SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

GTS, I am coming in super late here, but I just wanted you to know you've been heard and encourage you to stay strong.

Thanks JanaGreen. Ugh, the past few days have been anxiety filled. I think maybe being recovered from Covid and back to work and to a "normal" life remind me that my life is missing two people who have been very close to me over the past 2-1/2 years and 36 years. I'm sure this will all pass, and I will eventually recover, but I am really struggling to detach and let go, give up all hope, and not give a damn.

I followed Kentsugi's recommendation and checked out the reddit post, and that helped. Another poster on there recommended a blog called Magnet of Success, which had some interesting articles too. One of them explained Ghosting and why ghosting is a form of emotional abuse - this also explains why I may be struggling so badly with this.

I really appreciate everyone's comments, suggestions, support, and criticism on here. Posting and reading your responses has been really helpful. I know better times are on their way. I survived the infidelity and divorce from my marriage, and I will survive this. I'm in the weeds right now, but I will move through this. Everything is going to be alright.

So, last night one of my female friends called me and told me that my exGF texted her and asked her if they could go to lunch. I told her I didn't care if she went to lunch with my exGF. I've known this friend and her husband for 20+ years, and they have been very loyal to me. My exGF hung out with them (and me) a handful of times while we were dating, but my exGF always liked them. I asked my friend if my exGF ever texted her or invited her to lunch when we were dating, and my friend said NEVER. Weird.

And also yesterday, another female friend posted a photo of her daughter's 8th grade school photo on Facebook. I went to comment on the photo, since I've known them since before this daughter was born. As I went to the comments section, I noticed my exGF had already commented. She met this friend and the friend's husband twice - once in June 2018 when we went on a couples vacation with them and a few other couples, and once in March 2019. She's never met the daughter who the Facebook post was all about. Weird.

I don't get it? If my exGF was so angry that I called her brother-in-law (who I spent plenty of time with over the past 2-1/2 years) to wish him a happy birthday 2 weeks after our breakup, why is she reaching out to friends of mine who barely knew her? If she wants out of my life, why won't she get the hell out of my life?

GTS, block her on all social media. You need to go total no contact... That means social media as well. You're only torturing yourself. Asking why this and why that, because you still have a window into her life.

Cut the cord. That is the only way you will find peace.

Well, I accidentally got some answers this evening. I saw that my exGF posted photos and tagged her family members. This time there was a photo of her with a new guy. Now, you don’t bring a new guy around your family that you just met. She had to at least have been dating him for over a month. What are the chances that she met this guy after we broke up and they just hit it off? Not high. So I think if she wasn’t having a physical affair with him, she was most likely having an emotional affair, talking and texting with him while dating me.

This answers a lot of my questions. I now have a good idea why she broke up with me. I know why she hasn’t reached out to me. And I know she’s moved on and isn’t coming back.

The questions it doesn’t answer are 1) did this start before or after the breakup? 2) why did my best friend take her side? He clearly wasn’t cheating with her, so this makes his involvement even more strange.

She had him lined up, monkey branch style.

NOW will you block her?

You have a life. Go live it. Be fabulous.

GTS, regarding your 2 questions at the end of your last post: 1) it shouldn’t matter to you anymore because you’ve accepted that she’s not coming back and you now know she’s not worth giving any brain space to; and 2) because at an older age, best friends are hard to come by, you should consider inviting your best friend out for a beer 🍺 to clear the air and then decide where to go from there based on what he has to say.

Yeah, my guess is that she might have known this guy before and hadn’t dated him but maybe was friends on Facebook and probably connected with him during the 6 weeks we did t hang out at the beginning of Covid. She probably didn’t physically cheat on me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she was texting and talking with him before she broke up with me. As WhoTheBleep said, she was monkey branching, and saw the opportunity to end things by blaming me.

I’m going to wait for my best friend to reach out to me. He will come around. I’m using low contact on him. If he reaches out, I’ll respond but I’m not initiating contact with him. How can I trust him right now?

Yeah, my guess is that she might have known this guy before and hadn’t dated him but maybe was friends on Facebook and probably connected with him during the 6 weeks we did t hang out at the beginning of Covid.

I suspect this was more of the catalyst for the "lack of hanging out", I believe the poster referencing monkey branching is spot on.

She probably didn’t physically cheat on me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she was texting and talking with him before she broke up with me.

Giving her the benefit of the doubt is not terribly logical given her behavior, a more reasonable perspective would be to assume guilt.

As WhoTheBleep said, she was monkey branching, and saw the opportunity to end things by blaming me.

DING DING DING!....Yahtzee! So much for her being a decent person.

I’m going to wait for my best friend to reach out to me. He will come around. I’m using low contact on him. If he reaches out, I’ll respond but I’m not initiating contact with him. How can I trust him right now?

He isn't worth the time, someone, somehow there is a connection (perhaps he is friends with the guy, who knows, who cares), what he has proven is you need to move on from him.

Time to enjoy your life, YOUR LIFE, don't measure by what your XW, XGF, XBF would think, but live it for you.

Cheers!

You guys were right all along. It was highly likely there was infidelity, just not with my best friend. I can’t believe this happened to me again. She knew what I went through in my marriage. I’m stunned. I was just starting to feel better mentally too. Ugh. This really sucks. At least I’ve finally reached “no hope”. I can get angry. And I can move forward without wondering when she’s going to come back or reach out. She’s garbage just like my exWW.

Atta boy, GTS. She is indeed shit just like your ex-wife.

You did not deserve this. There are better things ahead for you. Just being single and free without a cheater in your life will be a vast improvement over being lied to.

Go do something just for you, take a trip if you can or go camping or hiking. Get to know yourself again. You will see you are pretty awesome.

Well, now that I know that infidelity "most likely" happened in my breakup, I can finally move forward and stop wondering what I did and if she will come back. But, It knocked me back a few pegs in my recovery. I had been feeling much stronger emotionally since last Thursday, right up until seeing that my exGF in photos with her family.

So, now I find myself dealing with infidelity again, just 4-1/2 years after discovering my exWW had been having an affair. And, I've also lost my best friend in this breakup, because somehow he took her side - she must have been feeding him lies about me for months while she was communicating with the new POSOM.

This is a lot to handle all at once. I'm thankful that I believe that I know what happened. If true, this explains so much. But, I'm sad that I found myself back in infidelity. I thought I had grown wiser and more able to pick up on the signs after my divorce. I was fooled by her blaming Covid for her feeling overwhelmed, when it was all a lie and she was detaching from me while connecting to this new guy.

I'm thankful to be out of a relationship tainted with infidelity. But I'm sad that she wasn't who I thought she was. I'm thankful that it was ONLY 2-1/2 years and that I didn't propose to her or move in with her. But I'm sad that I believed that those were real possibilities and that I believed I had found someone special. I'm thankful that I knew I could come to this internet forum and have friends here who understand what I'm suffering from. But I'm sad that I needed to come back here again so soon, or at all. I'm thankful that I know there is life after infidelity. But I'm sad that there is a long road of recovery ahead of me.

Thank you all for posting and supporting me. I'm going to continue posting because I'm struggling with my emotions, and I need to heal.

I concur with whothebleep:

NOW will you block her?

You have a life. Go live it. Be fabulous.

Block her so you don't see ANY of her activities. Knowing her life doesn't help you. Go live your fabulous life and enjoy learning more about you!

I disagree newlife and WhoTheBleep. If I had blocked her or defriended the remainder of her family, I never would have learned the truth, and I would still be agonizing over her like I had been for the past 10 weeks.

But now you know. So why not block her now?

Because I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop - my buddy posting a photo of him, his girl, my exGF and her POSOM.

I am feeling really anxious right now.

GTS, hard 2x4 coming here...unless I have missed something you have zero proof that she cheated on you. ZERO

Should she have given you more concrete answers, maybe? But we don’t always get what we want. CV19 has done a job on so many people and I would agree that the weeks apart probably allowed her to disconnect emotionally. And this may have allowed her to move on quickly to dating some new guy. Remember...you tried it and were not ready. Maybe she was!!

I pointed out in another post on this thread how you said the relationship was not perfect and you had thought about breaking up before. Then in another reply of yours you lament that she was practically perfect and you never said anything was wrong with her or the relationship...I’m paraphrasing. You are rewriting history. Stop it!!

Again, you have no proof of cheating. It feels to me that you are demonizing her for no reason and allowing others to do the same. I do feel she is flaunting the new relationship on social media and that is a complete bitch move as well as maintaining contact with your friends that she was not close with—another bitch move. But again that does not prove infidelity, just that she is a bitch.

Cut the social media connection. Quit picking at the scab!!!

Right on AnnieOakley. GTS, I feel you have wronged your best friend in the same way. You were so sure she was cheating on you with him. You felt so victimized by him.

Here's what I think about your friend. You can take it or leave it. He's pissed at you and rightfully so. You were going to cancel the trip with him to the beach because your girlfriend broke up with you, right up until you quite frankly stalked your ex on Facebook and discovered she was going to said beach on the same weekend. All of sudden the trip with your bestie was back on.

Once there, you spent all your time again stalking your ex's Facebook page looking at the view she was posting from somewhere on the same beach. You then left him in whatever place you were staying for your buddy weekend and began searching the beach for the view. And then proceeded to keep taking strolls along the beach in that area until you "accidentally" found her. And the whole time he sat around. I'd be done with you too.

There is nothing accidental about anything you are doing. You didn't "accidentally" find out she had a new boyfriend. You kept following the Facebook pages of her family members and friends until you found what you set out to find. Because it couldn't possibly be that she saw something in you that she saw as a red flag. It had to be cheating, whether it was or not. You did the exact same thing with your friend. It couldn't possibly about your behavior, he must have something going on with her.

You have no intention of blocking her everywhere, because its feeding the story in your head. You should look into why you are so obsessed with this. And you should invite your best friend over for that beer someone suggested and just listen. I think you might learn a lot.

AnnieOakley, you’re correct. I don’t have proof of cheating. But going through infidelity once, all of the same signs were there. She was pulling away, she was making excuses for not wanting to spend time with me, and she was picking fights where there shouldn’t have been any. I said before that I thought SHE was perfect, but that I had issues blending families because of the way her kids behaved. When she broke up with me, she said she “hasn’t been in the relationship for a while”. We had two arguments - one back in May, and one 2 weeks before she broke up with me. If she had checked out (which I’m sure she had) she could have ended it after either of those arguments. She probably didn’t because she wasn’t sure she would be able to jump into a relationship with the new guy yet. Once she was sure, she ended it and used the excuse about the Facebook post about my daughter. She might not have been physically cheating, but I am 99.9% sure she was having an emotional affair with this guy for months before she broke up with me. That’s why so many others saw the same thing. In fact, initially I didn’t think there was any infidelity. It was just too obvious to everyone else.

Charity, your facts are incorrect about the beach. She and here sons were supposed to come with me and 6 other couples and kids at the beach. I cancelled the room for her kids and I went with the rest of the group - not just me and my best friend. After I had been there 2 days, I saw her post that she was at the beach. I didn’t decide to go to the beach because I knew she was there. I didn’t go looking for her initially. I was the first person in our group of 30 who was awake, so I took a walk along the beach and that’s where I recognized the view from the photo she posted. I walked down there one time later to try to find her and did. I didn’t abandon my friend - he was with his daughter, his girlfriend, her kids, and the rest of our group. I have NEVER blocked anyone on social media or deleted any friends, because I think that’s juvenile. But I did need to know the truth about what happened that ended the relationship. She might very well have seen red flags in me, but then she should have ended things honorably, instead of ghosting me and turning my friend against me. In text conversations with my friend after the breakup, it was clear that she had been communicating with him about me for quite a while.

I have NEVER blocked anyone on social media or deleted any friends, because I think that’s juvenile

Blocking her is not a punishment to her. It is self-preservation and mental peace for you. Everything you are seeing about her is bringing you pain. You are not required to punish yourself because the relationship ended. Whatever the reason is. The relationship is over. She is not the one for you. Go forward and be happy. You deserve it. Love yourself.

I know it's not that cut and dry, and you'll have moments of pain. Do yourself a favor and distract yourself anytime you want to check up on her . Go for a run. Do 20 push-ups. Anything. You will heal more quickly by her being completely out of your field of vision.

[This message edited by WhoTheBleep at 9:58 AM, November 11th (Wednesday)]