I wanted you to know how much your post helped me.
I, too, have spent months and months trawling through financial records (where I can get my hands on them) to discover the duration and extent of my XH's behaviour. He seems not to have had any control at all, just spent any available income that i made and borrowed heavily against my assets. He took money from my parents and from our children. Just like a gambler feeding an addiction.
I was crazy with anxiety for the last few years of our M, and didn't know why - just a growing sense of unease and an inability to countenance the magnitude of what he was doing.
Our experiences with our Hs seem so similar. Mine left when i started to come to my senses and refused any longer to give him my salary to pay his employees' wages. He was at the end of the line; he couldn't control me any longer, and had cleared out all of my assets and those of my parents. So he just moved on to his next source of income. From his bank accounts I can see that OW started giving him large lump sums (in the multiple $1,000s) almost as soon as he moved in with her.
Like your H, mine is college educated and a smart man who should have been able to succeed in anything that he put his mind to. I really do think that there is an 'illness' involved - and addiction would seem to fit the bill. Hearing about your story made me feel so much better about myself. I've felt like i let my kids and parents down. I'm smart, responsible, successful, etc. How could I have been so blind??
Now, I'm beginning to see what was going on. I could not - and still cannot - fight against the power of his addiction.
