If you look back on my posts I had a 25 yr relationship, 20 year marriage, end this year.
The breakup started last fall.
We'd always had our ups and downs, and the past year at the time had been seriously down - she lost her job, mine was at 11 for stress even for an already stressful job. her reaction to stress is to surround herself with clutter, mine is the opposite - to try and control and porganize everything in sight. A volatile mix, but we'd weathered the storms before.
After 3 months of bizarre counseling - she said things like "I don't want to speak about issues", "You can't change my mind I want to break up", "I recall all these things from the past and it was all your fault, and I don't accept your perspective or or explanations for why you may have acted that way as having any relevence or truth") I was frankly severly confused as to why we were even in counseling. I could not understand her adamance to not discuss issues, revisionist history of our life, and plain desire to just get past this counseling stage so we could break up.
Sometime around April I finally came to accept that we were separating. That I did my best. that we were talking from a commons where Ishe could not work things out.
After that, things got a lot easier - we arranged an amicable SA, signed at the beginning of July, we co-habit for now in the matrimonial home until we move into our separate places in the next few months.
The kids have had some issues - my 16 year old has the worst. She's developed an eating disorder. My 10 year old's grades dropped last fall, but my spouse said that was unrelated.
That should be all she wrote - on to a happy separation with respect and trust between us for the benefit of us and the kids.
Until yesterday.
I am your 100% trusting person when it comes to friends and family, yet.. yet... I actually began to think things were strage starting several weeks ago. I dismissed it as separation anxiety, paranoia, I even joked with my 19 yr old about it... Then I turned over stones I should not have, honestly expecting to be sheepishly guilty and find nothing.
She's been having an affair with another man since last fall. To be honest why should I care? We're already separated, we're already going our own ways. But I do care, and I do hurt, deeply down to my soul.
From what I can reconstruct it was a classic seductionof amarried woman - strike up a friendship, bond as confidants under pressure of a prorgam she was in, leading to more intimate and flirting chats, then to private chats. All the time sympathizing with the negatives and not the positives of her marriage, then presenting himself as an alternate sexual partner. My spouse tore a wide swath through men before we got together. Somehow I would have expected better from her. I would have expected her not to get sucked in, to recognize the game for what it was. Stupid me - just because I'd been in those situations onb the revceoveing end several times over our 25 years together and I had always honoured our bond and never let things develop.
Why didn't she just tell me and be done with it - it would have hurt no more than what happened? Why didn't she come clean in the counseling sessions... pretending to take the high road and mouthing the twisted reality in the privacy of counsel? Who of our mutual friends has she spouted these fictions to? Who of our mutual friends knwo about what was going on and didn't tell me? How could she think that the cost to our children was acceptable? What rigged scale of morality did she use?
What totally eats me up is that she will get 50% of my income for pretty much the rest of her life. That she won't need to work and likely won't even look for a full time job. That she will be this leech on me, this horrible, horrible leech, until the day I die. That this morally bankrupt man will perhaps some day be introduced to my kids as the new man of the house. That a man who doesn't morally respect the boundaries of marriage could be trusted. That this one's different - that truth and pururity can come from lies and deception.
The breakup started last fall.
We'd always had our ups and downs, and the past year at the time had been seriously down - she lost her job, mine was at 11 for stress even for an already stressful job. her reaction to stress is to surround herself with clutter, mine is the opposite - to try and control and porganize everything in sight. A volatile mix, but we'd weathered the storms before.
After 3 months of bizarre counseling - she said things like "I don't want to speak about issues", "You can't change my mind I want to break up", "I recall all these things from the past and it was all your fault, and I don't accept your perspective or or explanations for why you may have acted that way as having any relevence or truth") I was frankly severly confused as to why we were even in counseling. I could not understand her adamance to not discuss issues, revisionist history of our life, and plain desire to just get past this counseling stage so we could break up.
Sometime around April I finally came to accept that we were separating. That I did my best. that we were talking from a commons where Ishe could not work things out.
After that, things got a lot easier - we arranged an amicable SA, signed at the beginning of July, we co-habit for now in the matrimonial home until we move into our separate places in the next few months.
The kids have had some issues - my 16 year old has the worst. She's developed an eating disorder. My 10 year old's grades dropped last fall, but my spouse said that was unrelated.
That should be all she wrote - on to a happy separation with respect and trust between us for the benefit of us and the kids.
Until yesterday.
I am your 100% trusting person when it comes to friends and family, yet.. yet... I actually began to think things were strage starting several weeks ago. I dismissed it as separation anxiety, paranoia, I even joked with my 19 yr old about it... Then I turned over stones I should not have, honestly expecting to be sheepishly guilty and find nothing.
She's been having an affair with another man since last fall. To be honest why should I care? We're already separated, we're already going our own ways. But I do care, and I do hurt, deeply down to my soul.
From what I can reconstruct it was a classic seductionof amarried woman - strike up a friendship, bond as confidants under pressure of a prorgam she was in, leading to more intimate and flirting chats, then to private chats. All the time sympathizing with the negatives and not the positives of her marriage, then presenting himself as an alternate sexual partner. My spouse tore a wide swath through men before we got together. Somehow I would have expected better from her. I would have expected her not to get sucked in, to recognize the game for what it was. Stupid me - just because I'd been in those situations onb the revceoveing end several times over our 25 years together and I had always honoured our bond and never let things develop.
Why didn't she just tell me and be done with it - it would have hurt no more than what happened? Why didn't she come clean in the counseling sessions... pretending to take the high road and mouthing the twisted reality in the privacy of counsel? Who of our mutual friends has she spouted these fictions to? Who of our mutual friends knwo about what was going on and didn't tell me? How could she think that the cost to our children was acceptable? What rigged scale of morality did she use?
What totally eats me up is that she will get 50% of my income for pretty much the rest of her life. That she won't need to work and likely won't even look for a full time job. That she will be this leech on me, this horrible, horrible leech, until the day I die. That this morally bankrupt man will perhaps some day be introduced to my kids as the new man of the house. That a man who doesn't morally respect the boundaries of marriage could be trusted. That this one's different - that truth and pururity can come from lies and deception.
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