SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

A Christmas crash out…

Dday was in March. Found out about multiple EAs. H swore there was nothing more. I gave him every opportunity to be transparent and tell me everything. Maybe if he had, then we wouldn’t be in this position now, or maybe the separation would have happened then.
Unfortunately, Sunday I found out that he has been lying, weird. There were PAs, in fact, there were many. I am so mad. Friends, friends of friends, randoms. People knew. He bragged about them to his Buddies. I cannot stay with him any longer. I would be disrespecting myself, now knowing what I know. We decided that we would get through Christmas, but then today he was hugging me and making sexual comments and I unraveled. He had the audacity to say to me tonight "ya, okay, I hooked up with a couple chicks… I would never do that now". I cannot explain the color of red I saw in that moment. Thankfully I kept my grace. I told him I am moving out with our child. That I cannot be with someone who loves like he does. I’m mad that he has wasted, yet another year of my life. I’m mad that so many people knew. I’m also so freaking mad at myself that I’ve put up with this for so long. I knew, I didn’t accept the thought, but deep down, I knew. I believed him. I trusted him, even though I shouldn’t have. I don’t believe he has remorse, I believe he is upset because he got caught and is now having to deal with the consequences. So anyways, I have decided that, for my sanity and to heal, I have to move out and get out of the cycle.

There is a strange peace when you reach the point where you know what you have to do. It doesn’t make it easy or less painful, but you have certainty in what your path forward needs to be.

My therapist kept telling me "you’ll know when you know" and i really didn’t understand until we had another DDAY and then BOOM. I knew, and it all made sense.

The roller coaster continues for a while, but it is nearing the end of the very shitty ride.

Please read the pinned post fear vs reality at the top of this forum, and retain a really good lawyer who will help you get what you are entitled to.
(Visit a few of the best lawyers in town - once you engage them for an interview then he cannot use them. Find the one you think will work for you.)

Meanwhile start implementing the 180 to help you detach.

You will get through this and 2026 will be a much better year. Best of luck to you!

My therapist said the same thing ("You'll know when you know") and was also right. We all have a breaking point, and it sounds like you've reached your Arae. The timing is terrible (not that there is ever a good time! But the holidays - ugh), and what he's done is also terrible. Don't let him DARVO or guilt you into staying. Divorce is hard, and it takes a lot of strength, but you're going to start feeling so much better once he's out of your life.

What both of those responses said. Absolutely. I remember the exact moment I knew. I thought it would be more painful than the pain I was already in. It wasn't. There was a peace about it. Sure, the hurt was still there, but in that moment I knew there would be an end to it, and you will too. Wishing you peace in the New Year.

When you're done you're done, but it's hard not to get sucked back into a vortex of emotions.

We may realize we're done, feel that we're done, and want to be done. Those are all valid.

I whole heartedly advise if you can, cut contact if you can. This will help you heal.

I'm not able to do so, and I can tell you it's negatively impacted 7+ years trying to mentally detach while stuck working with him, and seeing every bit of his life with new women. I wish I could walk away and never think on it again, but I can't.

We ruminate about having been lied to, when our gut told us the truth, but we believed them anyway.
We struggle with the years, or decades of wasted time we spent for someone unworthy of our love, time or devotion.
We are left with all the baggage emotionally, and physically for things they did to us that we had no voice in or part of.
We are disappointed, disillusioned, abandoned, replaced, our trust is broken and our lives destroyed for their benefit and our detriment.

We deserved to be loved, respected, cherished, but we weren't. We are not capable of the actions they had. We would never do to them what they so easily did to us, yet we must go on, heal and come to terms with the horrible reality that they did it with no care for the pain it causes. They move on like we never existed, laughing, living their fantasy sometimes seemingly blissful and unremorseful and we still have to live and heal from things we never asked for or deserved. We are survivors.

Don't beat yourself up for giving chances where none were earned. You believed in the illusion that he was capable of being a decent human being. You were deceived and are facing the reality vs the fantasy we create in our own minds. The death of hope, and happily ever after with them. That ship has sailed and now you must sail alone till you figure things out.

Hugs to you during all of this. May you find peace, and understanding for yourself, that you never deserved any of this.

I don't often post with advice anymore, mostly because others are much wiser and more tempered than me. But your post resonated with me.

I had a very abusive mother growing up. I won't go into details but let's just say the face was her favourite target using whatever she was holding, books, pots, shoes... etc. I suspect she broke my nose as a toddler as my ERT said I had the worst septum she had ever seen.

Despite all of this, I loved her and only wanted a normal loving parent back. Even as a married man, I carried the wound with me and she could ruin my week with a phone call, and she had impeccable timing.

It took a very enlightened and honest counselor to get me to see things, not as I hoped but as they were. He asked me if I loved my mother and I said no. He congratulated me on not lying and then told me that she will never change no matter what I did. This is who she was and I was paralyzing myself by constantly trying to fix her. You see, I was trying to apply reason to an unreasonable person. If only I could explain things better this time, she would finally understand. She never did.

The problem is, as I only discovered years later, I had married a woman much like my mother. Although she never tried to stab me with a kitchen knife, she was emotionally transactional and distant, unable to give or recieve love in any authentic manner. And I carried the slack, trying to move the pieces around the board to get her to finally have an epiphany, which Sadly never came.

It wasn't until I realized that she was who she was and would never change, that I finally saw my situation as it was and not as I wished to be. She was a 50 year old version of her 20 year old self, which was stuck in her childhood. My guess is that her development was arrested during her father's infidelity.

The point of my diatribe is this. Once I saw my WW with fresh eyes I came to the realization that even the best possible version of her was not good enough for me. I deserved better and I wasn't going to wait around hoping she would change while wasting my life.

I remember the day I told her we were getting a divorce. I sat her down and asked her a simple question at about the 6 month mark. What are you doing to help me heal? Her response: I can't be there for you until you are in a better spot because you make me feel too guilty. I shit you not. That is what she said. After all of the MC,IC, conversation, tears, pain, and trauma, she couldn't help but make it about her. So I pulled the plug and went to bed.

It's been 7+ years now and you can read about some of my journey in NB. I miss family and even a partner at times,but I am content with my life. I hope what I shared helps in even a small way. Good luck.

Oh Arae, I'm so sorry to hear this. It sounds almost exactly like the monster I married. Given any opportunity, he would go for it: hotel clerks, waitresses, flight attendants, random women on the airport shuttle, volunteers bringing ice to the green room (he worked in the entertainment biz so it was just a smorgasbord for his type of creeper). He even had a 'road wife' in Australia who knew all about me.

We were just about to move into our forever home that I'd spent the summer managing contractors for. He was always checked out and I couldn't figure out why. When I took a break to go visit a friend out of town because I was completely exhausted, he brought his sidepiece to the empty house and they went through the place with sweetgrass and tobacco, smudging every inch of the place before christening it with some hasty sex out in the greenhouse. Pure class.

The shit hit the fan when he brought home an STD that required antibiotics, and I had a bad reaction and spent a couple of days in bed puking my guts out. He couldn't lie his way out of that one.

After moving into the house (THAT was fun) I put spyware on his laptop so I could see every keystroke. Sleazy of me I know, but desperate times called for desperate measures. I. Knew. He. Was. Lying. He was nothing but a predator. The day after I finally pulled the plug after six months of in-house separation/hell, he spammed his email list saying he was free now and asked all of them to send naked pictures. It was our anniversary, so that was awesome. /s

I know that feeling all too well, beating yourself up for being too stupid to notice. His last troll sent me a message, told me I was a fool for not knowing and that "some people like to live in denial". That was fun. It took everything I had not to engage with that crazy bitch and go burn her house down.

When you finally have the information, you have ammunition for getting the settlement you deserve going forward. Get this jagoff out of your life, strictly business, no contact other than dealing with coparenting. Change all your passwords today, make sure your bank account/credit cards are all in your name, and DO NOT share this site with him.

I'm an elder now, 17 years flying solo, and it is sweet after the first few years of crawling from the wreckage (not gonna lie, it was HARD but it shaped me into the strong person I am today). You'll get there.

New year, new life.

Hugs.

Onward.