When my stbx and I met 9 years ago, he was nearing the end of his divorce settlement. He was deeply damaged by his wife of 12 years. She had been unfaithful throughout the entire marriage, at one point even seducing one of my stbx's younger brothers and having sex with him.

I was four years divorced, had ended a relationship of two years and had a few dates that didn't amount to anything with the exception of one that took a bizarre turn when I said I didn't want to spend any more time with him. The only description I can give to it is that it felt like he was stalking me. Anyhow, it was pretty traumatic and I made up my mind to not date for awhile and just focus on myself and my kids. Then I met E on a random visit to my local lake beach where he had brought his kids to swim for the day.

I was very big into my "higher self" at the time and was trying to be all zen about listening to my "other voice" and intuition and such. I think what I really was at the time was tired and traumatized and lonely. So when I met E, even though my defenses were up they were not very strong. He was the most "normal" man I had met in the four years I'd been divorced. He wanted the same things I wanted, to raise his family, to have a faithful companion, to have a house, take vacations, pay the bills... just regular normal stuff that I hadn't had since divorcing and he was desperate to have after the horror of being betrayed so many times. (Why he continued to live with that situation is KEY to everything I will say in time, because while he didn't know about all of the infidelities, he certainly knew about many and absolutely knew about his brother whom he had not spoken to in 10 years at the time of our meeting)

As we began dating and being a couple, it was clear to me that he still had feelings for his ex-wife that he was fighting really hard to put behind him. I tried early on to hit the pause button in our relationship so that he could process some of those feelings because I knew that it wasn't good for him to start something new with someone until he'd come to terms with his past. He insisted that he was over her and when I tried to back off, it was like he went into overdrive. I would wake up in the morning to see that he had tried to call me numerous times and left messages that sounded more and more frantic that I wasn't responding. This was the first time I knew I should break it off with him but didn't.

Our relationship has been a series of unfortunate events that has kept us together, but could have been opportunities to acknowledge that we weren't well suited and should break up. Much of it was dictated by finances, no work, returning a couple of times to college for me, and a desire to not give up on the investment of time and commitment to something that seemed to function most of the time.

I should say here that my biggest challenge in relationship life is the ability to make executive decisions about it. For example, for eight of the last nine years, E has been a heavy abuser of alcohol. For those of you who have lived with an alcoholic, you know the challenges of living that life. When you wake up in the middle of the night and they aren't in bed, are they dead somewhere? Did he fall down the stairs and he's lying at the bottom with broken neck? Did he asphyxiate himself sitting in his truck while he was drinking and listening to music? Should I get up and check the wood stove to make sure the house won't burn down tonight? I should have put an end to our relationship so many years ago, but I just kept plodding on, thinking that if I confronted him enough he would see how much damage he was doing. A year ago he stopped drinking heavily. He maintains that it is for his health (he has a stomach condition in which alcohol worsens the symptoms), and has twice acknowledged that it was for our relationship (I finally wrote him a letter last January saying I was going to leave if he didn't quit. But of course I stayed even though he didn't quit, he just switched to beer instead of whiskey).

So this is long, I know. I'm sure many have become bored by now. I need to get it all out and I need to know that at least someone can relate. It's not enough to write it and not have feedback, for some reason I need the feedback.

In the last year, I have learned that although the drinking and being drunk every night was a HUGE negative, I see other things that the drinking blinded me to. Even as a not drunk person, E is not able to be honest and humble. He cannot take responsibility for small or big actions he takes or the way he behaves. He sees himself as a hero in all of his stories, and what's more, he NEEDS to see himself that way. He is all at once incredibly selfish and very generous. But his generosity isn't motivated by anyone else's needs, it's motivated by his need to feel generous, so the way he expresses his generosity often goes unappreciated because the receiver needed something different. In our relationship, I have been very clear about my needs. He gives me other things (not possessions, just gives in a way that doesn't meet my need). And then he feels so sorry for himself because he's "unappreciated". It's a cycle that goes round and round and round... In the last few months, he has become increasingly angry that I am not showing appreciation (and by this I do mean predominantly sex. E could live happily ever after as long as sex was a daily expression of my "appreciation"). Every silly argument ends
with him saying we should break up. In the beginning of December at the end of one of these arguments, I called his bluff and said l agreed.

It's been almost 8 weeks. We are still living in the same house, which is a financial necessity at this time. I have just discovered that he is planning to bring his ex-wife back for a visit from across the country. I am feeling so insulted and belittled and I don't know...there isn't even a word for the absolute humiliation I feel by this development. That I am being replaced by this horrible evil woman who not only was so unfaithful to E, but who also actively has tried to break us up by attempting to seduce E whenever I was not around, is so hurtful and I feel so much pain that who I have been and what I have given has no value when all these years I thought it actually meant something.

I know that breaking up is the right thing to do. The bottom line is that even though we both tried to be good to each other and we both committed to our relationship, we have only been good team players. For many years, I have known that he was not the love of my life, and I know that I am not his because I have been the love of someone's life once and I know what that looks and feels like. I suppose I shouldn't feel so torn up about him getting back together with his ex-wife. I just feel like if it were any other woman I wouldn't be so upset. It's just inconceivable to me that he would go back to someone he has called the "evil bitch" for the last 9 years. It's pretty messed up.