My abusive partner cheated. I’m sick to my stomach
Very recently, I (26f) was forced to leave my husband (30m) of 6 years after he grabbed my throat and pushed me across the room. I guess neighbours had heard to commotion and called the police. Where I’m from, police have to press charges in the event of a domestic assault. They could see the redness on my neck. I didn’t want to press charges, I thought if I did he would hate me and make my life absolute hell as we have a child together.
He’s always threatened to keep them from me and they’re not of age to say where they want to be. I’ve always been terrified of losing my baby and could never get the courage to leave. Now, the cops have placed a no contact order, so I’m forced to.
I’m in shock at the reality that I’ve blinded myself to. I hadn’t realized how deep the control went, how brain washed I’ve been to believe that this was okay. I had given up all my friends, my family. He didn’t work, cook, or clean, or take care of our child. I work full time and do all the school, dance classes, everything. I thought this was normal.
I’m having such a hard time accepting that I have been abused, and for some strange reason thinking that it was done out of love (horribly toxic love) made it easier to process and accept.
Until today… when my sister had been scrolling through Facebook, and saw a picture of my ex-husband with his arm around another women. It’s only been a month.
In the post my ex-husband had been tagged in, he wears the clothes I recently bought him, and hugs a women I’d never seen before. In it she gushes about how lucky she is to be his girlfriend. name was familiar, he had told me it was his step sister. When I tried to look for the post, she’d had me blocked, so she obviously knows that I exist and who I am. My sister doesn’t post on Facebook often, mostly just likes seeing posts from our family, so I guess my ex and his new friend had forgotten she was even on his friends list. My sister did a little digging and sees the first time he liked something of hers goes back 9 months. During these past 9 months he had been trying to get me pregnant, wanting to grow our family. It sickens me thinking that the whole time my head was filled with thoughts of adorable babies, he had someone else. I suffered through a relationship that tore away who I was, and I thought it was for someone who loved me. I was miserable trying to preserve my family for my child, the whole time he was telling me to be better, that I wasn’t enough there was someone else. I feel sick.
He doesn’t know I know. Obviously we are no contact so I haven’t been able to question him, I don’t know if I even want to truthfully. I’m sick to my stomach wondering if they’d slept together during that time period, or if it was just texting.
I’m sitting here broken hearted over this man, trying to pick up the pieces of my family for my child. I’ve been feeling guilty for the way events had played out. And the whole time, he’s had someone to comfort him, someone to tell him it’ll all be okay.
I’m struggling to sleep, to eat, to be anything but angry and miserable. How do I move on?