TL;DR: My wife cheated for months and I made some major life decisions with bad information. I don’t know how to move forward.
Pretty much the title. My wife and I had been together for 8 years, married for 1. She was gracious enough to move across the country with me as I pursued my education and we had weathered a lot together. Things weren’t always perfect, but I felt like we were always on the same team, building towards something better. She had ongoingly dealt with some mental health issues relating to childhood trauma. Last year, I entered the hardest year of my education thus far to secure a residency spot in a particular medical subspecialty, which necessitated us spending some time apart for interviews and while I worked in hospitals in other cities to secure a spot. This is standard and many of my colleagues have done the same. She had voiced over the past year that she felt like this period had led to some emotional distance between us, which we went to couple’s therapy for and after I had concluded interviews, we really worked hard to try to be a married couple. About three weeks ago, she came home from vacation and initiated those concerns again before telling me she had had a one night stand. Needless to say, my world fell apart. She was still talking to her AP, narrating everything that happened between us after she told me. Over the course of a couple days, she trickle-truthed that for at least 7-8 months prior there had also been a social media account where she was posting NSFW pictures and receiving $$, though there was also some actual sexting with folks in the DMs. To me it seemed like a lot of this was for external validation.
I asked her to move out, which she did. To me this all seemed like too big a betrayal to ever overcome. I’m working >70 hours a week trying to be a good physician and learning to take care of people. I want to be at my best. I think what hurts the most is knowing that there is really nothing to come home to anymore, outside of our cat (who I kept). I just feel bad cause he’s got one less human in his life now too. I had pretty realistic offers for residency in big cities in my home blue state where a lot of my friends still are, but because I thought we were building a life together, I chose to stay in a smaller, blue metro of our purple-red state, which means years and years apart from my aging parents and my community. Reconciling would be easy in the sense that maybe some semblance of that support would be there, and we have some mutual friends telling us to work things out. But I just don’t know. I think I’m a nice, honest, hardworking person who has a lot of love to give. I thought my life was on a great trajectory and this is not how I expected to start my 30s. How do I move forward from this, Reddit?
Comments
First off it never gets easier to get past betrayal, but you seem like a decent guy. There were probably many things that led to her wanting to cheat or want out of the relationship which you may or may not have noticed.
Second you have the rest of your life to build something for someone who deserves it. Go find them. They need you more than you think.
She for the streets my dude. Let it go. It sucks dick losing any friend or lover, but it’ll get easier with time.
she isnt emotionally in the relationship anymore, there is nothing to save. go work on yourself and your life and be happy and find someone else along the way.
Move on and divorce her. She lacks the emotional intelligence and personal integrity to be in a loving, adult relationship. Just another bog-standard cheater. You will have the pick of the litter in your near future.