SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Copying some of my text from the JFO Thread. I thought I had a good marriage and that my husband loved me. Now I am questioning if he ever did love me and how you would know if somebody didn't love you. I have friends telling me he likely thought we had a loveless marriage and it was an exit affair. After he left me he said he didn't love me and he hadn't loved me in years. He also talked about how terrible my personality was and what a bad wife I was. I feel like I was so dumb not to notice him feeling that way about me. Friends are telling me that I am not accepting that he truly did feel that way and I am just blaming it on this ow...who he says is just a friend/roommate. I don't buy it. How do you know somebody doesn't love you?

I found it odd that he told me on a Saturday, then good sex and promise of counseling on Sunday to coming home on my birthday and leaving me. A normal guy who has just been unhappy doesnt do that on your birthday.

He also went straight to divorce. No wanting to work on things. I got comments like you had your chances, it shouldn't have taken me leaving for you to be a better partner, I was suffering, I did everything for you, this is about me, I don't love you, I haven't loved you, I don't like you, you were a bad wife, yOu didn't emotionally support me, you controlled me, I did talk to you, you did know we had problems, etc.

He said he let things build until he began to hate me but wouldn't I have sensed that? We still were spending all our time together and having sex. He was acting normal. We had went to the beach with this couple and other places. All seemed normal.

Normally he is the nicest most caring person. He always cared and went out of his way to do anything for me. Maybe he did just resent that? I never asked he just did things for me because I thought he cared. Last I saw him (he had to fix a pipe) he was so cold and wouldn't let me touch him and would barely look at me. When I asked why we couldn't work on the marriage he said because he didn't like me as a person and my personality isn't what he wanted, everything about me turned him off. So crazy.

Up until he left we ran our horse business in addition to our regular jobs and were doing great. I have good reputation, am respected and well liked. Why all of a sudden just hate me? Maybe he always hated me.

I don't think he hates you. He just doesn't love you. My husband gave up the affair and stayed, but that doesn't tell me he ever loved me. He just didn't want a big change in his life.

My husband, too, is a very nice man. I realize that what I took for his love was just his niceness. He doesn't treat anybody poorly. I was wrong to equate that with loving me.

I realized my husband is not mentally healthy. So if he did/does love me, I'm not open to being loved by him. Mentally healthy people don't abuse or hurt those they love. I will only have relationships with mentally healthy men in the future, even if they're not as "nice" as my husband.

That is something that I think about as well. He always spent all of his time with me. I considered us to be best friends. He went over and above to make me happy but maybe he did it because he was just a nice guy. Maybe he didn't feel love. Still not sure.

Oh wow this sounds familiar. I was told I don't love you and never had, I still have a hard time with this, especially after 15 years. From what I'm reading this is my take on it. I too was told that he tried to talk to me and work on our marriage, but honestly it's like having a conversation with someone when their asleep, they do it so they can say they tried but so not. If he can rewrite the history and change everything around it helps him to justify his behavior. Him saying all the mean things about being selfish etc sounds like projecting, as well. He is still so far in the fog he can't see anything yet. Will he ever come out I don't know some do some dont. Since you mentioned he can't even look at your that tells me he's embarressed by his actions, he can't look at you becuase he can't face what he's done or is doing.

I hope that makes sense. Please focus on you right now.

I wouldn't believe that he never loved you. I think hes trying to convince himself so he can justify his bad behavior. Sounds like he's really messing with your head. If you were such a bad wife, why no mention of it pre A? He's trying to blame you for his A.

What do you think is easier for him? To say "you were/are a great wife, a great business partner, and a wonderful friend and lover. I'm just too selfish and broken to keep my pants on. I'm leaving because I'm a selfish prick and I don't want to actually do the work that's needed to rebuild our marriage. I'm too afraid of being seen as a bad person, so I'm leaving."

Or to vilify you as a horrible bitch that never cared for him, that he never loved, and that is too horrible to live with? He's taking the "easy" way out because if he does so, he can salvage some sense of not being a lying asshole as he waltzes away. That's the ONLY reason that he is being such a prick because he doesn't want to be seen as the pathetic pant-less loser that he is. It has nothing to do with you. It's all about him.

Even if it isn't an affair (which I think it is) I still think all of it just reeks of somebody who is unhappy with the self. I am trying to figure out how I would know he didn't love me and didn't like my personality.

We didn't argue and we spent all of our time together. Right up to the end we were still intimate. Although he did say he just wasn't "feeling it" so maybe he had sex with me and was just going through the motions but didn't love me.

I agree with the thoughts expressed here about justification. But I also think there is another thing that happens. I think when a person has an affair, that illicit rush they get from forbidden sex is mistaken for true love. Since you aren't forbidden, they don't have that feeling with you. Therefore they now think they never loved you because their concept of love has been hijacked.

For that reason I don't think he never loved you. He just didn't love you in this screwed up way. Like it or not we have to face the fact that the affair is exciting to them. They are in love with that excitement.

In my case it took a few years after my divorce to understand that he could never love me the way he loved her. He loved me, but not in the same way. I was unexciting. Not by normal standards, but by his new standards. I wouldn't do drugs with him or commit insurance fraud so we could go on vacations or any of the things he does with her. In hind sight I knew my ex was not a match with me in terms of our value systems even before we got married. But we have a way of glossing over those little details when we're in love.

I absolutely believe that people can reconcile and have an even better marriage after an affair. I've seen it first hand with my sister and her husband. He cheated. And at the time he said all the same things to her. But the fact of the matter was that unlike my choice of a spouse, he chose my sister for all the right reasons in the first place and that eventually came back to him. And she in all honestly did need to be a better wife in some ways. And now she is. And I'm proud of both of them.

These are reasons he gave me when he left via text. I just don't know..it seems like he thought he was really unhappy with me.

-I am sorry but we can never be together again. I shouldn’t have let it go this far. From the very beginning I haven’t felt right about this relationship. I just want on being an obedient boyfriend/husband pretending everything was okay and hoping if I just ignored it that I would be okay and things would be good. All I wanted to do is make you happy. It has come at a major expense to me. This relationship has been eating away at me for years and I cannot live that way any longer. I know you said we are going to lose our asses in this divorce, but that is not a good reason to stay. I have lived with that fear long enough and I have to be willing to let it go. I will do whatever is needed to end this suffering. It is not fair to me or to you to continue because my heart isn’t in it.

-I don’t know, I guess I see it a lot differently maybe because I have been living it for so long. It is better to have it come about at 10 yrs rather than 30yrs of marriage. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but I am not in love with you. Counseling isn’t going to change that. I don’t want to fix the problems, I want to leave them behind. I am sorry this is painful for you, but it has been painful for me as well but I know in my heart I am doing the right thing.

-Please stop. I am not going to counseling. I have come to realize marriage vows are bullshit. There is no saving this. I am already gone.

-I left you because I don’t want to be with you. I am sorry that I have hurt you, if there was a way to leave without hurting you believe me I would. If I am not into this relationship I am hurting you much more than letting you find your true love.

How do you know somebody doesn't love you?

First of all, if somebody doesn't love you, he doesn't marry you.

He doesn't want to spend time with you.

He doesn't care when you're sick or sad.

He doesn't pay attention to your pleasure in bed.

He doesn't want to do activities together or spend time alone together.

He doesn't laugh with you.

He doesn't ask questions about your day, your thoughts, your likes and dislikes, or share about his.

He doesn't want to meet your family or friends or have you meet his.

Love is more than a giddy, infatuated feeling. When someone loves you in a deep and lasting way, you see it in their actions. They are Most often kind, helpful and a generous lover. If they are mature and emotionally healthy, they protect your relationship with boundaries to block inappropriate people. If they are messed-up, they have poor boundaries and they might have an affair. That doesn't mean they never loved you.

[This message edited by sailorgirl at 10:15 PM, November 22nd (Friday)]

How do you know somebody doesn't love you?

Horsegirl, I am in a very similar situation as you. Do not believe your husband's rewrite of your marital history.

I have asked myself the same questions ad nauseum. Your husband is trying to justify the unjustifiable. He has betrayed himself completely. He has to tell himself and you this new story as a defense mechanism to try and make sense of the senseless and find meaning where there is none.

I was lucky. The things I heard from my wife were so obviously contradictory that it helped me stop taking her too seriously. I had hard evidence to counteract her most ridiculous claims. She tried to tell me that she was never in love with me. I had hard evidence in the love letters she wrote me while we were dating and engaged. They were a lot more beautiful and eloquent than the private communication between her and the OM.

She was open and honest with me enough during some of our conversations to completely debunk the most cynical and negative things she said at times to help justify her A. At other times, in her most negative moments, she made some very specific statements that I knew to be factually untrue. It was enough evidence for me to stop agonizing too much over the same questions you are struggling with. It is still hard. I am still tempted to beat myself up and wonder why and how.

As for whether he really ever loved you, I think that question is the wrong one. It is only a valid question in a world where love is something that happens to you. It comes and goes at a whim and you can do nothing about it. I don't believe in that world. Love is choice and action. My wife chose to marry me and have 3 children with me. She loved me. What we had was special, wonderful, and beautiful. It is her loss if she tries to throw that away and scrub it from her memory.

I feel horrible for you. What cruel things to say. But don't buy it. His head is just up his cheatn' ass. Do not give him any more opportunity to talk to you this way. Let him move on. I guarantee this is not his happily ever after either.

Everything he is telling you is total bullshit. He's trying to creat reasons for leaving you, because it certainly couldn't be his own fault.

Your situation is very similar to mine. My XH told me the same things. I highly recommend a book called Runaway Husbands. It will explain everything that you just went through. Thus about men who appear to be happy one day and then up and leave their marriage the next. It really helped me to understand that this was not about me, but about him.

I'm sorry he is saying these things and I DO believe he is having an affair.

However my DH (not the one who brought me here) divorced his ex because she was very controlling. Most people said they didn't know he was unhappy. And it's true. His closest friends seen it but they put on a good show for family and others.

When he left her he was just done. Of course this is all what I have heard. I do know from his family that he had talked to her about some things he was unhappy with but she just blew it off until he left. Lots of people told her he would be back, but he didn't and we met, dated and got married.

There was no cheating in his marriage, but I don't think that's the case in yours. Whether he ever loved you I don't know. But I know he's not acting loving to you right now. Do the 180 and hopefully you will heal.

Hi, horsegirl

Being told "I never loved you" and "you have a terrible personality" is nasty. I could not even say this to my enemy.

I never got the actual truth about xwf's previous divorce before he met me, but I figured it out after DD, 8 yrs. later. This fact I only came up with later and wow. This lie affected me dating him and our whole life together. Now I see why his own 24 yr. old daughter treated him like she did. And I thought he was so mistreated by xw and daughter. Nope. I think he did something bad in his 26 yr. marriage. I so wish I hadn't been so gullible.

Please don't put yourself in a position to even hear his vile verbage again. Protect yourself. That stuff is so cruel and lies.

That's why SI says you didn't cause the A and your ws is rewriting the marital history. Don't believe him at all. None of us are perfect.

I agree with cantgetup and newlysingle. I had xwf leave on DD. Never had a chance to try R. I will tell you, I wasn't perfect but I also was/am really good on so many levels and was good for/with him. We were quite good together and were loving and best friends. I saw him through all kinds of work and family issues. And I had work and health issues too. He's been on match for almost 3 years now. He will not meet someone like me again. Heck, his xw was probably good for him too, so how many "right" partners can there be out there for someone? I think he's had his chance with 2 very good women. We're older. I love that he's still looking. I have had to really talk to myself, knowing and hurting from all the lies he probably told others. That has been hard, but I have to turn it off and get stronger.

So don't waste time listening to nor trying to analyze his lies. They're simply not true.

[This message edited by Thinkingtoomuch at 12:28 PM, November 23rd (Saturday)]

It really is crazy talk because I have so many friends and run a business as well. He was always my best friend. I don't know how he can be so cruel. It is hard to understand how he can just go from a caring husband to somebody who acts like I am the worst person. He says I treated him bad and made him feel bad. I really don't feel that I did. He had everything and just threw it all away.

I could have written your post. My STBXH and I had a marriage that everyone envied: we spent all of our time together, never fought, made each other laugh all the time, had just had our second baby, etc. The he met the OW and he wanted to leave for her and go straight to divorce, with never wanting to try to work it out. I heard all the same things you did: he wasn't happy for years, he did everything for me, blah fucking blah.

I go back and forth on what the truth was: Did we have the great marriage I thought we did, but once the OW appeared and got in his ear about how she was his soulmate and how they could have such a great life together, he believed it and decided to leave? (I was a breastfeeding stay at home mom to a young child and a newborn at the time; pretty hard to compete with the OW who always looked her best and smelled great when STBXH saw her while I smelled like spoiled milk and wore yoga pants and tee shirts every day running on no sleep). OR, was STBXH truly not happy and didn't love me and I just didn't realize it? He lied amazingly well when his affair started, so maybe he was lying for years while we were married.

I don't think I'll ever know which is the truth. My brain tells me that it's not likely someone can spend all their time with someone else and laugh with them and have another child with them if they're truly unhappy and no longer in love, but who knows.

I'm four years past D Day and it probably shouldn't even matter to me anymore, but I'll probably wonder about this for the rest of my life.

[This message edited by thisisterrible at 1:10 PM, November 23rd (Saturday)]

I too think this is something I will always wonder about and likely will never get the answer from him. I don't know what to believe.

I really couldn't say those words even to my worst enemy. It just hurts to the core.

I hear you and I have no advice I'm afraid, just sending you hugs.

I don't think ex ever loved me. I've questioned our whole relationship and I think I was just a mother figure to him, someone to do everything for him.

I just regret ever meeting him and having children with him. I wish I had have noticed the red flags in the beginning and ran away from him.

For him love is something that is owed to him. He had never had to struggle for anything in his life. His parents always give him too much and they have made him into someone who is happy to abandon his partner and children.

It must run in his family as his only sibling, a younger brother abandoned his child too.