DEAR DEIDRE: I HAD sex with the guy who coaches our son’s football team and my husband can’t get over it. He wants to throw me out. We have been married for five years. Our son is ten and we also have a daughter who’s eight. I am 28 and my husband is 29. My […]
DEAR DEIDRE: I HAD sex with the guy who coaches our son’s football team and my husband can’t get over it. He wants to throw me out.
We have been married for five years. Our son is ten and we also have a daughter who’s eight. I am 28 and my husband is 29.
My husband has his own window-cleaning business and works long hours to support us.
I have a part-time job in a supermarket and life is full-on — looking after the kids mostly on my own, cooking, cleaning, and sorting out my husband’s invoices and all the household bills.
So it went to my head when my son’s football coach started flirting with me last autumn when I took my son to matches and practice.
He is 43 but I felt like a young girl again, as if there was more to me than being a wife and mother.
He suggested I go to his place one night to talk about fundraising for the team. He’s divorced. My husband agreed but I assumed other committee members would be there. I suppose I knew deep down what might happen but I was in a strange frame of mind.
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He started kissing me as soon as I arrived and took me upstairs to his bedroom, where we had sex.
It felt good to start with but then I asked myself: “What am I doing?” I told him to stop, got dressed and left.
I tried to pretend nothing had happened but felt so guilty that I broke down a couple of days later and confessed to my husband. He was beside himself.
He didn’t speak to me for nearly a month but I kept saying sorry and eventually he said we should try again with our marriage.
Although we’ve hardly had sex, I thought we were going the right way — until the other day, when he tole me he can’t get over what I did and he wants me to leave our home. Lockdown has made it all worse.
I can’t bear to leave my children but know this is all my fault and don’t want to fight.
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DEIDRE SAYS: It was very wrong of you to cheat but there were clearly problems in your relationship and it seems your husband was taking you and all your efforts for granted.
Suggest to him that splitting up would be so traumatic for your children it’s got to be worth first trying couple counselling. Tavistock Relationships are offering four sessions online for free (tavistockrelationships.org/living-with-lockdown-help).
In any case, the law doesn’t allow him to just throw you out. The guiding principle would be what is best for your children. He could find he is the one who has to leave and pay child maintenance, while you stay in your home with your children.
Single parents’ organisation Ginger-bread can advise on your rights (gingerbread.org.uk, 0808 802 0925).
