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Hi Maria,
I am sorry I keep back-sliding.... I decided to write to you again because you seem to offer me the best advice when I desperately need it. I guess you get a lot of emails... I am not sure if you remember my situation. Married 9 years, found out about an affair that had been going on 5 years. I initially found out 7 months ago of the affair but he said it was a "one time thing then". Then I found out myself that it had been going on for 5 years. More lies... he promised he wasn't seeing her, texting, emailing her etc. But I knew it was still going on. Then a friend called and said she saw him with her in a sports bar one night when I was out of town. So I left and filed for divorce. It's been 2 1/2 months since i moved out. I do much better when there is no contact.... but I guess the divorce is getting down to the nitty gritty and maybe that is the reason he has decided to start communication again.
I have ignored it for several weeks, but he has kept begging me to just let him talk to me for 5 minutes. So in a weak moment last night I said "you have 5 minutes but it's not going to change anything". He was crying, actually crying, saying it was all his fault, he is so sorry, and how every time a car like mine goes by and he thinks it might be me. He literally has to pull over and get out and walk around to get his breath. He says he is ready to do ANYTHING to put all this behind us. He wants to go to AA. He says he will NEVER do anything to hurt me again etc.
I listened but just told him that I couldn't trust anything he said anymore and that he had hurt me and humiliated me enough for a lifetime and that I was through listening to him. I told him that he didn't love me enough for 5 years to quit that affair, or to stop lying to me, so why now??? My guess is that it is finally becoming a realization to him that I am serious and that it is over. He has not told anyone. He told me last night that when friends asked where I was he told them that I was staying out in California with my dad since my mom just passed away. So NO ONE knows STILL.
I guess he knows now that everyone is going to finally find out that I have actually been moved out all this time and that I haven't been in California and that I filed for divorce 2 months ago. Maybe that is why he is just now seeing that his fake world is going to come down on him. What bothers me is that from what I have read, a typical narcissistic behavior would be for HIM to dump me... and since I am dumping him, why isn't he cutting me off and moving on? Why is he STILL trying to get me to come back? He keeps saying we are in our fifties and we have 12 years together, and I shouldn't throw it away without giving him ONE more chance. But I GAVE HIM 6 months of chances and he lied the entire 6 months, right in my face and right under my nose. He didn't care then. I told him that his cheating, his lying and his verbal and physical abuse was going to KILL me at some point and that I had to get away from him for my own health. That is when he said he would go to AA and he would do ANYTHING to have me home again.
Please tell me what I need to do. My brain is telling me one thing and my heart is telling me something else.... I know I should cut off all communication with him, but I just keep having these little doubts that pop up. They are telling me that maybe he has hit rock bottom and really is going to change. Then my brain kicks in and says NO, he is never going to change. Please help me get through this terrible time.... I feel like I am being pulled apart.
He says he really misses me and my family and he can't sleep, can't eat, can't work. Well guess what? That is what I went through for 6 months while he was still seeing someone else and lying about it, and now he wants me to feel sorry for him?? I really do though, I do feel sorry for him because I am human.... but I really don't think he ever really truly felt sorry for what he had done to me. All those days that I was crying about the affair and he was lying and telling me it was over... he didn't really feel sorry for what I was going through so WHY should I feel sorry for him now?
Please help me, I am drowning here....
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The goal of this website is to give support to people who are facing problems in their relationship related to cheating, abuse and narcissism. I am living in Europe and English is not my native language, I wish you will excuse me if I make some grammatical errors. I have a background in neuroscience and behavioral sciences and I am currently doing brain research related to these topics in university in my home country. I decided to write in English because I wish to reach as many people as I can around the world.
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Dear Friend,
I am sorry you are going through such hard time. I do remember your earlier letter (to read the first letter of this writer, please see page Divorcing my narcissistic husband - How long does it take to recover?). I understand exactly how you are feeling when you say you are feeling pity towards your narcissistic husband. It is natural for us to feel pity. We are humans with normal level of empathy and other emotions. This is the first time you have broken up with your husband, so I understand well what you mean when you say your heart tells you something and your mind tells you something else. It is like that for all of us, who are / have been in similar situation, trying to struggle towards freedom. It often takes several attempts to break free. If you wish to read more about how to learn to control negative emotions, please see article How to control emotions. I also recommend you to read this article of Training the Brain to find out what you can do to help yourself to recover faster.
 Do not blame yourself if you end up going back to your husband. If you do, you can say to yourself you do it for YOU, not for your husband. You do it to help yourself to see his true personality, which makes it easier for you to move on with your life later on. Sometimes it is necessary to go back to see that things do not change and that something precious has been broken forever. Please be aware that if you decide to go back, you can never feel towards your husband as you did before the betrayal took place. However, this does not mean you cannot love your husband anymore. You can. But your feeling towards him can never be the same as in the beginning. It is important that you do not have unrealistic expectations regarding future, if you decide to go back.
If you feel like you truly had enough and you do NOT want to go back to your husband, that you want to shut down your longing feelings and move on with your life, I will give you a good advise how to achieve this goal: Whenever you are having a "soft moment" and you feel you would like to get back together, remind yourself of the time when you heard your husband say on the phone "f**n b**" just before he hung up since you did not answer (you told about this incident in your earlier email). That is his true feeling towards you. We do not say such thing of someone we love when we think no one can hear.
Also remember how your husband lied to you for years regarding his secret affair with another woman. Imagine your husband together with his lover, making love to her, spending time together with her, making her see how little he respected you when he was willing to keep the secret relationship going for so long. He did not care about your feelings, only his own desires mattered. When you willingly invite these memories to your mind, your warm feeling towards him goes down instantly. You may even feel hatred towards your husband. And in this situation transient hatred is a good thing: It helps you to let go of your mental addiction to a person who has caused you such strong pain.
Dear Friend, whatever you decide to do, I am here for you. Please write to me whenever you feel like it. But for your sake I wish you choose not to go back to your husband. The road is long and hard if you would like to save this relationship. Your husband has damaged you so badly. He did not respect you. Now he is asking for your forgiveness, but it is possible that he is doing it for his own sake and not for you. Your husband will lose his face when it comes out that you have left him and he has lied about it. This man seems to be the kind of a person who is always trying to lie his way out of trouble. He has not even been honest to his friends regarding his situation with you.
If you decide to go back to your husband, you must be prepared for a possibility that that he might leave you after a while, because that makes him appear "strong" in his own eyes. He knows now that you are capable of leaving him. If he leaves you instead, it makes him feel he is the one who is (again) in charge. If that happens, it will be devastating to you. If you stay strong now and do not go back, you maintain your dignity in your own eyes and that helps you later on in your recovery process. Your husband insulted you and betrayed you in a worst possible way. Now he is begging you to forgive him. If you go back, you are in a way "at his mercy". Your husband can then either stay with you or leave you. You will lose the control you have now gained.
If you go back, there is a danger that you would be constantly afraid of your husband either cheating on you again or leaving you. If you go back, you give the control back to him. That is what he wants. That is why he is crying to you etc. He does not want to be the one who gets dumped. If your husband is a narcissist as you suspect, he wants and needs the feeling of being in control. Do not grant that to him. Do not let him "win", after everything he has done to you. Remember his betrayal. Do you really want to go back to that kind of a person?
Dear Friend, stay strong! Whatever you decide to do, you can always write to me. I am here for you.
Dear Visitor, to read more about how to get over cheating and narcissism in a relationship, please visit page Recovery After Cheating and Narcissism.
Warm hug,
Maria
If you wish to submit your own story and get feedback and support for your situation or if you wish to contact me for any other reason, send me email to
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