OOHC,

I haven’t posted in such a long time, but we have been on this journey together for years. I would be so incredibly angry. How dare he again engage in a deceptive relationship! You think clearly, so I support whatever you decide. My first instinct is always to go with truth. If you are telling the truth out of compassion for this woman, I don’t see how that can be a bad choice. Of course, what this woman does with the information is completely up to her. That is out of your control.

I would make a decision, reflect on it a very short bit, follow through…and then go take care of yourself. You owe it to yourself to not let this new situation erode any of the progress you’ve made.

Thanks (and lovely to hear from you again jkpeace) for your support.  

I am indeed incredibly angry, jk, and feel just as you say: how DARE he mislead another woman?!?!   But of course I know how he dares...he is disordered and thinks nothing of anyone else's feelings or indeed rights, only of what he wants.   That I have a history with this woman (she was my student, she was also for a time a friend) and that we as a family have a history with her (she was at one time our son's violin teacher) increases my anger--she's not merely a stranger who has gotten involved with my ex but someone I know and care about.  So I am angry in general and also specifically on her behalf!

I will also admit, however, that my anger is not simply noble in intent (to give her the full picture he has denied her of what she's walking into).  I am angry at my ex and also myself, because I have kept my ex's secret--I have not, for example, told our adult son the truth about the underlying cause of our divorce--and I am furious at my ex and at myself that I have kept this secret, because I have enabled my ex to have an unchanged relationship with my son rather than forcing him to renegotiate his relationship with our son in light of the truth.  That I told my son I would tell him the truth if he wanted to know it--and he chose not to know--does not fully discharge, in my view, my culpability, because in essence I opted to continue carrying my ex's secret for him and free him from the consequences of the disclosure of the truth on the relationship my ex has with my son.  I didn't do this so much as to "protect" our son as I did because I was browbeat by my ex at the time of our separation.  It doesn't matter to me that I have been unhappy with this compromise and course of action ever since.  The bottom line is that I have been complicit in keeping my ex's secret.  And so now I feel complicit in this newest deception.  

 My feelings are many and complicated:

I am outraged that he is willing to deceive another woman;

I feel guilty for helping him continue to live untruthfully;

I also feel personally betrayed once again: I kept his secret, and he now trades on my silence to deceive another woman.  At some level I think I felt I had an unspoken and one-sided (meaning on my side only) understanding that I would stay silent as long as he stayed single. 

I wanted his secret life to mean he would not take up with another woman, an expectation I never put to him and that he never agreed to, and clearly rejects.  It was, I guess, in essence a bargain I made with myself, and one I never expected to have to confront.  His secret life is to him no barrier to getting himself another woman, another woman he is perfectly willing to keep in the dark about a hidden sexuality that warps his behavior and makes intimacy in an intimate relationship a sham. 

In addition to feeling righteously angry he would deceive another woman, I feel once again personally rejected and humiliated by being "replaced," as if "replacing" me were a public announcement of my failure as a wife (when it was his failure that caused our 35 year marriage to end), especially after keeping his secret from our son.  All those old feelings of being rejected and discarded in favor of a secret life focused on making love to himself as a woman--I wasn't even woman enough to "compete" with his imaginary woman!  He preferred dressing in women's lingerie to actual flesh and blood me, so what does that say about me?--have been brought to the fore.

 I don't know what I'll decide to do.  The alternatives run the gamut from scorched earth (telling both the woman and our son) to ceding the field and simply getting on with my life.   

 The timing is awful, too: my mother, for whom I was the primary caretaker in the family for the past three years, died three weeks ago (I was with her when she died).  I am carrying enough sorrow...and now this.  
These disordered spouses are truly the unwanted gift that goes on giving, aren't they?

Abby and MJM: I doubt that I could inform the woman and stay anonymous.  I'll give some thought to that, however.   (The woman, Abby, is not younger.  At the time I taught her, she was the wife of another professor and using the university's education benefit to earn her degree.  So at least there's that sorted.)

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (October 5, 2022 7:29 am)

Send her the link to this website. Tell her your profile name here. Actually send her the link to all your comment history so she reads the pertinent parts with a short paragraph about why you're doing this
If she is younger she'll be very social-media savvy and need clear proof of what
may sound and read like sour grapes.

Edited to say... Why hide? If you want to be believed...you can't/shouldn't be anonymous in today's world in my opinion

Elle

Last edited by Ellexoh_nz (October 5, 2022 1:06 pm)

Well, she wasn't born yesterday so I retract my advice about doing a good deed. Since there is no way to keep from revealing your identity and thus being sucked into the vortex I suggest that for your own health you practice self-preservation and thank goodness that you are enlightened and free,

 

Sorry to hear that OOHC, it's horrid isn't it.  I had a similar thing happen - nowadays I am far enough away not to have a clue what he's doing and I am comfortable with that - but at the time I struggled, feeling the same things you have said, so I was glad when she backed off anyway, on her own account.