I am so sorry you are going through this. I spent years blaming myself for his infidelities. I suffered from severe depression years back. He blamed me. Justified his bad behavior because of it. Want to know why I was so deeply depressed? He was cheating. Vicious circle. F that. He could have communicated with me. If he had spent one tenth of his energy just communicating with me as he did trying to validate himself somewhere else, we would not be divorcing. For years I felt as though his cheating were MY fault. Well, I pulled myself out of that deep deep depression. Happy, thriving. Guess what? Still cheated. And also guess what? Cheated on the girl he cheated on me with. So I realized it wasn't me after all. Done feeling guilty. F that. F him. Live well. Find what makes you happy and do that. Love yourself. Stop blaming yourself. Wish I could have back all that time I spent feeling bad. Am I perfect? Nope. But I did not deserve ANY of that. And neither do you.🙂

What is really tormenting me now is all the stuff I should have noticed over the last few years. The new underwear, the male grooming, secretive over his phone, long walks alone, going away with work a lot etc etc all signs of this affair and the slow but steady withdrawal from our relationship. It wasn’t his decision to end it, it was mine. How long would he have just carried on?

My situation is similar. Think deep down I knew. Just always chose to believe the best in him. He did ****ty things, but I always tried to see what I hoped? If that makes sense. Sadly, it took me 28 years to realize that when someone shows you who they are you should really believe them. We are living together. I am following through on a divorce I have wanted for some time. I still care for him. Still want happiness for him. Right now he is a mess. And because I still see good in him I want to help him. It is very unhealthy. I'm getting lost a bit. We are so focused on him. I feel guilty he hurts. Wish I didn't. For me, I am going to stay away from the question of "why wasn't I enough?". I am enough for ME. F him. After such a long relationship, I would like to focus on ME. And have some peace and laugh. Be well. Thanks for sharing.

AJB I'm sorry you're going through this but things will indeed get better. Actually divorce can be a blessing in disguise. Please don't blame your behavior on pushing him away. He's the weak minded fool. Marriage is supposed to be for better or worse. And if you were going through depression, he should have been man enough to help you through it instead of choosing to have an affair! As I stated in a previous post, I married the wrong person the first time around and if I hadn't been the victim of date rape, there's no way in hell I ever would have married him since he wasn't my type physically and certainly not mentally. When I think about it, I should have filed an annulment the first Christmas when he made a complete fool of himself on national television showing his desperate need for attention. Anyway, he wasn't man enough to give me a divorce when I brought it up in the 3rd or 4th year of that contract marriage. Instead he denied it. I was actually relieved when he finally began having an affair because it meant I wouldn't have to sleep with him. Thankfully there were no children involved either. I went into depression after being forced to relocate to a backwards town in the middle of no where in CA. My physician had said that anti depressants wouldn't help because the depression was circumstancial. So one day I had to force myself to think about what was making me so depressed. It was horrifying for me to realize that I was depressed from marrying someone I didn't love and could never love. He became more abusive when he began his affair and I found myself happier about divorcing him than I was on that wedding day. As for him and his mistress, trash is like water: it finds its own level. The only way he could find someone interested in him was to lie on his profile about his height, claim to own a Porsche and get a 300 lb. like his mother. Today I'm happily married to a wonderful man who comes from a good family and we have beautiful children together. The same can happen for you. Your soon to be ex is now the other so called woman's nightmare. And prayer works!! There are times when fasting and prayer is an even better solution!