My marriage is headed for divorce

Help!! I've been married to my husband for 22years this October. For the past year I have been dealing with him secretly calling, texting and fb messaging other women. I was able to get rid of the first one, but the one he is talking to now just won't go away! He's been talking to her since before February and had kept it a secret until then. When I noticed his behavior change is when I started looking at the phone records. The last two months we have fought constantly about it and then last month I did the worst thing I have ever done throughout this. I blocked my phone number and called him pretending to be someone else to get answers out of him. He figured out it was me and moved out the day before mothers day. He now has his own apartment and free access to have whomever over whenever he likes. I'm afraid he is developing feelings for this other woman. He has told me that we will split for 6 months and then decide from there. He told me that he is very leery of being with me because of the evil person he saw in me over the last couple of months. I agree, I don't like that person, but I panicked and needed to know if he was going to stay with me or leave me for her. She is 10yearsvyounger than he and has 2 boys that are pre-teens. She is going thru a divorce right now. Please help me figure out who I am so my husband will love me again. I don't want to be that evil vindictive person that I've been for the last year, anymore!!

Hello SUS, can I help you?

As you eventually realised, you cannot keep trying to fend or ward off other women because there's always going to be another amoral woman ready to slot herself into that newly-vacated space, meaning, you could spend the rest of your days futilely trying. Plus those stupid women are not the source of your problem. HE is. Oh, and for the record: if under those horrid conditions you *hadn't* turned into an "evil person" I'd have to have concluded you weren't quite right in the head. Yes, funny how that happens, one getting 'all untoward' when you discover your so-called soulmate is behaving like the very monster under the bed that he was, til death do you part, charged with protecting you from, isn't it. 'Evil', my a*se! - utterly beside yourself with grief, anxiety, huge sense of betrayal and all-round headf*cked, more like it! Don't listen to that drivel, it's just classic textbook emotional blackmail for justifying himself and ensuring he gets to continue his heinous way. For if he can convince himself you're evil/whatever then that makes him the poor wickle victim, one who doesn't WANT to have his cake and eat it, oh no, but has no choice if he wants to keep his sanity, thanks to the fact that living with 'a mad bizc like you' is too much for ANY poor man to take. (Pff!) It's called demonisation and is par for the cheating, guilt-avoiding course. And I'm not surprised you've been fighting constantly about it. Let's tell that like it actually is, shall we? You've been trying desperately to get him to cooperate (to get back into your marital boat and start his side of the rowing) whilst he's not been wanting any of ...because HE'S having fun!...the time of his life! And if he could make you put up and shut up, walking on eggshells for fear of upsetting him thus losing him for good, said 'fun' could continued. But he couldn't...not whilst living under the same roof as you...so he moved out. Er... He's the dirty cheater. He doesn't GET a say, now. And he isn't the one with his finger on the Red, nuclear-missile launch button. *You* are. So how DARE he think it's up to him and his say-so whether and when you two divorce! Scuse French, but, what an effing cheek!!! But you obviously don't realise this and, instead, believe you're completely powerless and at his mercy. Well, you're not - far from it! You do NOT have to sit around on nightmare-ish tenterhooks, waiting to see IF he comes back - at that, only if it doesn't work out with HER! If it *does* work out with her, you're history! What I mean is, he has left you and the marriage but wants to keep you all hopeful and waiting 'just in case', so that if his attempt to forge this new relationship should fail, he still has a nice, warm, welcoming household (and still healthy bank and assets balance) to come home to - one that at least features a free housekeeper, bottlewasher, cook, nanny, etc.... (following which, what with you having shown you tolerate this nonsense/being treated like sh*t on his shoe, he'll no doubt start cruising for *another* loose woman replacement). LOVE you again? Sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but that he could put you of all people through this and in that despicable way rather goes to show that he hasn't loved you for quite a while, now, and this decision and behaviour of his is actually testimony to the fact of the already stone-cold corpse on the floor (your marriage). Come on, now, be real. The way he's been making you feel - would you could you, even under serious duress, treat even your WORST ENEMY like he's been doing? COULD YOU? So either this man never genuinely loved you (but loved that you loved him, including all the things you did for him) - which you're now finding out in the most shocking, eye-opening way possible - OR old, banked-up resentment, liberation-craziness and the psychology change an adulterer undergoes has basically rendered him temporarily insane. *TIME* and giving your poor mind a chance to adapt to this devastating 'woken up to find you were wired to the matrix' and 'invasion of the body-snatchers' situation is what will make you figure out who you are / what you want/don't want.... Time and venting and processing. And that is that is that. The very BEST thing you could do to give you (back?) your self-esteem, a sense of clarity, power and pride, as well as DIRECTION - and just all-round feeling BETTER - would be to book a free consultation with a family law solicitor ASAP in order to find out (as an exploration in theory only, at this point) JUST HOW there is life - very likely a MUCH better life and partner - beyond this man/this so-called marriage. Once you regain your pride as well as start treating HIM like the perpetrator he is, he is much more likely to start 'coming round' and cleaning up his act. In other words, he is proving by his choices and behaviour to have ZERO respect for you. ZERO. I'm very, very sorry for you. Do you have a close female friend or relative(s) to support you? Also, do you have equal access to the marital wealth (and I mean ALL the bank accounts, etc) or are you still reliant on him for money?

Thank you so much for your opinions. SOULMATE you were right in the money with your comment. My husband admitted to me yesterday that he has been with this gal since he moved out. They are intimate but he says nothing happened until he moved out of our home. I am heartbroken, but at the same time a bit relieved. I know I will always love him even with all of the pain he has caused me and out family. I hope she can give him the happiness that I never could. I honestly don't believe this new relationship will last as they are both a rebound for one another, but stranger things have happened. At this point, I am just trying to find the person I was before I got lost trying to make him happy. Honestly, I hope karma bites him in the butt and he is left with a broken heart smashed into a million pieces!! Only then will he know what he put me through, unfortunately for him, I will be week on my way to making my life happy and loving myself!!

You're welcome and sorry for the delay! "but he says nothing happened until he moved out of our home." Yeah, sure. Here're our 'we really believe him' faces ---> :-p :-p Anyway, I just wanted to say, after reading what you've just written, which is chock-full of impressively emotionally-intelligent insights, that I have a *very* strong suspicion that you're not only going to look back on this whole period as having been a *huge* blessing in disguise but also that you're going to be one of those women who come up positively smelling of roses! No, of course their relationship can't thrive. For starters its foundation was built out of lies and duplicity, NOT a good basis! But that's their (downhill) business. Yours is your (upwards) journey from this point forward, a journey which, as I say, will take you to the kind of destination you always dreamed of but thought impossible. So - LITERALLY his loss! And, GOD, yes - Karma will definitely teach him a lesson he'll never forget. It always does. If you want to get back in touch with intrinsic you, can I suggest that the first thing you do be to play all your old music records/tapes, the ones you used to listen and bop to back before you even met him? Very cathartic that one. Warning, though: it's normal for your emotions to keep switching, to where it's sometimes hard to keep up. Feel free, therefore, to talk it all out on here if you need to.