Dear Richard:

You are welcome.

You wrote in your original post: “if she had moved on with someone else I would feel sooooo much relief”.

This leads me to think (and please let me know if I am correct and where I am not) that your current feelings about your wife of 23 years, is not about her as a woman but as a child that needs rescuing. You view her as one who desperately needs help, financial and otherwise.

It is as if you are watching a helpless child, not a 41 year old woman. You are watching a helpless child suffering and the thought is: someone must do something about it!

How can you “get over her” (in the title of your thread) if you believe, emotionally (not logically), that she is a helpless, suffering and desperate child whom you abandoned?

I suppose you were  like her, in the ways you indicated, a child yourself, helpless when bullied in the past, in desperate need for help. You met this woman when she was 18 and you saw yourself in her, and did your best to help her, and by proxy, help yourself.

And now, that you did the right thing for yourself and ended the relationship, you experience something like survivor guilt, the one who grew up, leaving behind the one who didn’t.

Let me know what you think and I will reply further.

anita