yes exactly - but if he won't acknowledge he is the bad guy then he makes you the bad guy and don't think he isn't, likelihood is he's spinning a line to everyone including your family how this is your fault not his.  

My ex started with my closest friends first.

People are impressionable, malleable, we just are.  we just are.  All my life I've been a good cook.  My closest friend, how many hours has she spent in the kitchen with me preparing meals.  At one stage three friends decided to try and get a recipe book out of me by recording what I was doing in the kitchen - that's how obvious it was that I was the one who cooked the nice food.  well blow me down with a feather but once we are separating my closest friend has started to believe that it was my ex who did the cooking and I took the credit!!!  I still find this hard to believe but it really happened and the thing is none of us like being lied about.  It's an assault on your sense of self, of your reality map, your feet on the ground.  Automatically we defend.  I remember on the pre-school playground this girl saying I had one brother, no I have two, but she just kept on, she insisted I have only one brother, people believed her not me the one who knows how many brothers I have, it was distressing and I remember that incident to this day.

 

Firefly - thanks, yes friends can be cruel too.  and it sounds like you too are in a situation where he holds the cards socially.

The way it felt to me was that I was the sacrificial lamb - the person designated as the pillow for his comfort.  I bargained my silence for my freedom - I did not want to remain married, by the time I realised he was gay I was already in my 50's, enough water under the bridge - I understood full well that I was getting into worse and worse pain.  I wanted my life not to have all been about him.