First of all, my heart goes out to you. What you went through is horrific. Your ex marrying her affair partner is salt on the wound and certainly is something you still need to process and grieve over.
My general thoughts:
1. Yes, what happened is unfair. It feels like you get sucker-punched, kicked to the curb, replaced, while your ex moves on to happy life. Your wife broke a promise to you, committed adultery and abandoned you. It's supposed to feel unfair. If you have any modicum of self-respect, human feeling or sense of justice, you are going to feel like you were run over by a train. I'd be worried about you if you weren't wallowing in anger, revenge fantasies and self-pity. This is normal. The question sometimes, isn't "Why do bad things happen to good people?", but rather, "Why do good things happen to bad people?" Or, "Why do evil people flourish?" The problem is thousands of years old. If you are a Bible reader, look at Psalm 73, it's all about that very theme. Read it. I won't spoil it for you, but remember: nothing escapes God's eyes.
2. Shirley Glass in her book, Not Just Friends, talks about this exact thing. Most affairs fail. Most do not lead to marriages, much less happy ones. But some small percentage of affairs succeed and lead to life-long marriages. Some cheaters seem to escape short-term or mid-term karma, get to sh*t all over people who love them and, apparently, get rewarded for it. What do you do when your ex waltzes off into the sunset, marries her affair partner, and lives a fairy-tale romance with him for the rest of their natural lives? Shirley Glass says we naturally expect justice and recompense. The only real revenge we can have is: a life well-lived.. However trite and pious this sounds: move on and live a great life. In this case, 25yearsmlc is totally right.
3. I don't, however, take as "Zen" a view as 25yearsmlc. Her advice to move on is really helpful: detach, don't base your happiness on what you ex is doing, etc. I disagree, however, on the level of detachment and ability you have to re-write the story of your betrayal (yes, that's still what it is) to the point where you really want your ex to be so happy, that you can actually say "good for her that she found someone who can make her happier than me". I'm sorry, that's a little unhealthy sounding to me. You were hurt. You were sinned against. What your ex did is wrong. Eventually, you won't be defined by this betrayal. You will always bear the wounds, to some extent, but they do heal. And there is resurrection of the spirit and mind. You will soar again!
4. I strongly suggest you go to the Chump Lady website. She's freaking hilarious. She'll make you laugh out loud (something you probably need right now). She's not optimistic about reconciliation, but she's really great at helping people cheated on get their bearings and, believe it or not, admit to themselves that cheaters suck. Plain and simple she thinks affairs are immoral and those that participate in them are "flaming turds". She thinks leaving a cheater is the first step in gaining a new and better life. She even addresses issues about friends and family supporting the cheater: they also suck. GreyMeadow: unless you were some kind of monster, your friends rallying around your ex and her new paramour is sick. Find some real friends. You need people in your corner, loyal to you. I get it.
5. You'll find a great support group here. Though it's super simplistic, I think all of us who have been betrayed and cheated-on, have, in some ways divided up the world into two camps: those that cheat, and those that end up on the Divorce-Busting boards desperately trying to save their marriages. There are great people here. I've meet several in person. Every one I've met is a gem of a human being. Some have saved their marriages; many haven't. But I trust all of them. If people get too specific here about how to connect offline you get kicked off. I can share this with you however: Theoden is, indeed, a King and sometimes, in the strange world of Middle-Earth in that great book where people like to show their faces, he can be found. Perhaps Greymeadow has visited Middle Earth?
6. This may seem like cold comfort: Fall on your knees and give thanks that you DON'T have children with your ex. This would have made it more excruciating and hurt many more people. Plus, you would have had your ex in your life in some way as long as you had kids in common. Also, you would have to contend with you kids being raised by the man who helped break up your marriage. Your chance for a clean break and a fresh start is more likely now.
7. Let's see how you can begin to re-write your story so that your life from now on is interesting, enlivening, meaningful and rich.
