I had an affair while I was married, we were married for 16 years and have a daughter together. I was unhappy, lonely and tried to reach out to my husband to get counseling together. He thought it was a waste of money and told me I was a bitchy wife. I met someone while we were married and he made me feel beautiful, loved, important and actually enjoyed having a conversation with me. We started meeting after I would drop my daughter off at school and while my husband was at work. It went on for months and then I started to realize what I had done and the mistake I had made. I began to hate myself, hate the person that I have become and for what I had done to my husband. I had failed everyone. I failed myself, my husband, our daughter, our families and most importantly I have failed God. So I moved out and filed for divorce (never telling him the real reason why…..yes, I’m also a coward) because he deserved someone better and I deserved to be punished. I deal with self hatred everyday. I made the biggest mistake of my life and I hate myself for it. I have never told anyone about this and I probably never will. Everyone that ever meets me always tells me I’m one of the nicest people they have ever known and it just makes me hate myself more. I have created my own personal hell and I wish I could die. I have tried to find ways to do it so that it looks natural, so that my daughter wouldn’t have to grow up knowing her mom took her own life and thinking it was somehow her fault. I just want to be happy but I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t even know how or what could make me happy. I wish I could have a do over at life and try to be a better person but all I ever do is disappoint everyone. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up.
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I think you are human, we are imperfect and make mistakes. Forgive yourself. I don’t think not telling your husband why you left makes you a coward at all, maybe you really didn’t want to hurt him further? I understand wanting a do over, but it looks like you’ve got one, maybe not under the best circumstances, but rarely are things as ideal as we would like them to be. Take your chance and do something wonderful, pour yourself into your daughter, find out who you are and what makes you happy. You matter.
If you want to hate yourself less maybe you should tell your ex-husband the truth. He was married to you for that long and out of fairness he deserves to know, even if he didn’t treat you well. Once you get everything out in the open at least you’ll have that off your chest and you can focus on rebuilding a new life for yourself. Keeping painful secrets won’t help you or anyone else.
You’re not a bad person for wanting to be loved – it’s a basic human desire, but you know now that you went about it the wrong way. You can’t change the past, but being honest about your mistakes with your ex-husband and maybe also a therapist (if you want private counseling), will help you to move forward in the future.
In a way you are right, but at the same time you are victimizing yourself. This next paragraph is going to sound pretty rough on my part (sorry about that) but the right thing to do here is facing the truth, because honestly… running away without giving a reason why is a pretty selfish thing to do. The funniest part of it all is that you punished yourself and the rest of your family by taking that choice (and leaving them in the dark about it), while thinking you were doing the right deed by “letting them free”… nope, that’s just a way of justifying a coward way out. If you were a guy you’d have plenty of comments saying that you messed up and that you have to deal with it now, but… well, i guess double standards work both ways.
That said (and again i’m sorry for being so rough, but i’ve been cheated on multiple times) your husband did neglect you, and even if cheating is never right you did end it. My guess is that the best thing you can do now is rebuild your life but have you considered telling the truth in order to start anew in the best way possible? that way you take out of your chest so you’re free to pursue whatever you want. That might also give you some peace with yourself, which you seem to need from what you wrote. I do wish you luck, and again i’m sorry if i sounded rough or rude but sometimes we just have to face things in order to learn and grow from them.
If she’s not the one with the double standard, why bring it up at all?
If he was beating her would you tell her that he still deserves an explanation? Just from the one description of him, he sound like he’s mentally abusive. He’s obviously disrespectful and cold if he doesn’t care about her enough to respect her enough to even try entertaining going to therapy without talking down to her.
Calling her cowardly is uncalled for . At least she got the divorce , which takes an immense amount of effort after being attached for 16 years. At that point most people pick the devil they know . She could have just as easily pretended that the affair never happened
Don’t judge yourself for leaving a marriage that was already dead if he was being mentally abusive to you. Telling him that you were cheating is just going to give an ammunition to hurt you. I don’t think giving him ammunition is going to help you feel happy, but maybe talking to someone about your relationship with him and why you were so unhappy might help. Sometimes someone telling you you’re not crazy helps