SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi, you may have caught me (BW, 33) in the Just Found Out forum a few times, but it’s my first post in Divorce/Separation.

You can view my profile for the full story but the tl;dr is: WH said he started to feel disconnected in January, didn’t tell me despite being in couples therapy and decided to "work on it himself." In doing so, he found himself in an entirely different relationship "in secret" (aka: he told several other people about it) and then finally told me on Oct. 1 after the OW gave him an ultimatum.

After two couples therapy sessions where I had to hear how "he’ll never be able to love me romantically again" several times, I got the hint. I filed the divorce paperwork the next day (uncontested, we don’t have children and the house is in my name only and he waved equity rights). He signed today…we’re in a 60-day waiting period.

I think i’m still shell shocked, and the rumination is horrible. We’ve been together for 15 years, so his friends have reached out to check on me. I feel this strange guilt when I share what happened with them, they’re mad and disappointed in my WH, but I feel like I’m turning people against him. I know it’s the result of his actions, but i’ve spent a long time protecting him from consequences.

I guess I feel a bit like I failed? How could I do so much, and yet, he walked away so easily? Our home, our cat, our nephews, our shared history and relationship. I would describe him as a runner when the going gets tough, and i’m unfortunately(?) the opposite. Maybe that’s why he didn’t give me an option - he knew i’d fight. Maybe it was always going to end this way.

People keep saying the person you marry is not the person you divorce and that seems to be true, I guess I just wonder when that change happened? Did you ever see the shift?

Divorce, as a process, has not been as daunting for me as it has been for others - but being divorced feels like i’m being ripped in half. I have so many questions, but he’s in no position to provide them. One because I don’t trust a word he says and two because he just keeps saying "I don’t know," and "I just changed."

I guess I just want to know when you stop looking for all the ways you could have changed the outcome?

[This message edited by stayg0lden at 10:15 PM, Tuesday, November 10th]

Here’s the thing, You cannot control another person’s actions or feelings. You could have been the MOST PERFECT spouse that ever existed and he may have cheated anyway. The flaw is in him and was not because you didn’t match up his socks or dress like a porn star, give him enough ego kibbles, or master that soufflé.

So did you miss any signs that he was pulling away? Probably, but what we tend to see here is that the BS tends to give the WS a lot of room and space to work through whatever they are going through. Many of us actually supported it (I facilitated my WS having time with his AP because I thought some camping "alone" would be good for him. Didn’t realize it was actually a vacation with her… ). But regardless, it was his job to identify his issues and bring them up. You were in MC, so you even had a safe space for him to bring that up and he didn’t. What more can you do? Over time I think you will have moments of enlightenment where you remember some signs that you wrote off when they happened. To stop from ruminating, just remind yourself (as often as needed) that you only control you. And he cheated. So HE FAILED. Not you. We often say that issues in the M are 50/50, but the decision to have an A is 100% on the cheater. If you picture your M as a house, maybe you hadn’t cleaned the gutters and he put a hole in the wall that he didn’t patch. But with his A, he threw a hand grenade into the middle of the house and blew it up with out telling you why. Even if you had fixed the gutters, his actions made that moot. He blew up the house. not you. You didn’t fail.

I am impressed by your taking action and control of your destiny. Pretty bad ass, honestly. But it has happened so fast that you probably haven’t been able to process all of it, so expect it to take some more time to get through. Stay in IC and use this time to recover, rediscover, and plan a new future. And hope you kept the cat >^..^<

It gets better. But that four-letter word… TIME. Be gentle on yourself. You are really doing great even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Oh and regarding his friends. Tell your truth and leave it at that. If he loses friendships, then that is on him and is a consequence of HIS ACTIONS. You don’t need to bad hum or anything, just state the facts and let the chips fall where they may. A good mantra is that he fired you from caring about that. or "not my monkey, not my circus".

BearlyBreathing, I always appreciate your responses.

I fear if I did not take action fast I would completely lose the nerve to do so. Plus, I don’t think my WH would have known how to even start the process… While I was interviewing lawyers, he was with his AP.

I do plan to stay the course with IC. I adore my therapist and she has been a source of guidance and calm during this time. I have an individual session with our couples therapist this Friday - he said it was for "closure" in the space, but I also think he’s a little pissed at my WH since he was also lied to for the last eight months.

Kitty is still with me! I feel bad for her because my husband was her favorite person, but her and I will move forward together. We’ve spent a lot of time snuggling over the past few weeks.

not my monkey, not my circus

i’d love this tattooed across my forehead right now 😌

That is rough, stayg0lden! It's all happening really fast, and your brain is still catching up to it. I'm glad you've filed for divorce. After reading through your other posts, it seems like the right move.

I second everything that BearlyBreathing said. You haven't failed this marriage. His behavior is not yours to control, nor his feelings yours to manage.

The statement about divorcing a different person than you married isn't one that I take literally. All of us change with time, but I think that statement is more about your state of mind. You thought you married a partner for life. You're divorcing the person who cheated on you. Maybe he was a better person 15 years ago, but the ability to cheat was in him, buried somewhere in his personality. He wasn't honest with himself (and probably still isn't) about his ability to commit to one person for the rest of his life. This isn't because of who you are or anything you did/didn't do during your marriage.

You're going to ruminate about his behavior, relive the past, see old things in a new light, and question where things went wrong. You're barely a month past DDay, and I'm sorry to say it's going to take years to heal from all this. Having these kinds of thoughts and questions is totally normal.

Tomorrow marks 4 years from dday for me, and my divorce was final 3 months ago, but I still catch myself wondering if there was something I could've done differently during R that would've forced the changes to WX that I needed to see. Luckily I've had enough time and therapy to know how false those ideas are, and once I recognize what's happening in my own head, I'm able to let it go.

Practice self-awareness. Journal your thoughts so you can read them over and realize what's really happening and where your emotions are leading your thoughts astray. It's a practice, so there's not a switch or timeline for when these thoughts will stop, but it will gradually get easier to deal with them.

You are going to come out of this and start to find peace on the other side. The one silver lining of a quick divorce is that you heal faster than people in R!

[This message edited by NoThanksForTheMemories at 1:45 AM, Thursday, November 12th]

Thank you for your reply, NoThanksForTheMemories!

I appreciate your perspective on the "you don’t divorce the person you married," comment. It’s a reminder that this isn’t not something that just happened to him, but a series of choices he made that led him here. There are numerous ways he could have handled this, but he didn’t.

I have been an active journal keeper for about five years now. I went back to read some of my entries from earlier in the year and I feel so sad for her - I sensed something was wrong and wrote about it extensively, but kept coming back to my OCD and how I was lying to myself.

I wanted to try R, alas that was not an option afforded to me by my XWH. Probably for the best, but the jury is still out on that one.