Cherry, Jim, and Joe, thanks a lot for checking-in. I said I'd write again when there was something positive to report because I didn't want to keep writing about the same issues without progress.
Cherry, your advice is solid and I'm trying to do what I can - reaching out to my career network, going to therapy, talking with friends every day, exercising, doing activities with my daughter, etc.. I don't have any money at all at the moment so I can't really go shopping or buy a lot of stuff, but this is the first time in my adult life I've been without an income so hopefully in a few months my financial situation will improve. I reserved a new apartment in a new building in the city where I'm planning to move, sent an application for a new school for my daughter, and told everyone there I'm coming back. Nothing really makes me feel any better yet. The hardest part is still just feeling totally alone.
All, last week I apologized in person to my husband for everything I did wrong but he was resistant and emotionless. He said he still wants a divorce no matter what he. He started to say "maybe in a few years...." and then stopped.
I haven't done anything to check what he's really up to all this time, but he left to go overseas to take his father to his home country with a stopover in Dubai. The story didn't add up to me so I really had no idea where he actually went. One day, a few days ago, I just decided to check an old facebook account that I new he had years ago. His password to everything is the same so I just quickly checked. I saw that he's been actively searching the name of woman here in our current city the past two months. I went to her profile and saw she's a 26 year old nurse with whom he works. I searched her name on google and found an Instagram account with freshly uploaded pictures of "Dubai 2018." So obviously he already moved on with a woman 14 years younger than I. Most of the pictures on facebook are of her in a bikini holding a bottle of beer partying with friends. So I guess that's it. At some point in December he moved on.
I will go through the divorce process since I have no choice. Sorry I don't have any positive updates. My general impression of DB is that it doesn't work, I'm sorry to say. Not that I did a great job with it this time around, but it seems most on this board end up getting divorced. I believe it's just too easy to get divorced in the Western world with our values of freedom and independence. It's just too easy to say "I'm not happy so I'll just go dump my family and pursue a fun new life." Having traveled to a lot of developing countries in Asia, Africa, Middle East, and Latin America, I have a much stronger preference for cultures where divorce is saved for extreme situations. Yes, a lot of people might be unhappily married in those places, but our culture of just walking out the door and abandoning our loved ones isn't necessarily better.
