I have been contemplating whether to share this, and I doubt many here will have any firsthand experience; nevertheless, I would like input should anyone care to offer. I will keep it as brief as possible.

My XW of 19+ years filed for divorce in June 2022. We had no children, handled it via mediation in February 2023, and it was final on March 30, 2023. Just over three months later, in July 2023, she took her own life at age 45 and while more detail is beyond the scope of this forum, how does one go about getting past this? The two-fold grief of divorce and death is proving very difficult to get through. I find myself often stuck in sentimentality of what we had for most of that time; however, it is more often anger and disgust at how much I put up with and how blind I was (or willing to overlook) to so many red flags. Long-term, it will be counterproductive to harbor the negative emotions but it’s the only thing helping me manage and head off those relapses. I still sometimes see or hear things that remind and just completely crush me, setting me back seemingly miles from where I was. I simply feel emotionally numb and completely empty inside. How do you close one chapter and begin another without comparing everything new to the old?

I had ample evidence of infidelity and know far more about what went on than I have let on to her family and friends, neither of whom I speak to since I was notified last year. Two weeks ago, I found out from a joint friend that she had shared all sorts of details about affairs with married men, coaches at the school at which she taught (she took a six-week leave of absence spring 2023 and resigned at the end of the school year, assumedly because of the involvement with the coaching staff), two different hookups daily at times, and trains run on her by a group of mountain bike friends (both male and female, some of whom are also married) whom she, in typical fashion, had co-opted and pitted against me. The magnitude of just how much she unraveled far exceeds what I could imagine and leaves me wondering how much more I still don’t and may never know.

Things definitely changed after age 40 and I wonder how much, if any, of it could be attributed to perimenopause. We were both very active and she had always kept herself in excellent physical shape. She always had a high sex drive (apparently extramaritally too) and was hypercompetitive in many aspects. She had tried to keep her alcohol use discreet, but I had regularly found empty vodka bottles dating back to 2018 or so. She was also non-adherent to an SSRI anti-depressant prescription.

I recently finished a graduate degree in addiction psychology, and although I have instead opted to remain in my undergraduate field of choice for the foreseeable future, I am quite familiar with the state of affairs in the mental health domain. BPD has a suicide rate far above the other Cluster B disorders and, although never formally diagnosed, she exhibited enough DSM criteria to meet no less than a ‘moderate’ level diagnosis. While I may be closer to understanding the whats, hows, and whys, I feel I have made little forward progress the past year-plus. I have rebuilt the best I can, have a secure, remote role with a great group of colleagues, am very well off financially, and have maintained my dedication to the bike, crossing the 6,000-mile mark for the year earlier this month.

Thank you for reading and to all who have shared their stories here. This forum has been helpful beyond what I can convey with words.

‘There’s gotta be more than this but I just can’t find it’ – Henry Rollins