I haven't posted for months, a lot has happened, and I think i just need to get some of it out.
My wife and i separated, been a couple of months now, we're coming up to three years passed the affair and this is where we are now.
It's been incredibly tough, on both of us and especially on the kids.
I moved into a rented house in the same town, we arranged a custody schedule and....got on with it. My wife has always been a pragmatic person and when she's made a decision she gets on, it happens.
I failed her, failed my kids and failed myself. She seems to be picking herself up and moving forward, as much as I want her to be happy, want her to move forward form the pain and mess I brought her, I also don't know how to handle it. How do you reconcile what they want and what you want, when neither of them is happening - she wants this to have never happened, wanted a husband who didn't fuck around with her best friend, wanted someone to show up and be by her side, to have seen remorse for what i did to her, she wanted me to be there with her though this, to do whatever i could to fix it. She doesn't want this, but this is what it is.
I don't want to be who am I, I desperately want to be the man she needed me to be then, but then is gone - there's just now.
I don't understand how to accept that - I can't.
It's so easy to predict the responses to that sentiment - "You have to focus on being better", "Accept that you caused this, she is doing what she needs to" etc etc - but I can't - I can't accept a future without her.
I try to focus on my kids, to make the most of the time i spend with them, but even then I'm failing them - they don't want to be here, of course they don't - their stuff isn't here, their friends aren't here, as much as I try to make it fun and good for them, they are kids, time with dad at a place they don't want to be is a chore, that's not what their childhood was supposed to be like.
My wife, my beautiful wife..living through a nightmare because the person she should have been able to trust, focused on himself, trod all over her just to make myself feel a little less shitty about ... well me.
This is the true face of infidelity - there is no good in or from it, only hurt. My wife has to try and piece together and move forward in a life, that not only did she not want, but that was an inconceivable consideration until i forced it down her throat. My kids get to grow up in a broken home, they still have two parents who love them dearly - but they don't have what they were supposed to have. From here on out it will always be less than it should have been.
A family ruined by one person's selfish actions.
I'm trying to figure out how i navigate now - my wife always made it clear that i didn't make her a priority, she didn't matter, she was a bit part on the stage of my life. I never saw it, I thought she was the centre of my world. I was blind, intentionally naive, just too damn self absorbed to see that that was only what i thought, and not her reality. But now what do i do - do i pull back, stop trying, let her go live a new life, a new chapter - is that right? It sure as hell doesn't feel right, all she really wanted was for me to show up - so how in hell does walking away look anything like showing up? I failed to show up, does that mean it's too late to do it now.
I'm sure this reads like a pity party - and it's true that I feel incredibly shitty, of course i do, just look at the destruction i brought to those around me, you can't look at that and not feel shitty. But honestly this is more trying to work things through, to figure out what comes next.
What i truly want is to make the choices that are right for my wife and for my children. But when you have spent years making choices that just make things worse, how the fuck do you even see the right choice, let alone recognise it to make it.
One big thing i really struggle with, my wife does not want to be with me because of the way i treat her, and I do want her to be happy, want her to be treated in a way that she feels every bit as special, unique and wonderful as she is, and i'm not an idiot - she is able to self validate, she doesn't need a partner, and there's also many other people in this world who as a partner could treat her the way she deserves, who she would find happiness with, but i also know that family means everything to her, that our kids me everything to her and I truly honestly believe that what would be best is a future where our family is whole and together, where I treat her in a way that makes her happy, secure and being loved, if i can somehow, i don't know, just not be me?
I guess all in all I'm feeling lost, alone and completely unsure. I don't even know what if anything i look to gain from putting this all out here - but SI feels like a safe space to empty my head, and if you read all this, then thank you, and if you have anything to say, anything that might help....have at it.