Background: common law 23 years, had house, kids together he had multiple affairs then a surprise marriage to a woman he met only knowing her 14 days that I found out about on my birthday by a miss directed phone call. In 1.5 years he was back and I helped him divorce the woman he left me for. He forced her and I to work together. Reconciled for 2.5 years then he bailed again. I got the house, and settlement, he got the business. I work for him in our old business as financially I can't make the same elsewhere, and all our young adult kids live at home with me as it's too expensive for them to be solo. He continues to hire women he's sleeping with and I'm forced to suck it up each time. He tried to hire 3 including the one he's with now, but it failed to complete. I asked him to not hire his playmates, as it triggers me.
Here I am, eight years later and I still don't feel healed. He has pursued a string of women, written love letters, crashed and burned through a succession of women since he left again in 2023. I turned down being "FWB" with him. He has pursued women 33 years younger, no one his own age. He's spent thousands on women that he didn't end up with in the long run. Fancy dinners, flowers, and things he took them places he never took his family. He put in effort for them that he never did in the past. He always picks women that are in need of assistance. A welfare mom with 4 kids under the age of 6, that was 33 years younger than him. The newest one is now his roommate. She's been to prison for drug distribution charges and will be on probation for another three years.
My situation is unique as I have to have constant contact. No real separation in the sense that I speak to him daily, interact with him, albeit he's often rude and abrupt to me. I must work with him, and I have to see all the expenses for his business. It still blindsides me to see $600 dinners, hotels, and something ugly surfaces in me when I see it. Even worse while uploading work photos for insurance in the middle was a naked picture of her coochie and two of her in a bathrobe. That set me back a fat minute as I gave him his phone back and didn't say anything for more than a week. He has hundreds of photos of disposable women but virtually none of his kids or family.
I live in a small town, and he lives an hour away. They moved in a house together when he couldn't afford an apartment and she was renting a room there. Recently I sat down in the only "nice" restaurant in my small town. This is the same restaurant we used to go to and they all know us. I was sitting at the bar. He came in and sat down 5 seats down from me and didn't notice me immediately. He looked up and said hello, then hastily left, looking like a deer in the headlights. I assumed to the bathroom, but I later realized she was in the bathroom. I later asked him to not take her to this restaurant, and leave me some peace in not having to explain yet another woman to the servers that all know us both by name. He has land a couple of miles from me and a lot three doors down that someday he could build on if he pays off is massive IRS debt personally and business wise. At 62 it will be nothing short of a miracle for that to happen, but stranger things have happened.
I've not mastered the "let them go" part. I've not dated. I'm in a state of I don't care until some new woman triggers something deep in me, and then I hope they both get leprosy, or something vile that he deserves. Part of you screams that it's not fair, that he doesn't deserve happiness at all, while you still struggle in a bubble of pain that comes and goes for years with no warning.
The rational part of me says he traded down each time, and in time that too will fall apart. People underestimate how much infidelity triggers trauma to resurface over and over. I can't get back the years I lost, the trust. I can't afford therapy, but I find some respite in knowing I have a paid off house, kids that love me, and more stability than he does. He is struggling to stay afloat, twists the narrative to be the victim and willingly acknowledges he did me wrong, but never publicly. He still tells people that "he got screwed over" in the divorce and is extremely salty that his happily ever after didn't pan out like he thought, and I got the house.
He said recently "I'll always be there for you, just like you've always been there for me". He paid for a hotel for all of us after a wildfire warning sent us all scrambling to find a place to stay till it was safe.
I have three years till I could retire, but I can't. I wasted decades being a SAHM so not enough Social Security in my name. All the income went in his name. Now I need the income I get from him to help build up my social security. I sacrificed so much for him and now it's glaring me in the face. I need to walk alone, but my fractured story isn't over just yet.
I will face it knowing that I'm a better person. Life isn't fair, but we can find a way to make it meaningful, we have to try harder is all. I will hope in enough time that I won't care what his outcome in life is, and I will move away to where I can no longer hear his voice. A place where he has no hold on me financially or through memories.
In the words of Dory, "just keep swimming".
[This message edited by Muggle at 8:38 PM, Sunday, September 28th]
