Well. I'm back on here. In 2019 I was very active here when I had just found out about my then WH having a long term A with a coworker. It was the most devastating discovery of my life, and I feel like a part of me truly died that night. He had initially ended our relationship a few months before our wedding and then three days later decided that out of a sense of responsibility he needed to try to rebuild our relationship. It should have been a red flag, that he didn't really WANT to be with me, but felt like he needed to out of obligation. He seemed like a perfect picture of remorse, and we had healed our relationship in about two years. We were good, I trusted him again, and we got married and everything seemed fine.
Except that I had changed. The woman that rolled over and let him stomp all over me was gone. I gained a new sense of self-trust, autonomy, and independence. I insisted on getting a second dog, who has become my best friend, and basically all around started standing up for myself. And what I learned over those two years was that he was so focused on healing our relationship that he didn't work on himself at all. He frequently talked about reaching out to the OW to apologize, since she had expressed many times how angry and hurt and manipulated she felt. I was admittedly very angry with her for thinking she had any right to a relationship with him, and put my foot down that he didn't owe her anything (in my defense, she spent most of their affair manipulating him too, and calling him worthless and saying he didn't deserve anything and wishing him ill and that I'd never trust again - and also had a partner of her own she was betraying; although that's all I heard from him so who knows). She had also tried to tell me before we got back together that I didn't know the whole story, and that he wasn't worth continuing a relationship with. I had chocked that up to her just wanting him for herself at the time, and knowing what I know now, probably true. So I told him to forget about her. Still, up until the day we eventually separated, he kept thinking about apologizing to her. He told me he never really forgave himself about the whole thing, and our therapist ended up being someone who I feel favored him and maybe enabled some of his self-indulgent behaviors. She broke up with me when we separated, but has still been seeing him.
When we separated, I told my WH that I still loved him very much and wanted to help him through the process, per our therapist's advice as well. I didn't leave him because of his A, but it was clear that my newfound independence was difficult for him. He needed me to stay in the area instead of taking an out-of-state job. I had a hard time feeling intimate with him because, to be honest, I never really did. I just loved him like one would love a best friend soulmate. That the reason I was with him in the first place. I truly adored him and looked up to him, even though I didn't feel a romantic attraction, and simply didn't want to lose him. But now that I realized I deserved better, I wanted to free him to find what he was looking for, while potentially rebuilding our friendship to what it was before we got together.
He was angry when I told him I'd been dating someone else. I talked him through it. I sat with him and his pain. I wrote a perspective letter for him. I offered my love and compassion. I wanted to do what was best for me, while helping him heal. But he continuously said I was "ignoring my responsibilities" and abandoning him. Eventually, he seemed to accept it, and things seemed okay. But then he told me he started talking to OW again. I'm not proud, but I lost it, mostly because he told me in such a way that it seemed like he didn't expect it to hurt at all, like it was just some casual thing. I expressed my anger, and he immediately pulled back. A few days later he said we couldn't communicate anymore. He said that friendship was most likely not in the cards again. I was heartbroken, because I thought our love, no matter what it looked like, would endure. That's why I chose this user name all those years ago. We had a love that was so strong, it would be impossible to just abandon. But he disappeared. I asked if he was going to date OW. He said no.
Two years later, we're finally divorced, and I discover they've been dating due to a facebook post from his father. I can't begin to express my pain. I know I may have no right to feel this way, but the fact that I tried so hard to help him through his pain, to LOVE him through his pain and witness it and heal it, and I have to find out he's STILL been lying to me through facebook. Ten years of love, of self-sacrifice, of kicking and clawing our way to healing, and this is how it ends. It hurts so much. I know I ended the romantic relationship but I tried to do so in the best way possible. I wanted him to be happy, and he wanted me to be happy. But to just treat me like a stranger, like he doesn't owe me the compassion and love I thought ten years would warrant me, I thought his infidelity would warrant me... Is it because I expressed my anger? Does he really not owe me anything? AITA?
I'm just so broken. I truly thought he was better than this. I loved him with more than I had. Why does it consistently feel like he never really loved me, he just felt like he had a responsibility to me? Why does it hurt so bad?
