I am a member of the false R club. I HATE FALSE-R!!! It is SO damaging to your psyche - IMO it's criminal abuse. I'm so sorry you had this happen to you. I know how damaging it is.
WH had a 4-5 month affair with a married co-worker (they also worked with the OBS - all three of them so it was a total disaster as OBS also did not know for a long time), d-day 1, followed by a year of taking the A underground = d-day 2 exactly 1 year later, followed by a 3 month hiatus only for the A to resume again underground for about 2 months = d-day 3. His A was emotional and physical - there were declarations of love everyday blah blah blah. The A ended in 2019. We divorced but did not physically separate due to COVID lock-down which happened right about when I had planned to leave.
I do not regret divorcing, but to me divorce is just a legal formality and means nothing in the whole emotional game. I felt the same way about marriage to be honest - I didn't - and don't - need a piece of paper to establish my commitment. What that piece of paper did for us was set some legal ground rules that for me were important in the event that one of us died or got very ill. The lawyer part of me appreciated that. So getting divorced wasn't really a game changer - it was the leaving - the moving out (and buying my own house several days drive away) that really did it - just the action of starting that process changed things for me and WH.
That being said, without COVID forcing me to stay in the same place with him longer and bring a physical separation between WH and AP that was not there before I don't think we would still be talking (they were co-workers in a field that leaving is not easy - in fact I can't think of a filed where leaving for another job is much more difficult off the top of my head - due to the specialty of the work and the lack of application to other job skill sets). I was just done with him and his lies at that point - and false R really did kick the shit out of my desire to reconnect on any deep level (something that I still struggle with to this day). So we divorced but aside from the piece of paper nothing change EXCEPT the signal to my WH that I was indeed done. Then we had the better part of 16 months to talk about that whilst trapped together in the same house...and as my WH's hours were reduced by about 75% and I was working from home all the time and we lived in a location where lock-down was long and very strict, we were forced together for long enough that we started talking again on a much more "real" level.
WH decided during that time to stop hiding from what he had done - stop hiding it from himself - and got into IC for himself. He had a bit of a breakdown and it was his version of rock bottom I think and he decided he wanted to be a better version of himself. That process started in 2019 but really took shape in earnest in 2020 and he was in weekly therapy for several years and now goes monthly (I think).
We have reconciled our friendship and we now date. I don't live with him full time anymore but I do go and visit for several weeks at a time (but I will admit some of my traveling is to see my/our dogs which I miss terribly). Things are 100% better for me mentally. My life is NOT perfect and I am lonely sometimes but it is incomparably better than living with the hell of false-R and the self-imposed stay or go limbo you are in right now.
So, you asked:
Has anyone ever come back from something like this? Come back happily I mean.
And I suppose my answer is yes - we did, somehow, in part because the pandemic-gods forced me to stick around and interact with him right when I intended to go and never look back, but ultimately because HE decided he needed to make changes and he was doing it for HIM (not for me or as some manipulation to get me to stay or whatever). The pandemic just made me stick around to the point I saw the changes and interacted with him on a level that hadn't happened before (during the A aftermath) or I likely would have missed that as I was ready to leave and never ever look back. But the more important answer is I came out better - and happy too. This false R nightmare is draining and terrible to deal with on a cellular level - at least for me it ate at me every waking minute - something you simply cannot sustain long-term without going crazy IMO. Even if your divorce and you and your WH never speak again it will still be better. Trust me on that - I'm in that zone now where I know I am okay with or without WH. There is nothing that would ever convince me to go back and not divorce or try to save a marriage with someone who wasn't committed. In hindsight is seems like such as Don Quixote-esque proposition.
Every part of me is telling me to get away, but I’m so paralysed by the fear that I’ll D and then regret it, and I can’t rationalise to myself why I feel this way. Harder I suppose because before this the marriage was such a happy one. I honestly don’t know what’s happened to him.
Our marriage also was very happy - or so I thought - pre-A. I also for the longest was worried I was going to lose him or that by divorcing I was letting them win and that divorcing was "giving up." Now, I can tell you we are happy because I DID lose the marriage I had. And thank goodness - as staying with someone who thinks they love someone else, someone who can look you in the eyes, know your pain, and keep doing it...that's not worth sticking around for. And you know it. It's why you feel the way that you do - despite all the love you still have for your WH you know this version of him is toxic to you.
IMO false R is 10 times more damaging than the A itself, as the BS' pain is out there on display - it takes an especially fucked up kind of person to look at someone in pain who they promised to be there for only to be the source of their pain, and not only do nothing to help them, or leave them if they no longer want to help them, but to blatantly lie to them and continue doing the same thing. That shit amplifies the pain...it's absolutely worthy of never forgiving. It also requires your taking yourself out of its path because your WH, just like mine, has proven to you that they are willing and able to put your feelings entirely aside and continue hurting you. You have to save yourself.
What happens after? That is up to you and your WH. And really anything can and may happen - but while you stay in this limbo none of it will change. As your WH is showing you that in order to achieve change you will have to do it, the choice is yours as to when you have had enough. I can only say that once I made my decision, as sad as it made me, I felt better as I was exercising some control over my life. Funny thing, that control was there all along just waiting for me to take it. You WILL be okay.
[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 5:00 PM, Tuesday, March 26th]