Disclaimer: This is my personal story, told from my heart and memory. Names, locations, and specific details have been altered to protect privacy. This is my perspective, not a statement of fact about anyone else. Please read my full disclaimer.
Make Changes Choose Yourself Find Yourself Strength Within
For a long time, I called him my husband. Today, I call him my ex-husband. But for a brief, hopeful chapter after our divorce, I chose to call him my partner.
This is the story of that choice. It’s about trying to build something new from the rubble of a broken, almost 4 decade marriage. And it’s about the difficult truth I finally faced: sometimes, even your best and most peaceful intention isn’t enough when the other person hasn’t changed.
The Foundation Was Already Cracked
Our divorce didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was the final brick to fall after a long collapse.
The years after I discovered their affair, intimacy vanished, replaced by a heavy silence. Then came the discoveries – hidden packages of sex pills, arriving with excuses that made less sense each time (“to prevent dementia,” then years later, “for us”). Each secret was a small betrayal, teaching me I was living with a pattern of deception, not a partner.
The words he said after his affair cut even deeper. He told me he loved her, “but not like how I LOVED you.” He declared, “I have absolutely no regrets with her.” The final blow was his cruel shrug: “If it wasn’t her, I would have been with a f**king waitress“. His Affair Partner (AF) was only a cheating bar singer, so with him saying that about a waitress is cruel and showing the narcissistic side of him. It also shows that his AP meant nothing to him and he used her (not that I cared! She was just as bad).
My pain was met with blame. He said that he couldn’t trust me, and that my wound was my own fault because “you just can’t get over it. You can’t let it go.” He never gave me a single day to simply heal.
The Slow Fade: The Thousand Small Cuts
But the real end wasn’t in the big lies or the loud words. It was in the quiet, daily space between them.
It was the slow fade from being partners to being two ghosts trying to get along with an elephant sitting on my chest. It was the conversations that died, the jokes that weren’t funny anymore, the way a simple question could turn into a fight about my attitude. I started editing myself – what to say, what to ask, when to be quiet – just to keep the peace that wasn’t really peace at all. However, I also began reading his body language to learn more about this “stranger”, that I thought I knew most of my adult life. I learned when he was lying and when he was keeping his secrets. It got to the point where I discovered disturbing things about him just by watching him and listening to how he talked.
The hurt lived in the birthdays that felt like an afterthought or completely forgotten. The holidays were comical to to him to embarass me. In the way my feelings were always “too much.” I got smaller and quieter, trying to take up less space to avoid the next sigh or eye roll. These thousand small cuts didn’t leave a visible scar, but they slowly drained the life and love out of our time together, making room for the bigger betrayals to take root.
My Choice: To Try for Peace
When the divorce was final, I made a conscious, deliberate decision from a place of exhaustion with the conflict. I chose to try for peace. I didn’t want a war. I didn’t want to be enemies. We owned a property together. We had a shared history. I believed that two adults could choose civility, could choose to be respectful partners in managing the practical remnants of a shared life.
So, I called him my partner. I set my pain aside and extended a hand toward a new, quiet understanding. I chose to believe the person who had hurt me could still be reasonable. I was wrong.
Why It Failed: The Pattern Never Broke
It failed because the pattern never changed. The partnership I offered required honesty and mutual respect. What I continued to receive were the old habits: small evasions, subtle put-downs, and that same refusal to acknowledge the impact of past actions. The foundation for a true partnership – trust – had been destroyed long ago, and nothing was done to rebuild it.
Trying to be partners with someone who still operates from a place of secrecy and blame is like trying to build a house on quicksand. My peaceful intention was sincere, but it was no match for his unchanged character.
Finding My True Home
The most symbolic part of my journey is where I live. We still legally own a house together. My home is only one mile away from our other house. I live in our former rental house that I own now. This is a place from our past that I have reclaimed for my future.
Here, there is a profound calm. The constant background anxiety of his presence is gone. In this quiet space, I am finally learning who I am when I’m not managing his chaos, bending myself to avoid conflict, or healing from a thousand small cuts. I am finding a peace that no “partnership” with him could ever provide.
To Anyone Trying to Make Peace After the War
If you are reading this, holding out hope for a civil friendship or a functional partnership with an ex who deeply hurt you, please know this:
Your desire for peace is a strength, not a weakness. It speaks to your humanity. But please also know that peace cannot be a one-person project. It requires two people committed to honesty and respect.
If you are trying alone, if you are still facing the same old hurts in new disguises, it is not your failure. It is a sign that the healthiest partnership you can form right now is the one with yourself. Choosing to walk away from a dynamic that drains you is not giving up on peace; it is finally claiming it for yourself.
My journey taught me that the most important partner I will ever choose is the woman I am becoming in this quiet home of my own. And that is a partnership that will never fail me.
The comment section has been disabled in my Journal. If you would like to contact me, please do so by emailing me at lim761@gmail.com.