IM, that's a much better handle for you (and thank you, Marji, you rock, as always!) I just had a couple paragraphs written for you, with hopefully-helpful comments before my screen locked up, I hit "refresh," and lost them all; maybe a sign I should be briefer.....
Most of my story was poured out here last fall, and then a little bit over the winter months. I have been in "Limbo" for 16 years after my marriage blew up with the same sort of news you just got.
First I want to tell you, I understand that you are still reeling from this shock, and not ready to make a lot of decisions yet. But a warning: waiting and seeing becomes Limbo at some point. It is not a good place to be, either for our mental or our physical health.
No kids here, but still, I hung in for financial complications that I saw no way out of. And 12 years later, years during which I always thought it was just my own resistance to getting past his kind of emotionless, cold-blooded betrayal, and my (largely unconscious) fear of that false self he continued to show me every day, my SAWH was suddenly arrested for soliciting a prostitute (he found on a website). It was a local police sting to try and discourage drugs and associated human trafficking. My upstanding, self-respecting, affluent, established and well-liked husband's dishevelled mugshot made the papers, the nightly news on TV, the internet (she was not underage, or he would now be on a sex offender list for life.) But his defense attorney told him he will have his arrest follow him through the rest of his life, as Court records systems and Google don't forget.
You might tell this story to your husband, because eventually it could be his story, too. Eventually, it will come out, and he will need to get help for his problems. Like mine never did, despite all the counseling we went through - a year of intense MC (he needed IC, but I was in trauma and I appreciated being informed). He never sought IC.
An aspect of personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, is that they rarely find the motivation to do the deep work needed to fix themselves. They truly do think it's the rest of the world's fault! Sounds like your husband has that mindset, in spades!
I read where you were considering just doing the roommate thing, like I am now with my SAWH. (And cuddly he is and was, it's just too bad I finally realized I was risking my mental health, trying to enjoy that aspect at the same time I deeply feared his inner monster! So now, we don't share much of that at all, and I hate that, but it was my decision - too many nightmares whenever I allowed him too close...).
I had my reasons for hanging in, which put me in a situation I felt helpless to steer myself out of, economically. I paid a very heavy price for that decision, in reality. Imagine being in the middle of a trans-Atlantic crossing in an old wooden tall ship, when pirates commandeer the ship, kill your beloved Captain, tie you up in the hold, but keep feeding you every day, any food you like! You have no idea why they keep you alive, your life feels like it's over. Nor do you know where or when you are really going to wash ashore...you are just a prisoner now, with no hope of getting back on course. But you are still sailing, still have some physical needs met.,..that describes the last 16 years of my life!
You have heard of Stockholm Syndrome, where captives eventually bond with their captors, who are seen as "protecting" them, and the prisoners then resist being freed? It is a real phenomenon in humans, and I think that helps explain how I've never "seen a way out." Please don't do that to yourself, if you have as many options as it sounds like you do.
Secondly, I hurt for you, when you say you thought what we all tend to think, when he admitted having been to a prostitute in the past: you thought it happened when he was single and that kind of "desperate" behavior wouldn't be necessary, now that he was married, right? Forgive yourself, it is part of our culture to believe this. We all are told that men have sexual needs that they cannot control (not a universal truth, but many men really are out of control). We think a good woman will fix all that! We probably think that, because we were told that sort of advice by our mothers, Dear Abby, Cosmo Magazine, and our grandmothers undoubtedly told our mothers the same thing, and on back in time it goes. Even in the New Testament Bible, Paul advised married couples not to "deprive one another of conjugal rights, lest the devil tempt them to sexual sins..."
But what we learn is that normal sexuality has little to do with these guys' EI. Marji summarized it well. They aren't normal. In both my late sister's and my own cases, our SAWH's paid for sex with a prostitute the same DAY as we had had loving sex with them. It has nothing to do with the old "deprivation = motivation for paying a prostitute" although before I met this man, I might have accepted that premise because my first husband was a Navy Vietnam vet, and he told me, before we married, about the Japanese whore houses he and his mates visited on liberty in Japan. I accepted that "need idea" because I was a naive 19 year old girl, who had already seen the long lines of crew-cut sailors in white dress uniforms downtown in my city, Washington, D.C. They were lined up to go into a raunchy strip club for "entertainment." I just told myself it was pretty common for the military men!
We just need to forgive ourselves for not realizing all the ways this kind of sex-for-sale damages the man's capacity to be a real lover!
Well, epic post here. All as my way of saying: You are NOT an Idiot!
