SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi all,
Looking for some reassurance guidance if anyone has any positive stories please?

I’ve been separated for five months, still in the marital home, and after the first few months of feeling really strong, I’m feeling low again. Wondering if I made the wrong decision, for reference my husband cheated on me for a year with a girl half his age, I kept catching him and having awful gut feelings to which he lied, kept giving him chances but he didn’t stop. In the end I had no choice, we have two young children and he is financially much better off than me, so this has been a very difficult decision but there were times where I felt like I was losing my mind in his lies.

Anyway, does this feeling get better? I am a director and work for the business he predominately owns, so I can continue to work with him which feels impossible but the salary is good - or he’ll have to buy me out, I can fly solo completely but I have no idea what I’ll do because my drive/ motivation is at an all time low! How do you find your purpose again at 35? How do people juggle being a single mum, earn a reasonable wage, workout etc and eventually meet another partner… If id stayed maybe he would have stopped in his own time, but I begged, cried and pleaded to which he denied and still continued.

Im so resentful that ive supported him for so long and he’s put me in this position… I’m grieving my family and am concerned I’ll never meet a nice man? Maybe the grass isn’t greener.

We are about to commence legal proceedings..

Help please 💛

Hi MrsB.
You do it the same way you eat an elephant - one bite at a time.

I don’t have kids, but folks tell me sometimes it’s easier to not have the WS in the day-to-day. They muck up the system and make more work.
But you’ll find your rhythm. And over time you will enjoy the time when they kids are with WS— it will be hard at first, but soon you will see that you will get a little time for you and to get done the stuff you couldn’t when the kids are with you.

As for your career — an IC may be able to help. And dream a little. Obviously you have skills. What did you want to do when you got out of school? What things interest you? You may be able to retrain/go back to school and do something new. Have you looked around for other jobs just to see what they are paying? I get that right now you have no energy for that, but start looking around a bit. Until then, ,just focus on keeping your job. That can be a future step you take.

As for working out, get creative. Walk with the kids, use your lunch break a few days a week, watch videos after the kids go to bed.

It will not be easy at first, but you can do it. You are a mom- we know they are all super strong!

How do you find your purpose again at 35?

This is a heavy question that I've asked myself many times in my life, and it never gets easier to answer. Yet the answer is always the same.

When I was 35, I had no degree, a dead-end job making just 20k a year. I had a wife, three kids, and one more on the way.

I felt old. (I'm now 52 and feel ancient)

I struggled so much with these questions. Wasn't I too old to go back to school? Wasn't I too old to start a new career?

Now I struggle with these questions. Aren't I too old to divorce? Aren't I too old to start dating again?

Again, the answer is always the same. We're all getting older; nothing will stop that. So, the question isn't how do you find purpose again at 35? The question is what are going to do with the time between now and next year? Because you're going to be 36 no matter what. So, would you like to be 36 and go back to school? Would you like to be 36 and be trying to find a new career? Would you like to be 36 and have some direction? Or would you like to be 36 and be stuck in the same place?

This logic got me up off my ass when I was 35. I started back to school and graduated with a bachelor's degree, which didn't give me a good job, but I was now 37 with a bachelor's degree instead of 37 without one. I then got an MBA a few years later and used that to start a new career. I now make good money, with a solid career, at 52.

Over those same years I gained a lot of weight, and the thought of exercising was really challenging me mainly because of how much work it can be to lose weight. It took me 2 years, but I lost 75 pounds, and I feel and look better than I have since high school (my apps tell me I have the biological age of a 28 year old - I'm proud of that!) but it didn't happen overnight. Each day I had to say, well today I can either exercise or not exercise, do I want to be the person that exercised or the person that didn't? I mean, the reality is I'm 52 years OLD AS DIRT, but when I look in the mirror I see a person that worked really hard and that I'm proud of because most people just look in the mirror and think "I'm too old." And it's the journey that gives me so much confidence and self-validation, regardless of what other people may think.

When I think about getting a divorce from my WW and eventually going back into the dating pool, I just try to think about how one way or another I'm going to turn 53 next year. So, I can either be divorced and trying my best, or I can be miserable and stuck in this horrible marriage. It's my choice, the only thing I can't do is get younger.

Maybe that logic only works for me, but it's really helped me over the years from getting locked into the "you're too old" way of thinking.

I hope this helps. Good luck! Remember, you're only 35. I'm super envious of you because I can never get those years back. You just have to figure out if you're going to do anything with the years or not. Because one way or another we're all only getting older. There's no such thing as too old, until you're dead.

First, if you're second-guessing your decision to leave, consider the following:

-What if he had given you an STD?

-What if he gets OW pregnant and you have to share your home and pay child support to someone else's kid?

-What if this relationship fizzles out only for him to find a new OW?

-What message would you be sending your kids about the level of respect and treatment that they deserve or should expect in a relationship?

-What kind of a person do you think you would be after years or decades of tolerating cheating?

-Is this the man that you would trust to make life-or-death decisions on your behalf if you ever became ill or incapacitated?

Second, you will not be the first person to be divorced with kids; it's sadly commonplace. Plenty of people have to start over and the fact that you had to leave because your husband was a cheater is understandable. There are good men out there in the world but even if you end up alone-- which I don't think you will-- being alone is preferable to being demeaned and dishonored for the rest of your life by a lying, cheating bastard.

Third, you need to get a different job at some point. The first reason is that if he's dishonest as a husband then you can't trust him to be honest as an employer. The second reason is that, for as long as you're financially dependent and have to interact with him professionally, then you're never going to be able to be self-sufficient and emotionally disconnect from him. If I were you, I would start looking into similar positions at different companies. If you want to change careers entirely, then either look into jobs where your skills might be transferrable or perhaps take advantage of your current job security to get training in the skillset that you will need to change careers. I changed industries when I was your age and it was the best decision that I ever made.

Last but not least, for what it's worth, I have never met a single person in real life nor have I seen a single post from a person on SI who regretted their decision to leave a cheater.

However, I have known many people and probably read hundreds of stories of people who deeply regret their decision to waste their lives in infidelity and wish they had left much sooner.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 9:38 PM, Monday, October 13th]