Me and the ex have been together since january, 2008, up until june 2022. She left home in july, and we signed divorce papers in august, not without me begging for two months straight. I'm 34 now, do the math... almost half of my life I lived with her.

I met her at my first job. She was my first and only girlfriend, my first and only strong passion, my first and only sexual partner, my first and only wife... you get it. A lot of 'firsts' about my life, whatever you might be able to think about, she was the first herself or was deeply involved in it - from absolutely trivial things like trying a new restaurant to remarkable events, like my first international trip...
Hell, we were about to buy an apartment for us... first 7 years of our relationship, it was an "affair" (I'm not certain this is the word in english, in portuguese we say 'namoro') - with a LOT of breakups in between. When I decided to propose marriage, we had just been through the latest breakup. She came to me saying that a pastor told her that "god" had told him we weren't meant to be together - that was her reason. Somehow I convinced her of the opposite and on her birthday party the next week, I proposed.

...

Skip to feb/2023

And here I am, at my own apartment, which I financed after the divorce with a nice downpayment that my dad gave me. I'll never forget the day (oct 24th) I got the keys to my very own place: all I managed to do, besides being grateful to my old man and to God, was to cry like a child, desperately craving that she was here to share the achievement.

Meanwhile, between june/2022 and today, I discovered a lot of things. She changed jobs in jan/2022 to a fully in-office job - she had been working from home since the pandemics began, about march/2020. I was, and still am, struggling with a lot of anxiety issues, almost all of the related to her or to our then marriage.

In june, like 10th or so, she said something like "I don't want another person, I don't want another story, you're an intelligent man, I love you", and two weeks later, while we were still recovering from covid, she dropped the D bomb, all of a sudden.

We had ourJ long standing communication issues, and I was barely talking to her, because I was already suspecting of an affair at her new job.

Only in september, after the divorce was already final, I decided to look up at our cellphone bills and I found an unusual pattern of calls to a number that belonged to another state. I went on to investigate whose number that was - it belongs to te guy I suspected.

One month later, they were already publishing pics on instagram, together.

This january, the day we would have completed 15 years together, out of neediness, I sent her an email, to which she replied "I still have the same care and admiration for you. Our story is and always will be important to me, but it had an end.

There are a whole lot more of details, but I don't have the time, the energy or the brainpower to write them all now, so, thanks for your patience and time.

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P.S: a few good days since everything happened, but in the bad ones, the pain has been so real and strong that I began questioning whether it was worth continuing to live or not, if you know what I mean. Deep down I know the answer, but such horrible thoughts had never crossed my mind, not even by a thousand miles distance. Truly terrifying.