Divorced April Fool's Day 2014

Fear is the mind-killer.Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.I will face my fear.I will permit it to pass over me and through me.-Dune

New Years Karma

Hello to everyone who remembers me! As I've always said, I could not have gotten through my descent into betrayal and my painful journey out without so many SI members.

This is an update I've always hoped I could eventually post. (D-Day was 2012, divorce 2014.)

It is also important that I post this for those who have recently found SI, still in the early throes of pain and shock. More narrowly, this is for those who are emotionally ravaged specifically by your spouse leaving you for the AP. You are tormented by your questions--how could he/she? why wasn't I enough?--and one of the most painful possibilities: that theirs is true love. That the AP really was/is "the one," their soul-mate. That your Ex would change for the AP. That their love would last forever.

Nine years ago this is where I was, and for years after as well--albeit to lesser and lesser degrees as time healed my worst wounds and life went on. But so did my ex's relationship with the OM, who played an important role in the conscious destruction of a family. No, I don't place an undue amount of blame on the AP: my ex had free will. He was not a puppeteer, just a run-of-the-mill lowlife. I like the metaphor of the bank robbery: the spouse robbed the bank, but the AP drove the getaway car.

Anyway, I knew deep down (and supported by evidence) that they weren't truly happy, and yet... There they still were. Now, note that as time went on, I did not obsess over this. It is totally natural to do so in the early years. I generally stopped caring. My happiness was no longer dependent on their unhappiness. But once in a while, I thought: where the fuck was that karma? Could I have been wrong about her? About them? Were they star-crossed lovers and she is now the angel for him that she never could be for me?

Well. Fast forward to the day before yesterday--New Year's Day, appropriately enough. Their relationship finally and abruptly ended. And it ended in the most banal, utterly predictable way, for the most laughably cliched reason--one that I'd seen so many times on this site and wished for in my situation:

He caught her cheating on him and kicked her out. She had been having an affair for at least a year and refused to stop. Exactly the same as my narrative with her. Their relationship began with lies and deceit and ended with a satisfying stroke of poetic justice. Karma has been served--at least for the OM. As for her, she obviously found a new chump. He too will learn in time. And eventually she will hit her own rock bottom, when no decent man will buy her Princess in Distress act. It is then that I predict she will come to know all that she lost. But any such revelation will never be accompanied by remorse, only by regret. She never grasped the enormity of what she did in destroying her family: a devoted, loving husband and two small children. She never will. Narcissists don't. They just don't.

But here's the thing--and this is the part directed primarily at those who crave, long for that karma: Please let him/her cheat on him/her and let the AP know my pain! Yes, it is vindication. It does feel good for so many reasons. I saw my ex today when she came for our DD. She was a wreck: eyes puffy from sobbing, pale from days of self-pity. I felt a surge of triumph and grim happiness for the OM's pain and for my ex's. Finally! Holy shit, it's over, and she cheated on him!

But then, within a minute, pleasure, the schadenfreude I'd waited for, dissipated and was replaced by sadness: what a waste, I thought. Theirs was no Great Love Story after all, no star-crossed lovers they. Just a couple of cheap, selfish cheaters. Life had handed my Ex an enviable life and she pissed it away.

And then the moment passed. I kissed my DD goodbye and told my Ex to take care and drive carefully. Shrug. Karma was not what I thought it would be.

Fellow Betrayed, don't spend your days yearning for that karma. It may come in a dramatic, poetic manner as it did with me, but 1) the rush did not sustain; the sadness lingered longer, and 2) it took a hell of a long time: almost ten years.

Are yours still together? Did they marry? Is their Facebook page full of happy photos? I call bullshit. These relationships forged in pain will come to the same end. The end might "be an end"--they might break up, one might cheat on the other--but a dead, unhappy, distrustful relationship can burn on the fumes of delusion for a lifetime.

Don't believe that theirs was a love that you could not offer. You did, they can't, fuck them.

I hope this helps.

20 comments posted: Sunday, January 3rd, 2021

Classic out-of-the-mouths of babes!

DS, ten: "A female dog is called a bitch!"

Me: "Do you know what a baby goat is called?"

DD, seven, after thinking for a few beats: "A shit?"

Voila! Instant classic!

:-)

7 comments posted: Tuesday, December 30th, 2014