I feel your pain Linda.  I get it.  I have the same.  My marriage was not devoid of sex.  So I felt wanted in that way that so many here didn't,  BUT  I got crabs at one point when I was pregnant with our third child.  So he was doing this 21 years ago....being in saunas with men.  Cruising in restrooms for blow jobs or worse.  All betrayals of a terrible magnitude, but I loved him.  I thought it was his repressed upbringing as I too was his 'first' and I thought 'only'!!   When confronted with my decision to divorce, he confessed to an affair with a woman!  The pain, the abuse, the crazy of it is killing. 

But NOW we are divorced.  And has a successful woman who is his new 'life partner'.  She is a high powered lawyer paying his rent.  He has told her and she is 'understanding'  He tells our sons we were never compatible.  Says I left HIM for someone else... all such perversions of reality in this sad drama.  He accuses me of being melodramatic any time I mention the past or ask a question about his behaviour. 

And yet the really crazy bit is that I miss him.  I long for him.  I feel bereft and like I have lost a limb.  It is painful.  It is hard.  We have to just keep going forward.  I am struggling with feeling so confused even though it is now nearly two years on....  it is like a scab that I just pick at....thinking maybe I am wrong, maybe I should have tried harder....but we are no contact.  Only I break it when I am low....which is always a mistake.  I keep thinking he will somehow help me understand, but it is only a torture I inflict on myself. 

I come back here.  I see a thread like this and I think "I am not the only one". It is helpful.  All the stories here are so similar.  It is sad.  How can these people look themselves in the mirror?  I just think of all the years of heart felt conversations when I felt the distance and the discord and the anger he directed to me.  I was sincere.  I was trying my best.  Instigated marital therapy, learned, read and tried to change myself, meanwhile HE WAS JUST LYING FOR MOST OF OUR 27 YEARS OF MARRIAGE.....did nothing to change or help, just shrugs as if it was simply a bad marriage, incompatibility.... and yes it was.... but I didn't know just how incompatible...how much he sought outside of our relationship and within to diminish me and make me feel I was the problem and he was just a victim of a strong and vocal woman. 

TRYING TO RUN AS IF HAIR IS ON FIRE, BUT JUST STANDING AROUND SCRATCHING MY HEAD IN DISBELIEF AND PAIN. 

Leah, linda,

Yeah TGT is hard to process as is the depth and years of dishonesty.

It surreal..like we're in a bad movie.  I think that is because , as we can see now, that these spouses were more horrible and immoral than we thought.  They broke morals, vows, taboos that society and us thought people lived by.  The words arrogant and selfish come to mind but do describe them well enough.

So we remain confounded and confused like deer in the headlights...how many of us are going to therapy etc while these gay spouses are simple fine with the destruction they left all around them..they actually sleep at night.

I say NO.  I will not live in the false reality of lies and immorality.  I divorce this. I reject this. These spouses are wrong .  I will move forward with my head held high.  I will not feel ashamed of keeping my vows, loving fiercely and honestly.
I will not feel guilty for showing love and devotion.  This is not me leaving you this is you rejecting me.

Thanks Linda,

We can do it...  Relapsed and I broke no contact last Friday and it always is just so painful. 

And then yesterday I had a facetime call from one of my sister in laws and it was so interesting to talk to her.  They miss me terribly too.  It made me feel better to hear from her.  The family are devastated too.  He brought a new woman home for Christmas and I was just beside myself.  It was crazy hard. 

I can't imagine if he was getting married....be strong.  We have to do this.  It isn't a matter of can or cannot.

Though I do think some are able to recover and some do get dashed on the rocks of life and never really do get better.... I have worried I was one of the unlucky ones because I was so depressed and suicidally so at moments, feeling my life destroyed.  My happiness stolen and every family memory contaminated with the suspicions about what he was up to when.... I wanted him to tell me the details as if that would help me sort out when it was real.  When it was a lie.  But he then told me his new girlfriend deserved to hear his truth and I went ballistic and texted his family about his gay activities and affair....

But the devastation is that most of my marriage was false because the contamination of his guilt and self justifying scapegoating of me was always present in our marriage.  From so early....he was out finding his teenage freedom secretly

Friday he says I betrayed him by 'talking about private things that went on in our marriage!!!"  Like his playing outside the marriage for 20 year was a private and I SHOULD KEEP THAT INFO WITHIN our marriage....????  It made me think how I haven't actually talked about the things that were the real betrayals within our marriage...all the times he emotionally abused me telling me that my feelings were invalid, that my sense of something wrong was my problem, my issues, my crazy ideas about men being able to talk about things?  Really?   And that I was delusional and demanding....controlling...god endless criticism and emotional betrayals of the trust one has in a partner who actually cares for your emotional and spiritual wellbeing.  He did not.  He felt it a burden - always - just to be kind when I was low and had the temerity to be heard complaining about the everyday challenges of raising a family... endless cleaning and cooking and childrearing while he was off at work..... or not....All he would respond with was to add to my burden with unkind comments as to my princess like expectations....

The absolute selfish perspective is just so consistent and I have to pity the poor woman he is sucking the life out of now.  This man doesn't deserve the energy it takes to feel or think about him and his monkey circus.....

Not my monkey, not my circus.... but then there are the sons who suffer....the inlaws...all the connections that are in tatters... friends who don't quite know what to say or do... They make it my circus for a while until it settles...and until I recover my sense of the fact that I was a good wife...mother and am a kind and loving person....the fact that he spend so many years telling me otherwise and has for so long will wear off eventually I hope.  No contact....god I am such a wally as I always went to him with trying to fix our relationship.... so much energy in talking with him, counselling, dramatic moments he created with his reactions (over) to my pressing him to be open when he was as closed as a nut.  !!!  He projected so much onto me.... anyway I'm ranting... It's been a bad week.  My sons came home and I feel triggered as we are not whole......I am so attached to the idea of a nuclear family...(it is a big one) and I feel so lucky on the one hand, but also it feels so strange....I had to remind myself that part of the strangeness is the lack of opposition to things I say and do....arguments.  We had a peaceful weekend.  No one raised their voice....mocked me or said anything unkind.  Why am I still even going to that scab???  Anyway thanks for listening and Linda.... big hugs....we got this right?!