I just need somewhere to unload
I don’t even know what I’m looking for by posting this. Advice, validation, somewhere to put all of this, I genuinely don’t know. I just need to get it out because I feel like I’m going fucking insane.
My wife and I have been effectively separated for about nine months. We have two kids together, one of them is 9. During that time there have been affairs, lies, broken promises, constant moving of goalposts, and months of me trying to figure out whether our marriage was actually going to survive.
The most recent affair was with another woman. I knew about her. I was told that relationship/contact was over, and despite everything that had happened, I left some tiny part of the door open because my wife repeatedly told me she wanted to come home and work on our marriage.
For months it has been some variation of “I’m coming back.” A date would get picked. We’d make plans. I’d start preparing for the kids to come home. Then something would happen and the date would move. Then another date. Then another explanation. At some point I stopped even believing it when she said she was coming home because I had heard it so many times.
She’s currently been staying with her parents in another state with our kids. Our 9-year-old needs to be back in school and our younger son had a daycare spot waiting for him here. She told me she was finally returning this past Sunday.
Sunday came and there was basically radio silence.
Eventually I called her trying to figure out what was happening. Instead of “my car is packed and I’m leaving at X time,” I was still getting vague answers like “I guess I have to.” The more I tried to get an actual answer, the angrier she became. The conversation ended with her telling me she fucking hated me.
I lost my temper too. I’m not going to pretend I handled every conversation perfectly. After nine months of this I unloaded a lot of anger and said things I’m not proud of.
I finally told her I was done waiting. I told her I needed space, that for a while I only wanted communication about our kids or genuinely necessary logistics, and that I didn’t want phone calls unless something was actually urgent. I told her I was going to stop making financial and life decisions based around promises that she was coming home. For example, I was going to cancel our youngest son’s daycare spot because I couldn’t justify paying to hold an empty spot indefinitely.
She immediately started blowing my phone up asking if I was breaking up with her, telling me she quit her job “for me,” accusing me of trying to control her, etc. She repeatedly called from her phone, then started calling me from our 9-year-old son’s phone, and I started getting No Caller ID calls.
When I stopped answering, she called the police to do a welfare check on me.
The police came. I explained what was going on. They were satisfied I was fine and left.
Eventually things calmed down somewhat. She apologized for some of her behavior and even admitted that when she feels somebody pulling away from her she has a tendency to try to regain control. She said she was going to leave the next morning and bring the kids back.
Monday came and there were immediately more reasons to hesitate. Our 9-year-old apparently “seemed really disappointed” about coming back. She asked if he was going back to his old school. I told her yes for now because he needs to be enrolled immediately, but that it absolutely doesn’t have to be permanent and we could look at other schools once he is actually here. My position was basically: he’s 9, of course he may be disappointed about leaving where he’s been staying or going back to school, but the adults still have to make decisions and get him enrolled.
Eventually she actually started packing.
And then tonight I found something that completely destroyed whatever tiny piece of hope I still had.
I found the affair partner’s Facebook.
There were profile pictures of the two of them together as recently as July 14. I found out that on a recent trip my wife took to Sioux Falls, she met up with her again. I learned that they are STILL in contact.
And then I found out my wife had introduced BOTH OF OUR CHILDREN to her affair partner.
That completely broke me.
For months I was being told one thing while apparently an entirely different reality was happening behind my back. I was sitting here waiting for my wife to come home, trying to decide whether I could somehow forgive everything and rebuild our marriage, while she was still seeing/talking to this person and had brought our children around her.
I told my wife we’re getting divorced. I told her I’m getting an attorney and that I’m done.
She completely fell apart. Crying, bawling, hysterical. At first it was “I won’t sign the papers.” Eventually she seemed to understand that I genuinely do not want to continue the marriage.
The bizarre part is that she still wants to move back here with the kids tomorrow. She says she’ll stay in the spare bedroom and doesn’t expect us to work on the marriage anymore. At this point, honestly, that’s fine with me temporarily because I want my children home and I’m not making major housing/custody decisions in the middle of the night before speaking to an attorney.
The argument started around midnight. It’s now almost 4 AM. I’m supposed to be at work in a couple hours.
And underneath all the anger, I am just fucking devastated.
Because the truly humiliating part is that some piece of me STILL wants her to realize what we had. I still want her to look at everything she destroyed and want me. I don’t even think I want the marriage anymore. I think I want to know that I mattered enough for her to regret losing me.
I spent nine months feeling replaceable by the person I built my life with.
Every time I started believing her, something else happened. Every time I thought I understood where we stood, the ground moved again. I worried about my kids, tried to keep everything together, listened to her problems, tried to help her through crises, dealt with the financial consequences of everything, and kept this tiny fucking piece of hope alive that eventually she would choose our family and actually follow through.
And tonight I feel like an idiot for having had that hope at all.
I know anger is carrying a lot of this right now. I know I said horrible shit tonight and I’m not proud of that. I’m going to talk to an attorney and I’m going to try to handle whatever happens next like an adult, especially because we have children who don’t deserve to be caught in the middle.
But right now I’m just sitting here completely exhausted, furious, heartbroken and wondering how somebody who supposedly loved me could watch me spend nine months trying to hold onto something while knowing they weren’t being honest with me.
I don’t know how I’m ever supposed to trust this person again.
I don’t even know what grieving a marriage is supposed to look like when you’re simultaneously so angry at the person that you can barely stand them and still wishing they would turn around and prove that you mattered.