Greetings old friends!
I've been coming to hearth.com for more than a decade now, and seen all the ups and downs and changes. I miss Craig, and I even miss elkimmeg.
I have been a bit absent in 2018 as I've been sorting a couple things in my personal life.
Bottom line...I am going through a 'messy' divorce, separated legally since June 2018. I have two teen daughters, who are handling things as well as can be expected. This is my second marriage (first lasted just a couple years in my 20s, no kids).
In terms of my lived experience....
I fell head over heels in love with this woman in 1999, felt that we were a perfect match beyond anything that I had ever dreamed of, and the love and the bond never left me in 18 years of marriage. We got through our normal life stresses at work over two decades together, enjoyed raising our two girls, and are now prepping them to go off to college and starting their own lives. We saved our money, and went from broke to comfortable to thinking about a life of relative leisure and a cozy retirement together.
Of course, our relationship wasn't perfect....we disagreed about some things, fought occasionally. I always found a couple of her behaviors odd...but in a loving marriage we should accommodate the other in some ways...nobody is perfect, right? One of those behaviors was what I would describe as her 'moodiness' and a tendency to occasionally get upset or freaked out to the point of rage at me. Not pretty of course, but I figured it could be a lot worse. She would never really apologize (just a tiny, oops I'm sorry) for this...and again I accommodated.
If you had asked me....over all those years I would have said I was happily married, loved my wife and was confident that she loved me too. Our marriage seemed to be better than that of all our friends that I knew.
I will spare the sordid details in a public forum, but all I can say is that here, now, I finally know the truth. My wife was living a double life. She was having affairs with at least 4 other men over at least the last 8 years of our marriage. When you are in love and trust your spouse, you are blind to these sorts of unthinkable things. And in addition to my blindness...she was super sneaky. This is also her second marriage, her first one ended when her infidelity was discovered, and she was publicly shamed. She told me she 'learned her lesson' from that....and I thought she meant that was to not cheat....nope, the lesson was to **not get caught**.
My wife has a 150 IQ, a PhD in psychology and a lifelong and incurable **personality disorder**.
The disorder leads her to a life of pathological lying...never showing her true self or intentions to anyone...even her romantic partners. She is literally play-acting and sees herself as selfishly exploiting everyone in her life, all of the time, and enjoying that power-play. The same disorder precludes her forming a loving bond with anyone, although she can and does get infatuated, a combo that leads her to serial relationships lasting 12-36 months with the other men. Once her infatuation fades (as it did with me around 2004) the prior love interest is devalued, becoming a non-person worthy of contempt (which need not be displayed of course, if you want to exploit them). It is clear that she has felt zero compassion or empathy for me for the last 14 years, less than you would feel for a stranger, while pretending she did just enough to keep me from getting wise.
Her IQ allowed her to be super covert about her double life. I am no dummy or clueless person, but she had me fooled. This was NOT a case of me walking in on her, finding mens undies in my bed or getting a tip off email from a stranger. When I finally got suspicious, it took me hacking all her tech and personal communications for 2 months, pulling all her financial transactions for more than a decade and actually lab testing her clothing to figure it out! She is the effin Lex Luthor of cheating. Damn.
So imagine the surreal nightmare...your loving wife and kids' mother, of 18 years, that you adore, turns out to be something akin to a super-genius serial-killer! She's not homicidal, of course, but basically has the same mentality and degree of caring about her now many victim(s).
How am I doing six months later....surprisingly well. This has been traumatic for me, obviously. But I feel lucky. I have a few trusted friends, a couple great siblings, a really good therapist and a steady job I love.
I am not healed, but I know I will heal.
And I am very glad that I know the truth, and have removed a toxic person from my life.
Peace.
I've been coming to hearth.com for more than a decade now, and seen all the ups and downs and changes. I miss Craig, and I even miss elkimmeg.
I have been a bit absent in 2018 as I've been sorting a couple things in my personal life.
Bottom line...I am going through a 'messy' divorce, separated legally since June 2018. I have two teen daughters, who are handling things as well as can be expected. This is my second marriage (first lasted just a couple years in my 20s, no kids).
In terms of my lived experience....
I fell head over heels in love with this woman in 1999, felt that we were a perfect match beyond anything that I had ever dreamed of, and the love and the bond never left me in 18 years of marriage. We got through our normal life stresses at work over two decades together, enjoyed raising our two girls, and are now prepping them to go off to college and starting their own lives. We saved our money, and went from broke to comfortable to thinking about a life of relative leisure and a cozy retirement together.
Of course, our relationship wasn't perfect....we disagreed about some things, fought occasionally. I always found a couple of her behaviors odd...but in a loving marriage we should accommodate the other in some ways...nobody is perfect, right? One of those behaviors was what I would describe as her 'moodiness' and a tendency to occasionally get upset or freaked out to the point of rage at me. Not pretty of course, but I figured it could be a lot worse. She would never really apologize (just a tiny, oops I'm sorry) for this...and again I accommodated.
If you had asked me....over all those years I would have said I was happily married, loved my wife and was confident that she loved me too. Our marriage seemed to be better than that of all our friends that I knew.
I will spare the sordid details in a public forum, but all I can say is that here, now, I finally know the truth. My wife was living a double life. She was having affairs with at least 4 other men over at least the last 8 years of our marriage. When you are in love and trust your spouse, you are blind to these sorts of unthinkable things. And in addition to my blindness...she was super sneaky. This is also her second marriage, her first one ended when her infidelity was discovered, and she was publicly shamed. She told me she 'learned her lesson' from that....and I thought she meant that was to not cheat....nope, the lesson was to **not get caught**.
My wife has a 150 IQ, a PhD in psychology and a lifelong and incurable **personality disorder**.
The disorder leads her to a life of pathological lying...never showing her true self or intentions to anyone...even her romantic partners. She is literally play-acting and sees herself as selfishly exploiting everyone in her life, all of the time, and enjoying that power-play. The same disorder precludes her forming a loving bond with anyone, although she can and does get infatuated, a combo that leads her to serial relationships lasting 12-36 months with the other men. Once her infatuation fades (as it did with me around 2004) the prior love interest is devalued, becoming a non-person worthy of contempt (which need not be displayed of course, if you want to exploit them). It is clear that she has felt zero compassion or empathy for me for the last 14 years, less than you would feel for a stranger, while pretending she did just enough to keep me from getting wise.
Her IQ allowed her to be super covert about her double life. I am no dummy or clueless person, but she had me fooled. This was NOT a case of me walking in on her, finding mens undies in my bed or getting a tip off email from a stranger. When I finally got suspicious, it took me hacking all her tech and personal communications for 2 months, pulling all her financial transactions for more than a decade and actually lab testing her clothing to figure it out! She is the effin Lex Luthor of cheating. Damn.
So imagine the surreal nightmare...your loving wife and kids' mother, of 18 years, that you adore, turns out to be something akin to a super-genius serial-killer! She's not homicidal, of course, but basically has the same mentality and degree of caring about her now many victim(s).
How am I doing six months later....surprisingly well. This has been traumatic for me, obviously. But I feel lucky. I have a few trusted friends, a couple great siblings, a really good therapist and a steady job I love.
I am not healed, but I know I will heal.
And I am very glad that I know the truth, and have removed a toxic person from my life.
Peace.
