Thanks everybody, I think the mix of posts between "what a
**, he's scum" and "this is a good man who made a huge mistake" is actually a good reflection of how I feel myself, so as @Chickychickydodah* says, I really need time to process.
An important factor in this is that he had ended the situation with this woman before she ever contacted me. She got my details from his HR file. I think the idea was that if she told me it would get rid of me that it might clear the way for her to have him. But you're right, had it been a different woman who wasn't the type to contact me, then I think he would never have told me anything happened. I am sad to say that, but I really think he would have told himself that it would be hurting me for no good reason and convinced himself that silence was the best policy.
I appreciate there are probably lots of men and women who have cheated and never told their partner, but I find that disgusting personally. I also appreciate it's a very long time to go without sex / intimacy but I also find that disgusting. Understanding those things doesn't mean I necessarily want them for myself if you know what I mean because my morals are quite inflexible.
That said...
@kay1213 hits on a fair point, which is that we probably weren't serious enough in the first place for this separation. We have been apart for longer than we were together. We weren't living together. We'd only just (a few months) got to the point of spending special occasions and every weekend together. It was early days really, and it was only the job offer which expedited the commitment to the next level.
I did realise that at the time, and had the conversation with him where I said that it was too early in a relationship for someone to wait two years (if any relationship can take that!) but he assured me at that time that he saw a permanent future with me and I felt like I might feel the same and it was worth a try.
There were many reasons I agreed to it.
One was that I sensed it would be good for my BF to have the experience. He was tied down to an unhappy marriage at 17. He felt some insecurity financially that plagued him (being 40 and not owning a home!). And I knew he had some serious baggage.
I knew I had found a guy I had a lot of potential with, but I felt like he needed to deal with his baggage and get his own ducks in order if that makes any sense. I thought it was possible the relationship would not survive the separation, but at the time I had no idea Covid would happen and the separation would be anywhere near as drastic.
Another reason was that my son is getting close to university age, and I felt weird / wrong about spending my weekends / holidays with a man when it was maybe my last "mummy" years. I am not sure if that makes any sense at all to you, but maybe a part of me felt like him going for two years made sense for my life and meant I could have my relationship more in the background and just enjoy my time with my son without guilt I was being split in two directions.
Another was that my last serious relationship (8 years ago now) was one where we were very happy, living together, totally committed and the man absolutely ripped my life apart (we were engaged and he literally disappeared one day with a note) and I ended up losing everything (home, money, family life, sanity). It absolutely shattered me and took years to recover. I guess I was scared too, although I have only admitted that to myself in the last few days when a friend talked to me about it.
All the above is just me being honest. There were parts of me for which it was convenient / less scary to have a relationship that wasn't fully in my face. The lovely phone calls and letter and texts and support and kindness and future dreams were maybe a little bit easier for me than reality, and I think for BF it was the same. Being loved from a distance is very different from real life, isn't it?
Ultimately though, I was completely faithful and I found it pretty easy to go without sex. The company of my son, family and friends were enough. But he was completely alone, and engaged in "hanging out" with a single woman, in a very, very, very intense environment and doing "couply" things with her with hardly any other people around and she (probably understandably) formed a romantic interest in him. That progressed to drunken sex in an expat environment where very heavy drinking until the early hours of the morning was a normal weekend event. Yes, over a prolonged period of time, yes, with deceit involved, yes, it ended up really wounding me.
I don't think he was deliberately just using her for sex or deliberately trying to have his cake and eat it. I just think he was extremely lonely and isolated for a very long period of time and someone wanted to spend time with him. Then it presented itself as a comfort and he was incredibly stupid, selfish and ended up creating a lot of mess and pain for other people. I do think he understands this and takes full responsibility for all the different ways he made wrong choices.
The disloyalty and deceit are big problems for me. But as we have had time to go through things in more detail, a lot has become clearer for me. Like, for example, I found out he has been on anxiety medication for some months now as the situation / guilt / panic was actually affecting him physically. I am not making excuses for him, but I don't think he found it "easy" to be deceitful which is some help. I also found out he wanted to come home for a very long time but was embarrassed to admit it because he felt weak / like a failure after he had bigged up the opportunity so much.
The point he has come to is that all this (not just the cheating but the leaving) made him realise he had found "the one" (me) and it was a mistake to ever leave and even more of a mistake to not give the relationship his all without being scared.
But, as horrible as it is to admit it, I do think leaving and cheating were necessary for him to get to that point. If he had stayed here, I don't think he ever would and I would have spent years in a relationship with a man in midlife crisis mode and I knew I didn't want that. He needed something big to happen and now he's realised that jobs don't mean much, money doesn't mean much and the fact that he had a miserable first marriage doesn't mean he'd have a miserable second one.
That is pretty much why I wanted him to go in the first place -but I just didn't expect cheating to be involved! He's now reading the books on relationships and attachment and self development. He's now seeing a counsellor to work through his baggage. He's now doing absolutely everything he can possibly do to demonstrate remorse, commitment and to help me feel better after what he put me through.
Our communication now is more honest and vulnerable than it's ever been before. Like the armor he had on is now gone, and that's a good thing, despite the horrible circumstances. My friends, therapist and family (all of whom love me and are very protective) believe there is hope for this awful situation to create something new and much stronger than what we had before, and all I am saying is that I am now open to that possibility.
None of that is to say I will take him back, it is just the "other side" of the story. As I said, I genuinely just need to process and more importantly I need to observe over a period of time how these changes actually manifest in the real world because right now he is in panic / loss mode and it's easier in that to be motivated.
All of that considered as "one side" of my mind; I can't get past the cheating right now and I can't picture getting past it. I can't imagine ever being okay with it. I've understood all of the above. I have read books on forgiving infidelity. I think he very, very deeply loves me. I think he feels deep remorse and sadness for what he's done to hurt me. I think he is genuine in all his efforts and would never hurt me again. I think he's making the changes to create a relationship that would never get into this situation again.
But thinking all that is one thing. I still have pictures in my mind that make me feel like puking and I don't feel safe with him or like I can trust him because he still proved himself CAPABLE of it and that disgusts me. I know everyone will have different views on this, but I've just promised myself to give it time because there's so much to process.
Either way, I appreciate everyone's help. I appreciate all the things we've all been through as women being let down by men and others and the support has been so helpful and cathartic for me when I was completely losing it. I just need more time to figure out what the best future for me is going to be. I definitely still feel completely torn!
x