SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am actively working on healing myself and trying to stay objective about my options: continuing in a relationship filled with hurt and suffering, or moving forward into a new chapter on my own.

Even though he cheated on me, I still find myself holding onto my sense of loyalty. Part of me knows moving on with a new partner—emotionally or physically—is often seen as a way to ease the sorrow and let go, but our marriage is not officially over yet. He flew back to his home country and only agreed to settle our situation in January 2027, leaving me in limbo.

The hardest part is that my faith and world collapsed completely. Right before the affair, I genuinely believed I was the happiest woman with the best husband. I had no idea he was so unhappy or that he was making a conscious choice to leave.

I am posting here to seek perspective and support for my future:

How do you navigate a partner pulling away or planning to leave while you still love them?

What boundaries or conversations could have been had, and how do I protect myself moving forward?

Why do some partners keep what they truly want hidden until they end up destroying the relationship?

How do you navigate a partner pulling away or planning to leave while you still love them?

Love is a bond we form with people, and like any bond, it can be broken. It might take longer than you want, and it'll be painful, but with time and effort, it will happen.

Find ways to occupy your mind - new hobbies, go out with friends, live your life as if you're single. I do NOT recommend dating or moving on with a new partner. First you need that love to disappear and to heal from the betrayal. The healing will happen with time. As in your post in the New Beginnings thread, there will be good days, and gradually, the good will outnumber the bad until you reach indifference.

What boundaries or conversations could have been had, and how do I protect myself moving forward?

The best thing you can do is stand up for yourself. Don't sacrifice your happiness to save the marriage. Demand to be treated with respect, courtesy, and dignity, and believe that you deserve that.

Consult with a few divorce lawyers to understand what your life could look like after divorce. Get a clear picture of your financial situation, and make a plan for how you can afford to live alone. If you need to find work, start on that as soon as you can, or if you need to go back to school, get started on that.

Why do some partners keep what they truly want hidden until they end up destroying the relationship?

They don't. He is lying to himself and you about his degree of unhappiness with the marriage because he wants to justify his crappy behavior. I bet he wasn't "so unhappy" until the other woman entered the picture. Soon after DDay, WX spouted off about all the ways I'd wronged him over the years, but as he gradually pulled his head out of his a**, he admitted that our marriage was actually pretty good and that I'd generally treated him very well. And then when I told him I wanted to divorce, suddenly I was the best thing that ever happened to him and he couldn't bear to live without him.

People make up all kinds of internal narratives to avoid feel bad about themselves. Your WS is no exception. Don't accept the blame he casts on the marriage or on you.

[This message edited by NoThanksForTheMemories at 10:22 PM, Thursday, August 13th]

I’m sorry you are facing this sudden abandonment by your spouse.

I’d bet he really wasn’t unhappy in the marriage until he met someone else. Then all of a sudden he’s "unhappy" and "unloved" etc.

When the rug gets pulled out from under you, you need to stop and wonder WHY there was no warning or communication about feelings or anything that would have caused you to be summarily dismissed.

Unfortunately you cannot make him love you or want to be married etc. I would suggest finding a counselor for you to deal with being blindsided and betrayed. It appears as though putting effort into the marriage would be a waste of time right now. Especially if he lives in another country and has left you in limbo.

Right now you have to do what is best for you.

So sorry you are going through this.

It takes time, but you can heal from this, and I suspect that in time you will realize that you loved the IDEA of him, not him. You loved who you thought he was, who he pretended to be, NOT him.

A lot of what you are feeling is also habit. It is deeply ingrained in you to think of him, care about his feelings, remember to buy his favorite thing at the grocery, do his laundry to make his life a little easier. This is a lot of habit. And habits are challenging to break, but you absolutely can.

One thing I found helpful in the early days was to write out a list of all the things he did that hurt me. All of them. The cheating. The lying. The disrespect. The loneliness when he was not present in our relationship. The financial infidelity. The rudeness. The snarkieness and unpleasantness. And I had it close by at all times. When I started feeling weak and missing what I thought I had, I re-read the list. And added to it often because I realized there were a LOT more things like this that I had excused, wrote off of one-offs (but they happened way more than that), or justified as "no one is perfect."

Also mix up your routines to help disrupt those ingrained patterns. Re-arrange the furniture, take up new hobbies, switch going to the gym in the morning instead of the evening, try new recipes with ingredients he doesn’t like (but you do). See friends more often and say "yes" to every invitation even if you would usually say no.

As for what you could have done—- there is nothing you can do to change how another person acts. But I did realize that I allowed my XWS to "get away" with a lot more disrespect and taking me for granted than I should have. I should have spoken up more. I was afraid of rocking the boat so much that I didn’t see that the boat was not sea-worthy. Nice paint job and fun to sail in calm seas, but I was afraid of stormy weather but didn’t realize my fear. And obviously our boat sank anyway, so my sacrificing myself didn’t hep. I should have rocked the boat so we either could have worked to make it seaworthy or bailed out sooner. So you can definitely contemplate how you were in your M and perhaps decide to do things differently for yourself going forward. But you DID NOT cause his cheating or his supposed unhappiness.

Are you in IC (individual counseling)? I found it really helpful in helping me see our M clearly and without the rose-colored glasses, and to help me become the person I want to be and reclaiming the parts of me I downplayed to make my XWS happy.

And lastly No Contact (NC) is really helpful. I found that if I spoke to my WS it gave me a hangover of sorts and started my yearning and wishing for what "might have been" more. NC was hard at first (and I failed at it a few times- totally normal), but it really accelerated my healing.

You are stronger than you know and in a couple years you will be amazed at how different but beautiful your life has become.

I'm so sorry to hear what you are going through. I have struggled a lot with the number of people who will tell you your marriage must have been bad, you must have been to blame in some way or that happy people don't cheat. I don't agree with everything Lauren LaRusso has written but overall I find her take on infidelity and affairs helpful, and she recently posted a couple of videos on this topic on her YouTube channel that might help you.

How do you navigate a partner pulling away or planning to leave while you still love them?

I'll tell you what I wish I would have done: get a lawyer immediately, stop trying to keep the relationship on life support, and planned my exit. I know that's hard to do, if not impossible when you're still in shock and deeply in love with someone, but you need to protect yourself. I suspect that the reason that your husband is holding off on finalizing the divorce until January 2027 is that he and/or OW might have some financial or legal reason for doing so.

What boundaries or conversations could have been had, and how do I protect myself moving forward?

Your husband has already abandoned you, so there is nothing to discuss. If you have children who are too young to facilitate a relationship with him independently of you, then the only contact you should be having with him should involve the kids.

Why do some partners keep what they truly want hidden until they end up destroying the relationship?

Someone people don't really love deeply. They experience attraction and passion, but they're not capable of a deeper, more enduring love beyond that, so once the initial phase of the relationship is over, there's simply nothing left for them, so they need to move on to their next victim.

Also, most cheaters aren't actually unhappy in their relationship. They just meet someone else that they want to be with and then invent the list of grievances after the fact to justify their infidelity and/or abandonment of their marriages. In case you're doubting yourself, here it is again: YOU DID NOTHING WRONG.

I can only share as I see it…

If your house was on fire you would take action. Call the FD, save valuables and ensure everyone’s safety. You wouldn’t wait, wouldn’t try to negotiate with the fire, wouldn’t worry that the heavy boots and the water from the firemen would wreck the carpets… Nor would you plan a dinner later on in your burnt out kitchen, or phone a contractor before the fire was completely out, and you could evaluate if the home was fixable or not.
Well… It’s comparable to what you are facing.

You didn’t want this – not any more than you wanted a spark to turn into a flame in your living room. But it’s what you are dealt with.
MAYBE he comes back and wants to work on things… Like MAYBE the fire only damages a sofa and some carpet… But until and unless that becomes clear you need to deal with this from a stance of PURE reality and practicality.

Don’t wait for him to file or to start some process. YOU start it. YOU get legal advice on how to ensure he’s not emptying accounts, hiding money, moving it to his home-country. YOU ensure he’s not using a joint credit card to finance his journeys home and back.

As a general rule then once a partner has filed, then any unreasonable cost that either creates can be seen as something they need to be accountable for in the eventual and final divorce. As-is then if he were to move his cash from an account to his home-country then that money would be lost to the marriage. When it comes to the nitty-gritty of finalizing a divorce this could lead to you getting less equity out of the family home or vehicles or pension or whatever. By filing – by making it real – you create some boundaries and fences around your life, and set the clock ticking for a resolution - be that divorce or reconciliation.