I haven't posted in a while but I felt the need to do so today. So the downhill saga continues for me. I was served with the divorce papers today. Even though I want to see it as an opportunity to start a new life, I really feel sad. I guess the only thing that is left for me is to realize and convince myself that life goes on. To work on myself in order to understand why I am in this situation and become a better person. It is a painful process though. Well, things always happen for a reason. There will be someone else in the future that can give me what I need, can commit to me without being scared, can respect me, and cherish me. Someone that I can also give what she needs. In other words, someone that can make me happy and that I can make happy. Why am I posting? I guess I just needed some support.

I'm so sorry for you. I don't know your story, but I can feel your pain and hurt through your post. I know everyone will say all the right things and urge you to move on, but nothing truly makes this pain go away but time. Try your best to keep yourself bust - whatever that is - just make it be something. Try not to dwell on the past and do look at it as a fresh start at life. A chance to right wrongs and truly work on making yourself happy. Its all about you know. Life that chin up and do not let this pain take you down. Allow yourself to grieve, as that is important, but do not obsess or let it control you. be strong.

Please continue to post. let your feelings out and let us help you through this very difficult, but new and exciting time.

God Bless You -
VS

It might be that I had a really blue day since I was served today. But I've been reading many posts in this board and I just find it incredible how much pain is around. How did we get here? We felt those butterflies in the stomach when we met our wayward spouses and then overtime something went wrong. We might not were able to fully meet our spouse's emotional needs but why were they/we so coward not to talk before they/we began to do their/our deeds. When I met my wife, on her way to become ex, I thought she was the one. I saw myself growing up old with her and having kids. I never even thought about the possibility of enduring affairs and the possibility of divorce was completely out of the question. Today reality is different. The butterflies are gone and I just feel lots of pain. Before we used to get very excited every time we saw each other and now we just send cold emails to each other to handle the last businesses we have pending. I cried for a while after I went over the D paperwork. I just never imagined I was going to be in this situation 5 years later.

I am feeling much better now. The sadness and pain are fading away. I knew I was going to be served soon and was sort of ready but it was still painful. I continued working on myself with the resources I found at coping.org. The've been very helpful because this ordeal completely shattered my self esteem. Coping.org focuses on helping you understand the roots of low self esteem and ways to improve it. It also provides you with tools to learn how to control your emotions, forgive, and let go. Something striking is that while going through the different sections, I found out I had low-self esteem by the time I started dating my ex-wife. Thus, I was not healthy and I did not attract a very healthy person either. As a consequence, we ended up creating a co-dependant relationship where we hurt each other a lot. We both played the role of victims and victimizers in the relationship depending on the situation (Money, Affairs, Lack of commitment, etc.). Although you should completely follow the advice in this website, coping.org can help you understand aspects of yourself that might had prevented you from fulfilling your spouses' emotional needs. It can also help you on understanding how did you contribute to create the dynamics that led to the affairs or divorce. Just wanted to share that with you guys.