My wife and I have been married 4 years, but together almost 12. We had been college friends for 2 years before that. We had our ups and downs, but I always felt like we got through the tough times stronger than before. I loved her very much, and for most of those 12 years, I truly felt that love reciprocated.
I found out on Labor Day that she has been having an affair with a coworker. I woke up that morning and she was just gone. According to a text, she was out shopping with her girlfriend S, but in reality she was out with this guy. Long story short, S was trying to cover for her and I caught them in a lie. I confronted my wife over the phone and she admitted to being out with "someone from work" (whose name she still has not identified). When she showed up at home two hours later, she wasn't offering any answers or apologies. I told her to pack what she needed and come back when she could tell me the truth. She moved in with her friend S that same day (and has been living there ever since). I also found out that S, a former cheater herself, did indeed meet them for coffee that morning and likely knew all about this affair.
I was so lost. This woman had been deceiving me for months, acting as if everything in our marriage was tip top. Our bedroom wasn't dead, our physical intimacy didn't disappear, and she continued to tell me she loved me on a daily basis both in person and via lovey-dovey work texts. I needed answers, so Labor Day night, I frantically snooped for clues. I found out that she, for at least the past two months, had been secretly interviewing with other companies. How far did this rabbit hole go?
She came back the next day and gave me a world class lesson in blame-shifting. Conspicuously absent was any kind of remorse for cheating on me or explanation for why she not only fell out of love in the first place, but thought that an affair was her best course of action. When confronted about the job interviews, she said, "I get lots of job offers, I'm coming up in the world," and, "people can keep secrets from other people". She gave off a sense of entitlement that I hadn't seen in years. For two hours, she lobbed as many angry, hurtful things at me as she could, like the Hendersons throwing rocks at Harry to make him leave at the end of that movie. Eventually, I asked her if she had feelings for the coworker and her silence told me everything. Things she said after that made it seem like she didn't want to stop pursuing this guy. I wasn't going to get anymore answers out of her that night. She needed "space".
On Wednesday, by complete happenstance, I ran into her at the park as I was leaving a run. She approached me with an off-putting politeness and a detached patronizing tone, chit chatting with me about a whole lot of nothing as if we were old acquaintances. That night, I wrote her a love letter. I did this during our toughest times. I was fully in "I want you back, let's save this marriage" mode and wrote only of the things I wanted to change about myself--while ignoring her massive betrayal. I told her that I had been thinking of wanting kids, something I'd been mulling over for the last few months. This was always a thorn in our relationship. She wanted to get married to me despite knowing full well, from day one, that I never wanted kids. She even went off her birth control without telling me, two years into the marriage to force a baby on us. I should've divorced her then. We went to counseling after that, and she showed no remorse or understanding of just how heinous her actions were.
Also relevant to our relationship history, during our 6th year together, she carried on a secret relationship with a much older coworker. The guy was, at minimum, grooming her, sending her texts and calls in the evenings. She told me that he was already cheating on his wife, with another woman, and that he was "practically her dad's age". She kept it a secret because she "didn't want to make me jealous". I eventually accepted that, like a chump, but who knows what really happened. Each time she'd do something like this, I'd keep staying with her because of all the usual reasons: comfort, loyalty, LOVE.
On Thursday, she came over and resisted any pleas to salvage our marriage. She was already checked out--months ago, obviously--but I still had no clue. She told me she felt nothing while reading my love letter. She said it pissed her off when I mentioned wanting kids. It was obvious she was done, but she kept stringing me along with false hope (while consulting with a lawyer, of course). I asked her to move back in so we could start salvaging this marriage. She said she wanted the freedom to "go out on the weekends without me getting angry and wondering where she was", the implication being she would be going out WITHOUT ME, and likely with the unnamed coworker. Another day down, and still no closure.
Then, on the Monday after Labor Day, I found out about her secret Snapchat and WhatsApp accounts. This was my last straw. I realized then that this affair had probably gone on for a long time; she later admitted "It hasn't been that long", which in Cheater-Speak likely means "a few months". At that moment, I cut off my feelings for her. I couldn't let myself continue to love someone who so clearly didn't love me back. The next day, she came over and officially called it quits. "I think this is the end of us," she said. She even gave me the engagement ring back. She was cold and detached the whole time. That part hurt the most. It was as if our 12 years together had meant absolutely nothing to her. It'll take years for me to get over that feeling.
In the week that followed, we politely discussed asset distribution details over email like I was her coworker--except not exactly, because she didn't want to have an affair with me. She wanted to sweep this under the rug as quickly as possible and move on with her life, like I was a corpse that she needed to hide before the sun came up. I couldn't afford to hire a lawyer and fully pursue my cut of the assets, so we both wanted to resolve this without going to court. Less than 4 weeks after I outed her affair, we had our divorce agreement notarized. I get a cash buyout and two more weeks in our house, then she gets to move back in and claim sole ownership of it. I cared for this house almost exclusively, and it's going to tear me up inside when I have to leave it for good.
Over the past 5 weeks, I've experienced intense shock, waves of anger and sadness, crippling anxiety, more waves of anger and sadness, and a deep, dark bitterness. This has been the most traumatic experience of my life. I feel like my entire way of life was stolen from me in an instant. Meanwhile, she put on a strong face and showed absolutely no remorse, no regrets, no second thoughts, no hesitation, and no pity. One day I was in a happy marriage with an equally happy spouse, the next I meant absolutely nothing to her and I was merely an obstacle between her and the new future that she had been planning for some unknown period of time. Sure, there were red flags in our past that she was capable of such behavior, but nothing in the months leading up to DDay. No hesitant communication of her feelings. No sense of withdrawal. Just one person gleefully deceiving her husband while juggling her double life.
I felt like an idiot. I felt used. I felt lost. I felt worthless. I felt like the last 12 years has been nothing but an elaborate ruse. Was any of this real?
[This message edited by AbandonedGuy at 6:27 PM, October 9th (Tuesday)]
