He found a girlfriend on the internet

by Theresa
(Texas)

I have been married for 27 years. Things at home were not going so good the last couple years. My husband was sleeping on couch and I couldn't get him to come into the bedroom.

I honestly tried so hard to get him to open up about our relationship. He usually didn't say one thing. When I asked him if he loved me or if he had a girlfriend, he would say, "Why do you ask me such silly questions?"

He was coming home every night, so I just thought this was a bump in the road in our long marriage. I would have stayed with him, through thick and thin, “until death do us part”. During the past couple years, I would sit in the family room, just to be with him, even though I never liked the shows he was watching. Sometimes he would be playing on his laptop, like poker or something and I'd ask him what they were talking about. He said, "Oh, not much, just joking about the game". Sometimes I would play Snood or something just to be in the same room with him. I used to rub his feet with lotion, I made his special meals for his diet, and did a number of things that a wife would do. Looking back I feel like a fool.

Okay, so maybe I'm stupid and naive, but I trusted and believed him. I had no idea he was talking with someone in the Philippines. This past August, our youngest daughter went off to college. He said he couldn't take her because he was busy that weekend, so I went with my older daughter who lives close by. We had a great time and set her all up. I got home Sunday night and school started for us the next day. I work at a school so I had to be there.

By Wednesday, he was saying he needed a vacation. I was upset about that because he had gone to the Philippines in February two years ago, under the premise of sight-seeing. Who goes to the Philippines to sightsee? I was devastated at the time, but he only told me a couple days before he left. When he got back, I told him that that could never happen again. It hurt too much for him to leave the country without me. Then in January of last year, he called me at work to say he was going to Thailand the next day. I told him if he did, I would move out. So he didn't go. Turns out he was heading back to the Philippines and his girlfriend was devastated when he canceled the trip. He must have been planning it for some time.

So when he announced that he was going on a trip to Montreal the week after my daughter went to college I was devastated and begged him not to go. Come to find out, he was in the Philippines and they spent a glorious week together. He admitted to it when I kept at him when he got back. She has a 4 year old daughter and he said he met her sisters and father. Why would he fly so far away when the person, who would love him forever no matter how things were looking at the time, was right there in front of him?

Now, as the story is coming out, he says that he met up with this woman at a coffee shop two years ago and then he went on his way. Not sure to believe this. Thank God all my kids are older and they are helping me see that this couldn't be possible. They knew how disconnected their father has been in the past few years, so they know that he wouldn't fly that far by himself unless he had a motive. They completely support me and hope that I get through this and have a fantastic life, because they want to see me happy.

Anyway, sorry to bore you this this, but this has been such a difficult time. Everyone says that I will make it through and something better for me will be on the other side. I won't be as lonely, hopefully, even if I do have to move from my 3,200 square foot house to an apartment by myself, because nothing is worse than living with someone who completely ignores you. I'm just sorry that he didn't give us a chance, that when my daughter went away to college and there was no one at the house but us, that we could have tried to fix things.

By the way, he is still in the house with me, living downstairs and I live upstairs. He likes to chit chat from time to time and I go along because we haven't signed the agreement yet and I want to make nice with him, but when he asks me to watch TV with him, or he brings me dinner or says I look nice in the shirt I'm wearing, I don't like it at all. Can anyone give me advice?