Brief background: in late February my partner and husband of 26 years told me he wanted out of our marriage - self-indulgence masked as self-actualization, e.g., happiness seeking with another woman as he was already seeing a colleague of both of ours that is 18-years younger (he is nearly 67 she is 48). It was devastating, I both was caught completely off-guard, but also knew he was capable of this type of behavior as he has done this before with previous wives (longer story and not necessary for this post). He literally told me and I have not seen him since, he has come by the house to get some of things twice - but mainly he just left. He was very cruel when we did talk by phone after this happened (we only talked twice for about 15 mins) so I have not seen, nor talked to him since he left. I have communicated only by email, and very transactional. This is all despite the fact that we have to communicate because all three of us have intersecting professional circles.

I have done all the work - I hired a certified divorce financial analyst and worked through an equitable asset division; I hired an attorney to execute the marital settlement agreement that I wrote; I have packed his things up in the house that I am taking in the agreement (we have two houses); and packed up his thing in our primary residence because I am living there for another year. It will be officially over sometime later this month. I still have some sadness, not for losing the man he is, but for the man I thought he was. But mostly, I am feeling hopeful. I am embracing my future and not dwelling on the past. I am still lonely sometimes but am not going to reach out for a new intimate relationship until I feel that my baggage won't be a part of the discussion. I have started finding social events to engage with though (meetup is a great place, it is not for dating, but just social, highly recommend this!).

I will tell you all these things I have learned:

1. Take back your agency, do the work to protect your interests, but do it quietly, gently and without emotion (this is very hard - but it is in *your* best interest to do it this way - save your emotion for your friends/family/support system - not him).
2. Lean hard on your support system, find people you can call when you need to vent, don't call him (even if you are on good terms).
3. It *does* get better -- visualize *your* space/new home/future, every day spend at least 5 mins thinking about this. Slowly, too slowly, this will become the more present thought and regrets/sadness/anger will fade.
4. Be the better person - don't try to push the justice/fairness that might be justified - you need to be accountable only for your actions. I might say this is most important to remember, because while we are going through this we will want to say and do totally understandable (and justifiable) things - but it won't change the situation, and you don't want to feel regret (in the future) on top of everything else. It is better to know that you are a true and good person, no matter what situation others create, than to give in to base instincts (even when justified, I will say that again :)).
5. Try to find other people around you that need support -- be their support. This has really helped me get out of my own head and sadness. There are lots of people in your circle who are likely going through their own things - being *their* support will help you too - volunteer if you have time. This really has helped me - I couldn't do it the first couple of months while I was processing - but since then I have found this to really help me a lot.

Take care of yourself, be kind to yourself, know that there is no *right way* to deal with this - you just need to do the best you can to get through the day.

Dedication

For every woman who has been lied to, blamed, discarded, or replaced —  and still rebuilt herself with dignity, clarity, and truth.

Preface

This is not a story about marriage.
It is a story about patterns — fifty years of them.
It is a story about the cruelty embedded in those patterns, the women harmed by them, and the quiet, steady reclamation of agency that follows.

It is also a story about truth:  the truth we are denied, the truth we discover, and the truth we finally speak — even if only to ourselves.

I. The Breaking

When my husband and partner of twenty‑six years walked out, he left behind not only his belongings but the shared rhythm of our lives — two homes, decades of partnership, and the illusion of mutual respect. He didn’t pack, didn’t plan, he simply blamed me and walked away, as if the life we built together were a room he could exit without consequence.

In the months since, I’ve cleaned both houses, sorted through the detritus of his absence, and managed every financial and legal detail myself. I’ve done the labor he refused: emotional, physical, administrative, while he disappeared into a new life with a colleague eighteen years his junior.

The betrayal is layered: personal, professional, and public. I see him walk to her office, I see her able to live normally in our shared professional groups. I’ve seen photos from events where they are integrating together among mutual colleagues. The affair was not a sudden spark; it was a slow deceit, unfolding while I still believed we were planning our future.

II. The Pattern

This is not new behavior. It is the continuation of a fifty‑year pattern of a nearly 70-year-old man, a lifetime of serial infidelity and emotional evasion. He has been married three times, and in each marriage, he had a number of affairs. He monkey‑branched from one woman to the next, never closing one chapter before beginning another.

Each time, he frames the betrayal as a “special case,” a unique pursuit of happiness, as though his pattern of deceit were somehow noble. But the theme is constant: happiness‑seeking as justification for harm. Each wife — all three of us — has had to manage the emotional, financial, and physical wreckage he left behind. Each of us has had to navigate all of the divorce while he goes on to build his next life with his latest affair partner.

It is mind‑boggling that a person can engage in nearly fifty years of serial affairs and monkey‑branched relationships, each lasting decades, while continuing to be deceitful and dishonest, never accountable or responsible for the consequences. It proves yet again that the universe does not exist for justice or fairness — especially for entitled men who mistake self‑indulgence for self‑actualization.

II‑A. The Cruelty Embedded in the Pattern

The cruelty is not separate from the pattern — it is the pattern.

Wife #2’s story is not mine to tell, but it is devastating.  And the cruelty becomes even clearer when I look at the women he chose (the two I know about) during our relationship:  both were in my professional orbit. One was a woman who was part of the professional organization I was deeply involved in until he poisoned it for me. The other is now in my workplace.

It is as if he seeks out the monkey‑branch relationship that will inflict the most devastating pain on the woman he is betraying.  Whether this is a feature — intentional — or a bug — an unconscious artifact of his pathology — is unknowable. And it doesn’t matter; he will never take responsibility for either.

Just as he would not give me even ten minutes to express my pain. Once he decided to go, I was no longer worth his time.  My grief, my shock, my humanity — none of it mattered.  He had already moved on to the next storyline.

The cruelty sharpened when he tried to pull me into “separation counseling” with his therapist. A therapist enlisted not to help him take responsibility, but to help him justify leaving.  A therapist meant to help him “make up his mind,” as though the affair itself were not already the decision.

This is the cruelty:  He harms, he lies, he abandons — and then he blames the women who absorb the impact.  We are left to sweep up the pieces while he walks away with a new storyline, a new audience, a new woman who believes she is the exception. She is not the exception.  She is simply next, and I don’t wish this for her, not for one minute.

III. The Grieving

I have realized that I need to grieve — but not for him, not for the man he is. I grieve the man I thought he was. I grieve the version of him that existed only in my trust, the one I believed was capable of partnership, honesty, and shared purpose. That man never existed outside my hope.

Grieving that illusion is painful, but it’s also liberating. It allows me to separate the fantasy from the facts, to mourn what I believed while refusing to mourn the person who betrayed it. The grief is real, but it belongs to my own lost belief, not to him.

IV. The Rebuilding

I’ve taken control of my finances and discovered that I can retire comfortably now if I choose. But I won’t, not yet. My work carries legacy and purpose. I have succession planning to complete, and I want to leave my field stronger than I found it. I’ve built a plan for the next chapter.  All my choices now are boundaries made tangible, the architecture of independence. They represent foresight, fairness, and the reclamation of agency. I have reclaimed a future I thought was going to be “ours” to a future I know to be “mine”.

I am exhausted, yes. The daily pain of seeing both of them, of knowing the depth of his dishonesty, is real. But exhaustion is not defeat. It is the residue of effort, the proof that I am still standing, still choosing integrity over bitterness.

I am rebuilding not from rage, but from resolve. I am the counterweight to his lack of accountability. My life, my work, and my integrity remain intact not because he honored them, but because I did.

V. The Choice to Speak

I have the right to speak my truth, to claim the agency that he, and she, tried to steal from me. But I am choosing not to. Not for him, I do wish he would (for once in his life) be forced to be accountable for his actions. But my silence now is for her. 

Society will judge her — unfairly, I believe. If it were me engaging in this kind of behavior at work, I would be judged completely, while the male affair partner would receive a nudge and a wink. When the man is the betrayer, the woman bears an equal or greater social cost. I am struggling with my own pain while also dealing with my desire to protect her professional reputation. I know what it feels like to be judged harshly for the actions of a man. And so, even in my grief, I choose restraint — not because he deserves it, but because I deserve peace in knowing I choose to be a force of good, not pain.

VII. The Three‑Point Audit

In the quiet aftershock of the divorce filings, I have begun to see his behavior not as a mystery, not as a tragedy, but as a dataset, a fifty‑year longitudinal study of avoidance, betrayal, and reinvention. And when I step back from the emotional wreckage, the pattern becomes unmistakable.

1. The “Favor” Fallacy
He thanks me for being his administrator, but nothing I have done — the cleaning, the financial structuring, the legal work has been for him.  He benefits from my competence, but he is not the reason for it.  This is not generosity. This is infrastructure repair after a collapse he engineered.

2. The Capacity Gap
His lack of accountability is a lack of capacity to be responsible He does not possess the psychological architecture required for responsibility, remorse, or repair. I am not reacting to him.

3. The “Pattern” Baseline
What he is doing to me is exactly what he did to Wife #2. And what he did to her is exactly what he did to Wife #1.  The pattern is mathematically stable:  Affair → Blame → Abandonment → Reinvention → Repeat.

He is not a protagonist in a love story.  He is a man stuck in a loop.

Closing Reflection

I cannot change the past.
I cannot rewrite his pattern.
I cannot force accountability where there is no capacity for it.

But I can reclaim my agency.
I can reclaim my voice.
I can reclaim my future.

And I have.