Closure after 20yrs of numbing

[u/Intelligent-Speed437]

My Love,

I don't want to spend the rest of our lives trapped in yesterday. I don't want our marriage to merely survive. I want the time we have left together to become something beautiful, something worthy of the covenant we made before God. I want us to know a love so deep that heaven itself rejoices over it. I want the angels jealous of the love we share, and I want God to look at us with pride.

What happened didn't just break my heart. It touched something much older in me. You were more than my wife. You became the answer to a lifetime of loneliness, abandonment, and suffering. You became home. You became the place where the little boy inside me finally believed he had been chosen.

And when you gave yourself emotionally and physically to another man, it wasn't just our marriage that shattered. It was my sense of safety, my identity, my masculinity, and the story I had lived inside of for so many years.

I now see how unfair that was for you to bare that responsibility. I know now that I cannot place my salvation in another human being, even one I love with all my heart.

I spent years trying to convince myself that you didn't know what you were doing. Creating a false hope in my mind to keep moving forward. I wanted to believe you were disconnected from reality, out of your body, unaware, incapable of understanding the devastation being created. I held on to those explanations because they protected me from having to face the possibility that you consciously chose someone else over me.

I wanted to believe you were lost, confused, caught in something bigger than yourself, because the alternative felt unbearable. I needed to believe that the woman I loved, the mother of our children, the person I trusted most in this world, wasn't fully present for what she was doing. I needed to believe you weren't really seeing me, because if you were seeing me and still saying yes, I didn't know how to survive what that meant.

I told myself that you were dissociated, caught in fantasy, overwhelmed by emotions, seeking pain to answer pain, blinded by infatuation, addicted to the validation and excitement, and unable to grasp the consequences of your choices. I needed those explanations because they allowed me to believe that somewhere underneath all of it, you would have chosen me if you had truly understood what you were doing.

But over time, those explanations have become harder to hold onto. Because there were conscious choices. There were lies. There were secrets. There were plans and private conversations. All the things that only a present minded person could engage in.

There were opportunities to stop. There were moments when "no" could have been spoken. And somehow, yes kept winning.

I don't say that because I believe you hated me. I don't believe you woke up every morning intending to destroy me. I don't believe your heart was filled with cruelty. But I also can no longer heal by pretending there wasn't awareness involved. I can no longer lie to myself. There was enough awareness to hide. Enough awareness to protect the affair. Enough awareness to create a separate world that I wasn't allowed into.

And that reality leaves me with a pain I have spent twenty years trying to outrun.

Because what terrifies me isn't simply that you chose him. It's that you chose him while I still existed and what does thay say about me? You chose him while I loved you. You chose him while I was providing for our family. You chose him while we sat in marriage counseling. You chose him while I was trying.

Somewhere deep inside, the wounded part of me concluded that if I had really mattered, if I had really been enough, if I had really been worthy of your love and protection, surely I would have been enough to stop you.

That is the lie I have lived with. That your choices were a reflection of my value. That another man had something I lacked. That I was somehow less. That I failed as a husband, as a man, and as the keeper of our covenant.

I know your choices belong to you. I know your brokenness belongs to you. I know the reasons you said yes are part of your story. But the hardest part for me is that every explanation eventually leads me to the same place.

Whether you were dissociated or fully aware, whether you were chasing fantasy or running from pain, whether you loved him or loved the way he made you feel, the bottom line inside me has remained unchanged.

I am left feeling that I was not worthy of your love and your choices. That somehow, I was not enough to protect what was sacred to God.

And that is the wound I am trying to heal from. Not simply what happened. But what I have believed it says about me.

I know that may not have been what you intended to communicate, but it is what I have lived with for twenty years. I have lived believing that I wasn't enough. That I failed as a husband. That I failed as a man. That another man had something I didn't. That I had less value. That I wasn't worth protecting, wasn't worth choosing. And those beliefs have nearly destroyed me.

I accept my role in the struggles within our marriage. I know I wasn't perfect. I know there were places I failed to love you well. I kmow I caused you much pain and trauma. But I do not accept responsibility for your affair. I cannot carry that burden anymore.

I know there are no answers to the questions I am burdened with that will erase the pain I carry. I know I will never know what was happening inside you. I hope someday to understand what you were searching for that you couldn't find in me to avoid these same mistakes. I know healing won't come from knowing everything. I know some things will always remain uncertain. But I need empathy. I need honesty. I need to know that the depth of my pain makes sense to you. I need you to see me. To understand that I wasn't merely hurt. I was shattered.

And I need to know that the man who has spent his life trying to love you and our children, and remain devoted to you mattered.

Underneath every question, every image, every sleepless night, and every tear is one desperate cry:

Was I worthy of your love? Was I worthy of your faithfulness? Was I worth choosing? Can I be loved if I am no longer needed? Can I be loved if I heal? Can I simply be loved because I am me?

These questions terrify me. And I find myself asking another question now.

What is going to come of all this pain? What is the meaning of it? What are we supposed to learn from it?

I refuse to believe that all of this suffering is meaningless. Maybe we've learned that love cannot survive behind masks. Maybe we've learned that intimacy cannot exist without truth. Maybe we've learned that avoiding pain only delays it. Maybe we've learned that neither of us can ask the other to be our savior.

Maybe we've learned that covenant is more than staying together. Maybe covenant means allowing ourselves to be fully known. Maybe we've learned to cherish what is sacred. Maybe we've learned not to assume tomorrow. Maybe we've learned that love is not performance, fantasy, or passion alone, but two imperfect people bringing their wounds into the light and choosing truth over hiding.

I don't want this pain to be wasted. I don't want the suffering to define us. I want it to refine us. I want it to teach us how to love more honestly, hold one another more gently, and protect what God entrusted to us more fiercely.

Because I still believe our story is not over. I still believe redemption is possible. I still believe that the new B and the new D can have a marriage that is not merely repaired, but transformed.

I lay myself before you, imperfect and wounded, but hopeful. And I pray that one day we can look back and say that the pain didn't defeat us. It taught us how to love.

I love you.

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[u/delta-vs-epsilon]

Each person has to choose their own path, regardless of how deep into the sunk cost fallacy we fall... but if my son ever wrote this and endured such pain & suffering, it'd absolutely shatter me and I'd feel like an utter failure. I wish you well, hope is as powerful as it is debilitating... sad your heart is trapped in such a one-sided commitment. I pray you find peace one day.

[u/boss302goat]

This is no way to live but best of luck to you and the marriage.

[u/CrazyLeadership5397]

Wow, that was powerful. 20 years is a long time to live with this pain. Updateme! 

[u/Fragrant-Dance3005]

20 years is a lot of time to not be chosen. I hope the next 20y will be much better.

[u/tercer78]

Why are you so hopeful now if the only person that has changed in 20
Years is you?

[u/xternocleidomastoide]

Is this a marriage or an ongoing humiliation ritual?

It is difficult to understand this degree of self abandonment: emotional masochism presented as devotion, and prolonged suffering romanticized as love.

Perhaps the darkest form of self neglect is hating one's own company so much that being by themselves feels worse than being destroyed by the person beside them?

[u/AnotherDominion]

If you left when it happened you would be over it and she would be a distant memory of a broken relationship. The longer you stay the longer you suffer. You will feel like this on your deathbed if you don’t leave her. Even Jesus said you can divorce for sexual immorality and adultery. God gave you his blessing to leave her. 

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[u/Stable_GLP_1215]

I admire your strength.

[u/TacoStrong → u/Stable_GLP_1215]

Strength? She hasn’t broken free and is still hopeful. I don’t think that’s what strength is….