loozer's update [way, way too long]

[loozerinluv]

It's been quite a while since I've been here, but I guess I was feeling kind of melancholy today and thought about the discussion I exchanged here last year. For the context, here is my earlier thread. Not that I thought that anyone was sitting around wondering, but I thought I would provide an update I suppose as a cautionary tale of how ugly these relationships get and how much of a loser you can end up feeling like.

 

Soon after posting that thread last year, the xMW called me on our "anniversary" to tell me that she was thinking about me. At the time she called, she did not know that I was aware that she was in another relationship. I played dumb for the start of the call to see if she would tell me, but was not going to mention it. So, I busted her on it. At first she tried to claim that it was just a casual relationship that had recently started, etc. I asked her if she felt no guilt in calling me to tell me that she may need financial help back in May 2010, when she was already involved with someone else. She said "I am not sure if I was even seeing him at that time". (That has since been confirmed to be a lie.)

 

So anyway the conversation turned into a ugly argument and she hung up on me saying that she would never call me again.

 

About a month later, she called and left a voicemail saying that she wanted to know if I would be willing to loan her some money. There was a subsequent exchange of snarky voicemails before I finally talked her.

 

At this point, she was blaming me for the entire LTA and the destruction of her marriage and the damage done to her children. Despite having spent 4+ years proudly taking credit for initiating the LTA and saying that she knew that I never would have because I wasn't that type of person, now she was telling me that I used her "pity" for me to get her in to my bed. (nice, huh?) Now, she was purely a victim of what I had done to her and her children.

 

Then, inexplicably, the conversation turned to how she still wished that she and I could have a future together and still sometimes thinks that it is possible. How she had loved me for the 20+ years that we knew each other and that I was all she had ever wanted. How she never would have known what it meant to love if it weren't for me. She had no feelings for the new guy, she had only ever really had feelings for me. I tried to mostly not take any of that too seriously.

 

There was no discussion of her "borrowing" money during this 2+ hour conversation. The call finally ended cordially, but with no indication that I should expect further contact.

 

The very next day, she called me again and now it wasn't about "borrowing" money. I owed her because of what I had done to her and her children. She had worked out a sum which was equal to 8 years worth of the alimony that her x-husband had been paying her (he only committed to around 3 years of alimony). So, this was a figure well over $100K. She said that I could either pay her in a lump sum or in annual "installments".

 

Furthermore, she began threatening me. If I did not pay her, she could tell her c-husband the whole story about what I had done and there were things that he could still do to me. When her kids were old enough, she would admit to them what she had done, but she would also tell them who was at fault and would let them know that when they needed financial help, I walked away from them. I let them down. So, she was basically blackmailing me. I pointed out the fact that she was already in a relationship with someone else and she said "that has nothing to do with this".

 

Now, I should mention at this point that she and her children are/were not living in poverty. They live in a nice $300K home in a good neighborhood that she bought her x-husband out of as part of the divorce settlement. She also got half (more than $200K) of their savings/investment money plus half of his 401(k) account as part of the divorce settlement. To my knowledge, she is still to this point a stay at home mom and has not felt any real urgency to get a job even though the kids are in school all day.

 

So, I did not give her the 8 years' worth of alimony that she demanded from me, but I did pay her one year's worth in a lump sum. I did not do it because I feared her threats, there was no way that she was going to follow through with them. I did it because (as I said in my earlier thread) I felt so much guilt already and I didn't want to give myself yet something else to hate myself for. When I sent her the check, I included a note that said that this was all she was getting from me and not to contact me again.

 

So, that was last Sept and I have not heard from her since. I know from other people that she is still fully involved in her new relationship. I expect that they will likely be married within a year or so.

 

Several months ago, I finally broke down and did what I shouldn't have done which is I contacted the new guy. He and I swapped a number of e-mails where I told him some of the history of the woman he is in love with. I even provided some hard evidence in which she had written that she had always been in love with me and always wanted to be with me.

 

Long story short, this was a complete failure. She told him a bunch of lies and what little she admitted to, she blamed completely on me. Whatever happened between us was a result of my having spent 20 years trying to get in her pants. And of course, he bought every bit of it. To all her friends and family (who don't know the extent of our relationship), she blames the demise of her marriage completely on her x-husband and plays the victim role. She has painted a picture of him as a terrible husband. Everyone seems to buy it.

 

Something that I learned in my e-mail exchange with the new guy is that she had already started seeing him before she even dumped me. They had been together for a year at the point that she blackmailed me.

 

So, she managed to: have a 4+ year LTA where she led me to believe it was more than just sex, never even admit to her x-husband that she had a PA, take half of everything he had plus 3 years of alimony, keep him from "outing" her as having even had an EA to any of their friends, play the poor victim of a bad husband to her friends/family, land a new guy before dumping me, get a years worth of alimony out of me, and then pretty much blame me for everything. She seems to have no guilt or remorse over any of it.

 

And you know the worst part? After all of that, I still think about her constantly. Even though I know that I should wake up every day and remember how lucky I am to have gotten someone like that out of my life, I am still somewhat jealous of her new guy. I somehow feel like he is the "winner" in all this. I wasn't having an LTA with this woman for the fun of it. This was something that I was committed to for life.

 

It's just ironic that I spent years letting the guilt eat away and me and mostly destroyed myself emotionally over it. Yet, I am the one who ended up hurt and alone and struggle to even face myself in the mirror. Plus, I'm about $20K poorer for my trouble. I never detected one ounce of guilt out of her, yet she is happy and in love with someone else. I feel like an enormous loser.

 

Anyway, I am not herr looking for sympathy. I suppose that I deserved everything that I got and more. But, I just wanted to point out that I don't think that there is ever anything good that comes out of these things. If you are in this kind of relationship, my advice would be to get out as soon as you can because every day, you are digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole. I'm still trying [not very successfully] to climb out of mine.

[Carrot2000]

She sounds like a sociopath. $20k was a small price to pay to get her out of your life!

[Rooke]

Holy crap! I read that with my jaw wide open!

Phew, well, firstly I would say that there's absolutely NO need to feel jealous of her new man, you should think he's welcome to her.

Secondly, it doesn't sound to me as if she's capable of feeling any such emotion that even comes close to love, it sounds as though she goes through life thinking other human beings are only put there to be used for her own needs, not to be loved or cared for, or cherished.

This woman has children you say? Wow, I feel sorry for them.

It's such a shame you gave her that money, but please don't think of it as being poorer, (sorry was it twenty or ten thousand? I am English and did the conversion in my head and now I forgot) as far as I'm concerned, it's money well spent, to find out just exactly what kind of a person she is.

I understand how scorned you felt, but it was best not to email her new guy if you hoped he was going to discover what she was, people MUST find out for themselves, and he will learn, trust me, she will take him to the cleaners too. Just be patient, what goes around comes around, I am a HUGE believer in Karma.

However it is important not to dwell too much on what you should/shouldn't have done, it's important to focus on moving forward, and remember, when someone loves you, they love you because it's YOU, not because of the things or the money you have. You sound like an intelligent, successful man and there are plenty of sweet, kind, caring women who will have alot of love to give to you, so please don't waste even another thought on this evil witch.

Also, you didn't do anything wrong and you should never have felt guilty, not then, not now, not ever, all you did was fall in love with the wrong person, and how many of us have done that? It's one of the hardest things in life to do, to give someone up when you're head over heels.

Please stick around if you're feeling low, we're all here to help and support you in whatever way we can.

[loozerinluv]

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to read. I know that it was ridiculously long. I guess in absence of anyone to talk to on a holiday weekend, I just kept typing. I'll respond to a few of the comments...

 

She sounds like a sociopath. $20k was a small price to pay to get her out of your life!

Yeah, the amount of money was not that important. I could have given her the 8 years worth that she demanded and it wouldn't have been a big impact financially to me. (But, glad I didn't.) It was just the "insult to injury" aspect of sending her a check and her not even bothering to thank me.

This woman has children you say? Wow, I feel sorry for them.

Yes 2. The youngest is 10.

Also, you didn't do anything wrong and you should never have felt guilty, not then, not now, not ever

Well, I don't agree with this part. I am under no illusion that I should be guilt free. There are 2 kids whose lives will be changed forever because of me. They will always have to deal with separate holidays, step-parents, etc, because of what I did. I knew what we were doing was wrong when we were doing it. I didn't think that I was the kind of person who does this.

 

The only way I was able to square what I was doing with my own morals was to believe all of the crap that she told me about knowing that she loved me even before she got married, us being "meant" to be together, blah, blah, blah. Once I was in this mess, the only way I knew to make it "right" was for it to be real. So, the worst thing that she did to me wasn't breaking my heart, it wasn't blackmailing me, it was taking away my ability to balance my moral books and regain some semblance of my self-respect.

 

I was single, no kids, no baggage, and professionally/financially very successful. If I was just in it for the sex I would have abandoned her 2 years in to it when her BH discovered what he thought was just an EA. I could have just gone off to find a similarly baggage free woman. But, I would have never done that to her. So, instead I stuck with it for 2 more years of her heaping guilt trips on me only to end up without the woman, without the self-respect, and even without a chunk of money.

 

As you said, karma is a bitch. I'm living mine.

[fooled once]

I cannot believe you felt the need to send her $20k.

 

Man, who knew I could tell former lovers they OWE me and get them to pay me money.

 

I really think you need to see a therapist.

[loozerinluv]

I cannot believe you felt the need to send her $20k.

My life is all about guilt minimization at this point. I was trying to avoid giving myself yet one more thing to feel guilty about.

I really think you need to see a therapist.

Ha. I think that I'm well past the point that therapy is going to help.

 

I'm just trying to in some way help other people by telling them that if they are in one of these situations and they think it's going to work out well, it's probably not.

[Carrot2000]

Well, I don't agree with this part. I am under no illusion that I should be guilt free. There are 2 kids whose lives will be changed forever because of me. They will always have to deal with separate holidays, step-parents, etc, because of what I did. I knew what we were doing was wrong when we were doing it. I didn't think that I was the kind of person who does this.

 

No, there are 2 kids whose lives will be forever changed because of the decisions their mother and father made. Yes, you played in role in things, but ultimately the parents are responsible for their children having step-parents, separate holidays, etc.

 

Loozerinluv, you've beaten yourself up enough. It's over. Take a deep breath and vow to do better.

[carrie999]

It's been quite a while since I've been here, but I guess I was feeling kind of melancholy today and thought about the discussion I exchanged here last year. For the context, here is my earlier thread. Not that I thought that anyone was sitting around wondering, but I thought I would provide an update I suppose as a cautionary tale of how ugly these relationships get and how much of a loser you can end up feeling like.

 

Soon after posting that thread last year, the xMW called me on our "anniversary" to tell me that she was thinking about me. At the time she called, she did not know that I was aware that she was in another relationship. I played dumb for the start of the call to see if she would tell me, but was not going to mention it. So, I busted her on it. At first she tried to claim that it was just a casual relationship that had recently started, etc. I asked her if she felt no guilt in calling me to tell me that she may need financial help back in May 2010, when she was already involved with someone else. She said "I am not sure if I was even seeing him at that time". (That has since been confirmed to be a lie.)

 

So anyway the conversation turned into a ugly argument and she hung up on me saying that she would never call me again.

 

About a month later, she called and left a voicemail saying that she wanted to know if I would be willing to loan her some money. There was a subsequent exchange of snarky voicemails before I finally talked her.

 

At this point, she was blaming me for the entire LTA and the destruction of her marriage and the damage done to her children. Despite having spent 4+ years proudly taking credit for initiating the LTA and saying that she knew that I never would have because I wasn't that type of person, now she was telling me that I used her "pity" for me to get her in to my bed. (nice, huh?) Now, she was purely a victim of what I had done to her and her children.

 

Then, inexplicably, the conversation turned to how she still wished that she and I could have a future together and still sometimes thinks that it is possible. How she had loved me for the 20+ years that we knew each other and that I was all she had ever wanted. How she never would have known what it meant to love if it weren't for me. She had no feelings for the new guy, she had only ever really had feelings for me. I tried to mostly not take any of that too seriously.

 

There was no discussion of her "borrowing" money during this 2+ hour conversation. The call finally ended cordially, but with no indication that I should expect further contact.

 

The very next day, she called me again and now it wasn't about "borrowing" money. I owed her because of what I had done to her and her children. She had worked out a sum which was equal to 8 years worth of the alimony that her x-husband had been paying her (he only committed to around 3 years of alimony). So, this was a figure well over $100K. She said that I could either pay her in a lump sum or in annual "installments".

 

Furthermore, she began threatening me. If I did not pay her, she could tell her c-husband the whole story about what I had done and there were things that he could still do to me. When her kids were old enough, she would admit to them what she had done, but she would also tell them who was at fault and would let them know that when they needed financial help, I walked away from them. I let them down. So, she was basically blackmailing me. I pointed out the fact that she was already in a relationship with someone else and she said "that has nothing to do with this".

 

Now, I should mention at this point that she and her children are/were not living in poverty. They live in a nice $300K home in a good neighborhood that she bought her x-husband out of as part of the divorce settlement. She also got half (more than $200K) of their savings/investment money plus half of his 401(k) account as part of the divorce settlement. To my knowledge, she is still to this point a stay at home mom and has not felt any real urgency to get a job even though the kids are in school all day.

 

So, I did not give her the 8 years' worth of alimony that she demanded from me, but I did pay her one year's worth in a lump sum. I did not do it because I feared her threats, there was no way that she was going to follow through with them. I did it because (as I said in my earlier thread) I felt so much guilt already and I didn't want to give myself yet something else to hate myself for. When I sent her the check, I included a note that said that this was all she was getting from me and not to contact me again.

 

So, that was last Sept and I have not heard from her since. I know from other people that she is still fully involved in her new relationship. I expect that they will likely be married within a year or so.

 

Several months ago, I finally broke down and did what I shouldn't have done which is I contacted the new guy. He and I swapped a number of e-mails where I told him some of the history of the woman he is in love with. I even provided some hard evidence in which she had written that she had always been in love with me and always wanted to be with me.

 

Long story short, this was a complete failure. She told him a bunch of lies and what little she admitted to, she blamed completely on me. Whatever happened between us was a result of my having spent 20 years trying to get in her pants. And of course, he bought every bit of it. To all her friends and family (who don't know the extent of our relationship), she blames the demise of her marriage completely on her x-husband and plays the victim role. She has painted a picture of him as a terrible husband. Everyone seems to buy it.

 

Something that I learned in my e-mail exchange with the new guy is that she had already started seeing him before she even dumped me. They had been together for a year at the point that she blackmailed me.

 

So, she managed to: have a 4+ year LTA where she led me to believe it was more than just sex, never even admit to her x-husband that she had a PA, take half of everything he had plus 3 years of alimony, keep him from "outing" her as having even had an EA to any of their friends, play the poor victim of a bad husband to her friends/family, land a new guy before dumping me, get a years worth of alimony out of me, and then pretty much blame me for everything. She seems to have no guilt or remorse over any of it.

 

And you know the worst part? After all of that, I still think about her constantly. Even though I know that I should wake up every day and remember how lucky I am to have gotten someone like that out of my life, I am still somewhat jealous of her new guy. I somehow feel like he is the "winner" in all this. I wasn't having an LTA with this woman for the fun of it. This was something that I was committed to for life.

 

It's just ironic that I spent years letting the guilt eat away and me and mostly destroyed myself emotionally over it. Yet, I am the one who ended up hurt and alone and struggle to even face myself in the mirror. Plus, I'm about $20K poorer for my trouble. I never detected one ounce of guilt out of her, yet she is happy and in love with someone else. I feel like an enormous loser.

 

Anyway, I am not herr looking for sympathy. I suppose that I deserved everything that I got and more. But, I just wanted to point out that I don't think that there is ever anything good that comes out of these things. If you are in this kind of relationship, my advice would be to get out as soon as you can because every day, you are digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole. I'm still trying [not very successfully] to climb out of mine.

 

WOW!!!! What a sociopath!!! I really, really hope you seek professional help. Yes, you got involved with a married woman, and knowingly aided in her betraying her husband. Your responsibility ends there. SHE was the one responsible for jeopardizing her marriage and her children's happiness. That was HER decision to make. You sound like a really nice guy with major self-esteem issues. You did NOT do this to her family...she did.

 

I honestly can understand why you felt partially responsible for her financial situation, simply because you made her a promise that if she left her husband, you'd take care of her. But it's also clear that you didn't mean you'd support her family if she ran off with someone else. Please.

 

If you were actually married to her and you divorced and owed alimony/maintenance as part of the settlement, that agreement ends when the receiver is cohabitating with someone else. You weren't married to her and you're not the father of her children.

 

She manipulated you and basically swindled you. I'm really sorry for that...even sorrier that you still feel guilty for the role you played here. She is a user and a liar and...well, as others agreed, a sociopath. You really need to make peace with that and recognize that you are a good person who deserves to be in a loving relationship. I hope you'll figure that out, and learn from your own mistakes...for YOUR sake.

[JadedAmore]

Wow, I cannot believe she demanded you give her money for her actions. You might have been a participant in the A but it wasn't like you held a gun to her head to force her to get involved with you.

 

I'm with the others, quit being so hard on yourself (yes, MUCH easier said than done) and press forward.. walk away with knowledge on the subject of what type of woman NOT to get involved with and learn from the experience. Be glad she is out of your life!

 

Good luck, I hope you find peace soon!

[loozerinluv]

I honestly can understand why you felt partially responsible for her financial situation, simply because you made her a promise that if she left her husband, you'd take care of her.

Yeah, that's it. I know it doesn't make sense to most people. But, while I never encouraged her to divorce her husband, I had promised her that I would not let her and her children suffer for what I had done. I may be a homewrecker, but I do keep my word. So, the way I looked at it is I would pay for 1 year and by the end of that, she would have been with the new guy for 2 years. If she needs him to support her, she can marry him.

 

In the ill-advised e-mail exchange that I had with the new guy, he said that she had not mentioned any money problems to him, other than to say that she was thinking of looking for a job. As I said, she also still has quite a bit of money that she got in the divorce settlement. And, her x-husband pays child support.

 

So, I don't know what the sudden urgency to get financial help was last Sept. The new guy is in nowhere near the position to help her financially than I was. So, I guess her goal was to get me to support her for 8 years thereby protecting the funds that she got in the divorce settlement, while at the same time dating a guy who isn't in a position to support her, and not having to get a job. I was dumb enough to help her do this for a year, but that was partially the result of her somehow twisting things such that a LTA that she said that she had always wanted and that she started, was all my fault.

 

Thanks all for listening and providing some thoughts. I guess I was just having a bad day and needed someone to "talk" to.

[BB07]

That is one screwed up story........and I'm sorry you had to go through that.

 

What worries me about it, is in your first post you said you think about her all the time and you are jealous of the new guy. From what you've wrote, this woman is very, very bad news and as someone else said a sociopath. Maybe you need some professional help in getting to the point where you can put her in the place in your mind, where she belongs, as in very, very far away. The bottom drawer in the back.

[carrie999]

Yeah, that's it. I know it doesn't make sense to most people. But, while I never encouraged her to divorce her husband, I had promised her that I would not let her and her children suffer for what I had done. I may be a homewrecker, but I do keep my word. So, the way I looked at it is I would pay for 1 year and by the end of that, she would have been with the new guy for 2 years. If she needs him to support her, she can marry him.

(snip)

Thanks all for listening and providing some thoughts. I guess I was just having a bad day and needed someone to "talk" to.

 

I'm mad on your behalf because she sounds like she is perfectly capable of making ends meet and chose to treat you like a sugar daddy instead. She is getting three years of alimony. Even if she wasn't, she (not you) wrecked her marriage.

 

I react particularly harshly to people like this because it's clear that she is a user. My mother chose to leave my abusive father and worked her butt off to support us when he was a complete deadbeat and didn't even pay child support. She never went after him because she knew it was not worth detracting the time and energy needed to fight him. She chose to instead focus all that extra energy on our survival as a family, both financially and emotionally. If she actually did receive child support and alimony for a few years and that somehow wasn't enough, she would have flipped burgers before going after someone else for help.

 

That said, I still understand that you were trying to live up to the promise you made her unconditionally. You are clearly very honorable and very, very caring. I hope that even from the wreckage of this situation, you can extract something more valuable than a lesson...I hope you can see what a worthy person you are, and how much better you really do deserve.

 

((((Hugs)))) to you. Keep talking...you are among friends :-)

[loozerinluv]

I'm mad on your behalf because she sounds like she is perfectly capable of making ends meet and chose to treat you like a sugar daddy instead. She is getting three years of alimony. Even if she wasn't, she (not you) wrecked her marriage.

Just for the sake of completeness, I'll explain her twisted logic that led to concluding that I "owed" her alimony. As I stated in the previous thread, she is all about "appearances". She wants it to appear as though she was a great wife and mother who suffered through a bad marriage. While her x-husband, to this day, knows nothing more than that she was "talking" to me too much (hence an EA), she was terrified that he would tell their whole large clique of neighborhood friends even that much.

 

So, when they were negotiating alimony, while not really outright threatening, he kept reminding her that he was doing her a favor by keeping her secret -- letting her play the victim. (She has an amazing ability to get men to do strange things.)

 

Anyway, 3 years is really not much alimony given the number of years that they were married. But, she felt that she was in no position to try to negotiate more alimony because of her fear of him blowing her whole "image" out of the water.

 

Thus, her logic was that she didn't get as many years of alimony from him as she "deserved" because of me, so it was my responsibility to make up the difference.

 

(Not saying that I agree with the above logic, but just clarifying the insanity that she spewed at me when threatening me.)

[Carrot2000]

Just for the sake of completeness, I'll explain her twisted logic that led to concluding that I "owed" her alimony.

 

Just because she concluded that you owe her money doesn't make it so. She knows she had no way of legally enforcing this supposed "debt", so she used your guilt as a means to extract money from you. Emotional blackmail, plain and simple. And you fell for it. She's a master manipulator and knows how to choose her targets. This sociopath's got game.

 

Loozer, holding on to guilt doesn't do a damn thing for this woman's kids; it only makes you a victim to her schemes. Again, think of the $20k as the price you paid to get this woman out of your life forever.

[Rooke]

I really don't understand why you think you're to blame.

Do you really think that if you hadn't been in the wrong place at the wrong time she wouldn't have found another victim?

You didn't - and don't owe her a thing.

[QueenVictoria]

It's been quite a while since I've been here, but I guess I was feeling kind of melancholy today and thought about the discussion I exchanged here last year. For the context, here is my earlier thread. Not that I thought that anyone was sitting around wondering, but I thought I would provide an update I suppose as a cautionary tale of how ugly these relationships get and how much of a loser you can end up feeling like.

 

Soon after posting that thread last year, the xMW called me on our "anniversary" to tell me that she was thinking about me. At the time she called, she did not know that I was aware that she was in another relationship. I played dumb for the start of the call to see if she would tell me, but was not going to mention it. So, I busted her on it. At first she tried to claim that it was just a casual relationship that had recently started, etc. I asked her if she felt no guilt in calling me to tell me that she may need financial help back in May 2010, when she was already involved with someone else. She said "I am not sure if I was even seeing him at that time". (That has since been confirmed to be a lie.)

 

So anyway the conversation turned into a ugly argument and she hung up on me saying that she would never call me again.

 

About a month later, she called and left a voicemail saying that she wanted to know if I would be willing to loan her some money. There was a subsequent exchange of snarky voicemails before I finally talked her.

 

At this point, she was blaming me for the entire LTA and the destruction of her marriage and the damage done to her children. Despite having spent 4+ years proudly taking credit for initiating the LTA and saying that she knew that I never would have because I wasn't that type of person, now she was telling me that I used her "pity" for me to get her in to my bed. (nice, huh?) Now, she was purely a victim of what I had done to her and her children.

 

Then, inexplicably, the conversation turned to how she still wished that she and I could have a future together and still sometimes thinks that it is possible. How she had loved me for the 20+ years that we knew each other and that I was all she had ever wanted. How she never would have known what it meant to love if it weren't for me. She had no feelings for the new guy, she had only ever really had feelings for me. I tried to mostly not take any of that too seriously.

 

There was no discussion of her "borrowing" money during this 2+ hour conversation. The call finally ended cordially, but with no indication that I should expect further contact.

 

The very next day, she called me again and now it wasn't about "borrowing" money. I owed her because of what I had done to her and her children. She had worked out a sum which was equal to 8 years worth of the alimony that her x-husband had been paying her (he only committed to around 3 years of alimony). So, this was a figure well over $100K. She said that I could either pay her in a lump sum or in annual "installments".

 

Furthermore, she began threatening me. If I did not pay her, she could tell her c-husband the whole story about what I had done and there were things that he could still do to me. When her kids were old enough, she would admit to them what she had done, but she would also tell them who was at fault and would let them know that when they needed financial help, I walked away from them. I let them down. So, she was basically blackmailing me. I pointed out the fact that she was already in a relationship with someone else and she said "that has nothing to do with this".

 

Now, I should mention at this point that she and her children are/were not living in poverty. They live in a nice $300K home in a good neighborhood that she bought her x-husband out of as part of the divorce settlement. She also got half (more than $200K) of their savings/investment money plus half of his 401(k) account as part of the divorce settlement. To my knowledge, she is still to this point a stay at home mom and has not felt any real urgency to get a job even though the kids are in school all day.

 

So, I did not give her the 8 years' worth of alimony that she demanded from me, but I did pay her one year's worth in a lump sum. I did not do it because I feared her threats, there was no way that she was going to follow through with them. I did it because (as I said in my earlier thread) I felt so much guilt already and I didn't want to give myself yet something else to hate myself for. When I sent her the check, I included a note that said that this was all she was getting from me and not to contact me again.

 

So, that was last Sept and I have not heard from her since. I know from other people that she is still fully involved in her new relationship. I expect that they will likely be married within a year or so.

 

Several months ago, I finally broke down and did what I shouldn't have done which is I contacted the new guy. He and I swapped a number of e-mails where I told him some of the history of the woman he is in love with. I even provided some hard evidence in which she had written that she had always been in love with me and always wanted to be with me.

 

Long story short, this was a complete failure. She told him a bunch of lies and what little she admitted to, she blamed completely on me. Whatever happened between us was a result of my having spent 20 years trying to get in her pants. And of course, he bought every bit of it. To all her friends and family (who don't know the extent of our relationship), she blames the demise of her marriage completely on her x-husband and plays the victim role. She has painted a picture of him as a terrible husband. Everyone seems to buy it.

 

Something that I learned in my e-mail exchange with the new guy is that she had already started seeing him before she even dumped me. They had been together for a year at the point that she blackmailed me.

 

So, she managed to: have a 4+ year LTA where she led me to believe it was more than just sex, never even admit to her x-husband that she had a PA, take half of everything he had plus 3 years of alimony, keep him from "outing" her as having even had an EA to any of their friends, play the poor victim of a bad husband to her friends/family, land a new guy before dumping me, get a years worth of alimony out of me, and then pretty much blame me for everything. She seems to have no guilt or remorse over any of it.

 

And you know the worst part? After all of that, I still think about her constantly. Even though I know that I should wake up every day and remember how lucky I am to have gotten someone like that out of my life, I am still somewhat jealous of her new guy. I somehow feel like he is the "winner" in all this. I wasn't having an LTA with this woman for the fun of it. This was something that I was committed to for life.

 

It's just ironic that I spent years letting the guilt eat away and me and mostly destroyed myself emotionally over it. Yet, I am the one who ended up hurt and alone and struggle to even face myself in the mirror. Plus, I'm about $20K poorer for my trouble. I never detected one ounce of guilt out of her, yet she is happy and in love with someone else. I feel like an enormous loser.

 

Anyway, I am not herr looking for sympathy. I suppose that I deserved everything that I got and more. But, I just wanted to point out that I don't think that there is ever anything good that comes out of these things. If you are in this kind of relationship, my advice would be to get out as soon as you can because every day, you are digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole. I'm still trying [not very successfully] to climb out of mine.

 

o my word loozerinluv - you sound like a damn goon! be right back

[loozerinluv]

o my word loozerinluv - you sound like a damn goon! be right back

I'm not sure what that even means in this context, but I can assure you that I've been called worse. I bet that if you focused on it, you could come up with something better.

[carrie999]

I'm not sure what that even means in this context, but I can assure you that I've been called worse. I bet that if you focused on it, you could come up with something better.

 

LOL! I was wondering what exactly that was supposed to mean, too. Those are the responses I generally ignore entirely...I guess that's part of the "troll" term I've seen used here? (This is my only message board experience, so forgive my naivete).

 

Anyway, back to your response:

Just for the sake of completeness, I'll explain her twisted logic that led to concluding that I "owed" her alimony. As I stated in the previous thread, she is all about "appearances". She wants it to appear as though she was a great wife and mother who suffered through a bad marriage. While her x-husband, to this day, knows nothing more than that she was "talking" to me too much (hence an EA), she was terrified that he would tell their whole large clique of neighborhood friends even that much.

 

So, when they were negotiating alimony, while not really outright threatening, he kept reminding her that he was doing her a favor by keeping her secret -- letting her play the victim. (She has an amazing ability to get men to do strange things.)

 

Anyway, 3 years is really not much alimony given the number of years that they were married. But, she felt that she was in no position to try to negotiate more alimony because of her fear of him blowing her whole "image" out of the water.

 

Thus, her logic was that she didn't get as many years of alimony from him as she "deserved" because of me, so it was my responsibility to make up the difference.

 

(Not saying that I agree with the above logic, but just clarifying the insanity that she spewed at me when threatening me.)

 

As long as you see that you didn't actually "owe" her this and just chose to help her to make yourself feel better, while extricating yourself from this mess, I completely understand it. She didn't deserve the alimony, (from either of you, really), and she needs to get her butt to work, but that's not your problem anymore. You did what you needed to do to feel good about keeping your promise to her.

 

Are you okay? You've been through a lot. Our situations are incredibly different, and you and this woman do have a history of what you considered friendship (seemed that way up until now), and it's been a horrible year for you with her. But I can empathize. I have almost nobody to really talk to about my various thoughts about my own complicated situation. I come here to unload and vent and ask for guidance, and I have to sift through some angry posts (some perfectly reasonably so, others just throwing stones) to find a few people who are actually listening and trying to be supportive. I appreciate the support and occasional tough love.

 

I hope you're finding some help here from people who have helped me (while forcing me to face the truth), and that it's helping you.

[loozerinluv]

LOL! I was wondering what exactly that was supposed to mean, too. Those are the responses I generally ignore entirely...I guess that's part of the "troll" term I've seen used here? (This is my only message board experience, so forgive my naivete).

Yeah, probably was/is a troll. But, I got some similar responses when I posted here last year from folks with tons of posts, so they weren't just drive-by trolls. I'm not sure why there is even a message board for people who do this kind of thing, but given that there is, I'm not surprised by getting hammered by people.

As long as you see that you didn't actually "owe" her this and just chose to help her to make yourself feel better, while extricating yourself from this mess, I completely understand it. She didn't deserve the alimony, (from either of you, really), and she needs to get her butt to work, but that's not your problem anymore. You did what you needed to do to feel good about keeping your promise to her.

Right, I know that I didn't "owe" her. And during some of the heated arguments the last couple of times I talked to her, I told her exactly what you said above -- she should feel fortunate that she got even 3 years of alimony from her XH. If he had known the truth, she would not have gotten a penny. In this state, if a providing spouse can prove infidelity on the part of a dependent spouse, a judge can waive the requirement of the providing spouse paying alimony. They still have to pay child support, but not necessarily alimony.

 

But, the other way I looked at it was back to the karma thing. I was an active, willing participant for 4+ years in her making a fool of her BH by having him support her while sleeping with me. Now, she is making the same fool of me by having me support her for 1 year while she sleeps with someone else. The only difference is that I know that she's making a fool of me. He never even knew.

 

Are you okay? You've been through a lot. Our situations are incredibly different, and you and this woman do have a history of what you considered friendship (seemed that way up until now), and it's been a horrible year for you with her.

 

It's been a pretty horrible year even without the mess with her. I was involved in a traffic accident that was not my fault, but in which the other driver was killed. I have a family member whose business collapsed in the bad economy so I am partially supporting him and his family for a while until he gets stabalized again.

 

Like I said, it's karma and there's probably more to come.

 

But yeah, I'm mostly ok. The whole experience has changed me and my life quite a bit, made me much more withdrawn. In order to be sure that I maintain NC (which I think is critical), I gave up many of the social things that I used to do to avoid the risk of seeing her there. I mostly just stay home.

 

Someone earlier in the thread said that it sounded like I had self-esteem issues. That's true and it probably goes a long way toward explaining how I got involved in something that goes so much against my own beliefs. I haven't had a long history of many relationships, so when I ended up involved with someone who I thought I really knew and who told me that she had always "loved" me, I wanted too badly to believe it. But, she also knew that I had pretty low self-esteem and I guess took advantage of that. It's what led her to unleash the comment that I used her "pity" for me to get her in to my bed. This is kind of ironic since I'm generally so shy that there's little chance that I'm gonig to do anything to coax anyone into bed.

 

But, unfortunately, the whole experience and the fallout had destroyed my self-esteem even further. Lesson learned: don't get involved in something like this if you don't have the stomach for the repurcussions.

 

Anyway, sorry to go on and on. I know it all sounds pretty pathetic. Thanks for listening, Carrie.