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Now that I'm not spending my energies in fruitless reconciliation with my WW, I'm spending time reconciling what I know and experienced in the past. Learning to trust myself again. I realized my WW, at least a decade ago, stopped telling me friendly stories about people in her life. When she was working, I only heard about the typical work stresses, not about interesting, fun, or engaging stories. Unless it was a routine conflict she was having, I heard nothing. I can't say exactly when that behavior started, but I realize now I lost an entire part of the normal sharing in a relationship. When I ask why? Now it's obvious, her friendly interactions were with other men, and she didn't want me to hear about these plates she was spinning.

This and many other realizations have forced me to see how little I actually knew about my WW. Her likes, dislikes, feelings on all manner of topics, all vanished into the affairs. I was left only as a place to bring problems. I was the man for support, the rest were for fun and relationship. More and more I see I was this one part of her life, kept in an isolated cell, and thrown the occasional bone to keep me from emotionally starving. Or rather, to keep me in my cell when I started rattling the bars.

I feel sad reconciling the reality of my life with my former delusion, yet it seems like actual progress and not rumination. These are old facts that are new to me because I buried red flags as quickly as I saw them. I'm sad, but glad to at least understand better boundaries and vision I can use going forward. Never ignore the red flags.

Anyone else experiencing any of these eye-opening revelations?

It's amazing what you see when you leave them. It's like a peeling back of onion layers. It took me many years to finally figure out who my xWS was and continues to be. I see the red flags from the beginning and throughout the M. The hardest part for me is the time that I wasted on him (my whole youth). But had I not met him and left when I did I would not have met the man I'm with today... and that is worth all the misery I went through, as well as finding myself again and getting healthy and peace of mind back in my life.

I think it happens I’m so many phases of life.

You learn you never knew the BF/GF that would dump you.

You realize your cheating spouse/SO is not who you thought they were.

You learn your BFF was nothing more than a lying fake phony friend (who would steal your BF/GF if they could).

You figure out your siblings are just using you for $.

And the boss you thought was so great at work was just trashing your reputation so they didn’t have to give you a raise.

And the list goes on.

Sadly.

At least when you realize it, you can do something about it.

This definitely resonates with me.

Now free of his daily presence, I can see so much clearly. I am reconciling that he never really loved me. He was playing a part. The red flags were many and i chose to bury my head. Now free I see how abusive he was, the day to day stuff,not just the physical. I see how much damage was done to our children and the damage he contines to inflict on them even without being here.

I am seeing just how strong I really am.

I'm seeing how wonderful life can be and how peaceful it is here. The kids have their bad days but less and less. They have done amazing things since their dad had been gone. They don't hide in their rooms. We have fun. We are more a family now then we ever were.

"see the red flags from the beginning and throughout the M. The hardest part for me is the time that I wasted on him (my whole youth)."

Sadly…The review mirror reveals that EXWH had a lack of character and was truly aweful to me.

I don't know if it's exactly the same but I found out that WS told stories about me to other people. After the A and D, friends and some acquaintances would mention that he told them a story and I had no clue what they were talking about. It never happened. And it made me go back and question what he told me about other people. I recognized that WXH would tell what I thought were "white lies" all through our marriage about small things. But it never dawned on me that he would lie to ME. Because we were partners, had each others' backs, blah blah blah. It was a lightbulb moment when I realized that he tells people what he thinks they want to hear. He doesn't(?) consider it a lie. My DS and I talk about it; he recognizes it in his dad and I do stress to him not to fall into that pattern. I know I've done it in the past but with my new husband we talk about honesty a lot.

Kind of sad actually. But a learning moment for me to recognize and choose that I'm not going to fall into that habit or let people around me get away with it either.