I left my marriage for him - he didn’t return the favour

[Ladywit]

Two years ago, I met a married man whilst I was also married. It had been a long and unhappy marriage for me and this man offered everything I had been longing and hoping to find in life before it was too late.
Although I was very cautious when I met him and didn’t sleep with him until a year after meeting, he broke down my defences completely. Meeting him put my already troubled marriage on a downward spiral and, egged on by this man in whom I found both a lover and a friend, I filed for divorce last year. He also claimed to be stuck in a very unhappy marriage, made promises and constantly referred to our future together. Although I told myself that he’s merely played the role of a catalyst, deep down I know I left the marriage to make a legitimate place for him in my life.
With the breakdown of the marriage came many challenges, most of all financial as my ex managed to transfer everything to offshore accounts and I have been struggling with single motherhood and a full time job. But I was still relieved to have taken this step and it seemed to me that I had found true love in the process.
However, when I pressed for him to take similar measures and make it possible for us to embark on the future HE had spoken about since the beginning, he didn’t seem to be able to follow through. After seven months of penduluming, during which he asked his wife for a trial separation, went back, we broke up, came back and asked me to go away on a weekend with him, assuring me that he had decided he wanted to be with me, left me again and went on an anniversary holiday with her (which completely devastated me), so on and so forth until finally the painful cycle ended a couple of weeks ago.
I’m weeping as I write this and hurting so deeply. I had to deal with all this uncertainty and emotional trauma while having to deal with the aftermath of the divorce and everything else. It has left me broken and questioning everything. I’m also feeling an immense amount of rage and wondering how it could be that I was hoodwinked by someone I considered the love of my life.
While it is true that we were both married when we met, I didn’t sleep with him until I had decided I was going to leave my marriage, and had taken steps towards it. Perhaps I should have demanded the same of him? I just was so certain it was only a matter of time before he would do that as he was always the one talking about us getting married. I suppose I trusted him.
The penduluming has also confused me, I know he felt genuinely conflicted about breaking his family unit but I feel furious about how he went about with it and prolonged the pain and confusion for me. It feels like he was struggling and trying to wean himself off me. Even during our last conversation he implied he was going to extricate himself from his marriage and come find me, whilst also saying that he would not be able to live with himself if he didn’t give it one last shot because his wife was trying her best.
But you see, the thing is, that poor woman has no idea about me and the last two years.
In my moments of anger, I feel I ought to tell her so that she at least knows what she’s dealing with and bending over backwards for. I feel he’s gotten away scot-free after destroying my life and is enjoying being wooed back by his wife on top of it all. It feels massively unfair both to me and her and I feel certain he will repeat what he did to me with another woman.
In other words, I feel affronted and my sense of justice demands that he be punished in some way.
I’m aware that this is a very basic, primal feeling and I want to know if I should act on it. It just seems unfair that he’s able to saunter back into playing the role of a doting family man after deceiving both me and his wife.
The anger and hurt I feel have paralysed me and I’m struggling to get on with life. I’m 40, educated and attractive but I feel broken, my marriage to a narcissist had already harmed me and I feel cheated that the man I fell so in love with and thought was my redemption and the balm for my wounds chose to play with me and hurt me so profoundly. Did he ever love me at all? What did he gain from this? Why does a part of me still hope he’s going to come back? I know I can never trust him so should I tell the wife and get some closure?
Please respond from a kind place x

Because you were in an unhappy marriage OP you think your entitled to have an affair with a married man and you seem to think that justifies your actions. You are selfish and keep trying to be the victim I'm in an unhappy marriage, he lied to me, he betrayed me by not leaving his wife. Look at your own actions and take responsibility for them what you done was wrong no excuses.

If this had been a man writing this he'd have been utterly roasted.

I'm glad this has happened to you, you seem like an awful person.

My heart goes out to his wife.

Now go and tell her what you've both done. She deserves to know and needs to be given the chance to decide if she wants to stay with him or leave.

Maybe I need to lash out at him and tell him what a scumbag I think he is

Why do you see your self higher than him OP? You have no moral high ground.

He is NEVER going to see this from your point of view. He is NOT going to be thinking of you either way except in a pathetic, self-centred, God I wish I could have my cake and eat it again sort of way.
He's very shallow about everything except his own feelings...other people aren't very real to him at all except for how they affect him.
Focus on yourself or you might end up the same way.

Or will my complete silence hurt more than my words?

Oh, please! He doesn't give a toss about you. You were his OW. He isn't giving you a second thought.

I have wondered about this wheretonow...

No sympathy whatsoever for the two of you. You reap what you sew I believe is the saying.

Plenty of sympathy for the spouses and certainly for your DD who’s life was completely changed because of your desires.

Telling his wife won’t give you closure whatsoever, you just want her to know it would seem. You seem to think this is all on him yet you both cheated and waiting a few months to sleep together doesn’t change that.

You seem to think that you're better than him on some level. You both cheated. He's made his choices, you've made yours. The problem when you take steps to enter a relationship with someone who is attached is that they're generally not a good person. So you can't be that surprised if they don't treat you well. You speak as though he preyed on you until he wore you down. He didn't. You actively chose, continually, with every covert text message, meeting, gifts or whatever, to get involved with him and you could have stopped it at any point. But you didn't. You're responsible for your own behaviour.

I'm trying to squeeze out some tears into my tear jar for you OP. But it ain't working.

I think you have to tip your thinking on its head.

You must think about yourself and your life and your kids.

Not about him: I can understand you want to lash out at him, he's left you devastated and swanned back into his life. But it will not help you to lash out at him. Your best strategy with him is no contact.

Not about his wife: nothing you do or do not say/write to her will impact your life, apart from in the few minutes you spend saying/writing it. I do feel very sorry for her, but you have no idea what's going on there so best to leave her alone. You cannot know and you will not know. You must not think about her. It's most likely she is the victim of this shit bag just as you are, given that you know he's a shit bag and you don't know anything about her, unless it's propaganda from him.

Your only way forward is to focus on yourself.

He didn't destroy your life.

I feel for you OP. The way some people are railing at you, they must be perfect saints. Yes, your behaviour has been less than ideal but you've paid the price for it and learnt your lesson. Are none of us allowed to make mistakes in life?
I don't for a minute condone cheating but I do think being in a marriage since 21 with an abusive husband, one might expect you to find the strength to leave at some point, and this man was the catalyst.
I think in your position I would anonymously let the wife now, because she needs all the facts about her relationship so she can make an informed decision about whether she wishes to continue. You wrote that he said she's trying her best to save her marriage but how can she when she's totally in the dark about her cheating husband?! She might not even want to save it if she finds out.
I would recommend against letting him know what you really feel, as you suggested. Silence is better. You might feel good ranting at him temporarily but in the long run you will feel better having left it and been the bigger person.

Maybe I need to lash out at him and tell him what a scumbag I think he is instead of telling his wife, maybe that will give me some respite. Or will my complete silence hurt more than my words?

The second one. Maintain a very hurt but dignified silence. If he is truly struggling internally with this and just lacks the strength to do it (and let's not pretend it's an easy thing to do) then a period of no contact from you will help him decide what he really wants.

If arrives on your doorstep as a newly separated man in two, three, six months time, with no conditions attached and willing to accept the possibility that you might have moved on, it's because he's reached some conclusions by himself and he loves you.

If he comes to you now, because either you or his wife forced his hand then there is a high risk that the relationship will fail because he's never needed to demonstrate that he chooses you.

I'd also say the people saying it means he will come back to you are very wrong, he is likely to be livid and never forgive you.

Yes, equally likely! As I said, no scenario whereby you tell her will get you the outcome you are hoping for.

I had to deal with all this uncertainty and emotional trauma while having to deal with the aftermath of the divorce and everything else

The only person I feel sorry for is his poor wife. If things had gone well I bet you wouldn't give a toss about her feelings so why contact her now just to make you feel better?

Oh, please! He doesn't give a toss about you. You were his OW. He isn't giving you a second thought.

That's a very narrow minded thing to say. Some affairs are shallow and meaningless but many are not.

I feel wronged because he let me down while kept my end of the promises. Wrong as it was to have the affair, I have been a married single mum to my children for over 8 years...yes it’s true that I needed to leave my bad marriage years ago but simply stayed because I didn’t have the confidence to leave. He gave me that confidence, even if it came from a wrong/selfish place. My children are and always have been my main priority - I don’t feel bad about ending the marriage except that I should have done it sooner. I do genuinely feel bad about his wife.
Whom I probably will now let be and not contact.

Are none of us allowed to make mistakes in life

A mistake is using the wrong kind of flower or turning left instead of right. It’s a conscious decision to break up your family to go to the person you are cheating with.

If the OP was unhappy in her marriage, she could have finished the relationship as amicably as possible with as minimal disruption to her child as possible. She didn’t have to cheat or try to break up another family. No one made that decision bar the two of them.

I bet he shit himself when you told him you’re getting a divorce. He chose you because you were married....free sex with no risk to his marriage.

I was on a college course with mainly mature students and I saw one married man flirting solidly with a married woman, to the point where they were behaving like a couple within college. Then she started referring openly to her unhappy marriage, and what a slob her husband was, and then left her husband, becoming a single mother. I'm pretty sure she expected the next thing to be that her boyfriend would leave his wife, but he didn't. He suddenly arranged a work experience placement that took him abroad for a term! Another married man on the course persuaded a woman to leave her husband for him, before telling her that he couldn't bring himself to leave his wife.

I'm sure this isn't any comfort to you at the moment, but it happens all the time. You need to firmly tell yourself 'He doesn't want me' and get on with your life. No doubt his wife will find out in good time what he's like, but you need to get him right out of your life, for your own sake.

Thank you for this Whereshallwemoveto

Well you've learned a hard lesson haven't you OP? Never trust someone who's already deceiving someone else and then act as if you're somehow surprised by the injustice of it all. You reap what you sow, etc, etc.

FWIW... If telling his wife makes you feel better, do it. I don't think you'd be doing it from a good place, but ultimately she probably does deserve to know that the man she loves is a liar and a cheat, so it's still better for everyone in the long term.

He didn't leave his wife, Where, so doubt he's really thinking beyond saving his own skin. He's a cheater.

I feel wronged because he let me down while kept my end of the promises. Wrong as it was to have the affair, I have been a married single mum to my children for over 8 years..

But LOL @ your thanks to people coddling you in your ideas that you're somehow morally superior to your equally married lover.

Look, you are obsessively overthinking this. It's normal to do this to a degree after a break up and you've got a lot to process.
But you need to shake up your thinking and get some counselling to help you develop into a self-sufficient single person. If you do this, you may well feel unrecognisably better in a matter of months.

Everyone in this situation likely has grounds to feel bad. Everyone has wronged almost everyone else. Life sucks.

I would have said you were my husbands mistress but I threw him out when I found out, so it can’t be you.
This woman and him have ruined my life, and the lives of our children. She split her marriage up, but he didn’t leave me as planned. He’d still be here if I hadn’t found the messages. Two teenagers, both in therapy, myself who can barely function day to day....all so they could both get their kicks. I’m going to end up homeless, they won’t see their dad because of what he’s done, and they’ve lost his side of the family.
You haven’t made a mistake, you knowingly made a choice. That’s all I can say, because otherwise I’ll be banned from this site, and you’re not worth being banned for