AP = Affair Partner
STBXW = Soon to be ex-wife

Context

My STBXW (38F) had been withdrawn and depressed for a several months. She lost her father to suicide a year ago and then COVID, the unrest in the US of summer 2020, and the elections took a toll on everyone. Being sad and exhausted was understandable. What she did though is completely incomprehensible.

I (36M) encouraged her to talk to someone or workout with me, knowing the mental health benefits of exercise, but she refused, and took my very gently positioned suggestion she workout as an attack about her weight. I had proposed it very carefully as to not come across like that, but I knew it was how she would take it, she always did with things like that. She has admitted in the past she thought me getting fit, getting my teeth whitened, and at one point, switching from boxers to briefs were signs I was going to leave her. So, clearly some insecurities. But I loved her, did my best. She was my person.

We had been together 16 years, married 10. We had met in college and moved in together after 2 weeks. I supported her in graduate school (she then did same for me), I married her, bought her a house, bought her a car, gave her the baby she wanted, and told her I loved her every day. I overcame my fear of flying to take her on luxury vacations. I worked hard so she did not have to. We did everything together, maintained a mostly decent sex life, and meanwhile I took care of everything. I put up with her messiness, her mine too. I do not know how else I could have proven my love and devotion for her.

I continued working from home during COVID. She quit working temporarily and then never went back, which was fine, I make enough money. She said she wanted to spend more time working on making the house nice, that was good with me, and I was happy to be able to allow her some time off work thanks my hard work. She eventually took over coordinating online school for our daughter (7) too. That is, when she was not on Instagram.

Instagram

I noticed she had become increasingly absorbed into her iPhone during this time, particularly Instagram. She had new friends from Instagram all around the world. I figured this was a good thing, it was a response the social isolation of COVID, indeed my online communication with friends went up during COVID. I was concerned by how many hours she was spending on the phone but figured it was just quarantine boredom.

I also noticed she had been increasingly going ‘to the park’ and other random places for hours at a time, for no apparent reason. I thought, again under the circumstances, given the physical isolation of COVID, it was good for her to just get out of the house and get some social-distanced fresh air and sunshine. She will not go to therapy or even use a therapy texting app like I suggested, going out is good for her mental health at least, right?

She had also, surprisingly, suddenly taken up French lessons using Duolingo. Again, in context, I thought this was a quaint COVID hobby to alleviate the boredom. She often did the lessons in bed with me at bedtime.

Making friends online during quarantine, getting out after quarantine, picking up a new hobby – all very normal and healthy under the circumstances, so I thought.

I had also noticed she no longer left her phone between us in the bed at night, instead under her pillow. Weird but never gave it a second thought. I was completely unsuspecting. Then I found them.

Discovery

About four months ago I was syncing photos between my STBXW's photo account and mine from her computer.

I had found sexy photos of herself in her photo account before and asked her about them, she told me she was simply 'too nervous' to send them to me. I encouraged her to do so, I would love to get them, but she never did. I figured it went back to her own insecurities she refused to deal with.

This time was different though, the sexy photos had a username on them, of a man, and captions that said she 'belonged' to him, she was ‘his’, he was her ‘wolf’. WTF is this?

I opened her browser, and she was logged into an alt Instagram account she had created several months prior. I found that she had started a BDSM-themed account where she posted sexy photos of herself along with kink-themed memes.

I also found there that she identified as 'belonging' to this AP, a man in France. They openly identified as being each other's BDSM sub and dom. This was all news to me.

I opened her Instagram DM's. There I found they had been texting, exchanging audio clips, photos, and videos, many very explicit, for months.

I read my STBXW take minor easily fixable complaints about our marriage, exaggerate them, and feed them to this man, who turned around and fed back how awful I was, how only he could ‘see’ her, how ‘neglected’ she was. He was clearly love bombing her, manipulating her, but-by her own admission later-she liked the attention and went right along with it, knowing it had crossed a line.

I read my STBXW text about how handsome he was and what she wanted him to do to her, things she has never said to me. Ouch. She talked about how sexy it was that he cooked, while I actually cooked dinner for her mostly every night after I got done with work.

I listened to explicit and detailed audio messages they exchanged daily, saw sexy photos they took of themselves including some very extreme photos my STBXW took for him, and watched videos my STBXW took of herself, some from our marital bed, in lingerie I had never seen. I read where they had sexy live video chats. The French lessons, those were ‘assignments’ she did from her ‘dom’.

I read plans they made together to meet up in France, specifically how she planned to sneak off with him while I was at a work conference there. So that is why she asked to come to that conference with me. When asked about this later she said this was all just a fantasy, even though I have the texts.

I read how she hoped I was having an affair and probably would not care if I found out about her affair. The cognitive dissonance was astounding.

I read about she complained that I worked on the weekends, something I did to provide for her, in part so she did not have to work, when she was supposed to be working on the house but instead having a very sexual online EA with a married man. Man, I feel like such a chump.

Later she bragged to him that I had gotten a raise and she would be out there as soon as COVID restrictions were lifted. So that is why she asked, when I got the raise, if I could spring for a ‘girls’ trip to Europe’ with her sister. She later denied her sister knew anything about the affair, even after those texts and voice messages planning how she was going to get gifts from him delivered through her sister’s workplace.

I read the music suggestions he made. So that is why she was suddenly into French metal.

I also read book suggestions he made. So that is why she said she wanted to ‘do more reading’, she then ignored all the books I bought her, and began reading other books that were very outside her normal tastes.

That is why she is spending so much time on her phone, hiding it away, learning French, and disappearing for hours.

I looked at the time and dates on messages and their contents, realizing that she was sending some from our marital bed, while I was lying next to her, sometimes right after we had sex.

I read about how he was married and had two small children of his own.

First Confrontation

I was stunned. I waited a couple days until our daughter went off to my mother-in-law’s.

I told her I knew about AP. She was cold. She explained she knew it was wrong and it had crossed a line. That she should have told me.

I asked her why (my first mistake of many), she told me she just did not feel ‘seen’, we did not have enough passionate sex, and she felt that I did not have the right feelings for her.

I told her she was wrong about my feelings for her, I listed all the ways I demonstrate my love for her, that we both know we could do better with spontaneous sex, but it was not terrible what we did do. I knew she was into kinky stuff, we have a lot of toys and gear, and used them regularly. She has never, on the other hand, been willing to indulge my kinks that did not align with hers. Also, if she needed more sex so badly, why did never initiate it, let me put on sexy movies to get us in the mood, and completely ignore what I was into?

I asked why she never told me she felt this way, she said she had tried. I asked her for examples, she mentioned crying two years ago around Christmas and that I just did not get it. I asked her why she did not try harder if I was not getting the message, suggest couple’s therapy, etc., did our marriage mean nothing? She said sorry she did not shake me to tell me these things but that she ‘tried’ by ‘hinting’. I did not realize at the time this was all justification in her mind for what she had done and was still doing.

Still, I thought we could get past this; it happens to lots of couples. This seemed fixable to me, after all, it was just an online thing. So, we had some communication issues around intimacy, we can address that, maybe she really did just want more kinky stuff, fine, I was jealous of all the stuff they were talking about anyways, so I was up for that stuff. (Having to be jealous of your wife’s activities in her affair is pretty messed up in retrospect.) This is just some depression talking in her mind I thought. She is confusing the feeling of things under COVID quarantine with how things were before.

I told her I did not want a divorce, but we both needed to see a therapist and a couple’s therapist. She agreed.

I told her to cut it off with AP. She agreed. I told her she could never contact AP again. She acted shocked and disappointed but reluctantly agreed. 🚩

She curled up in my lap and cried. I do not remember if she apologized, she did not feel repentant. 🚩 She was sad for a few days. I consoled her. I only realize now how absolutely messed up that was.

Later she told me she did not want to go right away to a couple’s therapist but attend some therapy on her own first. 🚩 I agreed, at least she was getting help.

She was, weirdly, never able to find a therapist on her own though. She said she wanted to find a kink-friendly therapist, so I sent her a list of several nearby or in the state who could do teletherapy. She made some calls but never followed-up. 🚩

During this time, I tried not to be angry with her all the time, to understand what happened, thinking it was my fault, and I needed to fix it, that as a man it was my responsibility. I tried being more affectionate generally and dominating in bed, she seemed to enjoy it, and things seemed mostly okay.

At the same time, I did not want to reward her for having an affair by suddenly giving her lots of affection and more sex, so it was very conflicting. I had good days and bad days. I managed to get to therapy. Five weeks went by.

Second Confrontation

I snooped. Can you blame me? Sure enough, there was a new account, and she had been exchanging messages him. 🚩

When asked why (again, stupid I know), she told me it was because I did not react ‘strongly’ enough to the first discovery. Like, it is my fault for trying to be understanding and repair my marriage? Did she want me to be angrier and maybe ‘punish’ her? A part of me thinks that is possible. That is not me though, I would never do that.

This time I told her divorce was on the table. She told me should not fight me on a divorce 🚩. I was still hesitant because I wanted to save this thing. I was in a sort of fog myself. I told her, again, I did not really want a divorce, so she had two options.

She had to accept several detailed terms, including therapy and monitoring of her devices, to remain married. Or we would be divorcing. To set it home, I sent her a divorce settlement and kicked her out of our bedroom.

A few days later 🚩, she reluctantly accepted the monitoring. I made her send an e-mail this time to him cutting things off. She deleted most of her accounts, gave me passwords to most everything else, but not everything. I installed software to snoop on her laptop. I let her back in the bedroom. In retrospect, this was just another ticket to continue riding my emotional ups and downs, so she could continue getting both me and AP.

Turns out she had used those days to find ways around the monitoring, including setting up communications with AP through her online friends and sister. Her sister, who I later learned knew all about the affair, encouraged it, helped facilitate communication and exchanging gifts, while regularly took my money and asking me for favors. They really are a special pair, aren’t they?

She told me the monitoring she had agreed to was ‘abusive’ and ‘extreme’, that people would be worried for her safety if they knew, and she would never do it to me if she caught me in an affair. Huh? Trying to shame me for trying to save my marriage and take this moral high ground. The weird moral high ground thing is something she would try to do several times over the coming weeks. Trying to compensate for the shame of her actions.

She told me it was unfair she had to give up the mutual friends she had online with AP, that she would be lonely now. I knew she was using them to communicate with AP. I suggested she join a meetup and make new, healthy friends. You would have thought I suggested she grow a unicorn horn.

She kept talking about the invasion of her privacy 🚩, how I would be able to monitor everything. I explained to her that I was not monitoring her conversations with her sister or friends, just for AP. She said eventually I would though, which was weird, I did not understand why she said that at the time. Now I know it was because she was using her sister and friends to remain in contact with AP, she was basically telling me she was right there.

She also pushed back against the requirement to get therapy, which was once a week for 12 months. She asked what if the therapist thought she did not need weekly therapy, I said then the therapist should put it on letterhead and bring it to me. She hated that idea. For someone so willing to be ‘punished’ by some guy she met online a few months, she had a hard time accepting accountability in real life from her husband.

I also did not like any of this. It all felt controlling. I wanted her to want to repair things, not have it forced on her. But I was grasping, trying desperately to save our marriage, but that is not possible with someone who did not want to be married anymore, she just could not come out and say it. I lacked the self-respect to call it myself, yet.

She said she had checked out of the marriage about two years ago, gave up, and had been miserable this whole time. I look at photos from this time, at all the fun stuff we did together, and it just did not add up. I kept looking for a reason, trying to get it from her. Meanwhile all I was getting were lies, denials, and trickle-truthing when confronted with hard evidence.

It was around this time that AP posted on his Instagram an open letter to me about how I did not really love my STBXW, how he is the only one who understood her, provided for her, and so on. I wrote him an e-mail, at one of the secret e-mail accounts he had created to communicate with my STBXW, and told him he was full of it, I had provided for my STBXW for nearly 20 years, no marriage is perfect, I mean look at his, but that he was doing nothing more for my STBXW than a stripper does. That felt good to send. He never responded. Because like my STBXW, he too is a coward.

It turns out it is hard to monitor up-to-date iPhones directly, so I could only do passive monitoring and spot checks of her phone. I was able to monitor her laptop though.

When I did spot checks of her phone, she threw a tantrum each time 🚩, wanted to watch what I was looking at, and would then disappear with the phone to the bathroom after I was done, presumably to erase whatever I was not finding.

She told me at the time the monitoring would never rebuild trust and she was right. The monitoring was making me even more paranoid. I knew she was still finding ways to get around it too, it was like a constant spy game in the house. Those were some awful few weeks.

Eventually I gave up on complete monitoring because it was eating me up inside. I had to make that call for my own mental health. I think somewhere deep down I knew and was beginning the disengagement process. I would go back to snooping off and on for a few weeks before finally quitting.

Couple’s Therapy

I was able to get her to one appointment with a therapist. She was dismissive of the whole thing and never went back. 🚩 Piecing together the bits I managed to get, it sounds like the therapist tried to call her on some of her shit, so she did not want to go back.

She has previously told me she fears what might ‘come up’ in therapy. I believe she cannot confront her own personal trauma and is sadly instead inflicting it on others as a result, including our daughter. She is fundamentally a coward, unable to deal with her problems, unable to tell me she was having an affair, and unable to tell me she just wanted out, dragging me though the emotional mud. By taking care of her all these years, I did her a disservice.

I was also able to get her to come to two couples therapy appointments with me before she quit that too. She was equally dismissive of the process. 🚩 We did a marital expectations list and matched up 95%, but she still insisted on lots of privacy, basically enough to keep up her affair. 🚩

Then, at the last minute, she added to the marital expectations that I could sleep with other people. 🚩 Huh?

My marital expectations list also included a lot of new sexy things we could do together. She looked at it and told me she did not want anything like a sub/dom relationship with me. 🚩 So, which was it, she wanted more sex, she did not want that kind of sex, where was she going to get that sex is she now identified as a ‘sub’, or, as she has also claimed, it had nothing to do with sex? It kept changing.

I was not eating or sleeping. I was having okay days where I could hold it together and pretend to be happy and bad days when I laid in bed all day.

There were even more secret accounts. They were sending songs back and forth to each other using a shared Spotify playlist. When I found it and showed it to her, she denied knowing it was there. When I showed her the Spotify play history, that she had been actively listening to it, she told me it was all by accident.

I tried the things the couple’s therapist proposed, like proposing a vacation together. She was non-committal about the whole thing. She used my ups and downs against me, saying we should not plan anything.

This whole time I realize now I was playing the ‘pick me dance’ and just making myself miserable.

I offered her two paths, one where we worked together past this and potentially become a stronger, better couple, or divorce. She would not give me a straight answer for weeks. She kept saying the damage had been done, she felt like she was accepting unhappiness by staying together, and that I would never be able to get over the affair. To her credit here too, she might have been right. She just refused to come out and say what she really wanted. What she really wanted was me and AP.

Parenting Marriage

It was around this time I discovered the concept of a parenting marriage as an alternative to divorce. Stay married legally, live in the same house, separate bedrooms, but have separate romantic lives. I thought it might be an option I could live with. I was adamant about giving my daughter a two-parent household, I saw divorce as a failure.

I mentioned this concept in passing and she instantly grabbed onto it 🚩. This is what she wanted, me and AP. She was back in touch, openly, with AP within hours. I had explained it would be something we would need to work out in detail, with a written agreement. She did not wait for that though. She never even visited the links I sent her about it.

After I realized what was happening, I said no, this is not what I had in mind, we need to talk about this.

She then complained that now I was jerking AP around. 🚩

(She had also previously told him that I would like him. WTF?)

I told her, one final time (I know, I know), cut it off and we work on this or divorce. I told her I knew she was still in contact with him, to send him one final message, block him, and come back to reality.

I made her break things of ‘for good’ (LOL) by text in front of me and blocked him. She moped again for a few days. 🚩

I was still cycling up and down day to day. I was still paranoid. I was still snooping. I was initiating sex with her, but it was more for my own validation she was still with me, it felt hollow. I was still finding new accounts she created and things she had ordered to wear for him. I also found a secret stash of cash.

I still wanted to make it work. I took her on a date night around this time, it was awkward and terrible, we had no chemistry left. She then told me she did not want to feel pressured to have sex on the date night 🚩, so I did not push it. She later complained that I did not try hard enough that night.

It was around this time she kept coming up for excuses for not having sex. 🚩 I was trying to initiate sex more often but was now being rebuffed each time. Eventually, after being rebuffed one more time, I told her she was withholding sex to be manipulative. She gave an incredibly angry denial. I did not realize yet that she had already moved on, she did not want to have sex with me anymore, she had been giving me pity sex, she was over me and onto AP.

She said she was not even in the mood for ‘self-love’, but she was still watching porn and using her vibrator, so she even lied about that.

She wanted me, the provider, father, and bill payer, and her sexy time with her sidepiece, and she was just going to ride out my emotional rollercoaster for as long as she was getting both.

I still thought I could rationalize with her, to come back to reality and fix things, even though she was completely unrepentant, ignored the terms I had set forth, showed no signs of wanting to stop with AP, was still lying constantly, and despite seeing all the effects this was having on me-depression, rapid weight loss, and affecting my job, she did not care.

I tried to point out to her that he was not going to leave his family. She refused to talk about it. Later I brought it up again and she said even if he did divorce in France takes a year. So…there had at least been some discussion of that. Wonderful. She later denied all of this of course.

I was having thoughts, but no plans, about hurting myself. I just wish I had discovered some of these resources earlier, not realizing how stupid that would have been to do over her.

I talked to my friends and family about how crazy this all was. Some suggested that I move forward with divorce, maybe it will ‘wake her up’, maybe she would realize what she was doing and come back. I had already met with an attorney I knew for a consultation, hoping it was just overkill, but I reached back out and said to start the process.

So, one night, I sat her down, and said I did not see a future for our relationship, and we needed a divorce. Like she had said before, she did not fight me on it. 🚩

After The Divorce Talk

I told her I had a divorce lawyer and she needed to get one. She took her mom and stepdad to her divorce lawyer consultation, LOL.

I was still up and down, holding out hope. I was hoping the logistics of divorce, such as making her find a place to live, get a job, etc., would wake her up, out of the fog, make her want to come back. I did not understand how thick the affair fog is.

I mean, she could not hire her own divorce lawyer by herself. That is how much I took care of her and sheltered her.

It later came out the reason she took her parents with her is that she had burned through all her savings and maxed out her credit cards (again), they had to pay for it. She had gotten $28k the year before in unemployment benefits during COVID (not all of which she was entitled to), with nowhere to go to spend it, where did it all go? I still do not know.

At each step, me getting an apartment, having to come up with a parenting plan with shared custody and visitation, her trying to find an apartment with no money or job, doing the co-parenting class, I kept hoping she would wake up. Stupid, I know.

All the while, I begged, sometimes tearfully. Of course, she had no respect for me, I clearly had no respect for myself. I still tried to reason, but you cannot reason with addicts. Some days I asked her to just hold me because I needed that. Some days I made her sit there and got angry with her, all of which she just used to engage in more manipulation and to mine for justifications to bring up later. It was dumb, but I did not know what else to do.

At one point she admitted she wasn’t thinking of our daughter when she had the affair, but then said ‘you weren’t think of our daughter when you neglected me’-um, excuse me? I did not ‘neglect’ you and if you felt that way you should have told me before you ‘gave up’ on our marriage years ago apparently. Your post hac justifications for your affair are different from the acts of betrayal that ended our marriage and are going to deprive our daughter of a two-parent household model for her own marriage. These imaginary false equivalencies are one of the ways she has used to justify her actions.

At another point, I admitted that sometimes she annoyed me with things, like all married couples do sometimes, but even admitting tha.t it was then something she began citing constantly as an excuse for her indecisiveness and refusal to commit to reconciliation. It really is better to just not engage with cheaters I have discovered.

I kept asking her why (I know, I know, I know), how divorcing would fix this, if she is not leaving me for him (as she says), she is not getting her needs met (as she says), but does not plan to date (as she says), then how is she going to get her needs met? Not realizing, as I do now, I was never going to get a straight answer from her ever about anything. Of course, she still thinks she has a future with AP. I talked about what the scientific literature says about affairs, relationships, and divorce. I kept offering a renewed path forward, other than divorce. I got nothing back from her.

Around this time, I was on the phone with a family member talking about the situation and I thought was alone in the house. She came into the house without me noticing and listened in on the 20+ minute conversation. When I got to a part where we talked about AP she got so mad that she outed herself as having been eavesdropping, storming in claiming to just be ‘stopping by the house to use the restroom’. Wut? Later though it became clear she had been listening the whole time. She was mad about what she overheard because it was what I really thought about the whole situation, but I am glad she heard it, it gave me the deniability of just venting and not being at her.

She was incredibly angry that I had been sharing the BDSM aspect of the affair with my friends and family, claiming that was ‘an unnecessary detail’. She said she felt ‘shamed’ and ‘attacked’ by that. Yeah, well, that part is crazy, having an online BDSM affair you refuse to quit, that you are willing to end your marriage over, sorry you feel ashamed for that. Isn’t that part of the rush of having an affair? Isn’t it kinky for a reason? Hope it was worth it.

My Next Discovery

Then I found some subreddits.

The following posts/comment threads have been critical to help me understand what she did and what is happening here:

‘You are not alone.’ https://www.reddit.com/r/Infidelity/comments/n9m6he/you_are_not_alone/

‘What goes on in a cheaters mind during the Affair’ https://www.reddit.com/r/Divorce/comments/nli6e2/what_goes_on_in_a_cheaters_mind_during_the_affair/

‘This comment on Is it helpful to tell her how much she hurt me or does that solve nothing?’ https://www.reddit.com/r/Infidelity/comments/nljyub/is_it_helpful_to_tell_her_how_much_she_hurt_me_or/gzk68ax/

‘They just can't admit fault, can they?’

https://www.reddit.com/r/survivinginfidelity/comments/nlgq33/they_just_cant_admit_fault_can_they/

‘Life can be so better after divorce!’

https://www.reddit.com/r/Divorce/comments/96kv90/life_can_be_so_better_after_divorce/

I read the following books too:

· ‘Cheating in a Nutshell: What Infidelity Does to The Victim’

· ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy’

· ‘Now What?: A Guide for Men Starting Over in Life After Infidelity, Breakup and Divorce’

· ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life’

· ‘The Grief Recovery Handbook’

Ohhhh. I realized. My STBXW is behaving just like all these other cheaters. This is a common cheaters script. The lies, deception, gaslighting, trickle-truthing, and blame shifting. So many stories just like my own. What I am going through is normal and I am making all the same mistakes in handling this.

Then, I came to some realizations:

Realizations

· Nothing I did ‘caused’ the affair. It is not my fault. My STBXW has problems that I cannot fix and she does not appear willing to fix. She also has questionable moral character. I did a bad job selecting her a mate, I settled because she was there, ignoring the red flags, I thought she was the best I could do, and fell into a pattern of accommodating and providing that ultimately she got bored with. All I can do now is work on myself, heal, and have higher standards going forward, be a stable and complete person, and be unwilling to overlook those same red flags when I am ready to date again.

· Even if everything she says about not being ‘seen’, not enough sex, and all those other lame excuses and justifications were true, it still would not justify the betrayal and trauma she has inflicted on me and our daughter. If she had wanted out, she should have come to me and said so. Choosing to have an affair, over sitting down and talking or couple’s therapy, over unmet emotional or sexual needs, shows a profound lack of empathy and emotional intelligence. She is not someone I should want to be married to.

· The good feelings she got from this affair, the rush of brain biochemicals, have completely overridden our two decades together in her brain, rewritten history in her mind and everything I have been and done for her, it simply does not matter. I need to let that go. The woman I knew before is not there anymore. It does not mean anything in terms of trying to reason with her, which I cannot.

· In the way a drug addict will lie, cheat, and steal from their loved ones to score a hit, that is basically what my STBXW has become, she does not care what she put me through, the lies and deception, what she is going to put our daughter though, all to keep those hits going. It will not be sustainable. She ‘monkey branched’ into her next relationship, with a married man, in France, without any effort to address the problems in her current marriage or in herself that would lead to having an affair. She will repeat the same behaviors again and remain unhappy. I will not.

· She sought out the attention of other men online and then ‘developed feelings’ for one, by her words. She had a million chances to stop, to come to me. This is not explainable by depression alone. She chose to do this by her own volition. That is who she is. I need to accept that. I need to be moral compass for my daughter in her life.

· She sees my pain, will have to see the pain this brings our daughter, but choses to ignore it and justify it all to herself (mostly by painting herself as the victim of my post-discovery roller coaster), because she places avoiding dealing with her problems and her immediate emotional gratification at a higher level than the people she cares about.

- I should have followed through on divorce sooner. I wanted to say I did my best, but I just dragged it out longer for myself.

· I cannot talk rationally with this person about our relationship anymore. She is not the person I married. She is a broken person. We all have our baggage, but she refuses to fix any of hers and instead throws her baggage around at the people closest to her.

· I do not want to be married to someone with such poor moral character, willing to break up two families to pursue her personal emotional and sexual gratification instead of dealing with her personal problems.

· The best thing I can do is get out, get away, focus on myself, and be there for my daughter in the best way possible.

· I have a lot to offer someone else after I have taken time to work on myself, rebuild my confidence, and reinvent how I want my life to be.

Logistics

I kicked her out of the bedroom. I told her to move out, but she has nowhere to go, she has no job, no money, and her parents refused to take her in. So, I am letting her stay in the guest apartment and she is not allowed into in the house during the day unless our daughter is home.

We negotiated the parenting plan and settlement agreement between ourselves.

I got everything I wanted, much better than I could get going through a contested case, 50/50 split, nice schedule, no alimony, lots of restrictions that will protect our daughter from this new lifestyle or a rotating bunch of men. She is obsessed with the fact I have screenshots of the texts, the photos, audio recordings, and videos she sent him and was willing to give me everything for me to destroy them. She is worried I might show her family or our daughter one day, which I would never do, because I am a decent person. I asked her why she is worried about me having them, but not some strange man in France she has only known for a few months, and she said she was not worried about him, then admitted that was not rational, then changed the subject.

I got the terms written up, she wanted some changes, those are done, and I am pushing to get signatures next week. If she balks at a prompt divorce I am going to go contested and put all the evidence of the affair into evidence, which will make it permanently part of the public record.

Then I grey rocked her and began my 180.

Gray Rock method

https://psychcentral.com/blog/the-gray-rock-technique-for-managing-difficult-people

The 180

https://beingabeautifulmess.wordpress.com/the-180/

A useful critique of some parts of the 180

https://www.chumplady.com/2014/07/the-pretzel-logic-of-the-180/

I am nice to her around our daughter but, when our daughter is not around, I completely ignore her and refuse to engage. This has annoyed her quite a bit, she keeps trying to get little jabs in to get a rise out of me, I just ignore them and walk away. She has made snide comments about how ‘she must be delusional’ (based on something I said in the conversation she eavesdropped on), how much nicer my new apartment is than hers is, how awful online dating is going to be for me (well, not all of us have a sidepiece we can run right to…or text and fly 3,000 miles to with our share of the proceeds of the house), made fun of my new place’s furniture, and it is clear she is obsessively monitoring my public social media, LOL. I remember obsessively monitoring her various secret accounts those weeks, it was driving me mad. I have long since stopped caring, so it is funny she is now monitoring mine now, have at it! I have nothing to hide.

Now that things have gotten real, she occasionally tells me she feels like she has lost her mind. I agree she has but that is not my problem anymore. I just nod and walk away. The other day she was shaking and crying because she felt I was rushing the divorce, which I am, and she was inviting me to console her, I explained I was ready to move on and walked away.

I have a great new place lined up.

She really wants me out of the house as my apartment becomes available first ‘for Aubrey’ because, according to her, we do not want Aubrey seeing me upset over the pending divorce. Ideally, yes, Aubrey should not see me upset about the divorce. But it is clear STBXW does not want there to be any accountability for any of her actions, she cannot bear it, and is in complete denial about the effects. When I raise an eyebrow at the mention of her sister, she storms out of the house and slams the door.

She still thinks this is going to be a unicorn divorce, we are going to be friends, and even go on trips together. She even tried to argue against getting our child some counselling to handle the divorce, projecting her own fear of going to therapy onto a seven-year-old whose parents are splitting.

I am not moving out of our marital house without a settlement signed and filed with the court. I can afford both at the same time if needed. I am prepared for things to go south when that dopamine tap runs dry in her brain, when the affair fog lifts, her online boyfriend does not want to give up his family to move to Georgia and she is left alone, in a shitty apartment, with her kid at my nicer place most of the time, working a job she hates that she normally would not have to work, all for the rush of an affair that cost her life as she knew it.

I have started working out with a trainer, going out by myself to have fun by myself, doing a lot of self-care like massages and spa treatments. I got a new therapist who specializes in trauma who is helping me process a lot of this. I feel like I have a brand-new opportunity in life. My friends and family have really shown up to support me. It is hard, scary, I worry about my daughter in this a lot, but I am also excited for what this could bring. I have been reading about being a good co-parent, helping my daughter through what is coming, which I can tell on a level she has picked up on. I am updating my wardrobe too. I am enjoying picking out new furniture for my place.

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