Why can’t I just cut my losses and move on after 2.5 years?

I don’t know why I can’t just cut my losses. We’re two years in since the day I discovered my husbands affair and we’re no longer together. I’ve been in therapy heavily for this. Here’s the short of it—

My husband of 9 years cheated on me with his coworker. Devastated seems like an understatement. I’ll never be able to put into words how hurt, disgusted and betrayed I felt and CONTINUE to feel, even though I feel at this point I shouldn’t since life has gone on. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around how a person could do this to their wife and two young daughters - now ages 5 & 10.

When I initially discovered the affair, my husband told me he was "done with me" and wanted a divorce. That’s all I got. He then packed a bag and left. There was no discussion around anything. No empathy. He refused to answer any questions or talk to me. I begged and pleaded for answers and over the course of the next 8 months, he would just breadcrumb me with reasons he was so unhappy in the marriage. One of the main reasons he said is I never bettered myself and that turned him off about me and stressed him out. This really hit me to the core. I always worked full time jobs throughout having our two children. I have a Bachelor’s degree and dabbled in a few different areas of social work over the last decade, but no, they weren’t my "forever" or "dream" jobs. I was still trying to find my path and what was fulfilling to me, but life gets in the way and I just didn’t have any vision or clarity for where I wanted to go in my career. He on the other hand, has been at the same job since high school, no degree and wound up working his way up the ranks. So in hindsight, I can see how to him my path of "finding myself" in a career was unattractive in his eyes.

He wound up saying for a year after leaving that he was confused about if he wanted to go through with the divorce and wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. He asked if I could ever get passed their affair and I told him I really didn’t know because he didn’t even show remorse, I caught it and there was no work that he was putting in to show that he wanted to fight for us. I told him working with her still wasn’t going to work either. It was absolute hell seeing him head to work every single morning where my mind would just spiral wondering what they were doing every waking minute of the work day. He told me that they’re just friends now and that felt like such a slap in the face. He told me he had no plans on leaving his job and I would have to just come to terms with it if we were going to stay together. We were both already in therapy for years prior to this (what prompted that was his weight loss surgery and therapy was a requirement, but he remained seeing the therapist for years as did I). I felt so disconnected from him throughout our marriage, that I wanted to speak with a therapist too, so I went to the same one in hopes of doing marriage counseling, but he always refused to go together with me. So separate is what remained for years.

4 years prior to him cheating on me with his coworker, I discovered him sexting back and forth with his ex girlfriend and I forgave that like an idiot. But I never felt the same about him and didn’t trusted him anymore. His reason for doing that he said was purely due to "boredom" and being "selfish". He said he was very sorry and that was the end of that. I had a hard time grappling with his actions vs the fantasy of who I always thought he was. I never in a million years thought my husband was capable of being so disloyal to me. Although in hindsight I never really felt he was loyal to me to the extent I longed for. What I mean by that is there always seemed to be boundary issues between him and other women and so I never truly felt safe in a relationship with him, ever. At the very start of my relationship, it was brought to my attention that he was "best friends" with a former lover of his. It made me very uncomfortable that they’d hang out and talk on the phone even though he was in a relationship with me. She’d even call him while he was in my presence and he’d become upset by me not feeling comfortable with it. He wanted me to hang out with her too. He would tell me they’re always going to be in each others lives and I needed to learn to accept her if our relationship was ever going to work. He even went as far as to have her message me to relay the same memo. It made me feel very underminded and small. Then there was a "special relationship" between him and his brothers wife. Throughout the years I’ve dealt with odd situations where they would drift off together if they were around one another, she would apparently make plans with him to come to my house when I wasn’t there and I only knew when I called my husband and then he mentioned that she was over the house..they would do errands for one another, sometimes when she was around he’d pass by her while grazing her lower back. It all made me uncomfortable and he would become annoyed if I ever mentioned these things from over the years and just walk away from me like I was an annoyance. There were several other things that went on between them that I just felt was very strange, but this post is already long enough. I would just tell myself, I was overreacting. She clearly didn’t see anything wrong with it either that there were boundaries being crossed so I felt like it was a me problem and I was just in the way.

So here we are today. I just learned a few weeks ago from my daughters that are ordered to go with him every other weekend, that they’ve met his girlfriend from work and it’s not the one he cheated with. They told me her name and it’s now the other woman on his team. I remember all the coworkers that he works with because he used to talk about his job to me all the time when he came home from work. After a few weeks of them being introduced to her, he told our daughters the other day that he’s moving into her house so that is where they will be staying going forward when it’s his weekend with them. Again, I just feel like the rug keeps being pulled out from under me and I feel devastated. I can’t believe he’s now with someone else from his job, has clearly moved on and is now residing with them. I feel like such a fool for a wife. These women always knew about me and now they’ve each had a relationship with him over these past 2 years and he’s moving in with the latest one now? I found out she’s 10 years younger than him too. No children, lives on her own. I feel like life is just working out for him lovely while I still go to therapy and am trying to process this all. I just continue to receive new information that feels like it furthur opens the wound. I had to up route myself and my children, move into a one bedroom apartment so I can afford rent and get back on my feet. These past 2 years he refused to get a place of his own despite his salary that’s 100K and lived in a family members guest room where him and my daughters all slept on a full size bed together. And yes, the judge approved of this a while back because he told the court that he would sleep on the floor while giving them the bed, which was an absolute lie and that he had an apartment lined up already, was waiting for it to be renovated — which was another lie. The girls would tell me. They had no space of their own and this went on for 2 years until just last weekend when he told me he will be moving into his girlfriend’s home.

I can’t even bring myself to look at him. When he comes to get our children I start to get panic attacks from everything I’ve endured. I don’t know why after all this time I still feel this strongly.

How do I cut my losses and let this all go? How do I no longer care and become indifferent? Why do I feel so deeply hurt and furthur betrayed?

7 comments posted: Wednesday, January 29th, 2025