One of the things I think about all the time is that, with my ex wife, cheating wasn’t the worst part of the affair, It’s the deception, the betrayal, the backstabbing, the disrespecting of you to their friends, their affair partners, and everybody seeming to know but nobody caring enough to do me a solid and tip you off that your life is a lie – that really hurts.
I sat in my ex wife’s parents house in Long Island for an entire week during the holidays in December, and not once did someone say something. The closest I got was my ex mother in law telling me, “You really do a lot for the kids…” I had no idea where this comment was coming from, but I later learned that it was from my wife complaining to her mom about me. During the Christmas gift exchange, her family spent 25 minutes exchanging presents with each other and our kids, and I sat there, happy for my wife and kids, but at the end hurt that I didn’t get a single present. When all the presets were opened, my Mother in Law stepped out of the living room and came back in with a gift card tin with $100 for me.
Looking back, this is how little her family thought of me, and knowing that they knew about my wife’s affair, and my Mother in Law calling it “it was just a fling,” hurt.
That reminds me of when my ex was talking to her friend in Rochester and telling her, “This isn’t going to work,” but she wasn’t talking about me, she was talking about her affair.
At the end of the day, my wife had no respect for me and our marriage, and projected that onto others. I’ll still never forget when she told her mom and sister about the affair over the phone while waiting for her friend, then told her friend and they “had a laugh about it….”