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[quote=Anonymous]NP. My life was upended by spousal betrayal 5.5 years ago. I’m lucky though; he only tried to gaslight me for about a minute before he just admitted it. Then it was trickle truth for a few months.

For a year he had refused to spend time with me, barely spoke to me, and would demean me when he did. He was mad that he was miserable and I wasn’t, thanks to his midlife crisis. We’d gone to couples counseling, but he had never confessed that he and a colleague were in love.

I really was traumatized when I found out, and suffered subsequent mini traumas every time he’d fall to a new low (such as telling the kids about his girlfriend while I was out of state, caring for my dying father, without the courtesy of giving me a heads up; or his failing to tell me or the kids that his girlfriend had moved in with him; or the fact that he has declined to have any custody of the kids at all). I’m angry with myself that at every stage I overestimated how good of a person he was. I just couldn’t accept that the man I had married was gone and that the man I was now dealing with was a complete stranger and a total a$$hole.

It took me several years to heal, with the aid of therapy and anti depressants. It took nearly 5 years until I could even contemplate the mere *possibility* of dating in the future. I’m still not ready to date. I feel ashamed and degraded by the sexual encounters I had with him when I was trying to save our marriage. I feel stupid for pretending to be into sex with him when he was so cruel to me. I feel sick thinking about the fact that he can remember those encounters too and they probably brought him pleasure. I’m humiliated that I sat in couples counseling and begged him just to be as nice to me as he was to his coworkers or our neighbors. How painful it is to admit that I was willing to settle for so little and forgive so much — especially because he still spurned me!

I will never be able to trust anyone else the way I trusted him — not because I think everyone is a liar and a cheater who doesn’t care about anyone but themselves, but because I’m more fragile now and need to wear an emotional suit of armor the rest of my life because I no longer trust my own judgment.

I feel the worst about what this did to my kids. My DD10 obviously could see that I was traumatized and she became exceptionally clingy. She needed to be within arm’s length at all times and touching me most of the time that first year. She must have been so scared. She’ll carry this experience with her. I feel so much guilt about that, even though she seems happy and well adjusted now.[/quote]

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