Divorce – I was cheated on – How do I survive?

Divorce for Mark and Carrie

Looks like it is official. There is an order in Mark and Carrie’s divorce case. I figured it would not take long since a stipulation was filed nearly a month ago. Basically, Mark realized he was screwed since he’d committed adultery. In Idaho, judges frown on infidelity and he wouldn’t win anything by battling it in court. He never even hired an attorney. Effing coward.

Instead, he curled up like a caged effing rat. Some would say he was brave to take his punishment. I say he was a complete idiot for screwing around on his wife of 20 years. And with a married woman. Karma is a bitch. Mark is gonna forever get to miss family events and it’s gonna cost him a shit-load of money. Maybe if there’s someone out here reading this blog who’s thinking of cheating, you’ll think twice. Or three times.

Mark gets to miss his kids growing up (at the very least 50% of the time) My guess is that Carrie was so pissed that he may not have gotten that much custody. I don’t know for sure and may never know. Just a hunch.

I do know that the Idaho Child Support Calculator says he’ll be paying about $2,100 in child support. He will also be paying maintenance to Carrie because she literally makes $0 and has relied on his income for 20 years. How much in maintenance? Don’t know that either. But it will be significant. Perhaps $2,000 per month? Perhaps $4,000? I do know that there is an unwritten rule where judges will award the non-cheating spouse up to 60% of the cheater’s income. Basically, if Mark’s business earns $150,000 annually, then $90,000 would go to Carrie and the other $60,000 to Mark. Mark was shacking up with his daddy last I heard, so his expenses are probably pretty low.

Must be a bit embarrassing to be a 45 year old man having to move back in with the parents.

They own their house outright. Yep. A $450,000 home fully paid for. My guess is the Carrie isn’t moving from her home. That would be expressly unfair. So, she probably gets the home. Now, she may have to buy 1/2 from him, or maybe not. I don’t know. Either way, that costs him a minimum of $225,000. Even if she had to buy 1/2 from him, she would buy it with HIS MONEY!!!!! LOL! Because he has to pay her each and every month. He would effectively be buying his half of the home from HIMSELF! What a fucking dumb-ass! All for a piece of ass?

I am really glad that his wife took it to him by divorcing him. Sometimes people who think that highly of themselves need to be knocked off their high horse. That’ll teach you to mess with someone’s wife you piece of dog shit! Mark the narcissist, who thinks he so effing cool, gets what he deserves.

There simply is no way that it is worth it to screw around on your spouse. I don’t care what kind of excuses anyone gives me, it isn’t worth it. Divorce first. Once you’re divorced, then have at it. No one can convince me otherwise. There simply is NO EXCUSE for what he and my wife did.

Well, what about Allie you ask? I am divorcing her. Just not yet. I am waiting for her to agree to an attorney free divorce with a minimum of 50/50 custody and NO alimony or child support.

The woman who ruined my marriage

I wrote on this before. My wife Allie had an affair with Mark. Mark was married to Carrie for nearly 20 years before they got divorced just this month. Carrie seems to be a very sweet person. I met her in person once on March 20th, 2018. That’s the day I told her about her husband and my wife having an affair.

This past weekend (June 4th, 2018) Carrie unfriended me on Facebook. I don’t ever care about stuff like that, but I knew it is because I am currently married to Allie. I imagined that when she opened FB and saw anything from my news feed, it reminded her of Allie. My guess was that Carrie simply couldn’t take it.

Then, I got a note from Carrie: (removed the real names for privacy)

So, I was correct. Carrie just doesn’t want to see anything that reminds her of Allie who she calls “the woman who ruined my marriage.”

I can’t say that I disagree with Carrie’s sentiment even though I am still married to Allie. A while back, when I found out they were getting divorced, I wrote about what it means to be married to “the other woman.” Not my “other woman” but “the other woman” to another marriage. (for the record, I don’t have another woman)

It really does bother me that my wife did what she did. I held Allie in such high regard. She’s a Christian, a mom of three sons, and until this affair, had only had sex with one man…….me. What would cause a woman who literally had it all to just say “screw it all, I am doing this”? Even if Allie were single, why would she go after another woman’s wife? There is no future there AND it destroys a family.

Now look, I know that Mike is as much or more at fault than Allie is. Mark ruined their marriage with Allie’s help. But my wife isn’t like that. Or at least I thought……..

When this happens, you pause and say, “who is this person I am married to?” You know how when someone commits a horrific crime and the news interviews the neighbors? The neighbors are like, “she was a nice person. I would have never imagined them doing something like this.”

That’s how this is. I am married to her. I know her. I know her character and every bit of her background. I married her when she was 24. A virgin strait “A” student. I was with her through grad school. I literally known her since she was about 21 and still so young. Everything we’ve been through would never suggest that she would help ruin another person’s family or marriage……except this is the 2nd time (edit: 3rd time. Yep, there was another one. Read on.) she’s had an affair. And both men were married.

So again, who am I married to?

Pick a lane!

When your wife has had multiple affairs, but still wants to work it out and stay together, it is sort of like highway driving. You have to pick a lane! Which way are you going honey? Are you on the highway with me in my lane or are you needing attention from other men? You can’t have both.

So, I have been seeing a therapist, and we’ve been doing counseling. It’s all very expensive when someone decides to step out of a marriage like my wife Allie did. We will be in this for about $10k in therapists and counselors before it’s all over. Crazy right? I think so. Would have been much cheaper to get her thrills somewhere else or to exit the marriage respectfully and honorably BEFORE having an affair.

Okay, back on point. Yesterday I saw the therapist and we talked. And she asked me the hard questions. And asked if Allie and I have had some discussions. Here is a summary of questions and talks that the two of us need to explore.

How is is possible for Allie to be “all in” as she claims when we’re only four months removed from her being in an affair? An affair justified by her disdain for our marriage?
Does Allie know 100% that if it happens again, there will be no third chance?
Have we discussed the pattern and if Allie is really operating on the fantasy of narcissism? (this one is more complex so I will save it for another post)
Do I have any hidden agenda? Basically, is there a thought in me that says “this may not work out.” The answer of course is “yes” now that my wife has cheated again.

Start the 3rd marriage

We were in counseling yesterday. Though it was a good session, I wanted to blog about something that they said. We have two counselors who are in session with us each time we meet. They are husband and wife and they do the sessions together.

At the end of yesterday’s session, the wife said to us, “you’re starting your 3rd marriage. You had your first marriage and Allie had an affair six years ago. Then you started your second marriage and Allie had an affair this year. Now you’re starting your third marriage.” She said it as a positive message and I really hear where she’s coming from.

That statement affects me and Allie differently. For Allie, it is empowering for us to stay together. Allie even quoted it this morning after giving me another heartfelt, remorseful apology.

Allie sees it as a new beginning. A reason to stay together. I see it as another time that she was unhappy enough to cheat and that literally nothing can stop her from doing it again.

I have come to understand something really well. I didn’t choose for her to cheat. As a matter of fact, I am a pretty darn good husband. Faithful, forgiving, caring, loving, non-abusive, not addicted to anything. But, I have become a doormat. She doesn’t respect me and had unrealistic expectations of marriage. Basically, if she wants me to make her happy and I can’t. She owns her own happiness. She owns her own choices and she owns her own dishonesty, deceit and infidelity. I don’t own any part of those.

In all cases of potential infidelity, the cheater has three choices BEFORE cheating.

Clearly and honestly explain to their spouse that they have an attraction for someone else and have unmet needs and expectations from the marriage. Seek counseling on these and they possibly can be solved.
p.s. A person should NEVER come to their spouse with “feelings” for another person. This indicates that they’ve already gone too far and are in an affair. (may only be emotional) But you cannot have feelings for someone unless you spend some time talking to them on some level. You can have a crush, an infatuation or an attraction. But true feelings of love would be through getting to know them and if that’s the case, you’re in an affair.
You can stop any affair BEFORE it gets physical or before you develop feelings. This is ALWAYS an option. If the conversations have gone too far, you can stop the calls, the texts and the conversations. You have the power to stop those. None of us who have been betrayed believe you when you tell us that you couldn’t stop and “it just happened.” The easy way to stop it is to hand over your phone to your spouse and when the affair partner calls or texts, have your spouse respond. Turn on any tracking activity and be an open book. This step requires honesty which seems to be lacking when someone is a cheater.
You can get divorced. If you are that unhappy in your marriage where you just HAVE to cheat, then go ask for a divorce FIRST. There simply is NO excuse that is acceptable for cheating. None.

A letter to our counselors

I thought I would share a note Allie wrote to our counselors today. I still have the password to her email and saw this in there. She’s changed all of her other logins so that I can’t see those.

I will breakdown her email as I go below. See what you think.

I know this relationship is not healthy. I’m still grieving the loss of what it could’ve been and what it was. I’m so upset because before he found out about Derek he wanted to stay married to me and really work on the marriage. If I had been able to keep the idea of Derek from him even for five years and then confessed to him later, maybe we would’ve had a thriving marriage.

Okay, let’s stop there for a second. She is so upset that I had hope before I found out about the third affair (chronologically second affair). She says that if she had been able to keep the idea of Derek secret for five years, then she could just tell me after we’re strong again. Basically, trick me, lie to me and betray me some more so that she can confess it later. Are you guys reading this the same way I am?

Or if I had told him at the beginning of counseling which would’ve been even better, I think that we would still be married today.

How about NOT HAVING FUCKING AFFAIRS IN THE FIRST PLACE? Then, we’d still be married today.

I’m grieving because he now says he has no choice. I’m grieving because he feels like he doesn’t have any options. I grieve the fact that he doesn’t want to work on us. I grieve the fact that he doesn’t want to work on him. I grieve the fact he doesn’t care about how much growth I have made. I’m heartbroken that he doesn’t see my heart.

The old adage is true here. Actions speak louder than words. Her actions of betrayal, lying, cheating and intercourse outside of marriage shows me her hear at that time. No amount of “working on me” is gonna change that.

I’m heartbroken over what we’re losing. Will you please just speak to that somehow? When I try to talk to him we just fight now. He tells me he doesn’t have a choice and takes it back to the stuff I did.

“Takes it back to the ‘stuff I did” The “stuff” you did was flirt, lie, betray, have sex, tell someone you love them, cheat, etc. That “stuff” is 100% what my decision to divorce is based off of.

I don’t think he will ever see it any other way. But I do pray that he will.

Nope. I won’t.

I grieve that he will be all alone and that our dreams have been shattered.

I won’t be alone. I have friends. I will have women in my life. Maybe not right away, but I will. If I want devotion, I will get a dog. Our dreams were shattered by her choosing to have affairs.

I really do believe that we could pursue our dreams together if he was willing to forgive and see the growth and make his own growth.

So, let me get this strait. She breaks every vow, every covenant, every commitment, every ounce of respect or honesty and I have to be willing to forgive?

Am I asking too much?

Yes.

Does that sound like entitlement?

If you have to ask…..

What do I learn about love?

I found out about the 3rd affair she had (or may still be having) with her boss. That was stings a lot because of the combination of betrayal and deception. She purposely hid things with him and even when directly question, lied through her teeth. When people show you who they are, it is our job to believe them.

But I digress.

This post is about love. What is love? What does it mean to have someone love you?

For me, my wife swears that she is madly in love with me. Yet, she had two affairs within the last 12 months. So, I have a really tough time believing that she loves me. But, for argument’s sake, let’s say that she does in fact love me. Then what does that say about love? Doesn’t it say “if someone loves you, they will betray you, lie to you, cheat on you and blame you for it”?

A text from my best friend

So, I have a best friend of 30 years. He was there for me when Allie had her first affair.

I sent him a text yesterday just to tell him how Allie and I had a little verbal exchange and one of the things that really still gets to me.

While we were arguing, Allie exclaimed, “I was getting my needs met!” She was referring to affairs #2 and #3. This always gets to me. It bugs me because there is a place where she feels justified in having an affair. Imagine me having an affair after our kids were born simply because my sexual needs weren’t being met by my wife. There’s about a 6-week window where the vagina just isn’t up for any action.

So, with Allie’s theory I could simply say, “I was getting my needs met” and she should be okay with it right? I mean, we have three children so that’s about 12 weeks total where my needs weren’t getting met by my wife. So, I should have the liberty to get laid outside of our marriage with no consequence right?

I send the text to my friend and he replies with this:

Apparently she doesn’t like to be reminded she’s wrong or not perfect. She can’t handle the rejection. Or what she thinks is rejection. Her vision of herself is one of perfection. This goes right to what you’ve been saying, that she needs validation. She needs to be right. It is important to her. So important, that she will risk (and lose) everything for that validation and need to be right. If you remind her of a fault or a time she was wrong, you become the enemy. Allie has a screw loose brother. I think if you take out the sex and really assess your 20 years together, you will find a lot of fighting, arguing, finger pointing, inability to meet in the middle. My guess is that you are always wrong. (in her mind)

She thinks validation is a perfect husband. Fit. Earner. Boy Scout. You said both times you gained weight, she strayed. She wanted you to be like Mark. She laughed at your career choice the other day. Bottom line, she doesn’t respect you or how you look, or what you do. Hence the affairs. Respect, keeps her home, faithful. Lack of respect puts you on the curb like trash. This is getting easier to see and diagnose.

This is the MOST insightful thing I have ever read on what is going on. My friend is absolutely correct on all counts. She literally expects perfection. She loves to judge others. And especially me. I have often felt like I was walking on egg shells around her. Not accepted for who I am. But having to squash myself in order to not rock her boat.

My buddy also nails it when he says “Respect keeps her home, faithful. Lack of respect puts you on the curb…”

She really doesn’t respect me at all.

I choose me

Wrote a note to Allie that I never sent. She said that I was choosing women on Facebook over her.

If you’re just tuning in, Allie had three affairs. This entire blog is about my process through this after finding out on March 20, 2018. Wanna read it? Start here instead.

Here is my response to her that I wrote but never sent. I sent a much shorter response.

The only person I am choosing over you is me.

I am choosing to draw the line and commit to myself. The line is saying that where you went is not okay. What you did, even if it was a symptom, was so destructive that I need some space and time.

I am working on me, my healing, my desires, my dreams, my life, my values.

When I needed you most, during a painful journey with my mom, you abandoned me for Derek. You piled on blame and confused me with your deception. You covered your tracks with lies and betrayed me while breaking our vows and the promise you made me six years ago.

I haven’t even been able to fully process my experience with my mom dying. I wanted to write a small memoir to her but I have been more than distracted by your affairs. I fear by the time I get to really pour myself into grieving her it will be too late.

Then, to make it even worse you added an affair with Mark. You gave yourself fully to him. Fell in love with him and repeated and expanded the betrayal, lies and deception.

And you tell me that I am the one giving up? That it isn’t personal? That it isn’t against me?

I am destroyed by this. So it really feels like it is against me.

I have forever changed. I have lost the ability to believe. Lost the adoration and admiration I had for you. You were better than how you decided to behave. And I deserved way more than how you treated me.

What’s your worth?

So, you’ve been cheated on. I get it. This entire blog is on my story of my wife Allie cheating on me three times! (that I know of) It chronicles the heartbreak, the pain, the confusion and the isolation I have felt. It questions everything that I ever believed to be true.

It rocked the very foundations of my life and made me reevaluate who I am and what I want out of life. Is it hard? Yes! Is it painful? Without question. But I want to share something with you as I have journeyed for the past seven months since finding about Allie’s affairs.

I want to share that I am good. No really. I am.

I am moving out in a few weeks and for the first time since March of 2000, I will be living separately from my wife. We’ve been married for 18 years and in that time we’ve dreamed, we’ve striven, we’ve worked, we’ve built traditions, we’ve had children, we’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve hoped and we’ve been let down.

While we can always look back at the negative aspects of our relationship, I am choosing not to (as much as possible). I am choosing to see the myriad of blessings that have come from the two of us being together. The biggest blessing of all are our three sons we have together. They are fantastic young men and I love being able to pour myself into their lives.

Allie has some pretty tough & deep issues to work through. In 18 years of marriage, she had three affairs. The first was 6 years ago. The second was with her boss (who she still works for) last year. The third was the knockout punch. An affair with Mark, the guy she and I both knew from Crossfit.

Sometimes we can look at these things and decide that we “wasted 18 years of our lives.” In some ways that has some truth. Because had we not chosen this spouse, we could have chosen another spouse. In theory, if all went well, we wouldn’t be here now with this kind of pain and these massive hurdles. But that’s hindsight and we didn’t see the future. We can’t beat ourselves up for something we had no idea would happen.

But we don’t have yesterday do we? We can’t change the past as badly as we might want to. So, we have today. And I look at it this way. I am actually letting go and being saved from a lifetime of pain. Imagine spending even more of my life with someone who doesn’t want to be with me. Don’t get me wrong, her words say she wants to be with me and she loves me, but actions speak WAY LOUDER than words. Three affairs? That speaks volumes.

It would be much too complex to lay out our entire story. But suffice it to say that I was very sad about what I was having to deal with in my life. You see, i because my mom’s legal guardian because she had horrible dementia. Because of that, her memory was terrible. She got to the point that she no longer knew anyone else. Not me, not my brother, not her grandchildren.

So, this journey with her was very difficult for me to say the least. I was very close to my mom and often called her my “superhero.” When I would visit her, I would get thrown into a mild depression of sorts. Just kind of in a daze as I was completely helpless to do anything for her. The woman who had sacrificed for me and my brother, given everything as a single mom, and I couldn’t do anything. There’s literally nothing we can do with that disease.

But Allie has some strong narcissistic tendencies. And she couldn’t stand that my attention wasn’t being given to her 100% of the time. So, she looked for another’s attention. Read the quote below:

Even at your best, you will NEVER be right for the wrong person. But with the right person, even at your worst, they will remind you of your worth.

Look, that quote doesn’t exactly fit, but it does say this. You are worth everything. I am worth everything. It completely devalued me with what she did. While I was walking through the toughest emotional journey I had ever been through, she piled it on by having two affairs. Sharing her body and sexuality with another man. “Falling in love” with a complete stranger. It is sickening. But I am free. And I am worth it.

Disappointment and Affirmation

There’s not much more than disappointing than finding out that Allie, my wife of 18 years, had an affair. Allie’s first affair happened just after our 12 year anniversary. Then in March of this year I found out about another affair just after our 18th anniversary. Since that day, it has been a true roller coaster ride of emotions, doubts, fears, questions and hurt.

After her 2nd affair with a guy named Mark, we decided to hire some top counselors. Why did I hire them? Why didn’t I just divorce her and save the money?

I hired them because I wanted to make sure. I wanted to live with no regrets whatsoever. Basically I needed to know that I did everything in my power to consider the marriage before divorce.

During counseling, we made some gains. Allie’s position has been that she wants to work on our marriage. Seems completely unreasonable doesn’t it? Yeah, it does to me too. So, she sees herself in the last 6-7 months as working really hard to become a different person, a better wife, etc. However, she was skipping exercises that the counselors would assign and she wasn’t doing the homework that they say would be required to get better.

I also knew something was missing. Call it intuition, call it suspicion. But trust your gut right?

When people cheat, they are very, very manipulative. They tell you what a horrible person you are to justify what a horrible person they’re being. It’s projection, manipulation and totally not authentic.

So, we had a great meeting with counselors the Friday before Labor Day. At that meeting, I wrote her a three or four page letter forgiving her of the affair with Mark. I let go of everything I could think of that I was holding onto.

So that weekend, I had a real moment (day or two) of beginning to trust her again. It’s been six months post affair at this point. On Labor Day I was going to my work out. I asked Allie about her boss just before leaving. I have had a suspicion about something happening between them. She denied it. Then on the four minute drive to my gym, she called me and admitted that the two of them had in fact kissed. (see the whole story here) Of course it was much more than a kiss and that day, I sank…again.

I sank with disappointment. It stomped out any hope I had for salvaging our marriage. It wasn’t much hope, but I had some. Like a tiny ember that “might” start a fire if tended to. Crushed me. Again.

I am making the only decision I can make

After reading about the disappointment, I want to bring up the other part of the title of this post. Affirmation.

When you’re making the biggest decision of your life, you can hear all of the advice you want from friends and family. But largely, a decision to divorce doesn’t really affect them. Especially my closest friend of 30 years. So the advice they give has to be taken with a grain of salt. No, this choice is yours and yours alone. (unless of course, she’s already left you)

But with Allie asking, practically begging, me to stay with her, this choice had been weighing very heavily on me and my thought life. I was completely consumed by this decision as it would have profound impact on me and my three sons.

That day, however, the decision was made. I am fairly certain I had made the decision back in March of 2018, but today it was iron clad. The information about the 3rd affair was the straw that was piled onto the already broken camel’s back. It affirmed my decision, strengthened my resolve and solidified the choice that I was so damned afraid to make. Basically, when you question if you’re making the right choice, something can come along and say to you, “you’re damned right you are!!”

So if you’re out there reading this know this one thing. You are worth way more than a cheating spouse has treated you. It is going to be lonely and hard, but you have to value yourself more than valuing your insecurities.