My husband and I have had some problems, but my husband never communicated to me that he was feeling badly about the relationship or unhappy in general with me. He didn't suggest marriage counseling, or warn me that he was feeling distant or sad or hopeless.
He started an EA with a girl who lives out of state at the beginning of June. She is someone he dated briefly before I met him. He was smitten with her then, and she didn't seem to reciprocate. So maybe he's carried a little flame for her always.
There is a lot of clear projection going on - after more than five years of no contact, she only wrote to him (via facebook) a brief two or three line message about where she was living and what her job was. In response to that he instantly wrote her the saddest, most despairing opinions of our marriage, and ended the letter with a mention that she was "beautiful" and he attached a love song he had written about her and recorded after the last time he had seen her, years ago.
So there was no build up, and while I know a healthy woman would flee from those red flags about him, she reacted with flattery and support. Soon she was telling him that she was still attracted to him.
All the while he was more irritable with me, we fought more frequently and I remember thinking to myself that he was starting fights over the smallest thing. If he sensed I was annoyed for any reason during those weeks, he would confront me in a sort of hostile way. For example, one day we were all trying to get out the door, I had mentioned we should leave as soon as possible, and when I was ready to get out the door he picked up his guitar and started playing. I sighed "Are we going or not?" and he put down the guitar and coldly said "Why is that you feel the need to talk to me like that?"
That was the line that started several fights in the span of one week. Once he didn't like the tone I used when I said the word "yes" , so "Why is it that you think it's okay to talk to me that way?"
It was a terrible week of fighting; I kept telling him I wished he could understand that if I feel annoyed for a split second in time it doesn't have to be a big deal, and he was more irritated and defiant and closed to listening than ever before. During the last of the fights for that week is when he shut down and had his "first doubt" about our relationship.
He never recovered from that doubt. He wanted space, space, and more space. I finally took our son to visit family out of state. I was gone for a week and it only took that long for him to go from confused with doubts and NOT wanting a divorce, to feeling he had no motivation left in his heart to work on the relationship, to telling me he was no longer in love with me, to actually signing a lease for an apartment without even talking to me about it. We are a one-income lower middle class family and just bought a house, so we have less than 200 dollars left at the end of every month to put into savings. So obviously no way to afford a 700 dollar/mo apartment.
Now I know that the other woman told him "I've realized I am still attracted to you, so I need to stop talking to you for it's the right thing to do".
He then stopped messaging her for that week that he steadily abandoned the relationship more and more and he messaged her again the night before he signed the lease, while I was still out of town and devastated.
He said "I am signing a lease tomorrow and so I want to continue talking to you because it's the right thing to do".
How cute.
Since then they've been inseparable online, talking ten messages a day.
Even after I found out, he just transparently lied (twice) saying he wouldn't talk to her while he still lived here out of respect but never stopped.
They recently started talking on the phone and connecting further while he is at work.
I am just dying inside because it's so clear what happened and why, why our marriage was "hopeless" for him with no chance to recover and why he needed to sign a lease so soon.
But he insists up and down (with a lot of condescension and irritation that I just won't accept the "truth") that this all would have happened regardless of her. He now says he was always miserable with me, has said every dismissing, hurtful thing about me and our relationship, and he says that if he didn't build up the courage to tell me he felt that way, he would have just stayed in a horrible marriage. Like she helped wake him up to how shitty his life with me has been.
I can't stand it. I have been on the "just found out" board but I am starting to feel jealous of those whose cheating spouses still want them, or do even the bare minimum to comfort them and insist they still love them.
My husband makes me feel like I am scum beneath his shoe. Before this started I was the love of his life. I have dozens of texts, emails, love notes and songs he wrote me from beginning of our relationship to the point he started talking to her.
I'm grieving for my beautiful son's life not including two loving parents under the same roof. I grieve for how happy he's been to have both of us every day. I want to claw my heart out thinking about the idea that my husband and the other woman might actually work out and get married and start a family, of which my son would be part. I'm the betrayed one and I don't get so much as an apology, just dismissive "Well maybe it wasn't healthy to start it, but you pushed me and it is what it is".
I've been cheated on in a past relationship (PA) but I've never, ever known pain like this. I feel he is deeply infatuated with her, probably believes he's already falling in love with her. The fact that it's not physical almost makes me feel worse, like it's building slowly with intensity because they have to reign in their passion due to distance and pretending they are both really morally righteous people who are just connecting throughout a sad situation.
I feel sick all the time.
[This message edited by lamplighter at 9:22 AM, July 12th (Friday)]
