6 Moving On

For some women, moving on might be staying with their husband and creating a new relationship from the broken one.

For me, moving on has been a lengthy process of accepting that my husband was not going to get treatment or get better, and filing for divorce.

I "wanted so desperately to believe he was getting better." I remember in the beginning being perplexed by stuff that was written in the SA partner books about "setting boundaries" and "don't believe what he says, only believe what he does."

What does that MEAN? What ARE these boundaries I need to set? How can I believe "what he does" if so much of what he does is hidden, and what he says is pretty much all I know about?

I would read that we shouldn't "obsess" about monitoring, but how else can you see what he is "doing" (in order to know what to believe) if you don't monitor the cell phone records, the email, the internet surfing, the finances?

I was probably in some form of denial UNTIL I went whole hog into monitoring. And that happened only by chance because a family member found his online Adult Friend Finder account accidentally by Googling his unique nickname which he brazenly used as his "handle." The AFF account is quite public and very detailed. It wasn't that I used this to confront him. I used the monitoring FOR ME, to finally convince myself of what a huge liar he was, and to collect as evidence for the divorce. In some way, I needed to be SURE that my husband's smooth, convincing persona was a complete facáde before I could give up, file for divorce and begin to move on. Monitoring has the potential to obsess you; it can also give you some sense of power and control at a time when you feel powerless and out of control.

I'm glad I got counseling FOR ME, because it didn't do him a damn bit of good. I'm grateful to my multiple counselors who honestly told me they felt the chance of his "recovery" (not just from the addiction, but from the underlying personality disorder) was highly unlikely, and why. I needed to see and hear these things to finally be willing to accept who he really is, as opposed to the person I wanted and believed him to be.

In a little less than one month, it will be four years since my initial discovery which revealed nearly a decade of addiction to prostitutes. As I think back, I am amazed how willing I was to take responsibility to try to "fix" in the beginning. Today, I take responsibility for ME; I have given up on fixing him. I don't worry about being "nice" because no matter what I do, I always get blamed. So now I don't try to appease, apologize, or repair. I'm very matter of fact. Reading more about dealing with narcissists has been beneficial.

I read somewhere that it would take something like four years to get through this emotionally, and I sure have gone through a lot of phases of recovery in that time! The journey is long and difficult, but in your own recovery, you have the opportunity to find strength and resiliency you didn't know you had.

When have Moved On and if your heart isn't too wounded, you may decide to start dating. A few articles on Dating are linked as subpages below: