I am sitting here wondering how my WH's past factors into what's going on with us now. He really has no moral background to fall back on, his life was totally screwed, let me give you some background.

His mother was married to his father, she was 18 years old (his dad was 18 or 19), she got pregnant with my WH and apparently towards the end of her pregnancy they were having some kind of marital difficulty. He liked to run around in the bars, so one night she went and found him at one of his hang outs, he told her he didn't want her there, she got upset, so he called her mother and told her to come and get her (she was like 8 months pregnant), so her mom came and picked her up and took her to her house. That night something happened at the bar, nobody knows for sure but when she came home in the morning to her apartment there were 2 strange people sleeping in her living room and her husband was unconscious in the bedroom and was on his back and vomiting, she rolled him onto his side and tried to wake him up, to no avail. They didn't have a telephone so she ran to the neighbors to call the ambulance, when she got back the people who were in the living room were gone. My WH father died a few days later from some kind of closed head trauma. He'd been in a bar fight, or someone had hit him over the head. My WH was born about a month later.

His mother then married another man and got pregnant with his sister. This 2nd husband was very abusive and beat the crap out of my WH mother. He never beat my husband, but he wasn't very nice to him, and yet my MIL chose to stay with him until her daughter was 4 or 5. I don't know how long it was before she married her 3rd husband, but he had children from a previous marriage too and they all lived together, I don't have much background on husband number 3 except that he didn't last very long.

After divorcing #3 they lived in an apartment and his mom worked at a drug store or something, she is the type of person who buys 'hot' merchandise off of someone and feels like it's okay, because ... she did buy it.

When they were teenagers she moved them into another apartment and worked at a bar across the street, so she was gone every night until the bar closed, so they ran the streets. My husband was in a gang and got into quite a bit of trouble.

When he was 16 he got a 14 year old preacher's daughter pregnant, her father wanted him to marry her, but he was having no part of that. So he moved her to Kentucky to have the baby.

When he was 17 his sister had been babysitting for a lady in their neighborhood, and one night she had other plans so she asked my WH to substitute for her. He went to this 26 year old woman's house to watch her kids. The woman sold marijuana, so my WH was more than happy to watch her kids, and the woman let him have his friends over and let them smoke all the pot they wanted. Well this 26 year old woman then developed a 'thing' for my husband. She wanted him to be her boyfriend, she let him skip school and stay at her house and drive her car (no license)...he ended up moving in with her. By this time his 1st childs mother was back from Kentucky and lived on the same street. Apparently this woman was insanely jealous that he had a child with someone, and got herself pregnant, so at about 18 he had his 2nd child. About a year and 1/2 later she got pregnant again with twins. She apparently smoked pot heavily the entire time. During one of her doctor visits this pregnancy the doctor discovered that she had cervical cancer, he gave her the option to terminate the pregnancy and treat the cancer or risk it and continue the pregnancy and treat it after she had the babies, she decided on the latter, but by the time she gave birth the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and she died of cancer shortly there after.
Her family was well to do, and never approved of my WH (Understandably), but had decided that HE was to blame for all of it. They took him to court and won custody of his 3 children.

When he was 23 years old I met him. He was staying from friends house to friends house, he had the option of living with his mother in her new boyfriends house (He was an ex-biker and had a nazi symbol tattooed on his forehead), but he felt like he wasn't really welcome there as it wasn't his mother's house. We met through a friend of mine, she was dating his friend, and asked her boyfriend at the time if he had any friends that could come over and play euchre with us, her boyfriend brought my WH.

We started dating, I had never been out with anyone like him, he was sort of a bad boy...and I was this girl from the suburbs (I had been married once and had 2 kids, a 6 year old and an 8 month old), he was totally taken with me and was telling me he loved me and asking me to marry him within 2 weeks. I was a little taken back by this as I had already been married before and wasn't really into the idea, but I did like him a lot and he worshipped the ground I walked on. We ended up moving in together and he asked me to marry him several times during this time and I always said "No", not because I didn't love him, but because I was afraid.

I got pregnant with our DD when we'd been living together about a year, at this time he again asked me to marry him, I again said "no", I married my 1st husband because I was pregnant and did not want to make that mistake again. After I had our daughter he asked me again to marry him. He had a good job, he still worshipped the ground I walked on and I was madly in love with him, so this time I finally said "yes". We got married 9 months after I had the baby.

Our marriage was always a little rocky, I had gone through a depression about a year after we were married and left him about 4 or 5 different times...for short periods of time...some times 3 days, sometimes a week, the last time we separated it was for about 2 months, I was incredibly unhappy, for no apparent reason, I assumed it was him that made me unhappy, finally I went to the doctor and was prescribed anti-depressants and realized that it was me all along and not him at all. While we had been separated my WH was living with his sister, he called me one day and said "I want a divorce" I flipped out, immediately went to his house and begged him to change his mind. He agreed that he wanted to try to work it out and he insisted the kids and I move in with him immediately, I thought we should take it slow, but he said "No...I want you here" I figured I was in no position to barter and moved back in.

He was very strange after I'd moved back, and I suspected an OW, he denied this, yet he was going out every night after work, etc. We grappled with this for a few months, then one night he came home and said he was leaving me...I cried and asked why, he just said he wasn't happy...etc. I was so upset, but I knew I had to get up in the morning, and go to work so I just stuffed all my anguish down and took a few Xanax and went to bed. I took the kids to my Mom's in the morning and was leaving her house for work when I got the feeling I should go back by the house, I did and there his car was at our house. I stopped and went in, and he was sitting on the couch, I said "What are you doing here?" He said "I just came to take a shower"(he seemed very sad) I sat down in front of him and asked him what was going on.....he admitted that he'd been dating a girl while we'd been separated, and had never broken it off, and that the girl told him if he didn't leave me she was coming to our house and telling me everything. I said "Do you love her?" He said "No", I made him call her right away and break it off. She called back several times and I talked to her, I was in shock and wasn't even remotely rude to her, the last time she called she said she wanted to talk to my husband and to tell him to be a man and get on the phone or she was coming over, he got on the phone, said he was sorry a hundred times and then hung up. I was a basket case and insisted we had to move, we moved back to the suburbs where I was from, and went to MC, but only for a few weeks. I thought we had worked through everything, and didn't want to continue going.

We had a pretty uneventful next several years...6 to be exact and then BOOM.....here I am again, only this time there's no begging him to please not divorce me, he's got a really hard nose attitude about him, he is spending WAY too much time with his 'friend', has his hotrod parked in her garage, etc.

He tells me all sorts of reasons why he wants to split up. He loves me, but isn't in love with me...I don't keep the house clean enough, I don't pay the bills well enough and he can't live this way anymore. He also claims that he NEVER got over the times I left him, and he's just never been able to get past it. (even though he had an affair and I didn't)

That brings us to the present, and I know that all of this isn't an excuse, but do you think it explains a little? He has a crappy moral background, and I have talked to his mother and she 'Can't get in the middle of this, he's a grown man'.

*Sigh* Just felt like I should throw this out here and see what you guys thought.

-Caren

Wow!!! I would say that your WH's past has a lot to do with how he is acting today. I'm not excusing what he's done but I think a lot of that factors in. My WH's mother is and was very controling and still treats all of her kids like they are 5. My WH always hated it and said he never got to do things like normal teenagers did and didn't date much. Actually I was his first. I used to think that was so special...now I think it was a curse!!!!! He apparently got very curious about sex.

Anyway....hope someone with more advice can help ya. I'm going to bed. I'm exhausted!!!!!

caren
i personally dont think past has anything to do with present.
let me explain, i was from broken family, went to live w/ my workaholic/alcoholic dad at 12 was set free to run streets, would stay gone for 3-4 days at a time. father was killed in carwreck the year i graduated, i went crazy for a while, drank, fought anyone that looked at me wrong, dabbled in drugs, everything.
woke up, thought what the he11 am i doing.
put myself thru college (almost) am 15 hrs short. found out i was a good salesman. quit college, started selling cars. but i had made a promise to my w that when we had kids, i would change careers, so i could be a family man.so here i am with my own insurance agency, big house(no furniture)
ok, here is the opposite, my w came from a upper middle class family, went to church every time the doors were opened,
and here we are
the bad boy and the princess

Dalson, I was just pointing out that he comes from a sucky background....I'm not blaming this for this indiscretion, I am saying I believe that plays a part in his reaction to it, and having no morals to fall back on certainly affects the way he is fogging out.

I am his only source for morals....I taught him by example how it should be, I mean his mother gripes and moans because he lies to her...and then she turns around and lies to my 10 year old daughter about where her dad was on Christmas Eve....I'm about done with that woman!!!

-Caren

blllaaaaaaaahhhhhhh

my holier than thou mil was my confidaunt. now im the sorry SOB that made her daughter the way she is. MIL FOG, worse than ws fog.