SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Also, regarding blaming yourself for your husband's death, DON'T.

1 in 5 men will have a heart attack in their 40s. I'm sure you're aware of these key risk factors, but I'm going to remind you anyway simply so you can come back and read them whenever you start to blame yourself again:

-Substance abuse or excessive alcohol use. If he was hiding an affair from you, he could've been hiding other habits you had no idea about
-Smoking
-High blood pressure
-High cholesterol levels (can be due to poor diet or genetic factors)
-Lack of physical activity
-Diabetes
-Poor diet

I doubt that stress was a contributing factor at all. A man who is able to sustain a long-term affair, gaslights his wife, and carefully plans how he will abandon his family isn't spend much time doing any serious contemplation or losing sleep over the fallout from his choices. But even if he was wracked with guilt, depressed, or simply having trouble having 2 simultaneous relationships, that associated stress was entirely a result of his choices.

Thank you bluerthanblue

I don’t disagree

Thank you to everyone for their advice and support. This is still very painful. I have read everyone’s comment and I truly value all of them. Bless you all

I didn't know I was with a narcissist. It's easy to get drawn in. They hide things. They are different depending on who they are with at the time.

Don't fault yourself. Narcissistic personalities are looking for partners They can exist with. People who will trust and excuse their behaviors. It's very easy to get in a way of thinking over the years. You give up parts of yourself and you have to protect parts of yourself from harm. It creates distance.

The narcissist causes this and then blames us for it. Then they have a reason in their mind to go out seeking a new fresh person to turn their interest to. It's nothing to do with us. You may have been blamed for x y and z and all the things that ever went wrong on this earth. It was not your fault, it never was your fault. That was all a lie to make the new relationship possible. Nothing is the narcissists fault, they are never wrong. It's everyone else, it's annoying how people have to stand in their way of happiness. But they can never be happy or fulfilled. They move from one person to the next and nothing changes.

I'm glad you are free. Your kids are free. Free from lies and being treated
like you are less than. That your dreams are less important. That someone else should have their attention. You are free from the whole sad situation.

I don't think it would have gotten better, only worse. Mine never gave me any answers. I wish he just went actually. It was hard waiting on him to do the right thing before I finally left. The mercy is that hopefully you're in a good place financially. Take plenty of time to look after yourself. It's you time. I was always asking myself why at first. The answer was that my ws acted selfish and ungrateful. He blamed me for his shortcomings. He chased after excitement. I am at peace now. I'm headed toward things that are meaningful to me. I'm grateful to have this now. I used to say I was happy but now I know I truly am. No regrets. Trust yourself. The pain will pass and you'll look back and see this time as a transition and time of growth.

Thank you pureheartkit

At times I feel guilt for his death (I know I shouldn’t).

One of his complaints in our marriage was the lack of initimacy. That seemed to be his priority. Unfortunately when it came to the intimacy, it wasn’t loving and I didn’t feel connected in those moments. It always felt one sided. He was very selfish in that area. I did communicate that with him a couple of times but he didn’t listen.

Anyway that was his biggest complaint. I definitely think if that was not the problem, he would’ve still cheated on me. Looking at everything, I believe he was cheating on me for a very long time.

When i found out about his cheating, I told him I wanted a divorce. He still denied the whole thing even though I had evidence. I never expected to him die a couple of weeks later.

His death is really hard to come to terms with. Also my in-laws were not supportive after his death. They didn’t show no support during the funeral arrangements. My daughter had requested her dad final resting place and they got upset. Therefore instead I surrendered and agreed with their request to keep the peace. How sad? They really showed me their true colors. Plus they never paid or contributed to the funeral. I knew from that moment on I wanted nothing to do with them.

I hope my children and I are able to heal. I don’t understand why it had to end this way.

If he was truly unhappy, why didn’t he leave? Or at least suggest counseling if he truly wanted our marriage to work. Sometimes I don’t think he loved me at all. Was my marriage perfect? Of course not. But remember I’m dealing with a narcissist. I gave him my all and more. It still wasn’t appreciated. It was always about him. Somehow he felt I played a role in the demise of our marriage and should take accountability. I don’t understand how. I never disrespected him, I never abused him, I never gaslighted him nor manipulate him. All of these things he did to me. He preyed on my weakeness. I blame myself for allowing him to treat me this way all those years.

I’m just venting here. I’m sorry

Never be sorry for venting here at SI. That's what we're here for.

If he was truly unhappy, why didn’t he leave? Or at least suggest counseling if he truly wanted our marriage to work. Sometimes I don’t think he loved me at all. Was my marriage perfect? Of course not. But remember I’m dealing with a narcissist. I gave him my all and more. It still wasn’t appreciated. It was always about him. Somehow he felt I played a role in the demise of our marriage and should take accountability. I don’t understand how. I never disrespected him, I never abused him, I never gaslighted him nor manipulate him. All of these things he did to me. He preyed on my weakeness. I blame myself for allowing him to treat me this way all those years.

All of this is so familiar. You've been hit by this pretty nasty triple-whammy. One, you've got all of this grief as a widow who misses her mate. Two, you've discovered adultery after his death so he's not here to answer your questions about that. And three, you've been intimately betrayed. We can all identify with intimate betrayal, so we got you on that. We've lived it. We're here and we know how you feel in ways the uninitiated can never understand. There's also quite a number of folks around here who have had the experience of having a WS leave without answering their questions. The cheater just bolts leaving them to draw their own conclusions about what, if anything, the relationship meant to them. And there are even a few here who understand in the most personal and agonizing way EXACTLY what has befallen you. You're in the right place and you can cry, and scream, and vent all you want, or at least within guidelines anyhow.

What I see in your post is a reflection of the duality I felt after dday. When you're a normal, empathetic person, part of you is trying to sympathize with what might have caused your WS to make such an immoral choice. IOW, we turn that confusion onto ourselves looking to find fault and looking to gain control over whatever flaw it was that caused the betrayal. But the other side of that coin is our own intuitive knowledge that the WS's choices were about HIM and not about us. We go back and review their complaints or whatever, and we feel badly that we didn't take those complaints seriously enough, but what you come to understand as time goes by is that those complaints could not be a legitimate cause for the course of action the WS chose because they do not apply ACTION to the stated problem. Lots of BS's never even heard a complaint to begin with, but they got cheated anyway. And for those of us who did, the actions taken by the WS weren't reflective of a person trying to fix the problem he claimed to have. For instance, my fWH complained of wanting more sex. We were already having sex on a regular basis, but his complaint was that he wanted it every day and I was only interested a couple times a week. The truth of the matter is that he did NOTHING to solve the issue. There were lots of actions he might have taken. It's not like I was squarely opposed to more sex. He never took any action at all to make it happen. And that's because the truth of the matter was that it wasn't about having more sex with ME, it was about the porn he'd been watching behind my back, and it was about proving his sexual bonafides by attracting new partners and getting some strange.

The lesson here is that there are words and there are actions. People naturally move toward their goals. My fWH didn't really care about more sex. Hell, I almost killed his ass during the hysterical bonding phase. If anything, he wanted less sex. The fact was that he HAD been "moving toward his goals". He wanted to try out some of the amateur porn he'd been watching with new people to whom he could prove his sexual attractiveness and prowess. He wanted the admiration and the fantasy... and man, did he ever set his bar LOW to make sure he got it.

I can't tell you how to process the loss and grief of being widowed or abandoned, but I can tell you that cheaters are full of shit when their complaints say one thing but their actions say another. You already know in a cerebral way that this wasn't your fault. But to know it emotionally means that you have to really accept it at the heart level.

((big hugs))

When you feel used, it's natural to withdraw. Don't blame yourself.that kind of situation.... It's not the loving sharing connection that brings out the best in us. We aren't sex vending machines. Looking back, I let myself believe so many things that just weren't true. I tried so hard for a long time. Things that should have been easy or fun weren't. I always wondered why.

Your husband sounds like he was a gaping black hole: impossible to fill, everything comes in, and nothing comes out. Judging by how you described his parents, it's not too hard to see how he got that way. I can't say whether or not he loved you or didn't love you, but I think it's fair to assume that he only viewed relationships from the perspective of what he was able to gain from them

As for why he never sought marriage counseling, he wasn't interested in having a balanced, reciprocal, and genuinely intimate relationship, so he wasn't going to bother. He also never fessed up to cheating or asked you for a divorce when you offered one because he wanted to maintain control and have everything on his own terms. Maybe if you knew definitively that he was cheating, you would've fought harder to defend your own interests. Maybe he didn't want to ruin his reputation and have his daughter think ill of him. Or maybe he wasn't seriously considering divorce; he was just stringing his AP along for as long as he could.

Every single one of us on SI has struggled in one way or another to resolve the dissonance between our perceptions and the reality of our marriage, and contend with the fact that we didn't truly know the person we married. Although your recovery process is unique in that you're dealing with complicated grief and will never got the opportunity to try to extract answers from your husband, I don't think any of us ever truly received closure from our spouses; we all had to find it ourselves, one way or the other.

The silver lining for your situation--thin though it may seem at this moment in time-- is that your husband isn't around to sabotage your healing process. He can't cheat on or gaslight you anymore, nor he will be able to blindside you with divorce, use your daughter as a pawn, and/or put you through a long and likely acrimonious process of dissolving the marriage.

Lastly, although you might want nothing to do with your in-laws, they are still your daughter's grandparents and she might not be willing to cut them off permanently. Going forward, be sure to have your daughter's back and encourage her not to let them steamroll over her. If they were willing to put up a fight with you and her about where your husband should be buried, then you can bet that they will feel entitled to try to push your daughter into making a myriad of other decisions that aren't in her interests. She needs to feel empowered to push back when that day ever comes.

Physician here.

There is nothing you did to cause his death. That is very simply magical thinking and is not medically accurate. Period. So stop beating yourself up.

I am still married to someone who is a black hole. I get it.

I am so sorry you are struggling. I hope you find some peace at some point.

Your H did love you in a very selfish sort of way. That is the best explanation you can find. His own unhappiness or deficiencies or whatever his issues were prevented him from being the best H he could be. In some odd way you can see that his family has the same deficiencies- no help, no support etc.

I believe it’s not a YOU problem. You were just the victim of his selfishness.

I hope you heal from this.

Thank you @the1stwife

I appreciate the support.

Im still wondering if he truly loved me.

It’s so hard

That's a tough one to unravel. It's possible he loved you as much as he was able. His ability to love was probably different from your ability to love.

I have nothing to add except support. Far wiser minds than I have offered their excellent advice. Just keep in mind that here there are people to give you a shoulder to lean 9n.

Thank you

I’m really struggling to the point I don’t want to live anymore (I’m not suicidal)

However I’m thinking about my beautiful children

This is all too much for me to bear.

Your beautiful children are the reason why you will survive this.

And be the best mom you can be.

I really hope so

Yes, you need to stick around for others now, your kid's especially.

If I did something to hurt myself, my kids and family would be devastated. I don't want that.

You will have good and bad days. I hope tomorrow will be better for you.

I am so sorry for your pain.

It feels insurmountable but you really can and will survive. Just keep going, one day at a time. Keep on swimming- it will get better. (((Hugs)))

I’m so sorry you are struggling and hurting.

I can tell you that I have a number of friends who lost their husbands on 9/11 and became widows and single parents (just like you). One of my closest friends raised her child alone and had to deal with grief and trauma and all of it.

Grief counseling helped. Meeting one or two people in your situation helped. Leaning on family and friends helped too.

So does time. Unfortunately you don’t think it will but it does. Six months from now you will look back and see a small glimmer of hope b/c some things are better. It might not be much but it will be enough to keep you moving forward.

Please try to keep as many positive thoughts as possible.

[This message edited by The1stWife at 9:16 PM, Monday, July 18th]

Ebz

You sound like you are really questioning if he loved you.
Well… Go back to my post on that issue.

I’m basing this all on my experience with dealing with abusive people. It requires some generalizations, but stats are stats, trends are trends… Some might apply, some might not.

Can we agree on one thing? Can we agree that living the double life he did isn’t "normal"? Can we agree that infidelity isn’t normal, that being abusive or violent isn’t normal?
Can we agree on that what you have described regarding his two relationships and how he treated you isn’t "normal" and isn’t what we envision the stereotypical loving husband as being?

If we can agree on all that… well… how can we expect to measure him using a "normal" yardstick?

You think of love and what do you envision? I’m guessing it’s hard to fit that vision with his actions.

As a cop I arrested men who had beaten their wives to inches from death. Like really battered them. As well as men that abused and subdued their wives so it was clearly visible. That look they had having been told a million times they were fat cows worth zilch… Yet these same men would profuse their love. They would claim having been forced to punch her or slam her to the floor because how much they loved them. They would cry in the ER wondering how they would make it if their honeybun didn’t make it, promising change and redemption… again.

With what little I know of your situation I think your husband probably loved you, only his "love" isn’t comparable to what we normally consider love.

Did he plan on leaving you?
Well… once again what is normal…
I believe people can change. But I don’t believe people can be two different things at the same time. I venture that your husband behaved towards you and the OW in the way he knew best worked to control the situation. With you it could be a bit more direct, aggressive and maybe even abusive. He could do that because he had put in the time to create conditions conductive to that. With the OW he probably had to be a bit more loving and caring, but it was probably more comparable to your early years rather than a totally different pattern.

Would he have left you? We will never know, but I think he would have left the one that was the bigger problem. The one that demanded change. The one that forced a change. After all – he wanted to control and not be controlled.

So yes – he loved you. Only not the kind of love that is desirable.
He might have left you, or maybe not.

Hopefully you have followed up on my advice regarding the practical and financial matter.

I want to suggest one more thing:
Go find a local domestic abuse hotline. Call them and tell them about your situation. There are very often good, free therapy sessions available. Sometimes group sessions akin to AA. You would benefit SO MUCH by hearing what others have gone through and seeing the comparable aspects.