Where to next….

So. I have been here a while. I have really been through a lot and grown in some ways, not well in others. I just don’t know what to do in order to plan. I don’t feel like there is any way forward from where I am…

The back story is that I am in my mid 40’s. I am educated, I work hard, I built a pretty good life… or so I thought.

I married in 2006 to someone, and I have regretted every second of it for the last two years. She had a secret relationship early on in the marriage, we ended up getting over it, but I never forgot. I didn’t trust her ever again. I would walk past her phone, look through it. Get into email and look. I found her talking to the same person again in 2014. Except this time, I found out by paying the phone bill. I got into her email and found an email she wrote home with her picture from that very day (Father’s Day) with my daughter in her back. The guy was gushing how good she looked and how cute my daughter was (he was married and was complaining about his wife and my ex was complaining about me. They both kind of had their comments about the things I didn’t know in different contexts. I felt like a total fool.

I want to bed that night just shaking with anger and sadness. I got up and packed a few things in a bag. I was planning on leaving. She got up and asked what I was doing. I can remember telling her that she knew what was wrong and what I was doing. She begged me not to go. I told her I needed her phone to see the 5000 or so texts that weee listed in the phone bill or I was leaving. I ended up walking out the door anyways. I went to a friends house and he talked me into going back. I told her if she ever was caught having any kind of illicit relationship again I would leave and she better be prepared for a big legal fight. I was done. So 2021 comes along and not much had changed, I still had no trust in her, she was focused on ***. So in September she wanted a divorce. I tried saving the marriage, until I found her over this guys home. I was furious and in the same page, I was done with her.

so I moved on from there and didn’t care what happened to her, to anything, I was the center of my new life, and my kids were the only other focus. She wanted to act like nothing was wrong through the holidays for the kids (business as usual for her, was absolutely great at that performance). We lived in different rooms of the house. Right or wrong I told her I’d she was actively going over this guys house, I was allowed to see other women, would not bring them around. I found it absolutely funny when she chewed me out for meeting someone for dinner, how could I. But she was allowed to go over this guys house (same guy from 2014 and 2008). Totally blew my mind. So we went through the divorce. She absolutely tore me apart, took the house, new car, had a bunch of my personal stuff that I was supposed to get but she didn’t let me get. I also had to pay her $1425 in child support, half her credit card, plus furnish a home for my kids to stay at. She immediately allowed this idiot access to our children at school, she brought him around my kids. Amazing how cheating has no consequences in our legal system…. But I digress.

I have been living in an apartment, pay an astonishing amount of money for rent, child support, living expenses and extras for my kids. I can’t afford a vacation with them but my ex is living high. She has been to gatlinburg, going to Disney, takes the kids out, goes to amusement parks, replaced the a/c in the house, replaced all the fencing, threw out a good lawnmower, a new snowblower last winter and a whole bunch of other stuff. I just want to live, how can I? What do I have to look forward to other than her demise in the afterlife? What can I do to live better? I am stuck here as far as location because of the kids…. I so t know what to do and how to grow to the next level….