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Husband left for another woman


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Hi everyone

 

It has been a year and a half and I am still in very bad shape, emotionally.

 

I dated my now ex husband for 5 years before we finally got married in 2011. It was a beautiful wedding and one of the best days of my life. Our honeymoon in Hawaii was the time of my life.

 

We finally purchased our first home last Sept 2014. I had just gotten a new job which required me to work late hours, which he was well aware of before I took the position. Four months later, and after we hosted our very first Christmas, he dropped a bomb on my life and told me he wasn't happy and wanted a divorce. We had a very rough patch during the holidays because of the stress of the new home, my new job and hosting the holidays, but I didn't see this coming. Looking back, I remember all the late nights he said he was going out with friends after work .. later I sadly discovered he was talking to another woman, someone we both knew.

 

I am absolutely devastated. The divorce is final but since then he has been on 2 vacations with her, posting it on Facebook for my whole family to see, people that flew in for our wedding, etc. We were still technically married when he did it.

 

I suffer from deep clinical depression, anxiety and I can barely focus on anything. My work is suffering and I used to be so great at it. The house has been taken over by the bank because could no longer pay the mortgage and it would not sell because it's in a flood zone.

 

Despite everything, and how badly he dogged me, I love him with my whole heart and soul and I miss him terribly. I saw him in court and wanted nothing more than to run and throw my arms around him, but he walked right past me like I was a stranger.

 

I am so sad. I don't know what to really do with myself anymore. I have a huge loving support system but I'm not doing much healing. I see a therapist, etc. Nothing seems to take away my sadness. I feel super bad for my family because they are sad seeing me this way too.

 

I suppose I just wanted another outlet outside family and friends to vent. This has been the most difficult time of my life and I don't know if I will ever get over it or be happy again.

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I'm 35.

 

He was very vague about it - he just said he wasn't happy. And that he was no longer in love with me. He said we did not have sex enough (which was true towards the very end because I was extremely stressed and exhausted) and I wasn't affectionate. And he was no longer attracted to me.

 

I told him I understood my part in the marriage breakdown - I begged him to reconsider and told him I'd take some time off work so we could go away but he wanted no part of it. At this point I later found out he had been talking to this other woman for about a month.

 

I guess it was a perfect storm.

 

It still doesn't take away from the fact that I love him so so much and I feel so lost without him. I don't know how to move on. No interest in other men or dating at all. And I'm not sure when that will happen. He was a huge part of my life for almost 9 years.

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I'm sorry for your story. It's hard when you dedicate so much to someone and sacrifice so much for the relationship. It's difficult to want someone but see them move on. There is an embarrassment factor I would imagine as he parades this new person online for people to see. I would recommend that you force yourself to move on from him. Don't go to his Facebook page, don't look through old pictures, keep yourself busy, and talk out your feelings with a counselor or close friend. Try to find support groups or forums like this one to help you vent.

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Why_So_Complicated
I'm 35.

 

He was very vague about it - he just said he wasn't happy. And that he was no longer in love with me. He said we did not have sex enough (which was true towards the very end because I was extremely stressed and exhausted) and I wasn't affectionate. And he was no longer attracted to me.

 

I told him I understood my part in the marriage breakdown - I begged him to reconsider and told him I'd take some time off work so we could go away but he wanted no part of it. At this point I later found out he had been talking to this other woman for about a month.

 

I guess it was a perfect storm.

 

It still doesn't take away from the fact that I love him so so much and I feel so lost without him. I don't know how to move on. No interest in other men or dating at all. And I'm not sure when that will happen. He was a huge part of my life for almost 9 years.

 

Deep down, what do you feel you (or both of you) could have done differently to prevent this? What do you wish you could have taken back if anything?

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Read up, if you haven't, about the affair fog.

 

I don't think there's much you could've done to prevent this, sadly. People who are unfaithful are going to find reasons to justify their unfaithfulness.

 

Don't think for a minute that he's not retroactively finding reasons to excuse stepping out on you for another woman.

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Deep down, what do you feel you (or both of you) could have done differently to prevent this? What do you wish you could have taken back if anything?

 

I would've done many things differently. I would've confronted him (and her) about it as soon as I found out. Not that it would've changed anything because the damage had been done by that point.

 

I also would've been more alert. I didn't realize how distant I became towards the end because I was so focused on other things. I didn't really tend to his needs. What did I expect him to do?

 

I know I'm blaming myself too much. I guess it's normal? I'm just so so sad.

It sucks.

 

I miss him terribly. Every waking moment. And when I'm not awake I dream about him. I tremble, I'm always cold and I feel so heavy in my chest. Is this normal?

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Why_So_Complicated

You love him, it's normal and very painful.

It's hard to live and function when hurting so bad. There is no answer to it. Just time and self discovery of who you are as a person with-out him. As you know you have to drudge through it, day after day. Then after a long time when you're at your bottom you will break out of the depression and remember who you were before your marriage or who you want to be for the future. There is nothing wrong with taking blame or even being a hard on yourself (in my opinion). You have control to change yourself not others. Love yourself! Look in the mirror and decide to be the person you want to be. Cry, Scream, Break things, get pissed off, whatever form of venting will help. Let it out!

Find support through friends and family even if you want to do nothing but sulk, force yourself. The foundation for you and your new self can't be built on the depression of your past marriage. That foundation is broken and any new house built on it will only be broken as well.

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LivingWaterPlease
I would've done many things differently. I would've confronted him (and her) about it as soon as I found out. Not that it would've changed anything because the damage had been done by that point.

 

I also would've been more alert. I didn't realize how distant I became towards the end because I was so focused on other things. I didn't really tend to his needs. What did I expect him to do?

 

I know I'm blaming myself too much. I guess it's normal? I'm just so so sad.

It sucks.

 

I miss him terribly. Every waking moment. And when I'm not awake I dream about him. I tremble, I'm always cold and I feel so heavy in my chest. Is this normal?

 

SaDee, I understand what you're going through. I trembled for six weeks after my exH left me years ago. The dreams, everything. I understand. You'll get through it but it will take time.

 

Do you have family close by? The thing that helped me most was prayer, my dad and close friends.

 

Be glad you don't have children with him because this way you'll be able to get away from him and not have to see him for the rest of your life.

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I am empathetic to your sorrow. The pain you are feeling is palpable to me, and it's hard to see a fellow person in this situation. I think the hardest realization I've come to is what one sided love is. We can love someone with all our heart, and when it comes to marriage, it's a promise we made to each other, so we expect it to be reciprocated. But something happens to a person. I don't know if a part of them dies inside, if they have a midlife crisis, they become blind to their spouses efforts, or if they are apathetic to the weight their decisions can have on others.. But something changes. Rationality is replaced by fear, desire, or some other emotion. It takes root, and leads to some damaging conclusions that they act on. Sometimes our spouses stop loving or respecting us due to these conclusions, but we are blind to it. I wouldn't call it blindness, though, more trusting and giving our partner the benefit of the doubt. It's because at the end of the day after the heat of the moment, we were truly committed.

 

But I have to ask you this.. Why should we keep loving someone who doesn't love us back? Why keep hurting ourselves when we are so blatantly disrespected? I'm asking you these questions, but I am struggling with them right now, and it is the hardest idea for me to entertain as a real possibility. I keep asking myself these questions, though. Every day. One day I'll be able to answer them, though I think I know the answer in my heart already. My problem is that I am still afraid to acknowledge that answer. I still fear that it is the wrong answer. If you know the answer to the question yourself though, maybe it is time to accept it. I can't imagine living through more than a year of agony like you have, and it scares me a lot. I hope you can find the strength to move on though, you deserve to be happy and you will be!

 

I would honestly delete Facebook though. At least make a new one with your closest contacts or cut all ties with anyone mutually and closely associated with him. I'm living proof that you don't need one. It seems like a lot of your pain is stemming from knowing what he's doing. Minimal contact with my wife(we have a kid together and are coparenting) has been the saving grace to my sanity and emotional stability. If you can completely cut him out of your life gradually or immediately, you may truly benefit and start to see improvements for yourself. Hell, no contact is praised around here and everywhere else you look, so it's worth a shot!

 

I'll say this. I got out of the military and started a hard science degree to get a good paying job to financially secure a good foothold for my family. I have been busting my ass taking 5 classes a semester, going to school nonstop in the spring, summer, and fall the since 2013. I hate school, but im doing it for my wife, my daughter, and then myself. My wife does not acknowledge or validate this effort, and the time i put into working on my degree caused a lack of passion in our relationship.

 

Something about doing the things we do and working hard to achieve success for our families and selves puts us in a vulnerable state and stresses our marital relations. Some spouses just can't see the forest for the trees though... That hard work pays off in the end and leads to a better life, though sometimes you need to endure and embrace the suck. Sometimes, we do get in ruts with hard work, and lose sight of ourselves. But pick yourself back up once you see it. Don't ever let anyone invalidate effort on your part, especially if you are making sacrifices. Just try to remember not to lose your self and identity in the work.

 

I hope some of this can help you. I'm not sure I'm good at consoling others through a forum, but I sincerely hope you can move on and be happy again. I've personally considered antidepressants myself if it gets unbearable, but exercise and a (un)healthy dose of mental disorder stigma from the military have kept me from that route. But it might not be such a bad one, in all honesty. Only you can know what you really need. Good luck, and I will keep you in my thoughts.

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Excellent post by Conclude.

 

I understand what you are going through. My ex-husband did something similar. He left me in the dust for not just one woman, but multiple women and a party lifestyle. Blamed everything on me and left seemingly without a care in the world. That whole ordeal was very traumatic for me. I isolated myself big time. I had never experienced such rejection in all my life and did not know what to do with it. I went into deep depression. I ended up anxious, paranoid, and fearful. I allowed my thoughts to run wild, marinated in all the negative thoughts and let the poison seep into my soul. Looking back I’m not sure how I fell so far. I hid it well from others. They assumed I was taking it like a champ. No, I am just a very private person and the pain was so deep and so destructive to my soul that I carried the shame silently. It took me a couple of years to get over the worst parts of it…then a year after that (3 years single total) I met a man who I thought was such a great guy – we were together 3+ years, but in the end I got overlapped and just like that he was gone. I never heard from him again. He wasn’t happy with me, he said.

 

I learned some things after pain from the ex-hub. This time I was determined to heal differently.

 

Things I did to get help keep from going into deep depression –

 

I got off Facebook ENTIRELY. No twitter, no Facebook, no social media stalking. You do not need to know what he is doing. The pull was so strong that unfriending him wasn’t enough. I deactivated for an entire year. I survived. I am back on it, but the addiction to FB has been broken and I spend very little time on it nowadays – also, I still NEVER look him up. For what? His life has nothing to do with me.

 

I politely told those who felt the need to update me about his life to cut it out.

 

I spent a lot of my free time with others. I did not sit in the house or spend a lot of time alone at first, because when I did I was letting thoughts of him consume me. If you don’t have enough available friends, get involved doing some activity – check out what’s going on in the community and start participating. Take a class, join a club, etc.

 

I got a gym membership and let me tell you I was looking fabulous…until I started feeling better and fell off the wagon, smh. BUT it did help. If my friends didn’t want to be bothered or I wasn’t feeling particularly social but needed to crawl out of the pity pit, I would hit the gym.

 

I took charge of my thoughts. This was the biggest challenge I had. Hopefully your therapist has given you some tools to help you cope and release some of your pain. Have you followed the advice? It may be that you need a different therapist. I thought about all the things that made me special and I wrote them down, and I made myself remember those things when I wanted to sit and think negatively. At first I struggled to come up with positive adjectives, because I never really got past that hump after the ex hub, so I asked for input from loved ones. Then slowly but surely my list kept getting longer because I stopped letting what others did to me determine my value.

 

Obviously you cannot ignore the pain every second of the day. At night I would let myself cry, think on it a little bit – but I also stayed so busy that I was exhausted much of the time, so the tears helped put me to sleep. In the morning he was the first thing on my mind – maybe I cried some more, but I got up, got dressed and just took it one day at a time.

 

Acceptance – with or without answers from him I had to let go. And believe me I had a lot of questions. I never got answers to those questions, I never pressed him for answers. I spoke to him once after the breakup, in order to exchange things. When I looked in his eyes he was not there anymore. Those eyes that use to look at me so lovingly were cold and empty. I had to accept that he wasn’t interested in carrying on with the relationship and that didn’t necessarily mean that I had no value, it just meant that we weren’t as good a fit as I once thought we were.

 

How is therapy coming along? How do you spend your days and evenings? Weekends? Perhaps we can assist you further if you shed some light on your activities and what you have done to heal over this period of time. Time does not heal all wounds, it is what we do with that time that helps heal wounds. What have you done with your time?

 

I do understand your pain and hope that we can be of some kind of assistance here. There is life after divorce.

Edited by springy
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Springy I feel ALL those things. Anxious, fearful, paranoid. I feel like my body is stuck in fight or flight mode. Everything makes me jumpy and on guard. It's terrifying. I never felt this way. At night I need to sleep with earplugs and eye mask because it need pitch darkness and quiet. I'm anti social and awkward. I used to be a social butterfly. So full of life and laughter, always smiling. Now I'm a shell. He took me with him when he left.

 

I have no interest in anything. My therapist teaches me breathing methods etc and they help calm me down but when I need to get out of bed and start my day I dread it and panic. I love everyone but all the joy in my life has been sucked dry. I can't even look at a sunset the same way again. I can recognize its beauty, but it doesn't strike me anymore. All my senses have been dulled actually.

 

I try and go out, talk to people and do things but all the while I look forward to it ending so I can crawl back into bed. Everyone tells me I'm in la la land. I know this but still can't snap out.

 

I don't know. I never felt like this. And it's scary.

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The way out of your depression is through anger.

 

Contacting your repressed anger, and dealing with it in a healthy way, will reenergise you enough to relaunch your life.

 

You might not feel it, but its there.

 

 

Take care.

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snip

 

I miss him terribly. Every waking moment. And when I'm not awake I dream about him. I tremble, I'm always cold and I feel so heavy in my chest. Is this normal?

 

“Some grief shows much of love

But much of grief shows still some want of wit.”

 

― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

 

 

Take care.

Edited by Satu
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And what you said about him not being there when you looked in his eyes makes me cry because that's exactly how I felt when he had one foot out the door. He grasped my shoulders and looked at me and I knew he was gone. And it kills me knowing his beautiful green eyes are now looking at someone else adoringly. I just want to cry. It's so gut wrenching.

 

He was so stoic in court too. Like I was a stranger he never knew. What has he become?

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And what you said about him not being there when you looked in his eyes makes me cry because that's exactly how I felt when he had one foot out the door. He grasped my shoulders and looked at me and I knew he was gone. And it kills me knowing his beautiful green eyes are now looking at someone else adoringly. I just want to cry. It's so gut wrenching.

 

He was so stoic in court too. Like I was a stranger he never knew. *What has he become?

 

*He is the person who betrayed you, left you, and cares nothing for you.

 

The person you are in love with exists only in your mind.

 

He never was that person.

 

When you accept that you will have truly begun your healing.

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stillafool
*He is the person who betrayed you, left you, and cares nothing for you.

 

The person you are in love with exists only in your mind.

 

He never was that person.

 

When you accept that you will have truly begun your healing.

 

^^^^THIS^^^^! OP when you reach a stage of ANGER for the way you have been betrayed, cheated on and abandoned then you will be able to move forward and heal. You still have this cheater on a pedestal while he has shown you that you mean nothing to him even though he made vows to you. Stop loving him and start loving you and then you will be able to move forward and heal.

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How does one fall in love with another when they are still madly in love with their ex?

 

Forget about falling in love with another; thats not the right question.

 

 

The right question is this:

 

 

"How can I recover from what happened to me?"

 

 

Ultimately you are the only person who can fully answer that question, but there are some obvious means:

 

*Therapy. Definitely. For as long as it takes.

 

*Self management. Looking after yourself properly. Every day. Without fail.

 

 

From my journal:

 

 

"Generally speaking, when someone is obsessing about their ex, that preoccupation causes the person to neglect themselves.

 

 

Are you eating healthily?

 

Are you drinking enough water?

 

Are you exercising?

 

Are you spending time with other people, family and friends?

 

Are you getting out of the house enough?

 

Are you avoiding drugs and alcohol?

 

Are you doing fun stuff, just for enjoyment?

 

Are you keeping up with your responsibilities?

 

 

Those are the things you need to do before you do anything else."

 

 

 

You're here, alive, in this world.

 

Be good to yourself.

 

Start now.

 

 

Take care.

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Is it normal to be reacting this way over a divorce? It's a breakup.. No one died and I wasn't in a war.

 

'Normal' is a matter of opinion.

 

You've suffered a very painful loss, and you're wounded.

 

That's certainly not 'abnormal.'

 

You can recover from it.

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Death is final. There is a conclusion with answers(most of the time) with death. When someone dies, you know they can't and won't ever come back. Death hurts like hell, but you eventually accept reality that the person is gone, and move on, because there is closure. As far as I can tell, separation so far feels like death in a way, but there isn't really closure. The person is still alive and can talk to you, and if you have kids, you can't avoid them. But I believe there is a true death in the situation of divorce. The death of a way of life and the death of two people's mutual love for another.

 

It sounds to me like you didn't properly grieve for the loss of these two things. When you don't truely grieve the death of afamily member, a friend, a brother/sister, someone you love.. When you don't do that, they stay with you and haunt you. Sometimes it's hard to let go of someone when they are standing next to you one day, and gone the next. In times like these, I've found that the ceremony of a funeral can truly help bring you back and give you true closure when you can't let go.

 

You may need to do this SaDee.. You might need to hold a funeral of sorts for the death of your mutual love and the death of your prior life. Find a picture of the two of you. Have some words to yourself. Bury it. Bring a friend for support, I'm sure they will understand. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it might help you reach the closure you need in order to finish grieving so you can move on.

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lolablue17

Injuries hurt more than death, right? Your heart and your ego are both injured. That's why you're in pain. You must first accept that, not thinking that you're damaged or insane. No, you're not. You're perfectly normal.

 

You can't delete it immediately, but you can start going step by step on the road of healing. Stop looking at FB and you can deactivate your account (I did it).

 

What happend to you did happen to so many people. it happens every day, it's common. Yes, a man broke your heart. Boom! Welcome to the (giant) club. you can trust at least one thing - Time. Trust time, it will help you, but you can also make things faster by doing things for your own social independent life.

 

Say to yourself "I'm adorable". Here, I think you're adorable, you see? You can add one fan to your list :rolleyes::rolleyes:

 

Good luck!

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Thanks guys. You are right. It's so crazy. It's not just a broken heart it's like my whole body shut down. I'm always exhausted.. Can't concentrate.. Have physical pain.. Feel so heavy.

I struggle just to walk. It's really strange and scary.

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getsmartie

Sorry you're struggling SaDee, but a lot of these posters are giving you good advice. Its up to you to take it but let me tell you a story....

 

My ex SIL who I really cared for had a similar thing happen to her..long story short but my brothers an ass. He left her for someone and you sound exactly how she sounded.

 

Fast forward today. She still loves him, put him on a pedestal and no doubt she would take him back to this day. She has not moved on, she's stuck in the same spot. Did I mention yet that it's been 12 years?

 

That'll be you if you don't get a grip.

 

The person you love is not who this person is.

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