New - HELP! Tried the 180/Last Resort & Failed

[AloneAt35]

Thank you Telemark, FooFighter (great band, saw them 2 or 3 times), and dbmod.

Thank you also for the liberty to keep writing. I feel so much fear. Being with him since I was 16 means I have a lot of growing up to do at this late stage. Him too I guess...OW is supposedly (who knows the real truth?) much younger than me.

I guess I also fear how this could have happened. He said I should have seen the signs...like that we weren't really married even though he told me that marriage was for fools, or that there was a decline in intimacy after the first ten years or so (his choice, not mine). He always explained those things away, so I was never concerned, I always believed what he told me. Always.

Even my family said he was the most trustworthy son-in-law they could imagine. He always said he would never leave, that he would take care of me forever. He progressed in his career with my support and sacrifice of my own (frequent moves, helping him through grad school, etc.)

Now he is selling our house and has bought a new home for himself worth more than four times as much; he is leaving me virtually homeless, dropping me from his insurance, taking our only car, offering no support - you get the drift. I actually understand what legal marriage is for now.

The OW tells him that I am "pathetic" and that its "not his job" to help me. He conveys all of this to me. I sometimes wake up feeling so worthless and betrayed that I want to die rather than fight for my dignity. She (OW) has 'dumped' him twice in their month-long relationship, claiming that he still cares about me, but then he cries and they come back together in less that 24 hours. If what he is telling me is true, they met on the internet, she lives two states away with her ex-boyfriend and a child who calls her MaMa but is supposedly not her biological child, and most of their relationship is by phone and email though he admits to having visited her several times and all that entails. I am horrified to see him debasing himself and grovelling to her, but he "loves" her.

This man was solid as a rock before this. He was the ultimate responsible and caring partner. He was admired by everyone for his stability. I never questioned that he loved me - he was warm and generous and attentive up until just a few weeks before he dropped the bomb when he suddenly became very agitated and started doubting himself. I suggested he see a therapist, which he did a few times. He was asking me questions like, "Do you think I might be a sociopath?" And, "Why do you love me?" I was offering him comfort and support, telling him he was a wonderful person that I adored. He had anger issues (he got physical with me) early in our relationship, but they were long in the past, yet he brought them up several times in those few weeks saying he was "despicable" and I deserved someone who truly loved me. He seemed to be making excuses or trying justify his impending decision to bail on our relationship. Since then, he has rewritten our entire history together, saying our relationship was always terrible for both of us, that there was never any happiness. I grew up in a very volatile home and I can tell you that our relationship was (in comparison) about as placid as they come. We were always doing things together: activities, happy home life, volunteering, visiting family, home improvement, cooking together, laughing together, gardening, taking walks. He's literally gone from emailing me several times a day to ask how I am doing and just to say "I love you" to moving out in a matter of weeks. There was no 'growing apart'- he just seemed to have a major crisis of confidence in our relationship and then decided it was worthless and time to start another! As I mentioned, he was seeing a therapist, but told me he had already made the decision to leave me but that she validated it.

When, a few weeks after saying IDLYAM he confessed to me about the OW he was in a panic of guilt but was also visibly exhilarated and was bragging that she found him 'handsome' and that he had confessed to her all of the terrible things he had done to me (not all that terrible in my book), but that she still said she desired him more than any other man. Then he started crying and said that he just wanted to know if he was "defective" and if he was capable of "feeling something" beyond the "superficial emotions" he claimed to have only ever had for me. He also said his therapist was worried about him and the fast pace of his new internet romance.

It is beyond devastating to hear that the reality you have been living - the deep bond of friendship and love that you have with your partner - was only ever "superficial" from their perspective. We made it through so many significant life events together, our relationship felt deep and true to me. I had cleaved to him and he used to say that I was truly his "better half." Was it all really a lie, or is this typical for a WAS?

I've spent hours reading about midlife crisis, but does this seem to fit the pattern? He never showed discontent with me like they talk about in DB, he just seemed to give up. He said his therapist said that he was not having a midlife crisis, but rather he was recognizing that our relationship was stagnant and got off to a bad start and it would be good for both of us for him to end it. However, I feel that his therapist got an extremely skewed version of our lives together as he was already in the process of rewriting history to justify leaving.

Can I bring back the wonderful and stable man I knew or is he gone forever??? If my recounting of events sounds confusing it is only because I am so confused too! It all happened in a flurry: self-doubt, relationship doubt, "I don't love you any more" but lets be friends, "I have to take a risk to find happiness", "I met the love of my life on the internet", "you are worthless and I need to start over without worrying about helping you because we were never married"...now, no contact. All in just a few short weeks, my life has been dismantled.

All I want to do is cry to the man who was my rock, but he is the cause...what happened to him?