“Did you ever love her?”
OR
“Did you ever love him?”
This is such a simply stated question. However, it is far from simple when applied to a cheater. Looking back on the marriage and how it ended, it is complicated.
How can you say you ever loved someone who revealed they were utterly different than the person you thought they were in the end?
In one sense, the answer is a simple, “Yes, I loved her.” That is why I chose to marry her and stayed married for years. The fundamental character trait of the woman I fell in love with was kindness.
However, cheating on your spouse and attacking their character is the opposite of kind.
Lying for months about the affair and gas-lighting one’s spouse during this time are behaviors of a malicious, cruel person. So, I was clearly in love with someone who did not exist. I had misjudged her character profoundly.
My cheater was not fundamentally kind but rather incredibly cruel.
Maybe I loved the person who I thought was kind, but I certainly did not love the person who turned out to be cruel. So, the answer to the first question is a complicated one.
“Did you ever love her?”
I loved the person I wanted her to be and not the one she revealed herself to be. Such is the sad saga of marrying and then divorcing a cheater.
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*A version of this post ran previously.
The way I answer this is, I loved the person I thought he was; but that person either went away or more likely only existed in my mind.
I figued out early on that he had some character issues, but he seemingly worked so hard to become a better person, and I believed he had grown and matured so much as I worked with him in the community. He had evidently only taken his other self further underground; until he had captured with my help the position he wanted.