It has been two years since the man I had kids with left our family. I did not have a clue. I was living one life with a man I loved. He worked away a lot and would call to tell me he loved us everyday, planning for the future. We had two young children. He wanted them. We had been together over a decade. There was no sign or warning. Meanwhile it turned out he had a whole other life. That of a care free guy. Going on date nights, renting holiday homes and doting on another women, while telling me how exhausted he was from work and couldn’t wait to be home.
I have had hours and hours and hours of therapy. I’ve moved forward in terms of moving house, getting a new job, raising the children virtually alone. Just some days I still feel like the wind can be knocked from my lungs. Those days I am struggling and I think why? Why did he have children only to leave? Why did he suddenly turn so nasty to me and blame me for his cheating?
In reality I know the answer I’ve gone over it a million times but there it still pops up with the “what ifs’, the doubts, the trying to make sense of something that simply doesn’t.
I do not think people who cheat honestly realise the severity of the damage to those they leave behind in the carnage. Realising your life was a lie. That your reality was not what you thought. Questioning how you didn’t know. Being left as a single parent of young children and all the challenges and financial hardship that bring.
I will never be the same person I was before.