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So after d day he agreeded to stop talking to her. He even signed a contract stating so. So a month later I walked into the living room and caught him texting her. He thought it was ok because her grandfather passed away lol.

He moved out three weeks later and we met a few days after that in a lawyers office. He left October 10. No regrets

Initially, failure to go NC with the OM. But ultimately, in the email I was drafting telling her of the decision, I took an inventory of who she had become. I looked at that inventory and asked myself "if I had just met this person, would I consider having a relationship with them, knowing who they are?" The answer was a resounding "no". Then I asked myself "if she became the person she was before the A, and I had just met this person, would I consider having a relationship with them, knowing who they were?" The answer was still "no".

On Dday I was terrified to D. I was blindsided and heartbroken and scared shitless. My impulse, as so many of us have, was to R. My now Ex swore he wanted to R.

I put down pretty firm boundaries eg no contact with the OW, no more lies, no deceit etc... When I discovered 13 months after Dday that my Ex had violated pretty much everyone of my boundaries I kicked him out in the middle of the night. I knew that without a shadow of a doubt that there was no possible way that my M could continue.

I still loved my Ex for a long time after that. I don't know what the exact moment was when I stopped, but I have. He went completely off the rails during the S/D process. It took a while for my heart to catch up with my head but it did. In the end I knew that it would never get better for me and so I jumped off the cliff and into the D process. Leaping into the unknown abyss of how a divorce would play out for me was terrifying, but staying in my super shitty marriage was not an option. It just wasn't.

Staying out of fear is understandable for a short time but do you really want to live your life like that? Yes things may get ugly, but there are laws to protect you and living like how you are is no way to live.

After two years of R, no more cheating, but with a gradual return of his contempt and disrespect toward me,

Well it took a little longer for me, he "seemed" like he was better for about 5-6 yrs, but yes then the contempt and the resentment and the disrespect started with me again, and for us it was during a period where we were actually going thru some hot sex, I felt good and it was pretty often.... and THAT is when it started creeping up with him, the sarcasm, the little digs that started out slowly then increased... then one night after I just did not feel like it that night he got SUPER ANGRY at me... something I had not seen since he was in his A fog. Basically cut me off and did not speak to me for a couple of days, which made me angry and quite frankly shocked me. I started to realize that there was a pattern that he did not like this "sexy" side of me. He needed to shut it down so guess what? It did. He got what he wanted. It was the start of a long slow detaching in the last few years by him.

What I found is that my voice or my wants or needs were fine if he felt like it, but the minute he felt I had somehow in his mind "withheld" sex from him, which was not the case... or if I wanted to discuss something and have my opinion or we got in an argument as most couples do after many years.... THAT was his opening to say I was a bitch and decide that I needed to be punished. That "I" deserved to have the ultimate most horrible possible outcome and that was him cutting me off sexually, blaming it on ME and then going back out and starting up other behaviors outside of the marriage.

But that night to me was the beginning of the final straw.

I came to the conclusion that she was likely BPD, and wasn't going to get better.

I’ve shared this before, but the second my ex confirmed his A on DDay, I remember thinking, “Guess I am getting divorced.” I tried to work on the marriage and see if we could R because of the kids and because of my own fears and shame.

Eight months after DDay, we went on a 10 day road trip we had been planning for a year. We had sex once and just felt so disconnected. I remember driving through Yellowstone and him berating our daughter who was 7 at the time, and me sticking up for her. He was livid with me and started to berate me. I just sat in the car, stony, thinking how much I hated him. I also remember on that trip our son (5 then) begging daddy to ‘slow down and walk with all of us’ as he was always ten strides ahead. I would just stare at the back of his head and think about how horribly he treated me and how I didn’t want to be married to someone like him anymore.

Then we came home, and I went back to work. He was home for the summer with the kids (teacher) and I decided randomly to log into his personal email, which I had never done because he never used it. There, I found emails about his new Ashley Madison account he’d opened the day we got home from vacation. That was it. I was done for real.

[This message edited by ADryHeat at 12:42 AM, January 9th (Tuesday)]

Finding her POSOM in my house. That was the final boundary.

When I confronted him about the affair it was something I knew for a fact, yet he still denied it. I calmly informed him that I wouldn't participate in a 3 person marriage, contacted a lawyer and prepared to divorce. He eventually admitted to the affair but wouldn't ever commit to dropping MOW.

I don't think he ever planned on getting caught, or if he did get caught the repercussions would be minimal at best. But I was pretty much done with him on Dday.

MOW left her husband and moved in with mine a few weeks after I left. They married the following year. I can't think of 2 people who deserve each other more.

A year after D-Day and the typical deadly mixture of a campaign of vilifying me during the then-secret affair and TT upon discovery, our R had started eroding. She was deeply remorseful early on, but when i began to feel great anger in the post-hysterical bonding phase, she pushed back hard. She began to resent my anger and feel like her feelings were being neglected. She characterized my anger as "violent," both to herself and our daughter, even though the worst I did was yell at her. After threatening suicide and blaming DD for it, to DD's face, DD turned her anger toward the safe parent. XWW was hugely relieved at this and fomented DD's anger at me, never admonishing DD in her lashing out at me.

But a year after DDay, XWW gave the final straw - a withering and cruel mocking of my deepest vulnerabilities - my desires to have a closer relationship with my kids. She mocked my voice, with fake crying and dripping sarcasm, for an extended rant. "Oh, I want a relationship with my children, because I'm always the victim..." she would say, literally laughing at me when she finished.

This was my "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" moment (reference to The Shining in which the beleaguered spouse starkly learns that crazy spouse is far crazier than suspected). I realized that in our attempt to reconcile after her horrible destructive behavior, she was willing to go to that place that no spouse should go to, especially a spouse who had fucked things up so badly.

That was when I realized she was irredeemably untrustworthy.

I'm glad I was able to see just how hopeless it was, removing all doubt that I needed to get as far away from her toxic influence as possible.

I think the final straw for me was when he sat me down and finally confessed? his affairs but showed absolutely no remorse.

Final straw was recently. One of the OC's from OW#1 texted me and told me about OW#2 (or it could be OW# 3+ to infinity for all I know now) There is irrefutable proof. He had been crying poverty but had enough money for this.

I haven't confronted him, getting ducks in row. Will NEVER tell my source when I do. (I learned that lesson all too well in the past, even though he will try to bully me into revealing my source)

Don't have money for D, but working on it. I'm so scared, but this is it. I'm done.

Funny thing, I'm not even that angry at him, but at me for putting up with all this crap for so many years.

hcsv,

He said she was a friend and would always be a friend. I told him then he was going to have a friend and not a wife because she wasn't going to be a third person in my marriage.

Switch the pronouns and that is VERBATIM what happened with me.

The constant disrespect and manipulations were the final straw. I would have tried to get over the A. But I never got the chance. R was never really an option for her. She "offered" it (face-palm) then later said I was too emotional and decided I wasn't a good candidate for R. How's that for manipulation.

If she would have shown me real remorse I would have withstood the pain. I always believed infidelity was a deal breaker. We both talked about it all the time. But now I'm wondering if my "acceptance" of her A if we attempted R would mean I was compromising a core value. Could I live with that? I honestly don't know.

My ex swore he wanted to R. For about 6 weeks, he did everything right. He checked in with me all the time, he was home, he showed an interest with me and the kids. However, he couldn't maintain this family man act because he is inherently too selfish to care about the need of others. Slowly, his old patterns started to creep back in. About 3 months after d-day, I suspected he was back in touch with OW and that there was more to his story then he had told me. I hacked into his computer and found evidence that his timeline didn't make sense and that his affair was much longer than he admitted.

About 4 months post d-day, a friend let me know she saw my ex and ow at Starbucks. I didn't confront him right away because we had an overnight trip planned to see a concert. My kids were staying with one of my best friends. Anyway, at that time, I issued the final ultimatum which required that he show proof of following all of my conditions. I let him know that I knew he broke no contact. I told him he had 24 hours. We went to the concert that night and I felt nothing but disgust when I looked at him. He is mean, selfish, arrogant, not a good dad, not a good partner, etc. I just didn't care anymore. I had my mind made up. Even if he met my conditions, I was done.

When we returned from the concert, I called my lawyer, met with her and filed for divorce. I told him to look for a place and that he had 4 weeks to move out. I moved into the spare bedroom until he was gone.

He tried to hoover me back a couple of times. He also tried to use scare tactics (he makes significantly more money than me). I had a good lawyer so I knew he was full of hot air. I also knew that I would never be safe with him. Something had changed. I was so done.

I think the breaking point for me was seeing just how ugly he was inside. He literally makes me sick. Even now, I can't make eye contact with him because I'm revolted.

[This message edited by CornflakeGirl at 1:28 PM, January 11th (Thursday)]

My xWW was acting strange for 2-3 years but she was on depression medications and I was bending over backwards to support her as she battled her illness. It never really dawned on me that she was capable of such evil deceit to not just myself but our 3 amazing sons so I never investigated. I'm just not the snooping type. When I finally decided to look at her email more in an effort to maybe understand her actions while "depressed", I was simply floored. I remember thinking about reading for 15 mins "My marriage is over. Now what?"

Of course we all know nothing is ever that straight forward when it comes to infidelity and reconciliation or divorce. I confronted, she cried and played victim, then proceeded to still see the guy. After I caught her with a burner phone, she said she wanted a 6 month separation and wanted me to cosign the lease on the apartment she had her eye on. I hadn't found SI yet but I'm not stupid. She wanted to continue the affair while keeping me on the back burner.

I said no, we are divorcing and sign your own damn lease. Since it had only been a few weeks since DD divorce still seemed so crazy to me and I now recognize I was instinctively protecting myself but what I really wanted was my old wife and my life to return to normal.

Two months before we had to make it official by signing the papers, she started coming around saying she wanted to go to MC save our marriage.

We met a few times and I always came back to a one word question: "Why?" The last time we met I got around to that question again. I really wanted to know. I'll never forget her looking at me and saying "The problem is I fell in love with a married man who was never going to leave his wife."

Drop the mic. For a smart guy and I can be pretty dense at times but the light bulb finally clicked on. I was plan B and she wouldn't be sitting in front of me at that moment if her damn boyfriend would just simply leave his wife. That was my moment. The turning point. I went from not being unsure to knowing I somehow had to get through this divorce. I had no idea what was on the other side but the divorce was happening and I was going to be the sane parent for my sons from that point forward.