SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thanks for the update, HH. Glad you have a good update and that you are doing well. Sometimes, living well is the best revenge. I'm glad your children have a stable environment.

ETA: Maybe XWW thought she had to come "save" you from whatever she thought you need saving from.

[This message edited by leafields at 6:36 AM, Tuesday, November 21st]

Thanks HH for the update, glad to hear you are (mostly) doing OK. I can only imagine the ups and downs you must still go through though. Keep fighting the good fight!

While I will always be sorry you had to go through this experience, I am pleased to hear you have been able to rebuild your life and find happiness with someone who truly cares about you.

Many here have not been able to find the same. I know life is not perfect, but having someone in your court while going thru this truly is a blessing.

Thanks for the update.

Bump

G'day everyone. Well, I'm 18 months out now from D-Day and wanted to give an update.

Things are mostly going well, to the point where I well and truly am starting to have faith in the 'it takes about 2 years to get over it' motif. I am still with my partner, and things are going great guns on that front. We had a slight wobble after she started applying a little too much pressure to start talking about kids and marriage/moving in a few months ago, and I had to tell her to pump the brakes a bit. As I said to her by way of metaphor, 'it's very hard to get excited about buying a new house when you're still hosing out the smouldering coals of your old house.'

Nevertheless, things are good now that we have found common ground on that front. She's beautiful, caring, thoughtful, and she loves my daughters. I am happy.

But still, the enormity of it all still hits from time to time. It still feels like some kind of fever dream that I expect to wake up from; knowing full well that I won't.

On the slightly amusing side, no one here will be shocked to hear that AP recently dumped my ex-wife, after taking a two year posting overseas. According to people in my military circles, apparently he gave away 'their' (i.e. his) dog to another family, and he gave his car to someone else to look after in his absence. Rumour is that ex-wife has had somewhat of a breakdown and has told a few people that 'she's made some horrendous decisions'. It's too late now of course.

I initially took some degree of amusement at the situation (I mean, we all know what type of guy he is), but now I'm rather sad; it's like all of it was for nothing, as dumb as that sounds? The destruction of my family, finances, and my children's sense of stability...all because my ex-wife got treated like a temporary sex doll from two pieces of homewrecking $hit. As a further aside, the 1st AP is now apparently also screwing another co-worker. At least he remains on-trend! 🤣

Anyway, what can one do? The best revenge is to keep on living. And that's what I intend to do. I am hoping you are all doing well, and thank you so much for all the combined advice. It has been an absolute God-send.

[This message edited by Hurthalo at 11:19 PM, Saturday, February 3rd]

The best revenge is to keep on living. And that's what I intend to do.

Awesome update! So glad you're doing well.

That’s a great update. I’m so glad you’re moving forward after reading the hell you’ve endured. Also pleased she’s not doing so well.

Thanks for the update. You’re a model of how someone can get through this with dignity. How are your kids handling seeing their Mom?

Thanks everyone!

@1994, the kids are still young enough where there isn't any animosity. In saying that, my 11 year old knows EXACTLYT what went down, and I suspect that deep down there is some resentment there for her mother.

She's already asking about whether she can live in one house, and I can understand where she's coming from. My other two are 7 years old, so they probably don't really understand it.

In saying that, I will never forget the tears they sobbed getting themselves to sleep of a night, or the months one of them spent wetting the bed in sheer confusion of what was going on. It still makes me cry to this day.

Hurt

I want to warn you of a pitfall I fell head-over-heels into:
Your new partner is NOT your ex.
Your new partner is not necessarily going to behave like your ex did.

I nearly wrecked my present marriage about 10 years in because I was always suspecting my wife of cheating. Something my ex-fiance seems to have frequented, but I don’t have any reason to suspect my present wife of doing or ever having done. I dealt with it by addressing some PTSD issues I had, and our relationship has grown stronger every day since.

On that optimistic note…
When and if you marry your partner… have a prenup…

Now – I believe in marriage, and think a prenup can be a real dampener.
Well… maybe a better comparison could be that having a prenup might be like having a parachute in an airplane that neither of you have flown in or operated previously. It’s not because you intend to crash it, but rather because it might crash…
Just make sure any prenup is fair. Maybe even have a time-limit, so if you two are still married after 10-15 years it’s void. Like… If you divorce all you bring into the marriage is yours, all she brings is hers and whatever happened in the marriage is divided. That if you pass away in the next 10 years (or until youngest kid is 18) they inherit your stuff, but she can live in a jointly owned house but needs to pay them out when youngest turns 18… Whatever.
Just make 100% certain that if you two marry in 2025 and divorce in 2027 that you aren’t left with half of the half you were left with last time…

You know what Bigger, one of my biggest fears coming out of this goat-rodeo was wondering whether I would be able to trust again. I am still on meds for what has ultimately been diagnosed as trauma-based PTSD, and let's just say it hasn't been a fun ride. I did 24yrs+ in the military and nothing phased me, but yet having my wife cheat on me so prolifically absolutely knocked me sideways off my mental bike. I'm glad to say that things are nearly 100% better on that front. My therapist has been invaluable in this regard.

The long and the short of it is that not once have I worried about my current partner and potential infidelity. It hasn't even entered my head.

Good call on the pre-nup, I've already had that awkward semi-rhetorical chat with my partner and luckily for me, she is in full agreeance as she completely understands my need to protect myself and the kids. As my financial advisor said, 'you've already sub-divided once, you don't want to sub-divide again.'

The fact that anyone can leave a trail of infidelity-caused life-long destruction in their wake and yet still have legal grounds to take 50%+ of the betrayed spouse's wealth just boggles my mind.

Thank goodness my ex and I were amicable on that front.

[This message edited by Hurthalo at 4:31 AM, Wednesday, February 7th]

On the slightly amusing side, no one here will be shocked to hear that AP recently dumped my ex-wife, after taking a two year posting overseas. According to people in my military circles, apparently he gave away 'their' (i.e. his) dog to another family, and he gave his car to someone else to look after in his absence. Rumour is that ex-wife has had somewhat of a breakdown and has told a few people that 'she's made some horrendous decisions'. It's too late now of course.

The break-up is not surprising, but what's very poetic about all this is that your wife was supposed to go away for a 2-year posting, but she blew this opportunity to advance her career because you busted her cheating and divorced her ass. Your wife is literally a master class in how someone's life can be completely destroyed by lust and hubris.

For your daughters' sake, I hope that your ex learns something from these experiences, steps out of the revolving door of penises, and focuses her energy on being the best possible parent she can be. Lovers come and go; children only get 1 mother and 1 father.

On the slightly amusing side, no one here will be shocked to hear that AP recently dumped my ex-wife, after taking a two year posting overseas. According to people in my military circles, apparently he gave away 'their' (i.e. his) dog to another family, and he gave his car to someone else to look after in his absence. Rumour is that ex-wife has had somewhat of a breakdown and has told a few people that 'she's made some horrendous decisions'. It's too late now of course.

Since you seem to be Australian or perhaps a Kiwi I certain you are familiar with a boomerang. Be mindful of it, sometimes they slow in returning, but return they try.

Please speak to your lawyer more about the prenup. In Australia these are not water tight and a family law judge can always choose to set aside the prenup.

I had no prenup entered my relationship and it was over the "magic" ten year mark with children and lots of property involved.

I got a 5% adjustment due to having more assets before I met him. I had about five times the amount of my exWH entering our relationship in our twenties. I had been working overseas and already owned a house. I got another 5% adjustment due to age. We increase our asset pool significantly together. When you work out the difference it won’t even account him working 4 years more if we retired at the same age let alone the fact I owned a house in a good suburb.

Tread carefully. I have full asset protection in place against being sued etc but nothing in Australia protects any trusts or asset protection from the family court. They can touch everything. Whilst they can’t allocated money from bloodline trusts to a spouse (the a trust specific from inheritance) they can take it into consideration and award more to the other party from the marriage pool of asset.

My asset protection lawyer said the only way to protect your assets in Australia is to marry someone richer.

Whilst you are lucky as your dating pool was indeed always going to be strong, I’m afraid the same dating pool is offering me lots of cheater / liars as there seems to be a higher rate of offending men. Not great for the innocent female BS.

[This message edited by Tortured at 4:46 AM, Thursday, February 8th]

The break-up is not surprising, but what's very poetic about all this is that your wife was supposed to go away for a 2-year posting, but she blew this opportunity to advance her career because you busted her cheating and divorced her ass. Your wife is literally a master class in how someone's life can be completely destroyed by lust and hubris.

BluerthanBlue, this 100%. It's amusing/upsetting in equal measure that she had a loving husband who was willing to take everything on his shoulders for 2 years (back when I thought her intentions were pure) in order to further her career and happiness while she was potentially away. She threw her family away to chase a guy who had 2 other girlfriends and dumped her like a bad habit, and is now screwing another co-worker. She then monkey branched to another POS who has ditched her to go overseas on a posting by himself for two years. Absolute stupidity.

Since you seem to be Australian or perhaps a Kiwi I certain you are familiar with a boomerang. Be mindful of it, sometimes they slow in returning, but return they try.

You guessed correctly mate, I am an Aussie. And your intuition is spot on regarding boomerangs. Don't worry, I'm watching!

My asset protection lawyer said the only way to protect your assets in Australia is to marry someone richer.

Whilst you are lucky as your dating pool was indeed always going to be strong, I’m afraid the same dating pool is offering me lots of cheater / liars as there seems to be a higher rate of offending men. Not great for the innocent female BS.

Tortured, I am all for no-fault divorces to protect possible abused spouses in divorces, but I was genuinely shocked to see how little the Family Courts over here care about the wishes of the separating couple, or the base circumstances of the divorce. To me infidelity should be an exception. In saying that, we sought separate legal advice in the end and just did a BFA (Binding Financial Agreement) to sort it out amicably. I was actually disgusted to find that despite breaking up 3 marriages, she could have claimed a share of my superannuation and child support. Luckily we split everything 50/50 and meet costs of raising the kids 50/50, which has worked out great.

As for the dating pool, you are right, it is completely unfair to women past 30-40. I have a female school friend who got divorced about the same time as I did, and over a glass of wine I asked her how the dating scene was going. She proceeded to show me her online dating profile, and the list of absolute clowns in their 50s (she's 44 and very good looking) trying to hit her up for casual sex was embarrassing. One guy's profile pic was a picture of him with 'PISSHEAD' scrawled over his forehead in whiteboard marker. Form an orderly queue to the left ladies!