Anon,
You are so welcome. I have been in a similar place. It's hard to find your strength, but from what you've said about your life I know you have it. You know it, too, but have forgotten it because you have been so pummeled and buffeted by your stbx's blows. One thing I did when I was going back and forth over leaving, knowing I needed to but afraid to take the step, was make a list of my assets, which included not only financial ones, but character and skills. If you can take a step back and try to look at yourself objectively, as if from a distance, to survey your assets, and then list them, you can refer to that list when you need to reassure yourself that you will be ok. My mantra, especially when I was panicked, was "I'll be ok. I'm going to be ok. It's going to be ok." It was like a life raft when I thought I'd be swamped and go under. In your case, the fact that you are working 50 hours a week means that you have drive and strength--and those are very very valuable qualities that will keep you from going under.
What you have said about your ex and about financial assets--that he absconded with the savings, that you assumed the debt, etc--convinces me even more that you would be advised to seek a lawyer's advice. For one thing, as Rob has said many times on this forum, spouses can be surprised to discover that they don't just get half our assets--they get half the debt, too! I didn't see it until after we were divorced, but my husband was always willing to accept or to intimate that I should take on responsibilities or debts that more properly belonged to both of us. Clearly your stbx is, too.
Please believe me when I say that one reason you find yourself apologizing and feeling bad about your actions when it's your husband who has lied and ended the marriage is because you were groomed over many years to do that. I also think it's a form of our wishing we could be in control and fix things--if we could just apologize enough, maybe that would fix things. It's the flip side of the control we tried to exert over the state of our marriage when we were in it. Then, we would do what we thought we could to please or to fix or to make things better, to make the marriage we longed for possible. Now that we can't do that anymore, the only way we have to try to fix things, to act in order to control the damage, is to appeal to their empathy or to blame ourselves and apologize. You've already seen that appealing to his empathy doesn't work. Nor will apologizing. (Not to mention that you don't have anything of substance to apologize for!)
I promise you that when you take an action for your own self respect, you will start to feel better. It might only be momentarily, but even momentarily is a start. My own experience of calling a lawyer is that it took me several times. Working up to even make the call was hard, and I was very easily discouraged when the first time I called the lawyer wasn't available. It took me another while to call again. And the day I met with the lawyer I sat in her office waiting to be called, filling out a questionnaire about assets, apprehensively shaking with fright.
Last edited by OutofHisCloset (February 23, 2023 1:11 pm)
Anon2222 wrote: