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Packing up all of her things. I don't want her in my house and someone has to do it. She has so much clutter, so much. I don't understand why after all the horrific treatment, all the disrespect, I am so sad. I am beside myself with sadness -- sadness for what I know now was all a lie, all an elaborate hoax designed to use me and spit me out. She never truly loved me. She does not care. And yet I grieve. I grieve. I grieve.

[This message edited by 84CF at 9:59 PM, September 11th (Wednesday)]

You, as well as the rest of us, were trusting persons. We happened to become attached to predators that took advantage of that trust.

Personally, I started running to get out of my head. Please don't drink too much, and please try and think that there are brighter days ahead, my brother. It's difficult to see that now, but this will be behind you one day - and you'll be better off.

In your situation, with the constant DDays, lying, and adultery, all her stuff would be on the front lawn - near where the garbage pick up is - she has until garbage day to get it, or it's gone to the dump.

It angers me to no end to see her treat you so poorly. She is sick, and if this has gone on this long, I'd be done. I live in a fault state, so in that instance, I'd gather all the evidence I could - maybe even hire a private detective - and get pictures or video for the hearings.

Movers came yesterday afternoon to take away her things. So many things. An unbelievable pile of things. My house feels empty, but also clear. Nothing more hidden in drawers, in closets, in corners, in plain sight.

And yet, I still feel so, so sad. I am sad about the waste. I mourn the loss of what I thought we had, but because I don't actually know what we had anymore, that mourning is diffuse, confusing. I am focusing on myself, on putting one step in front of the other and continuing forward. Yet I am worried about her, which makes me both angry and bewildered -- bewildered because she does not truly worry about me, and probably never has.

Terrible, terrible waste of time, of energy, of life. And yet I continue forward, taking care of myself, of my business, the best that I can.

[This message edited by 84CF at 4:55 PM, September 14th (Saturday)]

As I mentioned before, she has been waiting for you to do the dirty work; too cowardly to end it herself, she let you find out the extent of her adultery and passively waited for you to terminate the marriage.

Lord have mercy on the poor sucker she marries next. I doubt this woman has an ounce of compassion in her soul.

You are supposed to mourn the loss of what was and what was supposed to be---this is all part of the process.

There is no quick-fix, but I can say that you are on a far faster path to recovery than many of us. These may seem like shallow words of encouragement, but re-read this 3 months from now, and you will see what I mean.

It takes time and effort to recover from a loss like this. Currently, you are putting in effort on yourself, and time is elapsing. Even though you may feel at your lowest, believe me, you are on the right path. Things will get better. The sharp pain will fade a little more and more as time goes by, and if you continue with the effort on yourself, the progress accelerates.

Her items are gone from the house. No contact=No new hurts. Start doing things more for yourself--hobbies, exercise...whatever you want to try. I am not saying to forget the past, just to try not to dwell on it.

My brother is in the final stages of his divorce...they were married for almost 30 years. And although infidelity was not involved, he never saw the end coming---to him, he was totally blindsided. I believe the last quote she gave to him when they separated, was "I don't love you, I don't want you, and I don't need you". He couldn't believe that he was totally discarded, and although I am sure they had plenty of marital faults on both sides, he is still processing how someone he was with for over 30 years can just discard him...like he was never important to her.

Abandonment from our partner sucks. No doubt about it. And searching for "why" this has happened will drive you insane, because you will never know what was/is inside her head. That is why you need to focus on you. You are your own source to happiness.

Keep forging ahead.

Gods, what a roller coaster. I was cool and calm all morning, then terribly sad all afternoon, now I am so fucking angry. I cannot believe that I fell in love with a fucking sociopath. How does anyone do what she has done and live with herself. And yet I read these boards and it happens over and over and over again. How do people allow themselves to be so cruel to people whom they are supposed to love and respect? I will never fucking understand it.

84....we can't understand it because it's something we would never do.

I'm sorry this is all happening to you. But your life will get better.

{{{hugs}}}

k9

Haven't posted in a while as I've been really trying to focus on healing and moving forward. I've been having a lot of difficulty in the past two weeks, though, dealing with the complete and utter lack of remorse. In some ways I'm improving, in others not so much. Insomnia has become more of a problem -- barely got more than an hour or two of sleep last night.

The unresolvable thought that keeps pulsing through my head is that it was easier for her to inflict all of this pain and then to abandon me and her entire life than just to be honest. I have to accept the painful fact that she would never just say: she does not love me, maybe never did. (Right up until the end she actually said the exact opposite.) But what I can't accept is how she has to have narrated all of this to herself, to her family, to her friends. Clearly she feels that she has no need to make amends, to try to make this right.

The dismissiveness, the utter lack of love and respect, is still cripplingly painful.

I am so sorry this has happened. I can feel the pain in your words. I want to say this GENTLY and you must know that I too am married to a serial cheater. When I 1st found out I was going to be the reconciliation/forgiveness BS of all time...after all it was just a ONS...right? WRONG! he is bordering on sex addict, and cheating is the norm for him...not the exception. I believe you have more heart breaking episodes ahead. You will learn things about her that will let you know, you have been married to a stranger who is excellent in manipulation and lies but fails miserably in humanity. You will survive this...I PROMISE. You will survive, and you will be happier and strong when it is over. Serial cheaters suck the life out of their spouses and children. When you are finally done, you will not spend years mourning her, you will marvel at how bright the sun shines and how much energy you have suddenly discovered. Once I gave up and accepted my marriage (25 yrs) to a TOTAL stranger, I got busy planning my future and i now feel excited. Im filled with a lighthearted, stressfree existence but I paid for it with years of real misery. YOU WILL SURVIVE THIS. YOU WILL BE STRONG AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY AGAIN. I PROMISE.

As for "you will never get over this," I understand what that means. It means you will not be the confused, naive person who found comfort in her touch. HOWEVER, you WILL be happy again. you WILL be excited about life again. you WILL forget that she exists...and for me it was a big day in my life when I actually felt a tinge of happiness when I found out he had screwed up at work. I PROMISE IT IS VERY EASY TO DISENGAGED EMOTIONALLY FROM A PERSON WITH WHOM YOU ARE NOT HAVING SEX, AND WHOM YOU KEEP SECRETS FROM.

Once I began padding my savings accounts and stopped having sex with him I grew colder and colder. Now? Its like having to speak to a coworker whom you verry muc dislike. I am civil, and I attend to business, but it is sheer relief to get away from him. YOU WILL GET OVER THIS DEAR AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY AGAIN!

84CF

Have you had any contact with her family since she left?

With the way she treated you have you had no reason to reach out to her parents to make them understand what she has done and ask them to help her???

Just curious.

HM

Contacting her family would take an enormous amount from me for tiny gains, if any at all. I must admit that I've been slightly surprised that they haven't reached out to me. I can only imagine what she is/is not telling them. The main reason that I haven't reached out, though, is self-preservation. They are notorious enablers and rugsweepers, who are frankly responsible for a lot of their daughter's fucked-up-edness. (Though I do not absolve her of control over her actions -- she chose this.) The bottom line is that I doubt they would do anything other than validate by inaction and willful blindness.

Well, a month since my last post and I feel like I'm slipping backwards. I've been in a similar pattern for the past few weeks: sadness and anger, with a little bit of light mixed in. She finally contacted me this weekend, however, about getting the rest of her things. She mentioned again wanting to renegotiate the financial split that we agreed upon months ago. Her selfishness combined with feigned sympathy designed only to make herself feel like she's covered the bases of sympathetic decorum has torn open all the wounds again. "I cannot express how sorry I am," she says -- yes you can! Say it and back it up with action, for gods' sake! Show some freaking remorse! Any sign!

And so today I'm finding it very difficult even to breathe. I am so sad and this is coupled with feeling so weak for not being able to stay angry and braced against all of the horrible ways in which she has treated me through all this. I just cannot believe how easily she has been able to discard me and her life with me and slip into a completely new life. The bottom line is probably just that it is painful to see her move on so easily, without feeling anything real for the damage that she has caused, able simply to say that her life with me is over -- oh well! -- time to move on to the affair guy. It simply means that I never really meant anything. What I thought was a wonderful part of my life has been a complete fraud. Never mind that she spent the summer telling me that she didn't even like the guy, that he was bad for her, that their relationship was not good. Never mind that she spent the summer telling me how much she loved me.

Last night, in the middle of the night, I felt the strongest urge by far since the separation in August to text or call her. I wanted to ask, "Seriously, do you feel anything at all? How can this not be hard for you? How can you continue to make these choices? These mistakes? How can you so willingly go back on every word you have said to me? Your three pages of self-written wedding vows? How can you just throw away our life???"

I didn't do it. I hope I'll be able to stay strong, but I feel weaker now than I ever have. I feel so horrible and it's getting harder rather than easier to find any comfort.

You need to appreciate that some people are incapable of love. They take but never give back. If a better deal comes along then they discard their current relationship and move on to 'better things'. The process goes on ad nauseam since there's always a more desirable deal around the corner.

Its no use communicating with her. She has no soul to appeal to; no heart, no compassion; just a devotion to her own interests and needs. Just hold yourself together until the sun shines again.

Hey 84, want to let you know I just read your whole thread, and I'm so sorry for what you're going through. Let us know how you're doing.

I went through something similar a few months before you. Not sleeping and not eating were the worst. Not sleeping includes the spinning mind in the middle of the night. I can't believe I can say this, but it does get better. I really thought it might not. But knowing that doesn't help when you're there. I remember being just SO EXHAUSTED all the time. At the very, very end of my rope. I didn't even know where the end of my rope was until this experience.

I remember also feeling like I was going backwards. You're not. There is no backwards or forwards. This is some non-linear shit we're doing now, but we ARE HEALING. This horrible, searing pain? That's what healing feels like, unfortunately. It's not soft and peaceful. The bone is being broken and reset, and it hurts like hell.

Keep posting, let us know how you're doing.

Thanks, Artemesia, and everyone else, for reading.

I feel that I'm hardly in the "just found out" category anymore (although in truth 6mos is still not a long time), but I need to keep posting. Seems as though it's about every three weeks or so that the difficulty becomes really oppressive and I return to this thread. Mostly just trying to document and otherwise maintain 180/no contact.

She moved the rest of her things out just before Thanksgiving, which was intensely painful. I packed her things because I don't want her in my apartment, but this meant having to deal with all of her things that remind me of her and of us: our wedding things, the pictures from years of our life, framed and otherwise, which I had set aside months ago but otherwise not addressed. It rips me apart even writing about it.

On Thanksgiving day, she wrote with the subject line, "Thank you," and said that she was so grateful to have me in her life, that she loves and misses me. No past tense, although I'm guessing that this was what she was trying to convey. In what sense, I scream into the void, am I at all in her life???? Seriously, what the fuck could those words possibly mean to her? I know she's trying to make her life into something liveable, trying to rewrite our story and her own into something less sordid. She's trying to perform "loving care," I guess. I'm sure she's now telling herself and anyone who will listen that this was all meant to be, that she loves this other guy, that all will be happier, etc. It's such crap. And yet no one calls her out on it. No one can even see it. Our mutual friends do nothing, say nothing. She just proceeds as if completely abandoning our life together is part of the natural course of things that people do from time to time.

And today I'm finding it difficult to breathe.

I feel so humiliated that I miss our life together. It wasn't real. She was never the person I thought she was. And yet I grieve so much. What is with that, truly? Makes little sense to the rational side of me.

84CF,

I've been on this site a really long time and reading here is always painful for me, even though it's been a really, really long time since my first D-day.

I know you are hurting, thinking the time you spent with this woman was a lie, that you look like a fool, and that you wonder why, after all that, you can still hurt so badly.

Just because she didn't value you and your relationship doesn't mean the time you invested and the feelings you had for her weren't real and worthwhile and that it didn't count. Just because other people don't seem to be holding her accountable doesn't mean they are right. And most definitely it doesn't mean that she was. Because in no way that any rational human can describe, was what she did anything but horrible.

The thing is--the only people that are going to "get it" are people who have walked a mile in your shoes. People like us on SI. See--when you get cheated on, (and I think it's a lot worse for men) all of a sudden, people who have never been where you are, and are pretty smug in thinking that they never will be, start looking at you like you MUST have done something wrong because they believe the whole "it takes two to make a good marriage" (and it is totally true), but it really does only take ONE person to blow a marriage to smithereens. Because regardless of whatever else is going on--the cheating spouse, with no consultation at all to her/his faithful spouse, forever changes the rules in the relationship.

People who haven't been cheated on will never, ever get it. They will tell you to get over it, to let her go, to get mad, to get even, to get on with your life, that you're better without her. Or they'll say they can't choose sides, they don't want to judge, they don't want to get involved. They don't understand your grief--hell no one has died, so why all the mourning? They just don't get it.

It sucks, all of it, and there is just no getting around it. The only way out is through, (which is an Emerson quote, I believe), but it is true. You may never get over it but you can get past it, you can learn from it and you can go on to live an amazing life. Even if you can't imagine that life right at this moment. Surround yourself with people who are totally on your side. Let yourself feel whatever feelings you have. Be good to yourself, be your own best friend. Give yourself the gift of time and know that it will get better. You will be better. You are no longer connected to the person who did the worst thing that a spouse can do. I say that because when I went through it--I thought that if he actually killed me it would have been less brutal.

You have a chance for a do-over. The end of your story hasn't been written yet. You are older and wiser, maybe a little banged up. But you are in charge. Don't let this woman steal another minute of your life or your sunshine. She doesn't deserve it.

The worst thing to cope with is the rejection; the judgement that you fail to qualify; just not good enough. Really that isn't the case. your wife's values are corrupt and she puts little value on kindness, decency, compassion, trust or loyalty. The new guy may have an impressive lifestyle, body or social position, but they matter little when trying to make success of a relationship.

You have to climb out of the pit you have been cast into. Time to deliver harsh judgement on your STBX and see her for what she is. Destroy or give away all things connected with her and start the painful process of moving on. You can do it; mourn a little less everyday and find a friend to talk over your pain and offer new insights. A good friend is worth all the antidepressants in the world.