MrsFZRblack
New Member
Damn. I hate reading this, mostly because I could have almost written it myself, and it makes me sad and angry that anyone else is having to go through it.
Before I say anything else, I want to let you know, I am not going to tell you what your ultimate choice should be. Mostly because it won't do any good. And really, no one should make life altering decisions just because someone on the internet said to.
*IF* you decide to end things, it will be because you are at the point that you absolutely cannot take another second of living like that.
There is also the possibility that you're not ready to do anything one way or the other, and for now, will just leave things continue the way they are. Maybe trying some things to hopefully make it better, maybe not.
These are your choices to make, and no one here can make them for you.
That said, here are my thoughts based on my experience with a sadly similar situation:
Yes, people CAN change, but most are creatures of habit. With my ex-husband he offered many promises of change, and willingness to work on things, and yes, even counseling (which we did). Unfortunately, it was lip service to make the argument go away. *HE* did not have a problem with his behavior, so for him really no reason to change. The cycle we ended up in was he would get better at covering things up, and I would get better at snooping. Then we'd fight, he'd promise to change and we'd start it over again. He'd find different tricks to hide his behavior, or excuses for why it wasn't so bad, and I'd find more ways to figure out what was going on.
I was experiencing a lot of different emotions regarding the situation, as I am sure you are too (not saying they are the same, just saying I know it can be confusing). When we got married I told him I was not someone who took those vows lightly, that when I said "till Death do us part" I wanted to uphold that. The idea of divorce made me feel guilty. I felt like I had to make it work. But one person cannot make it work by themselves. I also felt angry and betrayed. I was angry at all the different girls, and even confronted some, which afterwards didn't make me feel better. Sometimes I would delude myself into thinking it wasn't that bad, after all, I hadn't walked in on him in bed with someone, so maybe nothing had gotten that far. And part of me felt like I deserved the all the pain I was living with, because I chose him, I made the conscious choice to marry him and felt like maybe I just needed to live with it.
I did the same thing as you are now. I got online and posted on a forum that I was comfortable with. And I got a mixed bag of responses, some saying go, some saying stay and try harder. And I used those responses to allow myself permission to stay miserable. What I mean is, all the people saying leave let me feel justified in my anger, and made me feel like it was ok to be thinking he was an <insert favorite expletive here> and then all the people saying stay made me feel like it was ok to not want to leave, and even have hope that it would get better.
After one argument he agreed to counseling, so we tried that. What I didn't consider at the time was that someone willing to lie to their wife, is probably not going to have any qualms lying to a 3rd party. And someone that doesn't want to change what they're doing, isn't going to do the work necessary to change.
But, to be perfectly honest...I'm not sure it would have mattered. My trust was so far gone at that point that I don't know if he would have ever gotten it back.
IMO at this point you have to look at what you have and what you want out of life:
• Is she giving you any reason to think that things are going to change? And by reason I don't mean just words, are her actions backing it up?
• If nothing changes, are you willing to let life continue this way?
• If it appears to have changed, will you be able to give her 100% trust?
• What is your happiness level? (We cannot rely on others to make us happy, because we have no control on what another person will or won't do) So regardless of her, what do you need to be happy?
For me, I finally got tired of our cycle. I got tired of being lied to. I got tired of being miserable. It wasn't easy. I was leaving the man I'd loved, even with all the crap, at one point I'd loved him, and it was the life I knew how to live. Leaving was hard, and it hurt. A LOT.
But now? I thank God I got tired of all that and that He gave me the strength to get through it. Being on the other side now, I'm with someone who I love and who loves me back, and I'm living a life happier than I'd ever thought possible.
On a side note, you may not really even get to make the decision to stay or go. She's already moved out, she may be deciding to end it herself. If that ends up being the case, you may have grounds to claim abandonment in your divorce case. But you need to be careful, and not do anything in the interim that she would be able to use against you.
Before I say anything else, I want to let you know, I am not going to tell you what your ultimate choice should be. Mostly because it won't do any good. And really, no one should make life altering decisions just because someone on the internet said to.
*IF* you decide to end things, it will be because you are at the point that you absolutely cannot take another second of living like that.
There is also the possibility that you're not ready to do anything one way or the other, and for now, will just leave things continue the way they are. Maybe trying some things to hopefully make it better, maybe not.
These are your choices to make, and no one here can make them for you.
That said, here are my thoughts based on my experience with a sadly similar situation:
Yes, people CAN change, but most are creatures of habit. With my ex-husband he offered many promises of change, and willingness to work on things, and yes, even counseling (which we did). Unfortunately, it was lip service to make the argument go away. *HE* did not have a problem with his behavior, so for him really no reason to change. The cycle we ended up in was he would get better at covering things up, and I would get better at snooping. Then we'd fight, he'd promise to change and we'd start it over again. He'd find different tricks to hide his behavior, or excuses for why it wasn't so bad, and I'd find more ways to figure out what was going on.
I was experiencing a lot of different emotions regarding the situation, as I am sure you are too (not saying they are the same, just saying I know it can be confusing). When we got married I told him I was not someone who took those vows lightly, that when I said "till Death do us part" I wanted to uphold that. The idea of divorce made me feel guilty. I felt like I had to make it work. But one person cannot make it work by themselves. I also felt angry and betrayed. I was angry at all the different girls, and even confronted some, which afterwards didn't make me feel better. Sometimes I would delude myself into thinking it wasn't that bad, after all, I hadn't walked in on him in bed with someone, so maybe nothing had gotten that far. And part of me felt like I deserved the all the pain I was living with, because I chose him, I made the conscious choice to marry him and felt like maybe I just needed to live with it.
I did the same thing as you are now. I got online and posted on a forum that I was comfortable with. And I got a mixed bag of responses, some saying go, some saying stay and try harder. And I used those responses to allow myself permission to stay miserable. What I mean is, all the people saying leave let me feel justified in my anger, and made me feel like it was ok to be thinking he was an <insert favorite expletive here> and then all the people saying stay made me feel like it was ok to not want to leave, and even have hope that it would get better.
After one argument he agreed to counseling, so we tried that. What I didn't consider at the time was that someone willing to lie to their wife, is probably not going to have any qualms lying to a 3rd party. And someone that doesn't want to change what they're doing, isn't going to do the work necessary to change.
But, to be perfectly honest...I'm not sure it would have mattered. My trust was so far gone at that point that I don't know if he would have ever gotten it back.
IMO at this point you have to look at what you have and what you want out of life:
• Is she giving you any reason to think that things are going to change? And by reason I don't mean just words, are her actions backing it up?
• If nothing changes, are you willing to let life continue this way?
• If it appears to have changed, will you be able to give her 100% trust?
• What is your happiness level? (We cannot rely on others to make us happy, because we have no control on what another person will or won't do) So regardless of her, what do you need to be happy?
For me, I finally got tired of our cycle. I got tired of being lied to. I got tired of being miserable. It wasn't easy. I was leaving the man I'd loved, even with all the crap, at one point I'd loved him, and it was the life I knew how to live. Leaving was hard, and it hurt. A LOT.
But now? I thank God I got tired of all that and that He gave me the strength to get through it. Being on the other side now, I'm with someone who I love and who loves me back, and I'm living a life happier than I'd ever thought possible.
On a side note, you may not really even get to make the decision to stay or go. She's already moved out, she may be deciding to end it herself. If that ends up being the case, you may have grounds to claim abandonment in your divorce case. But you need to be careful, and not do anything in the interim that she would be able to use against you.
