I wanted to chime in as I was the victim of a workplace A that went off and on (mostly on) for 1.5 YEARS after dday 1. I’m going to be frank here so please don’t be offended as I’m throwing myself under the bus as much as anything when I say this… (and the kicker is that our outcome was weird and wholly unexpected and better for ME)…
I should have told him I was done with him and let them be together from day 1. Really. The things you say and the head games he is playing in your head and the head games you are allowing yourself to play only exacerbate and lengthen the misery.
I rode the Snapchat wagon. I rode the deleted texts wagon. I rode the "the A is over" and the "I don’t know what I want" wagon for far too long. My WHs job is odd - so leaving it would have meant leaving his disabled daughter without heath coverage and very expensive treatments - so requiring him to just up and quit wasn’t a good one for her and a transfer takes about 2 years so in that way our situation is different than most. But the rest is identical to your situation. I allowed myself to half-believe things he said which in hindsight were such out and out lies because I wanted them to be true. I wanted him to be the person I thought he was but the reality is that he was never that guy.
Eventually I left (the house was his pre marital asset so there was no option for me to stay there - if anyone was leaving it was me). I had financial reason and career reasons that I stayed in the area as long as I did and some were valid but the reality is I should have moved out and let him have his freedom that it appears he wanted because…
This was all about control for him (and for your WH too - don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s not for a second - it 100% is.. Someone else said it and they were spot on - the WS lives in the pure fantasy that they get to retain control of the situation even after d-day. But here’s the thing: to the extent your WS has control it is because you are allowing it. Yes. You are.
The biggest life lesson in all of this for me was that you simply cannot control the outcome of most things. The only control you have is over you. My failure to stick up for myself allowed him to treat me like a doormat. I was never going to be able to warp the situation into him coming back to US if he didn’t want to. I was never going to make him no longer want the AP or to be free of me or whatever it is that he wanted (spoiler alert - 7 years later he admits all of this - that he didn’t know what he wanted for sure and was afraid to make the wrong choice like me - and the AP - were items on a menu).
And another spoiler…he and the AP were according to the millions of texts I did get my hands on and some recorded phone calls "in LOVE". They chatted daily sometimes sending over 500 messages in a single day to each other. They were going to ride off into the sunset together. They were perfect for each other. Same jobs (they convinced themselves due to the weird nature of their job that no one who didn’t do it could "understand" them (which is odd as her husband had the same job lol). And just so much in common. They were the "soulmates" although they didn’t use that term. Their sex was fucking amazing - better than anyone else’s on earth - blah blah blah. But what opens after I blew it up and left….nothing. They never moved in together or even officially dated.
In my case the AP was married to a friend of his who was also a coworker. Eventually it blew up and everyone at work found out and he really fucked up a lot of his own friendships and he and the AP despised each other for awhile and she divorced and married someone else at his work. Sigh. My WH got himself into IC and was going very regularly for 3 years and he still goes just less so now. He did the work for him not for me as I had given up on him and really needed to heal me.
But putting that aside for a minute as who knows what will happen with your WS in the aftermath - what I can tell you is in leaving I felt waaaay better relatively quickly. And with some distance comes clarity. Yes I still mourned for what I thought we had but I suppose the one thing about sticking around for as long as I did was the emotional abuse I suffered really kicked the shit out of my perceptions about what we had. And it also made me realize that I had allowed the abuse to continue - that part was on me. I didn’t protect myself well enough because I wanted what??? That? Him? Us? In hindsight none of that was worth the profound misery and suffering that ultimately I had total control to stop any second I wanted to.
WH and I date now. Casually. He has done the work even to the extent he understands that he wrecked what we had. It’s toast. Dead. What we have now is different. More honest and with far less commitment from me. And guess what??? I am infinitely happier now. My boundaries are rock solid. He would love for me to move back - for us to be 100% us again but he knows I’m not ready. Maybe never will be. But not because I’m secretly pining away for someone else but because it’s just the way shit is now for me. And really m, for the most part, he’s a gem these days. He’s still defensive - it’s his go to - but he recognizes it immediately now and self corrects. He’s apologetic when appropriate. He’s much more introspective and thoughtful. He’s well changed - nd he feels better about himself too. It’s a win for sure even if our relationship didn’t make it fully intact.
But even if none of that had happened with him…even if I had left and he hooked up with AP and was till with her. I would still be better for having left because being with just me is one billion times better than being back where you are now.
So I feel for you. And I am proof there is hope. I recall crying so hard lying on the floor for so long that when I finally went to get up my eyelashes had glued themselves to the carpet. I recall that horrible pit in my stomach every stinking day because I was worried if he was lying or if I was making shit up in my head (it was both - he didn’t lie about every single thing he did but it was so much it was impossible to tell). Gaslighting and total lies. Defensiveness on the daily. Trying to fake that I wasn’t wholly miserable every single moment. You are in control of ending that and my very long winded advice is to take your control back and let the chips fall as they may…as ultimately they are going to anyway.
Look at my signature line - it’s true. You can get though this and come out the other side better than you can imagine right now. You just have to believe in yourself and put you first. You’ve got this.
