After the Storm...

[Treasur]

Thanks for the 1x2 (a gentle 2x4!)

Avoiding litigation is good. Sorting out my financial stability is good.

I don't know if either of you had a Vanisher. I last saw him 10 months ago. He ignored emails about practicalities even for several months. I only knew he was alive if he paid money into the household account. I assumed logically last year he was having an A when I got anonymous death threats. I didn't know who she was or that he was living part-time with her since about April 16 (before he said he wanted a D) until I saw his bank statements in June. So then I had a name, a face, realised she'd been stalking me via LinkedIn and lived 5 miles away from our old house and her FB page was full of wedding dress shops.

You are right that imagination is probably worse than reality, but the reality was a slap in the chops. Realising that while I'd been struggling with maintaining the old house or going to see my IC, I could have bumped into them at any point. Seeing the scale of his lies in black and white. Realising that he'd taken her to our honeymoon hotel in Paris. That his work colleagues who I'd known would have known about the A before I did and it had probably gone on for longer than I thought because I believed him in 2015 that it was a breakdown not an A. (And I've no idea how he could do that and feel comfortable. I can hardly bear to go back to our old town without feeling triggered.) Like yesterday, I knew he was probably there and I heard a dog in the background...so he replaced me, and his cat with a dog, I thought...actually I thought he replaced us both with two dogs!

The good thing about a Vanisher is it limits the spew although I could feel his anger and resentment at times, he rarely voiced it. Just silence and indifference really, as if you are nothing. It makes detachment easier probably and keeps you away from mindreading every exchange. But I think some of my emotions are effected by things I found out in June.

I've been musing on the process before we talk again. I'll talk to my L about mediation for the financial stuff today and take her advice. Given the sitch, and the long silence, do you think talking would be best with a third party C present?

Tbh, my reservation about talking is about cutting my losses vs opening old wounds just as I am up off my knees. I know that the man who loved me had a breakdown, was diagnosed with severe depression, became unrecognisable, cut contact with all his friends, ran away from home, said he didn't love me, filed for D 8 months ago, is in a long-term OW relationship, probably planning to remarry and ignored me for a year...do I need to know why? What will that give me that will help me move on?

I suppose my wounded inner child feels that I became nothing to him. I'm not nothing and our long M wasn't nothing, but I'd fought hard to accept the reality. And it was hard because my H really loved me so it was all pretty inconceivable. I just don't know if I want to look back, even a peek. And I see no signs that he wants to do anything more than get the D stuff sorted out and salve his conscience as part of his therapy by explaining his 'demons'. Maybe they're just not my business any longer...