WS and I are finally coming to a settlement agreement after a year long seperation. I am most frustrated and exasperated that our divorce has not gone through much sooner as he has been to preoccupied pursuing more affairs and living the lifestyle to take ownership of his self generated garbage.

I see my seperation and pursuit of a divorce on my part as my last alternative to regain my self-respect and recover my human dignity as a result of being joined to an extremely sick,selfish, cruel, perverse man of over 22 years.

The "s" provided me with finally the actual basis, clarity and frame work to really observe his true character without him being able to use the convienant props of our marriage, family man, spiritual man, good man, respectable man who loves his wife/family so much, no longer as an excuse, facade/cover up. So on that level the seperation process is worth it.

I am saddened to discover the person I once chose to love is nothing more than deeply disturbed, arrogant,pathological liar, con man, perverse immoral, evil doer, all round rotten to core bad human being. Perhaps the politically sensitive/ correct terminology address would be to say that he is a narcissis, BP- manic depressive/bi-polar II , psychopath, sex addict, chemically dependant alcholic.

Needless to say my union with him for majority of the entire course of our relationship has been a uphill battle to stay sane, and a most negative, unpleasant, profound, unstimulating, un satisfying, joyless, impoverished union.

My personal experince has resulted from lack of fruit the adultery/lust experince brings forth in another person. I never found his affairs to enhance him as a person, lover, partner, husband or father. Dealing with a person in throws of adultery doesn't produce in my opinion a person of quality but rather reduces their capacities in a myriad of ways I never imagined.

The disentanglement process produced as a result of our sick soul tie relationship has been an extremely intense experince for me. I deeply regret the consequences of my poor judgement in marrying him so young and not understanding how damaged/complicated he was a result of his abusive/neglectful family of orgin.

The pain/agony of living with him as he repeats his family script over like a broken record feels like I have had to do hard time of marriage prison with him for 22 years. I deeply regret being so been terribly naivee believing that genguine love/committment was the answer to overcome life's problems. The nuturing, patience, aspect and respect/support for his person, dreams and aspirations, understanding him, life time of interventive counceling through time would provide healing/maturity to find his way. I have been so terribly mistaken and feel so used.

The bright side of our seperation process for me has also been healthy/healing process in more ways than I could have ever imagined.

The course has been extremely painful at the same time to discover how deceived/betrayed I and our children have been led astray.

The healthy healing part for me has been to discover his true colors, general reduction of stress, distress and suffering on my part. The human heart/soul I belive can only take only so much extreme distress as with my case. I am deeply saddened that I am going through the grieving process as he is most underserving of my time, engergies or actual mention of him. ( I will look forward to getting to stage when he becomes nothing more than a distant faint memory.)

I am most concerned that I have always been able to be resilient and bounce back to life with a fair amount of courage,optimism and love more. The impact of the horrible ordeal with him during the last few years of our marriage and seperation especially seems to have caught up to me.

I am not pleased my mind seems to be dumping at alarming rate many of the tapes/memories of what I and the children had to endure under as result of all his misconduct towards us.

The overwhelming feelings of waking up now, are taking me by surprise and am realising the stark reality that I am the one who has never experinced true healthy, genguine mature love by a partner is sad.

I have really blocked out own heart/needs in order to hang on to values/morals inspite of adversity.

I am so disappointed with my self that I have had to radically alter and repress greatly my feminine, intelligent, romantic life loving passionate adventursome self just as a defense mechanism to give up who I once was just to survive and be reduced to low levels of poverty to live with a person who could provide very little stability, little love and enrichment in our lives.

My having to be the strong stablizing loving source for our children and shoulder much of the martial, family responibility/dynamics.

Looking back now I also realise that I lived on sheer will power, throughout all his oppressiveness throughout the years to be the driving staying love force because of our children. I certainly am not claiming that I was a perfect person and certainly made my own fair share of mistakes. Thankfully, our children are the best/good that came out of our corupt/union.

It seems retriving myself and fighting to reclaim myself is the hardest part. I don't understand why I am failing my self. I seem so stuck with the grief process and the exhaustion of cleaning up all the mess he has left behind with his irresponibilty and helping of course our kids through this awful process for them.

I am having difficulty with my liberation process. I feel I should be out celebrating life, out at the gym every morning, out dancing every weekend, window shopping, sampling every fragrance, makeup department, involved in all my volunteer endeavors that used to bring me so much pleasure. I feel I should be taking all the university courses, music classes, putting on fabulous dinner parties, socializing galore, doing that I used to do and above all meeting new men as friends at least to make up for all the lost years. Yet,my energies and heart this time seems to betray me and I am so angry with my self.

I feel as though he has truly winded my sails and taken so much from me. I am disappointed that somehow I am letting this person still have power over me and I feel I am deeply betraying myself after all it is his guilt trip. It seems I have developed the habit of placing everyone else in front of the line but myself and now when I so need myself I am letting myself down. Ugggg.

When I first read this, I believed you were still in blaming mode. But it seems you're moving along, but not necessarily at the pace you'd like to see you progress.
You were in DENIAL for many years. It's a safe place to be when we are not yet ready to deal with reality.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Yet,my energies and heart this time seems to betray me and I am so angry with my self.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Yes, you should be out doing more things, but can you imagine how tired your body and mind must be from all those years of convincing yourself it was OK, and holding it all together.
Recovery takes time, as does healing.
If you have the time and energy for social events, by all means do it, but don't beat yourself up about not doing it. Congratulate yourself of what you can and have done.

My divorce support group is great, in that they plan activities to get people out. Since everyone is in fact rebuilding their lives, it provides a place to go with friends, and safety. (Not a dating scene). Just to go out to dinner or a movie is a great joy these days.
Find a local group for yourself, and expand your horizons.

Commend yourself on your progress to date, and don't dispair the long road ahead, think of the many joys to come.

Ditto ditto ditto. Are you and I divorcing the same man? Just sounds way too familiar.

And I am at the jumping off point where I want to start life anew and refreshed. So much. And I want to do many of the same things as you do. We just need a little more time.

God bless you. We've walked down a rocky road but God has been there for us.

::hugs:: from Houston

I felt every word you said..all dripping with raw emotion.
You have been fighting a war for 20 or so years. Along the way, prisoners were taken (parts of you, you lost). But you held fast for 20+ years with your immensne integrity and your steadfast determination as your unbreakable weapons.
But after all that time, you finally asked yourself..why am I fighting this war? When will it end? And knowing that it was pointless, because the "enemy" was too self-sbsorbed and arrogant to come to a compromise/truce, you now know that the war would've lasted until your time on earth was done. So you resigned. And with the end of this war, you may now *finally* reclaim those long-lost prisoners.
But you are war-torn, tierd, and still reeling from the after-affects. And since the prisoners aren't going anywhere...well, you'll get to them later. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Cool]" src="images/icons/cool.gif" />

Take the time to be mad. Punch the heck out of a pillow, or better, get a punching bag. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> Take the time to grieve, to cry. But no more being mad at yourself. You are tierd..this has been hell you've clawed your way out of, and no one expects you to throw a big, stupid smile on your face and jump right back up again. You'll get to those things..I wouldn;'t even set a time limit. You don;t need the added stress. Truly, the worst part is over. Gets better form here. Take care

mayflower,

I was going to say the same thing as notpeachyinga, but she beat me to it. Maybe he's a polygamist on top of everything else! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="images/icons/tongue.gif" />

Your post is so heartfelt, I could really relate to your frustration. My H left over two years ago, then we went through almost 1.5 years of fake reconciliation, intermingled with repeated lies, blame, and abuse. I finally had enough and initiated no contact with him about 10 months ago, which is when my healing really began.

I also expect myself to be getting over it faster than I am, but after 20 years together, repeated betrayals, and total violation of trust, it's going to take us time to recover fully. Especially, since I, like you, have been having the experience of slowly waking up to the reality of the full extent of the betrayal. When I first got here, I believed my H was just having a MLC, that he still loved me but thought I didn't admire him and therefore had turned to a much younger, adoring woman. In other words, it was my fault. I expected our marriage to recover and be stronger than ever.

Now, I realize that he has been unfaithful with various women throughout our entire relationship, that while I believed he'd been sober for almost 10 years, he was probably only sober for 1-2 years, if that, and that the OW is also into drugs and multiple sex partners and not having to work while I support them.

The last person we need to have beating up on us is ourselves. Hopefully, you can find a way to do one or two of the things on your list as a way to nurture yourself. You're setting the bar so high you're bound to fail or exhaust yourself in trying to meet your own expectations.

A support group is a good suggestion. MB is one. I go to 3-4 Al-Anon meetings a week myself while others here have suggested divorce support.

Millions of thanks and hugs for everyone above heartfelt support, validation and perspectives which were bang right on. I feel so much more connected to myself. Your all awesome women and I have been greatly insprired by the depths of all your courage, dignity and strength to walk this particular unforseen ugly path of darkness.

I have read some of your personal situations and my heart truly goes out to each and everyone of you.

I found much comfort by everyone's understanding as I knew my emotional threads were stuck somewhere unseen to me. I am now more able to see, feel and face more realistically of how traumitized and injured I am.

I so appreciate the generous much needed transfusion of support, hugs, wisdom.

I doubt anyone ever enjoy's being inadvertently dragged down wrong road of lust through a sex addict personal nightmare and experincing all the accompanying toxic emotional baggage. They do this with no conscience and operate on an empty soul.

Indeed I am exhausted both spirit, mind and body, worn torn and oppressed. I never imagined all the complex layers and depths the denial process has and how complex the process really is to repair a broken heart/spirit and get back on the road to good emotional/spiritual health. I am to stuck in the grieving process and is irksome.

I am now trying to stand back now at look at this experince with different set of eyes and gain a greater scope on things. It seems to me if we were to peel off the emotional labels behind affairs and multiple affairs addictions issues and get beyond the distressing injurious emotions that accompany betrayal experinces.

The Adultery/Betrayal experince in my opinion is nothing more than out/out spiritual/pyschological warfare intended on some level to inflict harm/destroy another person.

The silent raging demoralizing war, politely called domestic affairs-- all done under the roof/sancity called love, marriage, family, and home.

Anyone's feedback would be most welcome on the warfare aspect as I would like to better understand. The whole experince feels like to me that I have been dragged down a deep dark pit.

The entire responiblity which I know is up to me to get out and make the ascent.

It appears the ascent upwards takes alot of acrobatics,long ropes, good night vision, maps to pull one self up and out with God's help, to find the way back to the right path of safety, goodness and wellness.

Thanks again for everyone feedback and efforts to throw down those much needed ropes at the right time. I am finding it difficult to get my footing with all the injuries and fractures I have sustained. Maybe this is what I have had to face is the recognition and extent of my injuries and slow process of self/care to recover.

I am not sure of my head own space/why parts of me is so afraid to face that my partner is an outright degenerate and nothing more.

My spirit says affirms this person I once loved, never loved me and his all his wrongdoings, deceitful actions, misconduct, shallowness are already imprinted in my soul forever and proves in summary he never had my best interests at heart. So what's the big deal here I say to my heart, why grieve, why be sad, why feel rejected, is this a person of good character, this person has nothing to offer, not someone deserving. Why choose anylonger to be misguided, get on with life.

Facing my own self betrayal issues is really the problem here that I really need to explore and work through.

The pit of adultery is so dark, ugly, deep, steep. Why can't the foolish WS just go down alone with their companions and leave us out of the whole mess. It's their sole choice/actions that drove them there.

The ruling task master of lust is most grotesque, cruel and harsh that destroys all who land here and those who land unvolunairly.

There is much precious, juicy truth in the old saying of "Love Wisely". The golden sterling warning consequences of being unevenly yoked results in a most unpleasant imprisioning soul wrenching experince.

Still healing in the pit!

Cheers to better homes and gardens in the future for all of us!