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For Male BS, who chose a quick D over R how did it go?

29K views 156 replies 38 participants last post by  TaDor 
#1 ·
I've read plenty of threads and posts where male BS talk about reading emails, VAR or texts that were truly soul crushing. I don't know if I could do it.
Which made me wonder if some Male BS spouses can take the emotional punishment of having to read/hear/watch their spouses be intimate with OM.
Wouldn't it be easier to cut and run, for does who have chose to D from the get go, what was it like. Did your WW even put up a fight, was is a phyrric victory. Although D, seems like a lose lose situation how did your life go from the start to a few years/decades later?
 
#2 ·
I divorced my xWW as soon as I found out. I read a few emails when I only had suspicions, but once I got confirmation from a relative of hers I went straight to D. No VARS. No trying to recover texts. No trying to get damning evidence. Just "I know you've been seeing OM. Sign the papers." She put up a fight at first, and tried to bleed me for every cent in child support she thought she could get. She also held time with my daughter over my head. It only made my decision that much easier.

Nearly five years out, life is immeasurably better. My xWW and I actually co-parent very well. She has her life, I have mine, and neither of us interfere with the other. I went to therapy for about a year and a half, and it was probably the single best thing I've ever done. I have 50/50 time with my daughter now, and I don't pay child support anymore. (My xWW offered to give it up after three years of receiving it... Imagine that.) My daughter is quite well-adjusted, and even though her mother makes poor decisions sometimes, she has a good life and I know her mother loves her very much. My career has jumped forward leaps and bounds, and I'm making a lot more money. (Hopefully I'll be hearing about an interview for another job very soon, but even if I don't get it I've been promised a promotion at my current job next summer when a co-worker retires.) I'm financially solvent with a decent savings, and the marital house is now mine and mine alone. I've been in the best relationship of my life with an amazing woman these past few months; a friendship slowly grew out of mutual respect and attraction, and after a while we couldn't deny our feelings anymore. There is no comparison between my marriage and this relationship... It's like night and day.

Not once have I regretted my decision. I know for a fact that my life is better off this way. I can't say my formula is appropriate for everyone, and neither can I say it was all smooth sailing. I was flat broke for about two years, and I had to work really, really hard to advance my career. But it paid off. It was so much easier to focus on myself and my goals without a dysfunctional marriage in the picture.

You must have resolve and the strength to carry on, even when you're feeling punch drunk. But it was worth every penny scraped, every tear shed, and every sleepless night to have what I have today.

I don't look in the rearview mirror. I look through the windshield.
 
#5 ·
I didn't have to look for anything, my ex-wife guiltily confessed to her (physical) sexual infidelity with another man while I was away for work (we had been married for around 10 months and had a 6 month old child together), within hours of her confession I moved out and refused to talk to her.

A few weeks later at the encouragement of others and immense pleading from her we went on a few dates, in a half hearted attempt at reconciliation (we even had sex a few times). The last time I had sex with her I viscerally felt nothing but absolute disgust, contempt and hatred for her. As a consequence of those feelings I said we're done.

Thus began 12 months of legal separation before we finally got divorced for irreconcilable differences around 15 months after our separation (we both wanted the divorce).

At the beginning of our legal separation she started dating the other guy for around a week before he dumped her and subsequently had a few sexual partners from our extended social circle. Until she found a guy not from any of my social circles towards the end of that separation who she has been with ever since (they're married and have had three more children together).

Whereas for me I didn't start dating or having sex with anyone until I was 9 months into the legal separation. Then for the following four years I had several sexual partners, I also turned down several offers as well. One relationship lasted around 9 months, while most were a mix of one night stands and few week through to 3 months relationships.

All of the one night stands were mutual endings as such, while I was the one that chose to end all of my other sexual relationships.

In a few of those relationships I was also the other man inclusive of two married women, one was a mutual pursuit (all lust and chemicals) and the other she offered while the lust and chemicals took care of the rest. That said I am loyal so I have never cheated (despite some explicit offers) on anyone I have been in a sexual relationship with, nor have I been in a sexual relationship with the partners of any of my friends.

After 4 years I met my now wife and she asked me out on a lunchtime date, which led to an evening date, with a movie and a meal. I slept with her that night and although there was some kissing and mutual fondling we mostly talked and didn't have sex. She then dumped the guy she was in a sexual relationship with (she was the other woman), we then went on another date, had sex and we have happily been together for over 20 years since (17+ years married with 2 kids 16 & 13).

At the end of the day it comes down to what you accept or don't. I hated my ex-wife for cheating on me and ended our sexual relationship because of it. That said, once it was over I let it go. Likewise I didn't have issue with the other man since he didn't cheat on me, my ex-wife was the one who did that, without her wanting and offering it, there would have been no infidelity.

In my experience divorce can be a good thing.

@Personal, you didn't cheat but you did help some married women to cheat on their husbands. So in that regard you were a cheater. ("I don't dance, but I do dance with someone who likes dancing.")
 
#4 ·
Personal, I'm on the same page as you. I may go back and try out of social pressure from family or friends but forever know I'll never get over it so it be easier to just leave.
In the middle it seems you had a rough patch of being the OM and just sleeping around a lot. But great to know you've settled down and have a happy marriage.
 
#7 ·
Actually in that regard since I lied to no-one, and did not undertake any deception at all I was not a cheater. On the other hand I was an adulterer, I am sorry that you don't seem to understand that distinction.

From my perspective the only person responsible for any act of marital infidelity is the cheating spouse, since they are the one who chooses to break their vows of fidelity. I also don't care what people think inside their own noggins sans any action, as far as I am concerned sexual infidelity requires a sexual act to be thus.

At the end of the day if someone's spouse doesn't care for their own marital fidelity, I don't think anyone else should feel obliged to care for that marital fidelity either. That said the only marital infidelity I care about is if it is done to me, likewise the only person I hold responsible for such infidelity is the person breaking their vows.

I see nothing at all wrong with people having sex with cheating spouses, unless they're cheating on their spouses as well.

If you (as in the generic version for all that follows) don't want to cheat on someone don't (which is what I do).

If you don't like someone cheating on you, dump them and find someone else to have sex with (which is what I did).

If you do want to cheat on someone do exactly that.

If you are okay with someone cheating on you in the short term or longer term reconcile and or accept it and get on.
I full well understand the distinction.

Your distinction seems to be: You don't rob banks, you only drive the getaway car.

And if that works for you, that's fine.
 
#10 · (Edited)
No meaningful distinction, IMO.

Unless, of course, any involved BS's are aware of -- and OK with -- what's going on.

ETA: ...in which case they're not actually BS's.

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#16 ·
After I found out about XWW’s affair, I didn’t file for D right away. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and believed her when she said that she didn’t want to divorce but wanted to R. I wasted over a year putting 100% into R, with her putting about 20%...on a good day, only to find out she was still in contact with posOM.

I should have filed immediately and kicked her cheating lying ass out. This is my biggest regret ever! I wasted all that time, emotional/physical energy and money for nothing.

I have been divorced for almost 4 years now. I do not speak to XWW. The kids decided they wanted to live with me full time. The whole experience tore me up pretty good and my confidence and self-esteem took a big hit. I am doing better now but I am still not dating anyone. I haven’t met a woman that I wanted to invest time with.

By contrast, XWW’s posOM dumped her before our divorce was final. She joined 3 different dating sites within two weeks of moving out and attracted tons of attention. I hear she’s had several boyfriends since the divorce and is currently seeing someone for over a year.
 
#62 ·
That's almost exactly my story. But I don't regret my R attempts, because it answered the question "Could I have saved it" for all time. So for me that is peace of mind, and I can forever say I gave it my best shot and tried to keep the family in tact.

Now my X is remarried, and tells me from time to time how great the new husband is, and how bad a husband/father I was/am. I have worked on not hating her for the last 3 years, and I'm pretty much there on days that I don't get text attacked.
 
#23 ·
#24 ·
@Bananapeel moved pretty quickly toward divorce as well. I recall that he initially expressed at least some interest in reconciliation, but realized very quickly that -- given his XWW's obsession w/ OM -- it would've been a fruitless endeavor.
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#25 ·
After I caught my XWW on a VAR (I listened to it) I acted quickly and was divorced 3 months later (I had to find a good attorney and there's a 2 month waiting period in my state). Catching her was soul crushing and I had to go to the employee crisis counseling that day because I was shaking so much and couldn't focus. The worst part for me wasn't the cheating but the realization that all the work/value/commitment that I put into our relationship and family over the years wasn't worth anything to her. I had a hard time accepting that initially because, quite frankly, I am out of her league so her cheating on me wasn't something that was understandable to my pragmatic mind. I hesitated a little at the beginning, and quite honestly would have tried R if she had showed remorse, which fortunately she didn't. I chose to D and I don't regret it at all. My XWW didn't put up a fight because she thought she was in love with the OM and hoped that they'd end up together (didn't happen). It wasn't a pyrrhic victory or any victory, it was just a necessary change in my life's direction at that point. I do need to point out that one of the big things this experience has taught me was to view people as they actually are and not as how you want them to be. After the D I found out and confirmed that she had at least one other affair during our marriage, but by that point I didn't care.

I'm over a year post D and so far things are going very well for me. Like any other decision in life it had both positive and negative consequences that accompanied it. The first few months were the hardest because that was a transition point where I was still somewhat emotionally attached to my XWW. Now I have no attachment to her, my kids have adapted and are happy, I'm a much better father and have developed closer bonds with my kids, I have more time for myself, I have much more money than I've had before, and I have developed closer relationships with my family and several of my friends. On the negative side I have developed trust issues, only have 50% custody, and I don't like that my XWW makes some questionable decisions about the kids that I can't prevent.
 
#44 ·
After the D I found out and confirmed that she had at least one other affair during our marriage, but by that point I didn't care.
Ouch.

Just curious, how did you find out?
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#28 ·
My spouse claims she doesn't, and never did like sex, and only initiated in our dating days "because men expect it". Back in those days, she told a different story, and the sexual activity was the most frequent and almost highest variety I'd ever experienced - there was nothing in her early behaviors that said she didn't like it, because she had certainly figured out how to do a lot of it.

The fact that she now claims she never liked it - well, I actually do understand the psychological underpinnings of a "people pleaser" and why they literally cannot tell the truth because they're driven more strongly to please people than to be honest with themselves - but the impact of having been misled, intentionally, for 10+ years is still in me -

Anyway, with this claim that she never liked it - and me still feeling lied to - if I were to find out she's getting it on with someone else - that would feel like a lie compounded upon a lie compounded upon the first lie - I seriously doubt I would make any attempt to reconcile.


As for splitting and recovery: With my ex, once I decided I needed to go, I put a few simple things in place. I had arranged a place to stay, and had packed enough clothing to go a week without laundry. I chose to deliver the message at a quiet restaurant, so we weren't surrounded by the stuff that was always around us when she was having a screaming fit. I had planted a second car at the restaurant. So, I gave her the message, placed more than enough money on the table to pay for the meal we had just finished, and left. I felt instantly wonderful.

Two days later, I wondered if I'd started a nuclear melt-down that would cause my entire world to collapse. Two weeks after that, I got laid off and felt very, very, unsupported and vulnerable. And experienced a panic attack - two of them. It's horrible, knowing, as a certainty, that you're either having a heart attack, or your brain is self-shredding or what the heck is this that's happening that's causing me to be blind and deaf and can't even feel if I'm standing or sitting? Thankfully, having survived two of them, I knew when the third hit, that I'd survive it, too, and that was enough to stop it. It was awful.

About one month after I'd split, I had secured a long-term rental. Alone and a bit lonely, but the process of setting up a home in a tiny apartment kept me occupied. A month after that, I borrowed a friend's truck and got all the rest of my stuff from the house. I left a note telling her that I had no claim on anything else in the house, so she could have it.

I had no desire for female companionship, and did something totally not like me. I went to church. And synagogue. And mosques. And Buddhist temples. I got infatuated with religion and mankind's need for it. And met friends of both genders.

I would say, overall, 60 days after separating from her, all thoughts of feeling guilty/bad/hopeless were gone. I had some worries about money, like would she come after me for something, but what, exactly, since I'd given it all to her? She never did. BTW, we had no kids, and by her insistence, also were not married...but were monogamous for 10+ years.

Within 6 months, I was enjoying life WAY better than literally any time when we were together.

Financially? Having simply given her everything meant no debt to her. It was over and done with. I had no debt, but also no income. Spent down my 401k in two years, got a lower paying job, but kept my lifestyle more modest. Being 36, single and no kids made me very popular with divorced women and single moms my age.

So...I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Don't want to, but if I found out the spouse was doing someone else...yeah, I'd pull the plug.
 
#29 ·
I've been reading and posting on Infidelity forums for 5 years and I've never read a single BH say that they regretted their decision to divorce their WW. I've read plenty of posts from BH's who are miserable trying to reconcile & some who say they have reconciled but they still have issues with the whole mess and are far from happy. Many of them readily admit they are staying because it's easier and they value their family higher than their own happiness. They believe they are scraficing their life for their family.

I personally have two close friends whose wives cheated on them and both divorced immediately. Neither has the slightest regret, but neither of them can co-parent well with their xWW's due to their intense hatred of her. One got primary custody of his two boys and the other pretty much stopped seeing his two girls. There's never a fairy tale ending to and infidelity story but divorce is as good as it gets in my opinion.
 
#54 ·
If all spouses choose not to participate in marital infidelity, there will be no marital infidelity.
And if all people choose never to mess with someone who was married to someone else then there would also be no marital infidelity.

Just saying.
 
#37 ·
But make no mistake if your (as in the generic you for all that follows) spouse cheats on you they chose it, they knew what they were doing, they were willing and they wanted it and more than likely certainly enjoyed it. If you think they're not responsible for their marital infidelity and someone else is...
Eh... that's not what's going on here and you know it.

Each and every one of us -- whether WS, BS, OM, OW, or none of the above -- is accountable and responsible for his or her own decisions.

Full stop.

And, though there are certainly many among us that will deny this to some degree or another, we each know it to be true.

Say my wife cheats. EA, full-on PA, whatever. She's accountable for that.

As for OM? It's almost a certainty that he never made any promises to me regarding... well, NOT f*cking my wife.

But he's still a piece of sh*t for doing or having done it.

And sure, it might have been some other guy.

Well, then THAT guy would be a piece of sh*t.

...your barking up the wrong tree and may have limited comprehension skills.
Not really. (There are, after all, two trees.)

It is, however, an understanding of the following:

When one's only real defense for his or her sh*t behavior basically boils down to a) pointing out the "sh*ttier" behavior of those w/ whom he or she was complicit and b) a misdirect aimed at "outdated spousal ownership" concepts, there's no real defense to be found.

In short, it's recognizing a conditional morality -- or, as @aine put it, situational ethics -- when you see it.

Nice try, though.
 
#39 ·
Au contraire I practice do unto others quite nicely. For example since I have an expectation that no one should breach any promise of sexual fidelity to me, I do not and have not ever broken any of my promises of sexual fidelity to anyone else at all.
I would not wish it on anyone, but imagine an OM who takes a great fancy to your current wife and pursues her diligently, gives her lots of attention, sends her flowers, gives her gifts and little love notes, sends her vouchers for spas, holidays, surprise gifts, etc. Your wife does not reciprocate in any way (therefore remaining faithful to you, no breach of fidelity to you) but he tries all out to court her over a few months. You would be ok with that, right?
 
#40 · (Edited)
Then he has no obligation to you, so expecting him to care is simply naive at best.
I've learned to expect nothing from anyone from whom I shouldn't expect anything.

That would include the aforementioned hypothetical OM. After all, if he "cared" at all, he wouldn't be f*cking my wife.

But that doesn't mean that he's not a POS for f*cking my wife.

Also doesn't mean that my wife isn't a POS for f*cking him.

Quite the opposite, actually.

In both cases.
 
#42 ·
Look absent a spouse breaking vows of fidelity there is no infidelity.

The difference between marital infidelity and no marital infidelity in consensual sex is one or more participating consensual sexual partners is breaking their vow of marital infidelity.

It really is that simple remove a cheating spouse from marital infidelity and you don't have marital infidelity.
And yet adultery (i.e. being complicit in the commission of marital infidelity) alone is enough to make one a POS.
 
#47 ·
In response to the original question -

I missed all the warning signs/red flags with my ex wife. Therefore I did not have the unfortunate opportunity of snooping or otherwise finding things I did not want to see or read, and I am genuinely glad it happened that way. In an odd way, I'm grateful that my ex wife actually left for the OM, and it wasn't a casual, meaningless thing. Silver linings and all.

After she left, and things came to light, I had multiple opportunities to dig around and get all the 'facts'. I probably could have gone through ~2 years of emails and PM's from a forum (where they met), but I chose not to.

Believe me, I WANTED to, but it would have served no purpose. I credit it to the fact that it only took me ~2 weeks of not being with her to get out of the fog, and realize I was better off without her. Those first two weeks were typical of these types of situations ("What will I do?" "Nobody loves me" "Whyyyyyy?" etc.), then I snapped out of it. Two weeks of doing things on my own, on my own schedule was enough to wake me up to the fact that I was, indeed, better off. We weren't partners, it was a dictatorship. Even though normal marital obligations were split evenly, it was to her standards and her schedule.

The funny thing was, that each time she came by the house (which I now lived in - she moved out, thankfully), she was astonished at how clean and tidy everything was.

Any way, I did not delve into her illicit affair, even though I had the chance to. There was no purpose in doing so, and it only would have hurt me. I did not need to potentially read about how I didn't measure up to her needs, or that OM gives her everything she desires, etc etc etc.

However, I've often wished that I discovered it all prior to her leaving. There were numerous near-misses over the previous 2 years, things that I didn't pick up on back then. A few weeks before we split up, we went on vacation, and the plane tickets had been sent to her email account. I went to go print them out, only to discover she had changed her password (red flag!!!). I remember shouting downstairs to her about this. Long pause, awkward silence. "Hang on". She flew upstairs, said "I'll do it", at which point I was already sitting down at the computer. "Just give me your password". She typed it in, over my shoulder (rather than saying it), then hovered over me, completely silent, while her email loaded. Luckily for her, I was only focused on getting the plane tickets printed out, so I clearly remember not even looking at anything that wasn't them.

Literally, the day after she announced she was leaving (she didn't say for an OM), I decided to snoop her email, remembering a few weeks prior how she had acted, and that her password had changed. It had changed again (big surprise), but I just left it. Never said anything about it. And was oddly relieved she had changed it again. I guess I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that I really didn't WANT to know.

Like I alluded to, my marriage wasn't that great to begin with, so I recognized early on that it was no great loss. What I genuinely hated her for was HOW the marriage ended. Regardless of whether I was better off with or without her, it was still a betrayal, and that sucks.
 
#65 ·
No I just kissed her for a bit after I found out.
I took your choice of words ("snogged") to mean something else. Pardon me, I'm Canadian :grin2:

So at the end of it all, including defence of your actions, you never actually knowingly slept with a married woman. Why didn't you just say that???
 
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