Reply to Ex DH is a Christian who ended our marriage due to adultery

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am not religious OP although I was brought up Catholic.

I think what you are experiencing is actually a lot like what a nonreligious person experiences in this situation. You have this massive betrayal happen and the world around you keeps moving while you feel stuck in the moment, and the very passing of time feels enraging. This is just grief. The same thing happens when someone dies. The world just...keeps moving, but you are trapped in that moment, unwilling to let go of a world with that person still in it.

You are grieving your marriage, and that takes a long time and is an unpredictable and volatile road.

I think when you are in a strong faith like you are, there is a belief that the faith protects you, the church protects you. You think you are doing everything right, so everything will work out. But faith or no faith the harsh reality of the world is that bad people are everywhere and bad things happen to everyone. There is nothing that protects us from this. Faith and religion is about what happens when we die, not about protecting us while we live, if it was nothing bad would ever happen to children.

So first I would try to come to terms with the fact that any protection for the life you live here on earth that you thought came from your faith was illusory. And that sucks, but it is important, because you need to gird yourself for any other difficulties that will come from any number of directions in your life.

Then I would, as others have said, either on your own or working with your spouse ensure that you are not going to the same church.

And lastly, it will take time, but you need to reframe how you view his relationship with your children. You want them to be raised in faith. Even if he is a hypocrite, his raising them in faith will make it more likely they actually become adults of faith. If you have one parent bringing them to church and another saying none of it matters that will undermine their overall religious upbringing, something I think you do not want. Additionally, it is better for them to have a healthy relationship with their father. Children are better off having their father in their life, even a mediocre father. Being abandoned by a parent leaves deep deep scars and even if it is unfair that he gets to have them in his life, it is better for them. And truly, as they grow up they will see what happened and come to their own conclusions about his imperfect self. Trust that they will see him for who he is, and you don't need to trash him for that to be the case. Kids know their parents, they see the flaws, but they also know that their parents are a part of them, they are 50% of their dad on a cellular level, and so they cannot think of their dad as fully evil without thinking there is evil in them. So let them see him as a person who is flawed but who loves them and has good qualities, again, FOR THEM, not for him.

You were wronged here, but I hear in your words that you are clinging for an explanation, a reason for why this happened to you, an assurance that he will be punished for hurting you. And at the end of the day that comes down to the simple fact that life is not fair. Bad things happen to good people. Sometimes bad people go unpunished. And we don't know why. And in the end the only person you hurt by being unable to kind of accept this and come to terms with it (and that is not an easy thing to do for anyone I'm certainly not trying to judge you for it), the only person you hurt by not accepting it is yourself.

Keep the serenity prayer close to your heart in this time:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

You cannot change what he's done, you cannot change his relationship with God, you can decide not to be friends with him, you can decide to not sit in a Church that he sits in.

Good luck [/quote]

Op here. I feel like you are an angel of some sort. I don’t really mean that…but you helped me a lot. You are so right on so many levels. Thank you so much. I mean that. [/quote]

I am happy my words helped at all <3

A decade ago I lost my brother and stepfather a year apart and it was an absolutely agonizing time for me. The feeling of watching the world turn and feeling like you have suddenly just become a spectator, and an angry one at that, is so hard to work through. Time is the only real solution. When I was in that place, I told myself over and over 'in three years, it will be ok' and set my eyes on that fairly arbitrary date. And when things would feel agonizing or hard I would just think about that date, and think, things would be better by then. And then just tried to keep doing the next right thing as often as I could in the interim. And then eventually that date came and I was right, we had weathered the worst of the storm. You will weather the storm, and may come out quite changed on the other side. Don't forget to have as much faith in yourself as you do in God, you are the one who will pull you and your kids through this. [/quote]

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