Well - my divorce is final day after tomorrow and my H will be married to the OW two weeks from then. I just can't believe it has come to this. My heart is still so broken, although my spirit gets stronger with each day. He doesn't know it but he'll be married to two of us that day because a piece of paper isn't going to change my world and all of a sudden have my vows mean nothing. Please, please, please, tell me that relationships built on lies and deceipt won't make it. I need to believe that now - regardless of where I'm at if/when their house of cards crashes and burns...

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Dear Getting Stronger,

First of all, I am so sorry for your pain. I'm sure it isn't an easy situation at all. But what you need to look at is that YOU will no longer be with someone who lies and deceives you anymore. I'm sure that doesn't take away the pain and from your post, I take that you are still in love with him?
As for their marriage, that is ALL their marriage is built on, lies and lies and more lies. It isn't built on a solid foundation in which your marriage was with your H. Why would someone want to take part in such a union? Not that I can tell the future but I can make a prediction that their "happy" life will not last forever. I'm sure he will, in time, do the same thing he did to you to her and the cycle will continue.
I'm sure it doesn't seem like it now, but you are the one who won. You although hurt and torn right now have a clear future ahead of you. You don't have him holding you down anymore!!! You don't have any children with him so you will not have to have contact with him to remind you of the pain (even though I know it doesn't fully go away).
Just take care of yourself right now. Try and occupy yourself with self-healing activies (spa treatments, shopping, or your favorite thing). In time, things will get better! You will see how fuzzy things were with your xH and realize there is a whole world out there at your fingertips!! You will be able to find someone that will treat you the way you should be treated, and love you without wandering.
I hope you the best! I'm sorry for your pain and loss at this time which I can only imagine to be utterly painful. I hope nothing I said offended you! Take care!

GS -

I would love to just say "Yep, it will fail." But to be honest, there's a chance it won't.

That being said, the chances of them actually making it are not very good at all. If they do make it to marriage (and there's still 2 weeks for that to blow up) they will have already beaten the odds by quite a bit, but stats show that most marriages that start as affairs end in divorce. Most, but not necessarily all.

But remember this too - even if they stay married, it doesn't mean they are happy. My WXH and his OW were back and forth a whole lot right from the beginning. I still cannot understand why he would be willing to leave a stable relationship for one where she is kicking him out of the house every other week. Whatever!

I don't know their status now - for all I know they may have gotten married already. But in this case, if they do get married, I suspect that no matter how miserable things get with them, he will hold on like anything, and they will only end up divorced if she initiates it. Why? A couple of reasons:

1. It would be like admitting to the world he was wrong. Pretty much everyone told him he was wrong, he was nuts, he needed to fix things with me and stop this. He has a whole lot of trouble admitting when he's wrong, and divorcing her after all they went through to get there - well, he would feel like everyone was thinking he was an idiot (which they may very well!)

2. Even worse than admitting to the world he was wrong - proving me right! He hated it more than just about anything when I was right and he was wrong. And mind you, I never tried to shove it in his face. Usually, he would start saying "go ahead, say 'I told you so,'" and I would refuse, telling him that we were a team, and it didn't matter which of us was right. At one of the counseling sessions we went to, I told him flat out that if he chose her, he was going to find himself in the same position all over again in a few years, because he wasn't trying to fix anything, just avoid dealing with any issues. He will definitely not want to prove me correct.

3. Knowing how he thinks, he would probably at that point decide that no relationship will ever work out for him, and would probably try to just stay married and play around on the side. That's what he did with me - he really never wanted the divorce, just wanted both of us to look the other way and let him do what he wanted.

My point? They may or may not marry, and if they do, they may or may not get divorced eventually. But both will be married to someone who is a known liar who does not respect the institution of marriage. She'll know she's married to someone who will go outside the marriage when there's problems. He'll know he's married to someone who didn't have a problem breaking up someone else's marriage, and, as the old saying goes, "if they'll do it with you, they'll do it to you." No matter what they claim to the rest of the world, that cannot be a very happy or fulfilling relationship. It has to be very stressful.

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Having said all that, it really sidesteps the real issue here. This isn't really about them anymore - it's about you.

Don't get me wrong - I know you are hurting, I've been there. And I know it's easy to say you have to move on, but it's the truth all the same.

It was wrong of him to have an affair. No matter what went on in the marriage, that is completely his fault. And he was wrong to hurt you that way. You had no control over that.

And it sounds like you tried to keep from divorcing and were not really given a choice. It's easy to get divorced these days, and he didn't need your agreement. No matter how hard you fought, he was going to get the divorce eventually. It was wrong, and again, you had no control over it.

Now those were things that were done to you. But if you lose any more years to that man, it will be your own fault. What do I mean? He left. He has made it clear he has no intention of turning back. There is a chance he could eventually see his mistake and want to come back, but you can't depend on that. So, any time you waste on anything to do with him now is time you allow to be taken from you.

And it's counter-productive too. It's a waste of your time. You need to go and live your life. It won't be the one you used to have, and it may not be the one you expected to have, but it can still be very good. If you want it to be.

It's also counter-productive in this way. I bet somewhere deep inside, you're telling yourself that if you just hang on and stay faithful, then if things fall apart for them, he'll see you were still there the whole time, and how much you still love him, and he'll come running back home. But it doesn't tend to work that way. What he's more likely to see is someone who is dependant and maybe even pitiful. No mystery, no challenge.

So, ironically, the best way to make him want you back is if you move on. Work on yourself, and be happy in yourself. The best part of this is - yes, it makes you more attractive to him if he ever comes to his senses. But if he doesn't, it won't matter to you, because you'll be happy with yourself, and will have a fulfilling life either way. You may even find that a man who would treat you this way isn't all that appealing to you anymore.

All this is why the first thing you're supposed to do in MB is work on yourself. Because you can't just fix the marriage. You can only fix yourself, try your best, and hope the marriage comes along for the ride!

Believe me, I know I'm not the only one here that would tell you this. I wanted to die when my WXH walked out. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done telling him he couldn't come home when he called two days later wanting to come back. Telling him I had to see some real change first, because I wasn't willing to live with him bouncing between me and her as he pleased. There were a whole lot of times I wanted to just give in and promise him anything - including letting him continue to see her! - if he would just come back.

And now - I still have bad dreams about it all every once in a while, but now those dreams tend to be ones where he moves back into the house against my wishes, and I can't get him to leave! I don't believe in divorce really, though given the circumstances (his adultery, and the fact that he wanted the divorce and there was little I could do about it), it wasn't wrong for me. But now, I wouldn't turn back for anything.

Live your life and enjoy it - as they say, living well is the best revenge.

One other thing -

I don't know how religious you are, but I will tell you another thing that helped me move on.

I did a lot of reading from the Bible about marriage and divorce and such after all this started. And one of the things that helped me close the door completely was this - one of the things the Bible says about divorce is that once two people are divorced, and one of them marries someone else, the two that were originally married are not allowed to marry each other again.

And even though he hadn't married her yet (and still may not have, I just don't know), I decided that once we were divorced, I would never go back with XH again, whether he married her or not. I figured God must have some pretty good reasons for a restriction like that, and figured that since they were "engaged" before he and I were ever married, that even if he did decide he wanted to come back to me after the divorce, it wouldn't be the right thing to do.

Deciding that helped me a great deal in closing that door and moving on. Since I considered that avenue closed, no matter what, I had little choice but to move on with my life.

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I got some very good advice from an old friend shortly after the separation started. He asked me what it was that I'd always wanted to do, but never had, or what I used to love, but had kind of given up since I'd gotten married. He told me to figure that out, and then do those things! Look at the divorce as an opportunity to do all those things I thought I'd never get the chance to do. And he was right! That's what I'm doing. I have plans for a couple of big things, but I even do it in the little things. My XH was a very picky eater, and there were very few restaurants and very few types of foods we could have. Now, whenever I am going out to eat, most times I try to pick places that I've always loved, or always wanted to try, but never could with XH, because they might not have anything he would want to eat. I try to step outside of myself - try new things. I try to do things that even scare me a little sometimes. I end to be a little shy, so I've made it a point to make myself go talk to people and be more outgoing.

Somedays I'm more successful than others at that kind of stuff, but as long as I keep trying to push out and do more and try more, I find I am a much happier person, and that life has gotten interesting again!

osxgirl,

I'm not familiar with this Biblical passage. Could you please include a reference?

Monkey

Never mind, I remembered. Jeremiah chapter 3, I assume is what you're referring to.

Sorry it took so long to reply. I don't always check here that frequently anymore.

Anyway - no, I was thinking more of Deuteronomy 24:1-4.

Not that it matters anymore. It helped me initially, because I was able to frame everything from the perspective that I didn't have much choice in the circumstances, so I had to learn to accept them. The only choice I had was that I wasn't letting my now-XH waltz between the two of us whenever he wanted. After he walked out, the only way I would allow him to come home was to show me through his actions that he had given up OW and was really working on our marriage. What he showed me was that he was willing to lie to both me and our counselor (who is also one of the evangelists at the church, but went to school for counseling,) saying he had completely called it off with OW when he was, in fact, still living with her. And had evidently become engaged to her at some point (though how valid is an "engagement" when both of the people involved in it are still married to someone else?)

I insisted at that point on doing the separation agreement. It was very clear to me that she was looking for a meal ticket, and if he wanted to be it, ok, but he wasn't going to force ME to be it. (I was paying for a majority of bills and such through most of the marriage, and in the last few years of our marriage, for almost everything.) I initiated the settlement agreement to protect myself. But I refused to do the actual divorce - he had to initiate the paperwork. I signed the papers, but wouldn't start them. Until those were done, we could have gone back - the settlement agreement just said who got what, and we could have nullified those anytime we wanted before the actual divorce.

So, I didn't have a choice. He was divorcing me, and the way the laws are, I couldn't have stopped it. And according to God, once he got the divorce, there wasn't any going back anyway. Having the perspective of not having a choice in the matter helped me start accepting it sooner.