Thank you both for the suggestions. I’ll keep a close eye on things with S2.
For the sake of having a complete record of this weird journey, I wanted to journal a couple of things I’ve recalled lately. I think a lot of the early months after BD were blocked out. This is all immaterial now and I don’t want to dwell, but I don’t want to forget either.
The first one. X avoided his parents for two or three months after BD. They met with me several times to try to get a sense of what in the world was happening. I was still somewhat stunned by his sudden departure and had no inkling there was OW. All he had told his parents was that we were on a break. They immediately asked (not being as naive as I) if there was someone else and he apparently scoffed at the mere question of such a ridiculous notion. When they saw me later, they pressed for details and I hesitated, wanting to protect X and not wanting to hurt his mother by listing the cruel things her son had given as his reasons for leaving. That I was lazy and boring, bad company and bad in bed, had never been good enough for him, and wasn’t the wife he deserved. I gave them a sanitised version and simply told them he felt he had settled for me. His dad replied “That’s funny, because we always though you settled for him.”
The second one. About six weeks after he walked out, X made the final decision to end the break and officially divorce. This happened during a talk with my stepdad, who had reached out to counsel X. My stepdad asked if X wanted him to pass on a message to me. X apparently believed this was an acceptable way for me to find out my marriage was over. Stepdad came straight to my house to hold my hand and walk me through the conversation. I asked stepdad later if X had mentioned S1 at all during this two-hour conversation and the answer was “not once”. Later I messaged X asking him to please tell me this himself because I was in a lot of pain. He ignored me for days until he couldn’t avoid coming to see S1 any longer. When I asked him to take S1 to daycare so we could talk, he said “I didn’t come here to talk to you, I came to see S1.” Incredulously, I asked if this was not kind of important and he said “not really”.
The last one. X organised a settlement discussion shortly after the above events. He knew I wanted to keep the house we spent the last five years building, and made no bones about the fact he couldn’t care less, because he was desperate to get my settlement funds as soon as possible. I asked my stepdad to mediate. X was like a brick wall throughout the discussion. I cried and had to leave the room multiple times while he sat in silence. My stepdad let me speak my truth while X occasionally made passive-aggressive comments like “are we talking or are you just gonna attack me?” At one point I sobbed and told X that I had thought about ending my life every day since he left me to care for S1 alone. He stared at the floor and said nothing. Even knowing the depth of my pain, he was still not willing to be honest about leaving me for OW. Even knowing that my stepdad’s first wife left him for their mutual best friend, and that it nearly killed him, and he lost custody of his adored daughters as a result, X sat there with a sad look on his face and assured my stepdad there was nobody else.
I know there are hundreds of identical stories on here and elsewhere. Worse stories too. I just wanted to purge this ugliness from my mind.
