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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

Smug ex husband

34 replies

Bernie54 · 18/04/2025 13:37

Not sure where to begin tbh. I was married 27 years. 5 years ago my husband sent me a text telling me the marriage was over and had come to a natural end.

i was devastated, around the same time my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer and then Covid lockdown hit, so a bit of a shit show tbh.

i never really had closure on the marriage as he insisted there was no one else involved, and I was too busy trying to rebuild my life, grieve for my mum, etc.

Fast forward 5 years, we are now divorced, and he remarried about 18months ago 🤔. I also found out he had been having an affair with the woman he is married to now, at least 2 years before he left me, they had also bought a house and set up a business…whilst he was with me.

I’ve been gaslighted for the last 5 years and still he has never come clean about the affair and the level of deceit.

And yet he continues to be a smug, condescending bastard and portrays to the world, his kids (34 and 18) , his friends, brothers etc what an amazing man he his.

I could add so much more to this.

i think I would be over it by now if I had had closure from the beginning, but the truth has only unravelled by chance. He thinks I don’t know any of this, and I’m too scared to challenge him., because of how he gaslights me.

Any words of wisdom to deal with this and not allow it to affect me anymore?

OP posts:
Original poster
Bernie54 · 18/04/2025 21:07

Gloriia · 18/04/2025 20:47

So sorry for what you've been through op. It is so unfair the way the arseholes seem to come out on top and a double whammy that your ds has taken his side.

Just try to focus on positives, your relationship with your dd, the fact you're financially independent and have no problems mortgage wise.

He might be well off amd apparently popular but he's a liar and a cheat and his current dw will no doubt be cheated on. All you can do with your ds is keep channels of communication open and hope he sees his stepdad for what he is at some point.

Best wishes Flowers.

Thank you. I hope his dw does get cheated on, she was involved in the deceit as much as him it seems, so not really the innocent party

OP posts:
Original poster
Bernie54 · 18/04/2025 21:07

beAsensible1 · 18/04/2025 20:50

you find closure in yourself by moving on. There is no closure available from an offending party who has hurt you.

you will never get the answers or understating you seek because it doesn’t exist unfortunately. Forget him, move on and focus on building a fulfilling life.

Yes I think your right tbh

OP posts:
Purplesphere11 · 18/04/2025 21:11

Silence babe. Crickets. The rope has burned. Goodbye

BlooomUnleashed · 18/04/2025 21:24

Different circumstances, I was the older child, the adultery and history re-writing was parental. But .. I never moved forward genuinely. I just lumped around a constant pain in my solar plexus for 40 years. No matter how hard I ignored it.

I’m therapy/counselling averse, due to not being a particularly trusting soul and really not wanting to keep picking at what seemed to be the most fragile kind of scab. In case it released a storm of worse pain, and the therapist turned out to have bitten off more than they could chew.

But I was offered a single session for systemic coaching. I assumed it was some kind “filing system” for feelings. Which is a good thing, because having read about it since, it comes accross as quite woo-woo, which I like even less than the idea of therapy.

But it worked. I didn’t have to go into all the gory details and unravel the pandora’s box of my feelings. Just an outline of the issue and the causal factors so the coach had something to work with before the session. One very relaxing hour over zoom where me The Chief of the Uptights, actually properly relaxed, and … let go of burdens that are not mine to carry.

She gave me a personalised ritual to carry out. Which I wasn’t going to bother with. But then thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. Was very simple. Felt like a book properly closed with an ending, so a new story could being.

I liked how quick, efficient and freeing it was. I had given more than enough of my non-renewable lifetime to the fall out of other people’s choices. One hour in session and a few spent on a ritual was not much to spend on unchaining me.

Moving on, moving forward is not necessarily easy to do. Even when you try very hard, for a decent amount of time. So big fat hug. It can feel like a triple whammy, they move on, re-write history AND you are the one left with the emotional baggage to lug around.

If the above doesn’t appeal (and being typically very sceptical myself I can understand why) I hope you find the person or the method that suits you to illuminate a path out of the hard place you got thrown into without a map. I believed for so long that it was up to me, and me alone to find my way out of the cold, dark place I was in.. But in my case I was wrong, sometimes a guide with a well equipped toolbox is a necessary feature of being freed from a burden you didn’t create.

Original poster
Bernie54 · 18/04/2025 21:34

BlooomUnleashed · 18/04/2025 21:24

Different circumstances, I was the older child, the adultery and history re-writing was parental. But .. I never moved forward genuinely. I just lumped around a constant pain in my solar plexus for 40 years. No matter how hard I ignored it.

I’m therapy/counselling averse, due to not being a particularly trusting soul and really not wanting to keep picking at what seemed to be the most fragile kind of scab. In case it released a storm of worse pain, and the therapist turned out to have bitten off more than they could chew.

But I was offered a single session for systemic coaching. I assumed it was some kind “filing system” for feelings. Which is a good thing, because having read about it since, it comes accross as quite woo-woo, which I like even less than the idea of therapy.

But it worked. I didn’t have to go into all the gory details and unravel the pandora’s box of my feelings. Just an outline of the issue and the causal factors so the coach had something to work with before the session. One very relaxing hour over zoom where me The Chief of the Uptights, actually properly relaxed, and … let go of burdens that are not mine to carry.

She gave me a personalised ritual to carry out. Which I wasn’t going to bother with. But then thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. Was very simple. Felt like a book properly closed with an ending, so a new story could being.

I liked how quick, efficient and freeing it was. I had given more than enough of my non-renewable lifetime to the fall out of other people’s choices. One hour in session and a few spent on a ritual was not much to spend on unchaining me.

Moving on, moving forward is not necessarily easy to do. Even when you try very hard, for a decent amount of time. So big fat hug. It can feel like a triple whammy, they move on, re-write history AND you are the one left with the emotional baggage to lug around.

If the above doesn’t appeal (and being typically very sceptical myself I can understand why) I hope you find the person or the method that suits you to illuminate a path out of the hard place you got thrown into without a map. I believed for so long that it was up to me, and me alone to find my way out of the cold, dark place I was in.. But in my case I was wrong, sometimes a guide with a well equipped toolbox is a necessary feature of being freed from a burden you didn’t create.

Thank you so much for sharing that with me, and I could feel your empathy in your post, I am happy to read that you found something that was right for you and on a level which was emotionally ok. It has given me something to think about, I need to find some resolution for me because it is eating away at me, and the only person it is hurting is me

OP posts:
Original poster
Bernie54 · 18/04/2025 21:35

Purplesphere11 · 18/04/2025 21:11

Silence babe. Crickets. The rope has burned. Goodbye

Yes silence is good I suspect

OP posts:
LePetitMaman · 18/04/2025 22:02

Bernie54 · 18/04/2025 21:07

Yes I think your right tbh

Show quote history

Would you want Jack the Ripper to tell you that you're a sweetheart?

Would you listen to someone who abused animals telling you that they thought you were a bitch?

One day it will just click. Not only does the narcissist's apology not exist, but my god, even if it did, you don't want to sully your decent mind with anything that piece of work has to say.

I know today is not that day. It took me several years. But it will be one day xx

Original poster
Bernie54 · 18/04/2025 22:23

LePetitMaman · 18/04/2025 22:02

Would you want Jack the Ripper to tell you that you're a sweetheart?

Would you listen to someone who abused animals telling you that they thought you were a bitch?

One day it will just click. Not only does the narcissist's apology not exist, but my god, even if it did, you don't want to sully your decent mind with anything that piece of work has to say.

I know today is not that day. It took me several years. But it will be one day xx

Show quote history

Thank you x

OP posts:
IWishIHadntDoneThat · 18/04/2025 22:48

His new wife will never be able to relax knowing he is happy to lie and cheat to whoever he is married to.

A man who cheats and lies is no-one special. They are a dime a dozen. Money does not make up for it (although I am glad you got your house out of it).

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