Post Divorce...Still Looking for Answers

[Husky]

Hello Everyone,

I've been lurking around these forums for the past couple of weeks just soaking in as much information I can to try and figure out what the hell happened to my life. I'm not even sure what I'm looking for here, but I just wanted to share my story.

I met my wife 8 years ago through a good friend that was working with her at the time and ended up dating for 4 years before getting married. I wouldn't have called us the most perfect couple on the planet, as we were never really as intimate as I think either of us would have liked, but we rarely fought and were best friends. We started living together about 2 years in and as far as I knew, we had good relationships with our respective families. Before getting married, we survived my getting an MBA at night while working, and both of us had very successful careers.

Right after we got married, we purchased a home from my family in a nice neighborhood, but with all sorts of issues that needed to be addressed before the place was really livable from a family perspective. It had been a rental for 10 years and was in dire need of anything you could name. I pretty much dropped everything non-wife or house related to work on making our home more habitable. At the same time the W was gaining traction as an "office lead" for a newly opened office for a very well known tech company. So while I was fixing up the house, the W was working 60-80 hour weeks and starting to build herself a very successful career, which involved setting up events both in and outside the office and determining the day to day operations. I should mention now that she absolutely loves her job. On the other hand, I took a chance on a career change that was what I always wanted to do, but was with an utterly miserable company. We were making decent money, but nothing exorbitant at the time.

Fast forward 2 years. I am now feeling completely overwhelmed by the amount of time and effort that I am putting into our home, I am legitimately doing the job of 2 people at work and not getting any recognition for it and I am quickly becoming a nervous wreck of a human being...which I decide to hide as well as a can. I start drinking more, stop exercising as much and start to become sort of withdrawn and lonely with the W gone all the time. In the meantime, the small office that the W works for has expanded from 10 to 300 people and the W has cemented herself within the office culture, while still working 60-80 hour weeks...sometimes while working at home. At this point we are making a ridiculous amount of money and this is where I'm pretty sure things started to go wrong.

As we earned more and more money, the W justified that more and more things could be paid for rather than physically doing them ourselves. In theory I really had no problem with this, but the reality is that this made it easier for her to spend more and more time at work. I should mention that "work" entailed planning happy hours/dinners/concerts/shows for a variety of people and that she could go to any of these if she pleased. I should also mention that no matter how hard I tried, I really couldn't have the same connection with her co-workers as she did...seeing that I a) didn't work with them, b) lost the desire to go out 3 nights a week in my mid 20's, and c) still liked and wanted to spend time with my existing friends. At this point, we really aren't sharing any activities together at all other than the occasional weekend trip or night out for dinner.

I should also mention that the W sort of has a history of over-committing herself in all sorts of different ways. For years, she was on a bike team that pretty much demanded 4 hours a day on sat/sun and night training during the week. She set up book clubs, reunions with college friends, dinner parties with couples friends...I frankly still have no idea how she did all this. For years, I did many of these things with her, but as time went on, I found myself either too busy with our home, or with no desire to have this many things on my plate. I never saw my W and it was beginning to wear on me to the point where arguments started over responsibilities around the house and in our relationship. I should mention that while the W has always been "social", we were not the type of couple that was out every single night when we were dating...or even in the first year of our marriage.

About two years ago, the W proclaims that she is stopping birth control and wants to have a kid. I always wanted kids, but was a little surprised that there was not a little more discussion about it beforehand. That would be the last discussion about had about having children until the BD.

Also about two years ago, her work/social life really REALLY starts getting out of control. We're talking like 3-4 nights a week, out past midnight and as the months wear on I am getting more and more upset leading to an all out drag out fight and me sleeping in the other room for 4 nights. Her dad has an unrelated nervous breakdown the next weekend and we have to take him to the ER, then we end up making up. Only now her social scene was totally out of control and after the fight, I had nothing left in me to say anymore. She's spending the night at co-workers apartments, not coming home until 2am, not calling etc...

Bomb Drop - A year ago, I come home, she's crying...we all know what happened next. I move to other room, she claims she isn't moving out...she BD's me again a week later and says she's moving out in a week. I am absolutely devastated. I lose 15 lbs in the next month, panic attacks, crying etc. I convince her to go to counseling. W just blames, justifies, and validates...I cave on everything and we actually seem to be making progress.

3 months into this, I'm fixing something at the W's new place and am looking for aspirin. Instead, I find a prescription for herpes symptoms. It's from during our marriage and she has DEFINITELY never told me about this. I flip out, fight ensues, we talk about it in counseling and she spends the entire time blaming me for not knowing (?) and snooping. The next day I find out through the social networks that's she's booked a trip to Iceland with a mutual friend...and FOUR...SINGLE...MALE...COWORKERS (EA suspected). Three days later, I find out again the social networks, that she's booked a trip to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with two other co-workers. I end counseling 2 weeks later and say that I need a break for a while.

I end up sleeping with someone after the new year. I'm devastated, filled with massive amounts of guilt, and end up telling the W. Wife BD's me again and says she's been sleeping with one of the coworkers that she went to Iceland with...he's TWENTY TWO. She's 34.

We're divorced now...I'm still devastated. They're still dating. She's been out of town for literally 105 days over the past year, she started taking flying lessons (really?), she moved onto a houseboat. She doesn't talk to any of her "old" friends...only people from work with an average age of 25.

I'm a little removed from this now, but I do need to say that I absolutely do love my W (now ex), so if it sounds like I wasn't or didn't try to stand, that is absolutely not the case. I'm just at a spot now where I'm just totally broken by this. I'm seeing the person that I ended up sleeping with several months ago, but I'm still so incredibly lost as to what the hell happened w/ my xW.

Anyway, should run b/c it's late on Friday. Wanted to share in case someone had a similar experience.