2 1/2 years later - still broken

[MamaFriend]

Hi
i don’t expect any replies but I need to get this out of my head.
I was here two and a half years ago when I found out my husband (been with for 25 years) had been having an affair and up and left. It was awful and quite literally broke me. I didn’t see it coming - he wasn’t a ‘player’. I was the outgoing one, he was the mouse. He has been with the whore ever since.

But two and a half years on I’m still stuck. Still cry. Haven’t moved on. Have stopped talking to friends as I feel they must be sick of it by now. I don’t know who I am (I was 17 when we met). I feel so vacant. He stole my life and my future. I always saw us together.
I’ve tried things. My daughter (now 18 - who I feel he also abandoned) and I got a lovely little dog. We moved out of the home we’d lived in for years. We stayed in the area as I felt like it was home. I struggled through jobs for about 18 months. I saw her through a disability diagnosis and the resulting affect on her education and mental health.
She’s off to Uni soon and I am thrilled for her but it leaves me alone. I can’t even contemplate the dating scene - it makes my stomach turn.
He has very little remorse for what he has done. Saw it as just the end of a relationship. It makes me so angry that he swans about and I find it so hard to function. I’ve contemplated revenge but I know I’d lose in the end.
I just don’t know how to move on. I’m even thinking about relocating to the other end of the country. I hate that I am this pathetic but this horrible feeling haunts me.
Thanks for reading x.

Are you in a position to take a long holiday abroad when your daughter goes to uni?

No I couldn’t do that. I’ve just had a week away with my daughter and I dreaded coming home.

I was thinking more along the lines of getting away for a bit to have some time alone, focus on yourself.
I found that therapy helped me, would you consider this?

You’ve lost the man you’ve spent your whole adult life with. It’s a massive disruption that came as an unwelcome shock, so I’m not surprised you’re struggling, OP.

He deserves your bitterness and longing for revenge — but you don’t, because those thoughts harm only yourself.

He was a callous and unfaithful person, not worth wasting any more of your life on. At present you’re letting him rule you. You’re only in your early 40s, young enough to make a whole new life.

Thinking about him is holding you back. Please consider counselling to help you break free and move on. Your GP may be able to help with the depression you describe.

Best of luck, OP. Move on to your happier life.

Therapy with a well qualified therapist, not just a counsellor x

Time to start building yourself back up and building a life for yourself again, and you need help to grieve what you lost and move forward, especially now that your daughter is beginning a new chapter in her life too. Definitely find yourself some counselling, somewhere to really focus on you and what you need.

I mean this kindly. But you staying in this frame of mind is actively hurting yourself. Not him.

Do you think there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to move on? By staying in this phase of the grieving process, feels safer than actually going out and sorting yourself out? You were really hurt. He really hurt you. But it’s now what you know. Moving on means you have really and truly accepted it’s over and you have to build your own life. You always imagined this period as a joint life with him, moving on means accepting that future isn’t happening.

I can only suggest you try and get some professional support. I would treat this like a bereavement.

I know it’s not the same. But when dd was getting ready to Uni last year I struggled. My mum (aged 66) had died about 8 months previously, very suddenly. No illness. Nothing.

Dd moving seemed to highlight the fact that mum was gone. September 2022 me, mum, ds and dd spent loads of time together. We would talk about dd applying to uni, moving, visits to her etc. The all of a sudden it was September 2022 and dd was moving away and it had gone from 4 of us to just 2 of us. Me and ds moved dd to Uni. And it broke my heart mum wasn’t there with us.

Dd moving away seemed to just highlight mum wasn’t there. Realising the plans we made wouldn’t ever happen really hurt. I didn’t want anything to change. The more things changed the more I felt mum had missed out on. And we had missed out on sharing as a group of 4. Her presence was so keenly felt at these times. As weird as it sounds the more things changed the more I felt I was moving away from my mum. That we were building a whole life without and I didn’t want to build a whole life without her. It wasn’t what we planned. Moving on me at I had accepted she was gone and I didn’t want to.

I had bereavement counselling and general counselling. It really helped. Dd doesn’t know how hard it was for me, but I know she also really missed my mum moving day and I needed to be there for her.

But I have learned that building a life for self after loss, building a life that looks completely different to what you had planned is really scary. And not something our subconscious always wants to do. It can leave us in the painful phase, because it’s easier, safer, we know it and it makes us feel closer to the thing we have lost.

But please don’t waste your life. Get some professional support. Just take small steps. A new routine, like making sure you have a walk or read for 30 mins a day. Add something into your day that just for you. From there you may feel more comfortable doing bigger things that are different. And build from there.

I am so sorry this happened to you and you are struggling. I wish you the best of luck ❤️

Your sentence about him stealing your life and your future really resonated with me, it's such a painful place to be. When you've spent such a long time with someone it's hard to reimagine life and create a new vision of your future but that is what you must do. His actions may have stolen the future you thought you would have but your anger is now donating him the future you could have and he isn't worthy of that.

If you met at 17 and we're together 25 years then you are only in your 40's, you have decades left to live, don't let them be miserable years.

I agree with PP that therapy might help you process your anger so you can move forward but there are also things you can do which might help you let go of some of the emotions which are keeping you stuck. Write down how you feel, all your anger, hurt and bitterness, completely uncensored, including what revenge would look like in a fantasy world without consequences, then burn it. Write a letter to yourself as if you were a caring friend, we are often kinder to other people than we are to ourselves. You are not pathetic, you are struggling to process a very painful life event.

Reconnect with your friends but don't talk about your ex, this is not to avoid seeming self absorbed but to create space in which he is not consuming all your mental and emotional energy, he doesn't deserve it.

Find out who you are by trying new things, have a go at anything you've ever had a flight of fancy about; belly dancing, a degree, mountain climbing whatever, just know that trying things once doesn't make it a hobby and you can change your mind whenever you like.

I understand that you may think you can't do any of this and you are stuck but, no matter what your ex has done, your life is now up to you and sometime it takes a supreme effort of will to change it for the better. I speak from experience when I tell you that it is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting so you need to get on with faking a good life until you are living a good life. You will not feel better immediately but keep going and you will get there.

And to quote a frequently used phrase from MN: the best revenge is a life well lived.

I think therapy is really the only thing that can help you.
You are in your early 40s. Still lots of life to live and meet someone.

I think you got stuck in seeing the world and your life in a certain way, and eventually you will need to get to a place of understanding and accepting that your first relationship worked for you, but clearly, after 25 years it didn’t for your exH.

Most people don’t stay with the person they met at 17. Most grow up and change too much to be a good fit in their 40s.
Realising this and making peace with it is the first step to your new life.
Also - your exH is the one who cheated on you. The woman had no obligations to you. Calling her an ugly name only makes it harder for you to get out of it.

it’s hardly been any time at all, in relation to the time you were together.
the healing is going to begin when you can forcibly remove your thoughts from him and what he’s doing, and focus on yourself. It’s going to take some determination.
and in time, you’ll build a habit of it. If every time your thoughts stray to him and/ or her, just picture a big stop sign if that works for you -

what worked for me, this is going to sound silly! Is I imagined I was having a wonderful garden party - just a gorgeous , perfect party, and there were two (yes TWO 🤣) very terrifyingly correct butlers at the gate. Every single time a thought of him (or the woman he was with) came into my head, I would imagine the butlers looking over his invitation and saying “oh dear me, it seems you are not Invited to this party anymore. Your invitation has expired.”
and depending on my mood that day, sometimes I’d imagine a whole embarrassing scene where they threw him out.

in The beginning, I had to imagine this many many times a day. Then the little daydream itself became something I was quite fond of. I slowly stopped allowing him to cross my mind , and to have any power over my well being.

I haven’t imagined this little daydream in quite some time, but it helped me at the time - I was absolutely desperate to get my life back.

be patient with yourself. It’s early days yet. It really doesn’t matter if he seems to have moved on fast - he hasn’t dealt with any of it, so his wounds will last and will fester, trust me. The best thing for you is to find any way you can to keep expelling any thoughts of him, seal him out of your mind as many times as it takes. Take showers and imagine all the thoughts of him washing away in the water. Imagine yourself putting armor up inside that he can’t get through.

every time your thoughts are over there with him, you are bleeding energy out to him that he doesn’t deserve. Let your anger become a rocket fuel to get you away from him - he doesn’t deserve one minute more of your life.

This is so great, I love your garden party image!

thank you all so much for listening and offering advice - I am sooooooooooooooo going to try the garden party :)
I know I need therapy but it's so difficult to find someone.

new mantra ' you're not invited'

Healing time from this is 2-5 years, so you really are only half way through.

Surviving infidelity have a brilliant separation and divorce board. Reading there might help you and realise how common your feelings are. There is a book called ‘the journey from abandonment to healing’ which I know is recommended and has helped a number of people.

I think counselling is a great idea to help you move forward.

I am so sorry that you’ve been hurt so badly.