Reflecting on my experience

Today is the day that any hope of reconciling died. So, it's time to tell my (38m) story.

My STBXW (I literally JUST realized what this abbreviation meant as I realized what I would finally have to type this term) and I have been together for between 8 and 9 years. When we met, we both were pretty broke, and she was in a long-term relationship with another man. I have always been, and continue to be, exceedingly respectful of that boundary, and to this day can't really find myself interested in a woman who is involved. Even then, while she was certainly attractive, I stayed away.

The time inevitably came where she and her partner broke up. It was abusive, I was told; he was terrible, I had heard. Maybe it was true? I think, in retrospect, it was easy to believe. I decided to give her space, time to recover. Yes, I was interested in her, and I didn't want to miss my shot, but I wasn't interested in being a rebound. I wanted something real. I don't really do casual.

Two weeks later, she called me to have a drink at a local bar, and that night we slept together. So much for my grand plan, eh? It was a whirlwind after that; she was intense, fun, wild, smart, bubbly, sharp, all the things and more. Within a matter of months we had moved in together.

Anyway, eventually, she started to have an affair with someone at her place of work, and carried it on under my nose -- unknown to me -- while gaslighting me about how everything was fine, that she loved me, etc. etc. I'm sure many of you are familiar with that. Finally, after about two or three months, I discovered the text messages, called her, and told her to get her things out of my home.

By the end of that summer, we had reconciled. Looking back, I see the red flags; she didn't want to leave the man she had cheated on me with until she had guarantees that I saw a future for us. I shouldn't have bent; was it desperation? Love? Low self-esteem? Empathy? After all, I understand not wanting to be alone. I understand wanting a future. It's easy, it seems, to talk yourself into believing all kinds of things.

The next several years were, I thought, good. We still had our struggles, but we talked them out, worked on them. Again, so I thought. Three years later, we were married and bought our first home together. That was close to three years ago today. One month ago, she cheated on me again -- became blackout drunk, and slept with a man that she knew (and, in fact, that I knew). I found her walking home at 6am -- I had been out all night, trying to find her, worried she had been hurt, kidnapped, raped, killed. I had refused to let myself believe what was obvious because, well, after the first time, I had worked hard to believe in her, to have faith in her. In retrospect, the key is that *I* worked hard. She did nothing to change or grow after that. Something I realized after this lapse.

In retrospect, I realize that she is probably an alcoholic. It would start small; a few fun nights, drinks, etc. She would build up her thirst. Soon there were beer cans on the nightstand every morning. Finally, it would hit a crescendo: she would drink all day, in some cases from as early as 8 am to 10 or 11 at night; she would go manic, then deeply depressed, then find a knife and self harm across her arms, inevitably seeing me patching her up, putting her to bed, and holding her until she was asleep. She would enter a fugue state after that, lasting for days, in which she was depressed -- I would do all I could to cheer her up, be there for her, let her know that she didn't need to feel guilty or ashamed. I never told anyone about what was happening, as she was afraid of being exposed as broken. I realize now that I was enabling a cycle of mental illness. I regret that. I've learned the difference between support and validation, but I've learned it too late.

For the first week and a half after the one night stand, she was deeply remorseful. She talked about my right to my anger, how she wanted to listen and wait for me to forgive her, how she wanted to reconcile, how she wanted to get sober. I had told her I thought she was an alcoholic. Her therapist of several months agreed. Eventually, I said yes to marriage counseling. A day later she left to cat-sit for a friend for the weekend, in order to give me "space".

When she came back at the end of that weekend, she asked for a separation. She had found her anger. The remorse, the desire to reconcile, had begun to die inside her. She dropped her therapist and found a new one who didn't think she was an alcoholic. Still, she said she wanted to try. We scheduled marriage counseling. We had several long, difficult conversations, in which I explained what I was feeling, what I needed, what I demanded. Throughout, she only grew angrier, more resentful. I began to grow despondent, unable to think, unable to eat; I was torn. I knew what I thought it should look like when someone who has had an affair wants to reconcile: they need to protect you, protect the relationship, work tirelessly to rebuild faith and trust, perhaps for years.

Instead, she would say she was going to go out for drinks with friends but that she wouldn't go if I didn't want her to -- and later, complain to her friends about how controlling I was being, how insecure I was, how my ego needed stroking. I learned this by asking for access to her phone, and seeing in her text messages how brutally she mocked and maligned me. I also learned from those text messages that on that first weekend away, she had contacted the AP. According to her, for "clarity": she had been blackout drunk, and she wanted to know what happened that night. I chose to believe her. I could hardly do anything but; I had trained myself for years to have faith in and trust her, the only way back from the first affair. It was a reflex. One that was killing me.

She would say she was here; she was doing the work; but nothing she did was good enough for me. I could sense the lack of commitment; indeed I could see it. But my mind wanted to believe the words more than the reality, and I tried to fight my own insecurities and intuitions. It began to tear me apart -- I couldn't square how I felt with what I wanted to believe. I began to think about ending my pain.

In our first session in marriage counseling, she affirmed her desire to reconcile.

The next day, as she was preparing to go out for drinks with friends (again, without informing me), she found me in our bed, weeping. Again, the dance of, do you not want me to go? I know you'll feel controlling if you do... I asked her to stay. She asked me to talk to her. She held me, and for the first time in a month, I felt like I was talking to my wife. I told her everything I was thinking and feeling; we had been like that for a long time, open, or so I thought. I told her I was having dark thoughts. Later, her text messages would complain about how I had threatened to kill myself, that it was her worst nightmare to deal with. The cruelty of it all.

The next day, I had work. She went out. She drank. She was home at 4am, incoherently drunk. I picked her up and carried her to bed, disrobed her, tucked her in. I checked her phone. This time the DMs. There it was: the plans made with the AP, the contempt of me. It had been going on, likely, since that first weekend away. I left, spent the next day working, talked to friends, made plans for divorce. The next day I went home and held her for an hour -- one last hour to pretend I still had my wife, the woman I loved, and not the monster she had grown into. Then I told her what I knew, and that I wanted a divorce. I wasn't seeking anything but half -- a fair, equitable, even distribution. She agreed. I packed what I could and left.

In all of her communications, she is a different person. With me, she would be loving, empathetic, a listener, a caregiver, a partner. To her friends, who know nothing of her true struggles with alcohol and self-harm, she is a victim of my ego; to her family, she's just angry with me, and they know nothing of her alcoholism, the self-harm, or the affairs; to the AP, she's a fun girl who is strong (I've started to feel sorry for the dope; she's already lying to him). I don't know where she is anymore. If I ever did.

The next day, I tried again. I laid out what I needed. First, a brutal end to her relationship with the AP and the social circle that had enabled and encouraged the affair; second, to tell her parents what was really, finally happening in her life (they are very close to her, supportive, and loving; it breaks my heart to know how shut out of her life they are, unknown to them); third, to enter into intense psychiatric care. That night, she considered it. Truly considered it.

The next day, she decided I had been too mean, too angry in that final appeal. She said she didn't want to try and fix things. This was, throughout this relationship, effectively my 4th attempt at reconciliation. I told her that was fine; I shook her hand, we agreed to sell the house and split the equity, and we agreed on a date to meet to work through the particulars.

I stepped out into the rain, and felt finally free. I didn't think that I would. I thought I would feel the same heart-wrenching pain that I had felt for over a month. Her drinking had driven us apart, she had grown angry and resentful of me and instead of communicating and working with me she had chosen to construct a social life in which I was the villain of her story, I knew that things were going to be hard, but I also knew that the truth was that nothing would be as hard as the relationship I was now leaving.

So what have I learned?

• First, protecting your partner from who they are doesn't help them. It enables them.
• Support is not validation. Support can often look like challenging people to be better versions of themselves. Validation is encouraging them to believe the lies they tell themselves.
• My wife is gone. The person she is now isn't who she was; she's chosen to be a different person now. It almost seems like a mental break of some kind. Maybe it's fear of actually confronting who she is, her reliance on alcohol. I'm not sure. I don't think I can be bothered to speculate anymore.
• I need to be clear about my wants, my needs, my expectations. I need clear and strong boundaries.
• I need self-respect. I look back at what I bore, and I know that I told myself I was doing it because I believed in her and believed in marriage and the idea of what it meant. I had never wanted to get married, as I had seen too more divorce and heartache in my childhood, but I changed my mind for her. Ah, well.
• I need to trust my intuition. It has been right in every instance. It's my desire to believe in someone, something, that goes against that intuition that has consistently steered me wrong.
• When someone shows you who they are, believe them. The signs were there early on. I chose to ignore them. That's my responsibility.