SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This is my story.

In April 2025, after a couple of rocky months, my wife came back from a short trip to her hometown and, out of the blue, told me we were over. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I asked questions. She said we had grown apart, that she didn’t feel seen by me anymore, and that the attraction was gone.

From that point on, I started working on myself. I meditated, helped more at home, joined a support group for husbands—nothing worked. In June, two weeks before we were supposed to go on vacation, she told me she needed more space and decided to go on vacation with a girlfriend instead, leaving me alone with our child and no backup plan.

She came back and said she wanted to try again. I continued my path, kept working on myself, and tried to be the best version of me. Still, she seemed disgusted by me. She sent me to live in the basement because she "needed more space," then moved out in November for the same reason—yet still wanted to spend Christmas together.

The days we spent together were great, to the point that everyone around us was saying, "What’s going on here?" Then, on December 31st, she told me again that she needed more space and couldn’t be with me anymore. I told her I respected her choice. She said she wanted to end things amicably, for the sake of our child, before things became nasty.

Well.

Just two days later, I found her journal. It contained graphic details of her relationship with another man that had been going on since September 2023—one and a half years before she ever said things were bad between us. There was also a clear plan to make me quit my job and relocate to another country where this guy lives, so she could take our child with her and be with him.

I am shattered. One thing was the divorce, but discovering I had lived in a lie for so long is a whole different level of betrayal. Letting her go is easy now; healing is not. I don’t know where to start. I’m torn between telling her to fuck off and staying amicable for the sake of my child.

The crazy part is that everything was planned from the beginning. In her journal there was a mkt about the different options and she stroke out the confession one because she was afraid of public shaming

The most important thing to understand:

It was never about you or what’s wrong with you. It was always about what’s wrong with her.

Read "Women’s Infidelity: Living In Limbo" by Michele Langley. She has a website you can download from. Two volumes; quick read.

Really helped me understand my cheating wife.

Tell her you’re going to get tested for STDs and she should too. Remind her of her nastiness.

Best wishes.

I am not trying to rain on you but every woman I know who left, left. They were done. They all said there was nothing wrong with their husbands, who were blindsided btw. Sometimes people get married because it is expected by family pressure, or peer pressure, or fiancé pressure, or you keep hoping you will feel differently. I know so many people who either talk themselves into a marriage or their families do. In the US without religious pressure you wonder how people with common sense keep doing this. If you are in another country the same.
I don’t think there is one thing wrong with you. You and she just married the wrong person. Where she took this into cruel territory is lying and plotting against you. I see absolutely nothing understandable about her behavior. The day she took her first step into a new relationship should have been the day she told you and left. There is no excuse, ever, for harming another person. Putting you in the basement! No!
I hope you already have an attorney. I hope you see a dr if you need help with anxiety and sleep issues. Don’t let this wreck your health. She is not worth it.

It very likely does not sound as just an affair, it is a replacement.

She had an exit option, once she felt is secured, she became ready to breakup with you.

There is about nothing you can do to save your bond because your WS bonded already with someone else.

She might regret it in the future, but for now it is over.

You should try to focus on yourself, on your future and your child.

She does not sound amicable to you, quite abusive in fact.

Match it and protect your boundaries, don't think it's all your fault: it was the WS decision and you cannot change it.

Do not react either, respond appropriately, amicable if she is, stand your ground if she is not. Protect yourself and your child, that's the only decision you truly have power to take.

If you want a deeper insight about you WS:

She is not a monster. Deep down she is probably suffering through what is happening in a different but similar way as you are.

So way she is treating you so poorly and doubling down?

It's a subconscious mechanism. She feels some level of shame for replacing you with OM and working from an A to a full replacement behind your back for only she know how long.

The only way her nerve system can justify her choices without destroying her ego, is if she can devaluate you to a level so low, that she can tell herself she was fully justified on he choices.

If she can make you the villain, she becomes the hero in her story, and her conscience stays clear.

It is not rational, is emotional, that is why it feels so cruel.

What can you do to preserve yourself during this transition?

This does not mean you can change her direction, but it means your best choice is to hold your frame, do not accept disrespect, do not even argue. Simply stop to be so agreeable. Calmly say no to any of her demands to degrade yourself (live in the basement, to the doghouse... stand up and smile, say 'no way' calm and collected).

If she attacks or insult you, do not react, go along, agree with her absurdities, double down and blow them up of proportions make a joke of it. She says she cannot stand you around? Agree that it will feel so much better once you both will be apart and find your own happiness, with a smile.

Do not pick up on her arguments, she does not want to fix anything, they are a pretext to validate her already set in stone choice. Be functional, not reactive, almost like with a stranger.

For the time you have together, live your life as she has already left, as you were alone with your child. Only interact for the practical things of daily management, do not pick on any provocation she may send your way. Smile it off.

If you have your own interests, working out, meeting people, culture, do it now. Do not hang around her, do not even inform her, start already living your life as she was never there. Your silence will hit her ego more than anything could.

Do it for yourself (for her too) and above all to show your child that no parents should ever push or accept disrespect.

She will still move on, but you will preserve your dignity, and she will always respect that.

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 3:44 PM, Friday, January 9th]

The most important thing to understand:
It was never about you or what’s wrong with you. It was always about what’s wrong with her.

100% true. Don’t take this as a judgement on you – it’s a failure of her.

Reality is that anyone in a marriage can decide to divorce. They can decide to cheat, drink, waste marital assets... whatever. It’s a free world and we are free to decide to do things that are morally wrong. If your wife decides she wants to have an affair and / or to divorce... well... she CAN decide both.

Just like you can decide you don’t accept her behavior. You can decide that living in a marriage where your spouse has chosen the affair partner isn’t "your thing", and that since she has chosen the AP over you, then divorce is the inevitable outcome.

In some ways it can be compared to having a possibly gangrenous foot. The options are to wait and see if medication can heal it, or have it amputated from the knee down. Obviously you don’t want to amputate, but you also know that at some point the choice goes from losing the foot from knee-down or losing your life from blood-infection. The "better" option might not be all unicorns and fairy-dust, but beats the worse option.

My suggestion: Embrace the decision.
However – be realistic about it.
I would NEVER suggest making divorce harder than it needs to be, but really evaluate what the assets and debts and the overall complexity of divorce would really be like. You mention taking your child to another country – SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY look into what that would mean. Everything from what you could do if denied visitation to cost and locality of visitation.

Your goal with divorce is not that you part as friends. It’s that you part knowing that the process was as fair as possible and that you both have ensured the best for your child. You want to be amicable coparents, you want that you can both be in the same room at your kids violin recital, and that your financial- and emotional lives are as separated as possible.

It’s not "nice" or enjoyable – but you can learn to live with a limp.

Take photos of those journal entries. And keep copies in a few different storage locations. They may help show a calculated pattern that could help in the divorce. Depending on where you’re at.