I picked up a magazine and it fell open on an article about SA. I read it and then passed it to him. It’s the one and only time I’ve seen a flicker of recognition and acknowledgement in his eyes. He said he would go to SAA and told me he’d found a group but it was nearly an hours journey away. He claimed to go for a few months and I stupidly believed him, however he never had a sponsor, never brought home any literature or went through any of the steps I’ve read about. Just another lie I fell for – made worse by the fact that he was no doubt using this time to feed his habit. I gradually became more and more anxious. The day a credit card/phone or bank statement came through the door I would hyperventilate and almost have a panic attack at what I might find. He claimed I wanted to find things!

I started finding porn on the computer. He would delete it but not clear the recycle bin. I also found that he had accessed an extra marital affairs site, but he claimed that wasn’t him!!! Why didn’t I believe it could just have been a pop-up advert? Every so often he would agree to come to bed at the same time as me so I would know he wasn’t doing anything, but it would always only last a few days.

I think one of the worst instances was when he visited London on a business trip. He called but I wasn’t in. When I got home and checked the answer machine he was asking me to phone him as soon as I picked up the message (in a very upset voice). I knew him well enough by now and before I rang him I rang the bank and discovered that £250 had been withdrawn. When I rang him back he claimed to have been mugged at knifepoint, taken to the cashpoint and made to withdraw the money. His phone wasn’t taken, nor any of his cards, he didn’t tell anyone else and there was no police report. I didn’t believe a word of this but was made to feel that if I didn’t I was an unsupporting wife – he had just been mugged for goodness sake! I still to this day don’t know what that money was spent on – but I can imagine.

I tried to leave several times but he always begged me to give him another chance. I stayed for the children. I know now that was the wrong thing to do. I knew he didn’t really love me and said to him ‘I’m going to give you chance after chance and you’re going to turn round and leave me’ ‘I won’t. I would never do that’. He claimed. Well guess what!

November 2009 he re-connected with an ex-colleague on facebook. (female of course!) They went on a reunion night with other work mates (I know this to be true). He then said they were going out as a group again. He didn’t come home that night and when I woke up after 4am he still wasn’t home. I rang his phone. No answer. This continued for quite some time. Eventually he answered. He had gone back to her house for coffee. But that was fine because there was another guy there too (Yeah right!) The taxi hadn’t turned up and they were waiting for another one etc etc etc. I was so unreasonable for being annoyed about this. She is a heavy smoker and on another occasion he claimed to be dining with work clients but came home stinking of cigarette smoke (all restaurants in the UK are non smoking). I was supposed to believe it was because one of the clients went outside for a cigarette and then sat next to him. I knew he was seeing her, especially when he announced that he couldn’t live with me not trusting him any more (I’m so bad). He looked for an apartment and arranged to move out at the end of March 2010. A week before the agreed date for him moving into his new place I looked at his phone and found texts from them both declaring their love for each other. Even this was denied – they were just joking! And I was the bad one for looking at his phone.

I’m a year on now. Have a lovely new partner, who unfortunately has to deal with the emotional scars I’ve been left with. My boys are much happier as the anger has gone from the house. CALM is a much under rated word! He is still seeing the woman he ‘wasn’t’ seeing and she has now met my kids, which is hard.

Thank you for listening and thank you for all the support this website gives. When I first discovered the SA there was nothing out there and I felt so alone.