[StillStanding]

It's the second reply and it's genuine. I have the original tucked away ready for H to burn when he and I are reconciled!

I have a folder of emails and IM chats that I collected early on when I was snooping a lot. I don't look at them; the only reason I still have them is to reassure myself that what was going on before she left wasn't my imagination. When we are reconciled, they'll get deleted.

[kikki]

Wow Songanddance - thanks for posting that - I am speechless!

[toughtimes]

Ah, so the letter was real but the response was made up? I did think the reply was very well written.
Can I just say that this totally sounds like my H! It's hilarious! When you read something like this from afar you see how pathetic and disgust the person sounds. If the initial letter is true I just feel like all the other youngsters posting what a douche bag this guy is! He just sounds so embarrassingly teenage and interesting that most of the responders see right through him! I was a cynical young 21 year old and would never have believed a married man telling me his marriage had been over for four years, especially when he had kids!
Ooooh this hit a nerve for me because it reminds me of my sitch.
If the whole lot of this made up then it's a more than a metaphor for the fantasy that is mlc affairdom! Brilliant.

Ready2, you crack me up!

[kikki]

Ready2, you crack me up!

How did I miss Guillermo - you are funny Ready 

[SSG]

Do MLCers really see themselves as dashing Jon Hamm's?

Dream on!

L

A few weeks after BD, my H had gone to bed (so he could text OW for a few hours)...I was sleeping elsewhere in the house.  After about an hour, I went into our back yard and glimpsed into our bedroom window,  this was still during the I Need to Know it All Stage.

He could not see me through the blinds, it was late, after midnight.

I watched my H do something I have never seen in all our years together.  Standing in his boxer shorts, flexing his arm muscles in the two mirrors in our bedroom. Front ways, sideways...then he did knee bends and then some pushups.  I stood there in the darkness outside and watched...

This was a man who was in good shape, normal weight and not a vain bone in his body.   I felt like a voyeur at that moment and went back inside...feeling not so good.

SSG

[forthetrees]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/fashion/Modern-Love-my-marriage-a-course-in-desert-survival.html?mabReward=RI%3A11&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&region=Footer&module=Recommendation&src=recg&pgtype=article

I disagree with her in the end- it matters HOW someone leaves. Adultery betrayal based on the "I´m not happy" line is not a respectful and valid way to leave. Of course someone has the right to leave. I do think that each spouse owes the other open communication and the effort to resolve issues. That requires telling your partner that there is an issue in the first place. I think society will see that untreated and unacknowledged mid-life depression is destroying marriages at an alarming rate. There still seems to be a stigma associated with depression even though we now know that it is biological in its roots.

[OldPilot]

So she was in the hospital for depression, but he is the one depressed.

[Dagolark]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/fashion/Modern-Love-my-marriage-a-course-in-desert-survival.html?mabReward=RI%3A11&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&region=Footer&module=Recommendation&src=recg&pgtype=article

I disagree with her in the end- it matters HOW someone leaves. Adultery betrayal based on the "I´m not happy" line is not a respectful and valid way to leave. Of course someone has the right to leave. I do think that each spouse owes the other open communication and the effort to resolve issues. That requires telling your partner that there is an issue in the first place.

Bingo. I have been thinking exactly about the same thing. Especially since in my situation, I had just made a big sacrifice to be with him - left London and my life there to move back to Italy with him because that was what he wanted. So running away the way he did, he left me in a big ugly mess: the very least he could have done was try to work things out, out of respect for all the effort I did to be with him. At his request, at that.

But on the other hand, him behaving so horribly is helping me shut the door. In fact he shut the door for me. He's revealed himself to be an unrealiable, immature, weak man, and I cannot lean on someone like that.

[LisaLives]

So she was in the hospital for depression, but he is the one depressed.

She was in the hospital because she couldn't believe her husband left her.  If not for a timely and unprecedented visit from my neighbors, I could have been her.  But I have never suffered from anything but limited situational depression. 

Who knows what happened to her crazy H... 

[xyzcf]

 

Then he said in a voice of wonder, “You have such strong feelings.”

With a pang, I realized what I had always known: he never felt anything as keenly as I did.

That was certainly the story of our marriage. He did not seem to experience the highs and lows that I did. Indeed, as you know, when he left he told me two things ..I talk too much and I am too intense.

Is it a crime to be too intense?

Perhaps that is why this hurts me more than it seem to hurt him. Because I have strong feelings.