# dday anniversary



## Lon (Jun 6, 2011)

Well it has been exactly one year to the day since I found out my ex W was cheating. It is also exactly 8 years to the day I proposed marriage to her. The two seem to cancel each other out somehow, so looking back I feel nothing for either, thinking each would be a day I would take a do-over if I could.

I have also found myself a lot less interested in understanding my ex W's affair and have spent much less time participating in new threads about infidelity on here.

I suppose today has some significance but it doesn't really feel like it to me. Life is both better and worse now, while I feel profoundly more sad, it is not quite the hopelessness and despair I was feeling as my marriage was unravelling and I had no clue why. It has taken a huge toll on me, I feel like I lost years of my life and I too often dwell on what I can't have back, hoping to replace that horrible feeling with something new and exciting but not having any kind of measurable success. I have freedom but have a hard time enjoying it - and I hope that over the course of the next year that sensation of experiencing life as a free man comes back to my limbs... it is there, just a tiny seed that needs a lot of growing to do in order to survive. I've heard that the second year after divorce/separation is often more difficult than the first and I believe it, so I am kind of digging my heals in preparation.

Time seems to have accelerated again, in two days it will have been two months since the judge signed off on the divorce and it seems to me like that took forever to happen (though my relatives and family can't believe how quick it seemed to happen - though they have not been living in the trenches with me).

I guess my purpose for writing this is to get it off my chest and also to help any other betrayed husbands going through separation to be aware of what may be coming down the pipe. It feels so wrong that all of this happened yet since finding this place it is all so strangely normal - I hate it but I find comfort in this, and I wonder if the human condition is not one that we should truly be celebrating "successful" marriages - I look at my own parents and it makes me a little sad, after experiencing this new normal it feels to me as though lifelong monogamy is simply a cruel life of sacrifice, that a lot of the suffering I've been able to express has simply been suppressed by those who've stuck together, and I wonder what really the reward is, because in my previous mind that reward maybe never existed was just fiction. Divorce definitely changes a person, or it has me anyways.


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## Shooboomafoo (Mar 30, 2011)

Yeah man, looking for growth here too.
Also battling feelings of being out of time, less than what I used to be, isolated, superficial.
Its been nine months since my divorce, and this sense of treading water is killing me.


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## madaboutlove (Aug 28, 2011)

The final paper work will come in the next 2 weeks, dreading the day but also looking forward to it as a chance to move forward. Tomorrow is a double whammy for me, 30 years ago our first date, then 5 years after that our oldest son born on the same date. May 4th will always be both things to me, bittersweet. But I will go to work, then out with friends and then the day will be behind me.


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## LovesHerMan (Jul 28, 2011)

Lon:
I enjoy your posts. You are always so willing to help people; you jump right in and tell them how to fix problems with practical, technical advice. My husband also has that Mr. How-to quality, and that is probably why I am drawn to your answers to people's dilemmas.

There are women out there who will appreciate your kind, humorous, helpful nature. I hope this doesn't come off as too mawkish. Just wanted to give you a boost and some hope that things can get better in the future.


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## Dollystanford (Mar 14, 2012)

:iagree:

you come across as a lovely, decent, sweet man and any woman would be lucky to have you by their side darling 

we are all going through life changing experiences that knock everything we believed in on its a*s - wouldn't be human if it didn't change us in some way, but generally for the better I think. 

x


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