Feeling guilty over pulling the trigger
I please need the help and guidance of the wise & wonderful people at SI. Sorry if this is long. I'm so confused and I don't know why.
The background to my story is here https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/662636/still-reeling-after-d-day-revelations/
In January, on a cruise he took me on, my WH of 17 years, together for 24 years, told me he is having an A, loves me but is not in love with me, we're 'roommates', he loves me like a sister, I'm not his person, he is numb to me after his mother's death and 24 years is too long to be with the same person and that he has wanted a D for years. A week after D Day he told me he was looking for someone else two years ago and 'there's a darkness' in him.
He has been incredibly cruel and cold, rewriting our marriage, blame-shifting, gaslighting - all the things in the cheater's handbook I've experienced in the last few months. So much of the poison he spewed is so untrue.
Now, it feels like his mask is back on and he is 'missing me as his best friend' but wants the D. I can't live on crumbs and hopium. I'm his wife, not some platonic friend. He's very good at playing Mr Nice Guy though it feels like I have seen his true colours now.
I moved out with the kids at the start of March as I couldn't cope with the manipulation and mind games he was playing with me.
I have loved this man with all my heart and have been so deeply traumatised by this that it has consumed my life for the last few months and affected me and the kids so so profoundly.
He never once told me how unhappy he was until D-Day.
My question is that for someone so desperate for D - and he is still full throttle in his A - and totally not remorseful and delusional about the impacts of blowing up our lives, especially our kids lives and causing so much deep pain and trauma - why has he not filed for D yet or sold the house as that's what he said - we will sell the house and then he will D me?
Is it laziness? Is it cake eating as I am still paying half the expenses of the family home where we all used to live and where he lives now?
He tells the kids they will have to look after him in his old age as he won't have any money, knowing that they will tell me that. Does he want me to feel sorry for him?
I don't think it's that he doesn't want the D and is regretting his choices. He seems set on this path and ready to escape to his much younger AP. This fuel to his ego of a younger woman and a fellow trail runner must be immense.
I went to see a D lawyer in April and felt empowered to take charge of my life and map out a healthier financial and emotional future for the kids and I and get out this limbo.
I didn't have the money to do the settlement agreement and the lawyer contacted me recently asking if she must close the file. I told her I will pay and file the docs in the next two weeks. WH knows I've seen a lawyer and plan to file for D. He just seems relieved he doesn't have to do it.
Why do I feel so guilty for going ahead with this D as this all looms closer? His aunts have told me not to and that he must file if he wants the D and that others in the extended family had affairs and R'd.
R was never an option as my pleas for any kind of marital help fell on deaf ears with him. He wants out and has convinced himself this is the way to freedom. He told his one aunt the OW who is 'just a friend', is divorced and perfect and has no baggage. And that when he looks at me and the kids, he thinks is this is it, there must be more for him than us.
I feel so guilty that I am the one doing this when I think of my kids knowing I D'd their dad, even though all I am doing is the paperwork and protecting the three of us, he is the one who absolutely pulled the trigger on our M and on everything we built together and has told everyone he wants a D. What if he flips this and tells the kids mom ended the M even though it's not true, he is the destroyer.
Why must we as the betrayed have to do all these horrible things like file for a D we never wanted, have all the responsibilities of everything, as he gets to escape to his 'new life' and we have to pick up the pieces. Today, everything just feels so unfair. I just feel so overwhelmed and unsure of myself.
I know I shouldn't worry what his family or anyone thinks, no one is living in my shoes, they all know exactly what he told me and what he's done even if they don't want to accept he is having an A.
I need to make the best decisions for us. It's just that walking away from 24 years feels so incredibly brutal. Then, there are no signs - no action - that the M can be saved. He is a complete stranger now but sometimes I want to imagine the man I love is still in there somewhere. I've seen signs or imagine I have - again, hopium. I don't even know if I can ever love him in the same way again as he is not who I thought he was. I have lost so much respect for him now and even feel pity for his stupid destructive choices.
He says he 'feels like a monster' and sometimes I think he is one.
He told me after D Day that he had the A and wants the D 'cos he didn't feel loved, respected or liked and I don't why that's haunting me and now I'm back to blaming myself for all of this even though I know I was a loving, honest, supportive, loyal, kind and faithful wife and I did my best and put this man on a pedestal forever.
We all have flaws but nothing justified this horror that he has inflicted on us. If anything I felt unappreciated most of the time as 95% of everything fell on my shoulders yet I didn't go fuck strange and abandon my family and my vows.
Please help me see some light here. It's just been a wobbly few days.
8 comments posted: Friday, June 21st, 2024
Still reeling after D-Day revelations
In January this year, my husband (44) and I (45) were on a four-day cruise he took me on when he dropped the bomb on me. We have been together for 24 years, married for 17. I had never even heard of a D-Day but that day is burned into me as mine.
He told me that he's been in an 'emotional affair' for the past year and has ‘feelings’ for this woman; he loves me but is no longer in love with me; that he loves me like a sister; that we are 'roommates' and that he cannot stay with me until our kids are 18. That he is not my person anymore and that 24 years is too long to be with the same person. He told me that he thinks he may be having a midlife crisis and has become ‘numb’ to me since his mother's death in 2018.
It was a total blindside and I remember wailing in shock & disbelief in that tiny cabin. I considered throwing myself overboard many times that night. The only thing that stopped me was my children.
He had never sat down with me once to discuss any problems or issues beforehand or made any attempt at an honest & respectful conversation about what was bothering him so that we could work together to fix it, go on dates and spend time together or even go for marriage counselling or even that he was considering an affair or a divorce. There wasn’t a single conversation. I knew he was stressed with work and life as I was.
Last year I did start to feel a distance from him and he seemed more irritated with me and with us and said some strange things. I chalked it up to our busy lives and jobs and financial pressure and all our responsibilities. There were also a couple of nights when he left home at 4.30pm for a run and came home at 2am. We were sick with worry but he never communicated with us and I’m not sure if he was with his AP at those times.
That D-Day day, my husband and best friend instantly became a complete stranger to me. He was so cold and so cruel.
I thought, as my kids did, and everyone who loves us, that we had a happy, fulfilled and loving marriage. We were best friends, shared our lives together, raised our beautiful children, had a good sex life (though the frequency had diminished a bit in the last year or so) and were devoted to our kids & our family.
For the last three years, however, he has barely been at home/present as he is a marathon runner and is away from home five days a week on his runs. His AP is a runner too and his affair with her started at the running club. She knew he was married with children. Even though his running obsession took him away from us, I rarely brought it up because I knew how happy it made him and relieved his stress. Never would I have imagined he was running away from me into another person’s arms and running away from all we had built together.
My mom told me in all the years we have been together that I have never said one bad word about my husband and all my friends and family have told me I put him on such a pedestal. I would have loved this man forever and felt so proud and honoured to be his wife and thought that we would make it through all the hard times that life threw our way and be together through all the good times.
He was my first real boyfriend and helped heal me from my horrific rape at the age of 13. He is the only man I’ve ever been with. It makes me so unbelievably sad that he would hurt me this way.
He has completely blamed me for everything - the end of the marriage and his affair. The only concession he has made is that he should have helped me clean the house more often! He has rewritten our entire marriage and especially our intimate moments in the most brutal way and was even keeping a record in the last few months of how often we had sex as if he was measuring me up against someone else.
He told my kids, who begged him to please try to fix this with mom, that he has wanted to divorce me for four years and that he loves me but is not in love with me and that he loves me like a sister. It is all so humiliating and demeaning. But then he tells me how much he loved me when he put FB messages up last year on our anniversary. It’s so confusing.
I really tried to save my marriage and my family but about two weeks after D-Day, I soon realised that I could not do it alone.
He wanted me to pay half for the divorce and to tell the kids we have grown apart. I resisted and did tell them (don't know if it was wrong or right as they are 11 and 15) that dad has feelings for someone else. Was this his exit affair?
There was a similar ‘emotional affair’ incident in 2015 with another runner that I discovered but it seemed fleeting and quickly shut down at my request all those years ago. It made me insecure but he promised nothing happened. I’m not sure if there were other women over the years after he checked out.
He has since told me he was ‘looking for someone else’ since 2022 and there’s a ‘darkness’ in him. I have spent the last two months blaming myself on most days - what didn't I do, why wasn't I enough - all the devaluing got to me in a huge way. I know I have many flaws, but I really don't feel that I deserve this horrible treatment.
The day after D-Day he took off his wedding ring and never put it back on yet he told me how ashamed he is not to wear it and how he hides his hand. While we were living together, for six gruelling weeks after D-Day, he would tell me how much he loved me, missed me and how he would never get over me and how he could never see me as his ex wife. That I was his everything. But he could never be intimate with me in that time - I wonder if it was because he now committed to this other person? I humiliated myself trying to use my sexual wiles to reconnect with him.
There were so many mind games he played with me and I wonder if it was genuine feelings (or remnants of them) or manipulation or guilt. They made me so confused and even hopeful at times that our marriage could be saved. Yet he is sticking to his choice to divorce and is not interested at all in RC. I don’t even think I could ever trust him again. They say when someone shows you they are, believe them. Nor can I be married to someone who doesn’t love me anymore. They also say ‘everywhere you go, there you are’, and I hope one day the lies and betrayal catch up to him even though I feel so bad for having thoughts like that. He told his aunt that his divorced AP has no baggage and is the perfect woman.
I have since moved out of our home with my children as I had to get out of the house, even knowing how disruptive and traumatic it was for my kids. Even though he saw my deep pain and how he had broken me, it was a struggle to get him to move out. Also, it wasn't safe for the three of us to live in that house alone as there is a lot of crime in South Africa.
That night of D-Day, I instantly deleted my FB, unfollowed him on social media and have never looked at his phone and their messages as I don’t want more darkness in my life. I’m proud of myself for this too. On D-Day, I think I already instinctively knew the marriage was dead. Sometimes, being proud is all you have.
I'm glad we are in a new, different place where I can begin to heal and don't have the ghosts and memories of our family home. I am also gaining more clarity with the distance from him and am trying to emotionally detach. I have never contacted him since the move to beg him to change his mind, nor I have I ever spoken about this nightmare to him again since we left our home or for anything. I don’t need him and am okay on my own with my kids and every day is a new step in rebuilding. For this too, I’m proud of myself.
He kept saying he wants to cook for us every day and doesn’t want us not to need him, but I shut that down. None of this is acceptable to me.
I have found God again and feel his strength and love. My husband told me that ‘if he ever takes me back’ there will be none of that’ (God) in our lives. He is an atheist.
He says we must fix the house to sell it and then he will divorce me. There is no money to do that. I have told his family whom I am very close to what has happened and my friends and family and have incredible support from so many people and feel so blessed. There is so much disappointment from everyone as he was such a "good guy".
But I still feel so alone inside of myself and have many suicidal thoughts in a day. I pray hard to overcome them and can't imagine putting my kids in more heartache like that. At the same time I am so exhausted and really am just seeking peace from this nightmare. I have lost 10 kilograms since this started and wake up each night at 3am after dreaming of him and his AP. I am vaping myself to death and know I need to stop. I can barely concentrate at work.
I know cheating is a choice but I do wonder if he is suffering from depression and if this shiny new person made him feel good, validated and less numb? But then, while we were packing up and readying to move out he was whistling as if he was the happiest man alive! Who is this cold, cowardly person? Was he already so detached?
He has done nothing yet to divorce me and I am unsure whether I should divorce him first just not to endure a long drawn out separation and be the 'third person' in our marriage as I have no doubt that things with his AP have progressed significantly - if they hadn’t already while we were still together. I know I need to protect myself and my children financially as he earns more than me. What if this becomes years of living in limbo?
It seems as if he is trying to win the support of my daughter, who is 11, as she told me yesterday that dad has found his true love and that we must all be happy for him and that I really need to be his friend now and stop being mean to him and about him with family and friends. It hurt so much. My teenage son seems less forgiving as he sees the emotional wreck his mother is and the wreckage for him & his sister.
Our family is broken now, we all need counselling, and I'm a single mom and I cannot just be happy for him or forgive him. Everything is so painfully raw. So many people tell me to ‘let go’. He has crushed me and destroyed my faith and trust in people.
The only time I saw my husband express any emotion [he cried] is when I told him we can't be friends, that he can't come for supper every week and no, we can't have coffee dates, as nothing out of this toxic situation is acceptable to me. And that honour, respect and integrity are important to me and that's what I leave my marriage with. He looked crestfallen as in the fantasy he has concocted he would have it all - me as his BFF and his shiny new woman.
I am trying to do low contact with him and it is so hard because of the kids and because up until recently he kept trying to see me in our new place and trying to hug me all the time and confide in me about all his problems. But he has kicked me out of the wife job. He gets angry and storms off when I don't hug him back though I admit sometimes I just crave his touch and to 'feel safe' in his arms even though I can never trust him again.
How do I be strong and deal with having him in my life as the kids' father but as a man who is no longer my husband? I know I cannot love a ghost. I feel so guilty for barely communicating with him, seeming uncaring, being cold and business-like about arrangements with the kids, because I am not like that but I do not want to share any more of my myself with this man, who has little compassion and empathy for me, and for our children and keeps just saying they are resilient and don’t need counselling.
He has made me feel so worthless, small and insignificant.
Our kids, too, blame themselves though I have assured them so many times this is not their fault in any way at all. It breaks me how much damage he has caused our innocent children who have had this bomb detonated on their lives. Now, we must deal with the fallout. My daughter, who is really close to her dad, says she has suicidal thoughts too. Nothing breaks my heart more than this.
The kids only see their dad once during the week and every second weekend (I insisted they see him at least once a week while he was happy for just every other weekend!) He is not interested in shared custody (50/50). I am so worried that the kids will be sidelined as his new single life or life with AP intensifies. Ironically, he told me he knows he hasn’t made the kids a priority before and that now with the divorce they will be! I feel the full brunt of rejection and never want my children to feel anything remotely like this.
He is now being more distant with me and I am distant from him and I just don't know how I can continue to do this every day to be honest. I’m haunted by thoughts of whether he will ever realize or regret blowing up our lives and our family.
Everyone says ‘you will heal, things will get better, you will find someone who loves and cherishes you’. That he doesn’t deserve me. But this has been the most devastating and traumatic part of my life and I can't go on most days. Sometimes, I feel so desperate for an end to this pain and deep grief. I hope someone who has been in this dark place can please help encourage me out of this unending nightmare.
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59 comments posted: Friday, April 12th, 2024
