In thinking about OW, remember, she is with a married man! The best case scenario is he's lied to her and said he is divorced. But then the whole foundation of the relationship is set on lies. Not a good base. The other scenario is she knows he's married and she's okay with it. That is even worse!
The thing is, he's a broken guy these days. When you've been married 20 years, it is not a healthy option to just jump to another person. A healthy person would stop and really evaluate what happened. He/she would divorce and really heal.
A married man who runs to another woman is not going to be attracting top notch women. She is to be pitied because either she's being lied to and thinks he's divorced or she respects herself so little she'll be with a married man. A decent woman has strong coping skills and when she learns a man is married she runs the other way. (Her line of thinking would be: if he can cheat on his wife, he can cheat on me...) A broken/injured woman is okay with the married man.
What worked for me was reading a lot about MLC. I know I am far from perfect but reading reinforced that how my h coped (really it was how he could not cope) had nothing to do with me. I also began hiking and played a lot of tennis with friends. I walked a lot, too.
Focus on you. Take care of you. And don't blame yourself.
Keep posting. We're all here to support you.
Me 41, H 47, M 15 yrs, S11, S13 BD 1: 11/4/14 we work on it; really I pretzel myself BD 2: 3/31/15 H goes down to "dorm room" 8/15: H back to MBR 10/15: H back in dorm room 1/18: H files, now divorced
