I guess what you don’t need is yet another poster telling you to leave.
But that’s what you are going to get…
Way back in the days I was engaged to a wonderful, beautiful woman. We started off dating casually, then decided to become a pair. After a couple of years, we moved in together and about 3 years later got engaged. We started planning our big celebratory wedding: a garden-party with a whole army of friends and relatives.
Her family accepted me with open arms. Her dad got me into fly-fishing (still my passion) and we had our eyes on a house only a bit down the road from her parents. You know – white picket fence and all that.
She was a hair-dresser and was a partner in a highly successful high-end saloon. Worked hard and made good money. The girls at the saloon and I were all friends, as well as their BF and husbands. All a big happy family. I was in the police, on my third year.
One Friday evening I prepared for a night-shift. We had our dinner, I showered and shaved, and we once again talked about whether to book the DJ or the band (the wedding was 5 weeks + 1 day away) and some minor seating detail. She kissed me good-bye and asked me to come home safe.
About 2 AM I had to go to the scene of a crash. Helping the paramedics I got some blood on the front and sleeves of my shirt. After finishing at the scene, I decided to drop off back home because I knew I was out of shirts at the station.
Yes. I walked in on her having sex with another man…
I had the fortitude there and then to decide to end this relationship. Walked out of the apartment with a clean shirt and never went back. About 6 years of relationship (including the BF/GF phase).
It was tough. It really was. Six months of pure hell followed by about a year of slowly diminishing pain. I think I only got fully over it about 18 years later because PTSD followed me around like a shadow.
Turns out she would go out to bars and randomly pick up men. I have also heard (but never bothered confirming it) that she did at least one customer to the saloon. I never got the complete picture, but I think it was something like 6 men over a 2-3-year period. “Only” sex, no attachments. I never had a clue, but once out I had some “friends” come tell me they had heard rumors…
I cancelled the marriage. Cost some money, but less than a divorce… I cut ties with her family (although good and decent people) and moved on with life. Like I say it was hard.
Nearly 2 years later I met my present wife. A woman I have loved and respected for nearly three decades. We have had our ups and downs, but physical infidelity is not one of them.
My ex? Well… I stopped following her years ago. Maybe a year or so after d-day. I have since left the city I was in at the time but visit family every now and then. I met her father 4-5 years ago and we got talking.
After our break-up she lost it. While I like to think that I focused on positive things and personal growth then she focused on being a victim. There really isn’t anything healthy or positive in someone in a supposedly committed relationship having random sex with random strangers. It doesn’t indicate she was in a positive place. And she went from bad to worse.
Kicked out of the saloon by her partners a year or two later (her father claimed she was victimized, I know she was embezzling funds…), random low-end jobs, on disability due to not being able to hold scissors any more, two failed marriages, one abusive, two sons that were both dead-weights…
I felt sorry for her. I didn’t feel any responsibility, but I felt sorry that she didn’t become what she could have been. I think I am successful. I live well, travel, have a great career, loyal friends and the best family in the world. It’s probably all due to my wife… but I wonder what prevented my ex from being my partner on that journey instead.
I also wonder if I would have ended up as a fat, donut-eating cop with 30+ years on the pavement with a bickering wife that liked to give random BJ’s to truckers behind my back…
I admit: Had this happened after we formally married, bought a house, had kids and all that then MAYBE my response would have been different. MAYBE.
But at that time then leaving her was the SECOND-best thing I have done in my life. The best being when I convinced my present wife to marry me.
