@bb-jay, he filed for divorce in early October, it was final December 8, and before the divorce was awarded, he "married" his OW (the marriage isn't legal, as he was still married to me, and even after the divorce, he wouldn't be allowed to marry in this state for six months after). The OW is about the mental and emotional age of a twelve-year-old, with a ten-year old son. She's been married three times and had this last kid when her two older ones were aging out and her child support was about to end; the baby daddy wouldn't marry her. She and my h are both very unstable people at the moment.
I realize now your thread is for people in relationships, but I sort of am having a hard time realizing I'm divorced, which is why I want to go to the resort hotel and say "goodbye" to my relationship. But I also have the weirdest feeling that I will hear from h over the holidays and he will contact me right on the eve of the day we would normally have left for my home state.
His kids are in other states, and we generally haven't made the trip to see them in past years; we go in the summer. I've been their stepmom for 20 years and their kiddos are precious; I sent gifts to one batch of them, and h sends money to the other one of our boys who has kids so that he can pick out things for their Christmas. We live about 1200 miles away from his family.
H hasn't told the family about the divorce or the new "marriage," so they all think he's still here with me. It is a long story involving a lot of mental illness, physical issues, surgeries and personality change after anesthesia . . . and his family would write him off if they knew. They told him years ago OW would never be welcome.
I do think, as do many of my friends, that when he returns to normalcy or wakes up and realizes what he's done, he'll come back, and he's already showing signs of regret because I told him that divorce would mean an end to him coming and going, but I don't see it happening for a long time. But his illnesses and surgeries (MAJOR surgery for an aneurysm, he nearly died on the table, plus three or four procedures in 2007 for kidney stones; that's when his decline began, unraveling him in the face of his already existing bi polar disorder) delayed my dissertation completion (I'm on year 8, and usually after 8 or 9 years the Graduate College Dean requires people to repeat their comps, which I don't want to do, and my committee doesn't want me to do, and he gave me conditional approval to have this additional year, so long as I have drafts and defend in the spring, so I am glad h is out of the picture for the time being). And I had my own surgeries, including the removal of an eye, so reading and writing can be stressful, or tiring, and I have to do it in spurts. And my job is demanding, so I really need to do this. Of course, I'm being a little whiny about having to spend my holiday break this way, but if I finish the dissertation I can look for teaching jobs, and this break will give me a glimpse of what I always wanted to do. If I don't get it done this year, I'm going to quit and not finish it.
Thanks for asking! I hope you make some real progress on studying for those exams. They are SOOO stressful. Maybe we can both make some serious progress and be uniquely poised to face the New Year with confidence and a renewal of our dreams.