I wish I'd have done a better job of responding recently. As you may know my husband left nearly two years ago for another woman and he still hasn't filed for divorce. I guess divorce is just an inconvenient set of paperwork that means nothing to some people, especially when their new partner doesn't pressure them to file for it. It's really hard to understand the thought process of just leaving your spouse for another person and then not even getting divorced to make it official. One would wonder if perhaps they're contemplating coming back if the new relationship doesn't work out, so staying married is like a little extra layer of security, or if they're just to busy and happy in their new life to even be bothered with divorce. Of course people like us, who don't file either, prolong the process and enable our spouses to live like this so we're at fault to some degree as well.
One response I have to how you're feeling is that how you feel is important and it matters. There are many times when we tell one another, with good intentions, that we shouldn't feel a certain way, or we should re-channel our thoughts, or we should do or think a certain way. This way of dismissing someone's feelings isn't meant to hurt us, but in a way it makes our journey more lonely and painful because we feel all this pain and we're told it's not ok to feel it. Perhaps the secret is to avoid allowing those feelings to let us sink deeper and deeper but to recognize their validity.
It is dehumanizing to be left by your spouse in this manner. I don't even know where to start with all the reasons why it's dehumanizing. The fact that you weren't worth anything to the person that you love, the fact that the marriage meant nothing, the fact that you were discarded for someone else who offers what you couldn't.... All the while your spouse and her new partner are off living their happy new life together while you're left alone to mourn and grieve. It is dehumanizing. To some degree you're the victim of a cruel person. On the other hand you're to blame for being too kind. And to some degree it's just bad luck. There's some degree of risk that we all face to anyone we marry but there's no certainty that anyone will stick around. If you married someone else she may have cheated but stuck around. In your case it seems to be just bad luck that she chose to leave.
I think it's also hard to change who we are and how we cope with things. I have a friend who's husband just barely cheated. I think he asked a woman at work if she'd like to have coffee. As a result my friend exposed him to everyone in his family and she went on a major shopping spree spending all his money on herself to punish him. She screamed and shouted at him and said she was divorcing him....basically acted crazy. They're still together and he felt ashamed for what he did and she punished him badly for it. I think people such as yourself, who are respectful and kind and take a healthy approach end up suffering more because you're not doing anything to seek justice for yourself (I'm that way too). Sometimes I go back-and-forth on which approach is better but ultimately if you're not a person who is wired to act crazy then even if you try to act that way it wouldn't be sincere.
I do hope you get closure sooner than later. Your situation is particularly unfortunate here on this forum.
