Hi Elizabeth,

This is a terrible thing to have to go through. I wish you weren’t going through it.

Your take on things is that your husband’s inability to deal with difficult situations, as evidenced 10 years ago when he was 20 years old and turned to drugs and alcohol for a period of time after his brother’s death, is the reason he’s now decided, at age 30, to leave you for another woman.

He told you that he misses you, that you’re his best friend, but that he loves her. Understandably, this is extremely difficult for you to understand let alone accept and is causing you an extraordinary amount of pain. The betrayal, the disappointment — it’s outrageous and must be totally overwhelming for you. My heart goes out to you. In the midst of all of the confusion and heartbreak, please don’t make the mistake of assuming that you know what’s going on with him better than he does. He’s a 30 year old man who’s made a decision very early in his marriage to leave his wife to be with another woman and he’s totally unwilling to fix the marriage.

If I were in your shoes I’d probably try to make sense of all that doesn’t make sense about this and draw conclusions that make me feel better, that give me hope, so I really understand how you would connect what happened ten years ago to this situation.

If your conclusion is correct, it still doesn’t bode well that the stresses he was/is experiencing are so great so as to push him into the arms of another woman after less than one year of marriage. Many marriages survive a lifetime of very difficult stresses like terminal illnesses and death of family members, severe financial crises, kids with special needs or drug problems, etc., in spite of the temptation of another woman/man waiting with arms wide open to numb the pain. It takes a strong character to walk away from that; your husband chose not to walk away. Sure, many marriages survive affairs, but his affair is ongoing with no end in sight.

My take is that you are fortunate to have this happen before kids are involved, if kids were in your future. I know it’s difficult and totally unfair. I know you’ve invested a lot of years in this relationship with this man. My advice is to cut your losses now and start to accept that this man isn’t who you thought he was.

B