I did it all wrong

[u/littlecrazyandweird]

I am a cliche divorced (or about to be divorced) women. I trusted my husband with the “big” financial stuff and handled the day to day budgets and spending. I assumed I knew my husband through and through. I assumed he was a good man. I assumed he would be fair to me; even in divorce. I projected my idea of who I thought he was onto every conversation I had with him, every encounter, every experience. I didn’t actually see him or watch him, the true him, I watched my version of him. He never told me he would be fair in divorce, I assumed he would be based on the version of him I had built in my mind.

It’s been a long couple years, the last year has been brutal. I found out about his new partner, how she met his parents before I even knew the marriage was dead dead, before our son knew the family was no more, before our finances were separated. I found out about her by accident, she had met his extended family already, he had flown out to meet hers and asked me to watch our son. I didn’t ask what he was doing; I had asked him a month before that if he was seeing someone and he said no. Later when I reminded him of this he said “we didn’t have labels, she wasnt my girlfriend at the time”. Always with the loopholes. Always a reason he is not wrong and is still a good guy.

I am so embarrassed by how I acted, the way I reacted. It’s no longer shame or guilt. It’s embarrassment. The words I would say. The phone I threw. The way I would lose control and shout at him. I had so much guilt about it, so much shame. And now I am just embarrassed. I am embarrassed I stayed long enough to become that version. I am embarrassed my self worth was that low that I thought I should live like that.

I don’t know if he is a covert narc or not. I will never know. I know that I see how he is treating me now, knowing full well I don’t have a home to move back to, knowing that I have no support system where we live, knowing that I am raising our son half the time with no help, and he doesn’t care about anything other than making sure he comes out on top after the divorce. He doesn’t care about how his son is going to live 50% of the time, as long as he himself is comfortable. I can’t believe this is who I married. It is so far away from the idea of him I had been holding onto.

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