'My husband said the birthday card was from his mum. The message told a different story.'

'You haven't seen his bad side yet, have you?'

I should've known to run for the hills the minute I heard the words.

I met Matt* when he was working at my son's sports program and unexpectedly fell for him.

I was 43, had two children and was vulnerable. He was just about to turn 23, but he showed me so much attention and lavished me with compliments.

Early on when I met his youngest brother, he made the comment about his "bad side" and I passed it off as just something a brother would say.

But looking back now, I see exactly what he was talking about.

Watch: How would you answer if someone asked if you were okay? Post continues below.

And, yes, I am gullible.

But I also think I'm one of those people they talk about when narcissists find empaths. They latch on, and he love-bombed me in the beginning.

Things moved quickly and a year later we got married.

I had a few miscarriages, and then I fell pregnant with my youngest child.

I look back and can see times he was annoyed at me for giving my focus to our daughter. He was annoyed at not being the centre of attention.

My two older kids have since said they can't believe that I couldn't see how bad the relationship was. But I lost myself. I look back and there was a period where I just didn't know what my personality was anymore. I lost the person I was.

Then his affairs started.

The first affair he had was with a mother at my child's school that carried on for two years.

He came home around his birthday with a Lego set and I remember saying to him, "Oh, that's cute. Where did you get that from?"

"My mum," he said calmly as he set it up on the kitchen table, with no shame.

Then I found a card that went with it, stuffed inside his glove box.

It read: "My dear love of my life, I'm sorry I can't be there for your birthday. I would make you a cake. But I can't, because that's too obvious, but this is the best I can do."

When I found the card, I confronted him, and he lied. He spent two hours lying.

My response was, "if that's how your mum speaks to you, you've got issues."

When he eventually told me who it was actually from, I almost fainted. I was more shocked at who it was than that it was happening.

I did suspect at that stage there might be an affair, but I had assumed it was some young, attractive girl. But as it turned out, it wasn't. It was a mother from our child's school who had just come out of a really bad divorce with a very wealthy man, and we shared lots of friends.

I found out it started at the races. Everyone had a lot to drink. I did not notice that he had spent the whole night talking to this woman and I took our child home. He stayed partying. I didn't think anything of it. But I later found out he reached out to her on Facebook Messenger.

My first reaction was to tell him to get out, but he refused to leave. He said, "I'll do anything, please forgive me."

Because he was out of work so often, at that stage, I was working 60 hours a week to try and make enough money to keep the family going, and I just didn't know what to do.

He convinced me he would change. I had three children, so I made the decision to stay. I made him break it off in front of me on the phone, because I didn't trust him, and I was right not to.

And I will never forget hearing her reaction. She was saying to him, "but are you okay? What about you?" Then I found out three months later that they had still been in contact. So I made him break it off again.

He completely gaslit me.

He said things to me like, "We really need to work on our relationship. I thought you didn't love me, and you didn't pay me any attention."

He told me the reason he had the affair was because he felt like he was so much less than me that I emasculated him.

So we moved house for a fresh start, where we tried to move on and just focused on one another. He convinced me it would be different this time. What I now know to be 'bread-crumbing'. We did the 'lovey dovey' things. I made homemade meals, and of course, he loved that for a few years, didn't he?

Until his next affair.

I look back at that first affair now and feel sorry for her, because he played her too. She was madly in love with him. She was just divorced and thought he was her saviour. And I thought the same thing.

He told her he loved her, that he was going to leave me for her, and that I ignored him.

If only I'd known what would happen next…

You can read the next chapter of this author's story and find out what happened next week in another subscriber exclusive.

The author of this story is known to Mamamia but has chosen to remain anonymous for privacy reasons.

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