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Maria,
I am emailing because of all the sites and books I have found or that have been given to me, this one seems to closely fit my current situation. I have downloaded your book and this site is very helpful. It is the first time i have ever dared to share my story with a stranger. Although I admit I have been searching frantically for any and all explanations and help. The advice on letting go and becoming happier on my own is of course the recourse I want to take now, but imagining a future without him makes it all seem so hopeless. I would like to free myself from this pain and depression that I am keeping myself in, but I would also like a second chance with someone who seems lost himself these days.
It has been a long and complicated road with my now ex. We met when i was barely 20. He said it was love at first sight while I was much more skeptical. Little by little he wooed me, poems, letters, calls from foreign countries. We fell madly in love and have been that way ,or so i thought, for more than ten years. About two years ago he started having an affair with a young girl (she is in her twenties) who had been sending him emails (he is in his fifties). I wasn't aware at all, until she sent a letter to our house and i found it. After that, he promised she was nothing, it was flattery, he thought I didn't love him, etc.
I was devastated but wanted to make it work. Things were better, fast forward a few months and the girl was at my door step, frantically banging on the door and I realized she was still in his life. I had a melt down, he was on his knees begging me not to leave him, telling me he would prove to me with actions I was the love of his life. I was a wreck, aggressive, bitter, angry, I said things I regret and made his life miserable so of course, a month later he told me it was over and never coming back.
It has been several months now, I am still feeling like we belong together and he is now in a relationship with the other girl. However, he sends me random texts (not very often) wondering where i am, asking if i want to come to visit for a day or two, then when i respond in anyway, he stops contacting me again. I have been trying to play it cool, not show him how broken I am now, but it is lonely and I miss what we once had.
I guess my question is, will he regret this and come back? Or even better, is there any steps i can take to make him see me as he once did? I know you don't know him, but in your experience of other cases. I don't want our past, I want a new and different future and a chance to get to know the person he is now. I always thought i was a strong independent woman, but i have this painful ache I cannot get rid of.
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The goal of this website is to give support to people who are facing problems in their relationship related to cheating, abuse and narcissism. I am living in Europe and English is not my native language, I wish you will excuse me if I make some grammatical errors. I have a background in neuroscience and behavioral sciences and I am currently doing brain research related to these topics in university in my home country. I decided to write in English because I wish to reach as many people as I can around the world.
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Dear Friend,
Thank you for your letter. I am so sorry that you had to go through such a heartache. I know how painful it is to find out that the person who you thought was committed to you has betrayed your trust in such a horrible way. You wrote: "I always thought i was a strong independent woman, but i have this painful ache I cannot get rid of." If you read other stories on this website, you will soon notice that these same words are repeated over and over again in different letters. Your feelings are far from uncommon. The relationship with one's husband or wife is basically the most important relationship of one's life. If this base stone gets shattered it will have a profound impact on every areas of one's life. Your painful feelings do not mean you are not a strong and independent person, it simply means that you are facing a crisis and you are reacting to it in a very normal manner. In fact, if you were not strongly affected by something like this, there would be something wrong with you.
 Only emotionally cold people and people who are incapable of experiencing empathy could face something like this without being strongly affected. Even though you are hurting, try to remind yourself that the pain you are feeling is an indicator of you being a normal, caring person. I know this does not take the pain away, but I wish it will make it slightly easier to bare when you can think of the pain as something that is very natural under these circumstances instead of implying that you would be somehow "weak" as a person.
You were wondering if it is possible to resume the relationship with your ex husband. Based on everything you mentioned in your letter about the way he has been behaving towards you, it is quite unlikely that you would be able to fully trust him even if he did return to you. Even if he told you he is now fully committed to you, it would take a long time before you could trust him again (I am talking about several years). If you have read the page How to Get Over Cheating on this website, you know that it is very hard to get over the betrayal the first time when it happens. Cheating destroys something precious in a relationship and it is very difficult (but not impossible) to rebuild the feeling the spouses shared before cheating took place. If the betrayal occurs second time (and especially if the betrayed spouse has not had the time to heal) it is considerably harder to regain the trust and loving feeling in a relationship.
Your husband betrayed your trust when he started an affair with this young woman. He used somewhat ridiculous excuses to justify his actions, such as him thinking you do not love him anymore (in such a situation the right thing to do is to get a divorce, not to start an affair). Then he made a promise to you to end the relationship, but he kept it going behind your back. This behavior shows your husband was not able to put you and your feelings as a priority, instead he was only thinking of himself and pursuing his own desires.
 When your husband was caught second time he begged you to stay with him, even though he most likely had told the young woman he loves her too and wishes to be with her (or something similar to give her some encouragement). Even when he was caught, he was not ready to sacrifice his relationship with the young woman for your sake. Dear Friend, this is all you need to know. This shows quite clearly the personality of your ex husband. People like him can appear very kind and polite, but when it comes down to choosing between their own desires and happiness of someone else, they tend to put themselves as priority. It is very difficult to maintain a functional a relationship with this kind of a person.
You said he occasionally sends you text messages asking how you are doing and inviting you to come over, but when you respond he cuts the communication off again. This is a form of control. Your ex husband feels unpleasant thinking that you are no longer dependent on him, that you might actually have your own life and perhaps even romantic involvement with someone. Most likely the reason why he is sending you these messages time to time is to see if you are still emotionally "available". When you respond, and especially if your response is positive, he feels good again while thinking you are still there for him. Then he cuts communication because his true aim was not to resume the relationship with you (if it was, you would surely know it) but just to get a confirmation that you are still "there for him", at list on emotional level.
Dear Friend, I understand you still love your husband very much. Few months of separation is not enough to detach emotionally from someone who you have spent more than a decade with. Again, your feeling is perfectly normal and shows that you are a warm and caring person. I strongly feel it is best if you do not try to resume your relationship with this man. It sounds like he is the kind of a person who has very hard time remaining loyal and faithful in a relationship.
You are still young yourself, yet somehow your husband felt the need to get involved with a woman who was even younger than you. You wrote that your husband is in his fifties and this girl is in her twenties, and that he got involved with her when she contacted him via email. If you resume the relationship with him, imagine how the situation will be like when you are older. It is very likely that at some point he will again start to look for a younger woman, especially if younger women make themselves available for him in similar fashion as this girl did. You are still young and you have lot's of time to find your own happiness. I strongly encourage you to consider carefully if you wish to jeopardize your future happiness with someone who is not worthy of your trust.
I fully understand what you mean when you said that you cannot imagine your future without your husband. You have spend almost your whole adult life with this man, it goes without saying that it is extremely depressing to think of the life without him. But imagine how much harder it would be for you to leave him had you spent with him two or three decades instead of one. It is much harder to start to build a new life alone when you are in your fifties. Even though you feel very hurt now, I am sure that when you look back after couple years, you will realize that you could not have found happiness with a person who was able to treat you like this.
 It will help you to move on when you realize that this man does not truly love you. If he did, he would not have done this to you. You love him strongly. Could you have done a similar thing to him? I believe the answer is no. One does not behave this way towards someone one loves. It sounds like your husband was strongly in love with you in the beginning of the relationship but as years went by and routine stepped in, he slowly lost interest and wanted to experience the thrill of a secret relationship with a younger woman.
It can be that at some point your ex husband will get tired of this young girl he is now with and tries to get back together with you. If that happens, I recommend you to consider carefully whether you are willing to risk your future happiness by resuming your relationship with him. It can be that regardless of the risks you decide to resume the relationship if he expresses interest in doing so. If you get back together with him and end up hurt again, please do not be too hard on yourself. It often takes several attempts to break free from this kind of a relationship. Many of us go back couple times before we understand that separation is truly for the best.
You were wondering if he could again see you as he once did. It is possible that after spending some time apart he might become attracted to you again, however it is likely that if you resume the relationship and as time goes by that attraction again gets weaker and then you are again facing a similar situation, the only difference being that you are older and it is even harder for you to move on. There are people who are capable of a long-term respectful relationship and then there are people who are not capable of it. It sounds like this man belongs to the latter group. Most likely you could not have done anything "better" in the relationship. What happened was not your fault.
Even if he returned to you, I do not think you would be able to fully trust him. If you are not able to fully trust your spouse, your life will be very stressful and unhappy. Dear Friend, I do not wish that kind of a life for you. I do not recommend you to keep your life on hold and wait for him possibly getting tired of that younger woman. Please remember what I said above: Even if he did return to you, in a long run it would be very hard to trust a person who has been capable of treating you this way and who is clearly capable of being dishonest in a relationship (the affair with that young woman was not a one night stand or a momentary lapse of reason, it was an ongoing calculated betrayal).
Dear Friend, right now you need to be patient. Healing after a betrayal like this takes time. I would recommend you to cut all contact with this man and not to respond to him even if he tries to contact you. I know it is very hard to do this, especially in the beginning. If you fail in maintaining No Contact, please do not be too hard on yourself. Trust me: Eventually you will get over this. Please write to me anytime you wish. You are not alone.
To read more about narcissism in a relationship and how to recover after ending an abusive relationship, please see section Narcissism.
Warm hug,
Maria
If you wish to submit your own story and get feedback and support for your situation or if you wish to contact me for any other reason, send me email to
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he actually never cheated..so...