When we divorce our cheater, faithful spouses often do not know the full story (and probably won’t ever).
This is one of the traumatic aspects of marrying a cheater. They have all the knowledge of who and when they slept with someone else. But they are unwilling to give that to information to their spouse.
We usually stumble upon enough of the truth to know we have a serious problem. They have violated the most important marriage boundary–namely, don’t cheat!
Part of grieving the end of a marriage to a cheater is grieving and letting go of the “need” to know everything. It is hard to do. But if we are to move on, we need to do this.
I know this does not happen over night. It takes time to get to a place where we believe we know enough to move on from the cheater. Sometimes the head has to act on this before the heart is there.
“The loss of a coherent and accurate marriage narrative is a big loss. Sadly, it is just one more loss in the avalanche of losses that come with divorcing a cheater.”
It is a huge loss, because it is the history of your very life. A life that will forever have blanks, where memories should be. Now many years later when I remember my son growing up I remember so many good times. But, whenever my ex H is in that memory he presents as a shadow in the background. I guess it is how my mind has dealt with it.
I unwittingly shared my husband and my money with another woman. They had a choice, I didn’t.