Living with WAW who will not leave

[Casey]

Starsky,

Sometimes when I am particularly angry I do ask myself why I would want to stay with someone who has so little respect for me that she would cheat over and over with losers.

The nearest answer I can come up with is that it hurts my pride to have been left by someone who I went to so much trouble to date and bring here; I helped her become established and become successful here and this is repayment? I guess that is similar to a wife who sacrifices to put her husband through med school only to see him leave her for some nurse once he has taken what he could from his spouse.

It is not a very flattering answer, that it hurts my pride to be dumped for some complete loser; not one of these OMs has been remotely my equal; but it is a true answer.

And again, being honest, I would have to say that I look back on what I had to go through to bring her here and all the shared experiences we had and I feel a deep sense of loss for all those years of my life, that it will be cast aside for some cheap fling with a nobody in middle-of-nowhere North Dakota. That is not how I ever imagined our R ending when I first met her. For a long time I have derived some sense of self-worth from her and I have slowly given up other activities and interests that I used to do when I first met her. W is physically very beautiful and an excellent cook and housekeeper as well. So there is apparently a lot of reason on my side why I valued continuing the M more than W does. And I need to work on my self-esteem issues because my deriving self-worth from her is not healthy.

Her complaints against me have to do with not having a greater say in decisions, which is a valid complaint. Others include "not loving my son enough" which I believe to be an excuse and copout, supposed anger over getting a vasectomy which we both had agreed to and after which she claimed she never wanted me to get because it showed I did not want to have children with her... Her other complaints which she used to justify her affair(s) were boredom, lack of accomplishment in her life, turning 30, lack of power over her life, being in love, etc. She also says that I do not trust her (with good reason) and that she doesn't/never loved me.