Hi everyone. I don’t have many friends and between my family and friends, no one really cares to hear about my situation, give me advice, offer support for my feelings, etc so I thought I would try a forum. I am trying to battle my depression from all of this by myself for my kids. I have seen a therapist but she wasn’t helpful.

Background: 5 year marriage with a 4 yo son and 1 yo daughter. I’m 34 and she is 26. It was love at sight for both of us and neither has ever had these feelings before. I had red flags but my heart beat my brain. We quickly decided we wanted to get married and have kids. Second year of marriage, we left out of state for my grad school. She immediately had a six month affair. I didn’t want to forgive her, but my Priest told me I should so long as she wanted to stay married essentially. She did, so we did counseling etc. After the affair, we were stronger than ever. We chose to have a second kid bc she wanted to prove her commitment to our family/marriage. I finished grad school and moved back to TX where we both were from. Once we were back in TX with the newborn, things changed dramatically. She stopped working and kept quitting jobs, she gave 0 attention to our first child, and she started spending money recklessly. Meanwhile she stopped doing relationship things with me like dates, shows, games, etc. Nonwithstanding all of those warning signs, our relationship was still good. Our connection and interactions were better than every married couple we knew. Then late last year, I was blindsided by divorce papers. I had just accepted a job in Colorado paying 300K/yr (our dream was to live in CO and we really needed money with her spending). From that day forward, she has been doing her best to hurt me or ghost me. If I didn’t want her using an app she used during her affair, she started using it. Everything and anything you can think of that is hurtful to a married man, she was doing. Clubbing, going on dates with guys etc. However the few times I got her to talk, she was always ultra defensive and not taking any accountability for her actions. I was just supposed to accept that she is a strong and independent woman now. She did ask me to cancel the Colorado job if I wanted any chance of us working it out. Well now our divorce is almost over and she voluntarily gave me primary custody of our kids. She finally moved out (a week ago) and it’s been no contact since. She now lives 4 hours away.

Do I need to just admit to myself that she is never coming back? That’s my biggest problem is that it’s so hard to think it’s over when the day before it all happened, I would’ve bet my kids against us ever getting divorced. Is there anything I can do to get her back? Should I start valuing myself more and realize that I don’t want this person back after all she has done to hurt me and the kids? I feel like a sucker for forgiving her the first time and then for her to run away from the marriage a second time. Both her parents have been divorced 3+ times each and tell her not to try marriage counseling and to just leave because there are other guys out there. Which I don’t really understand as I have spoiled her rotten, am a romantic etc, and don’t even get to watch my own shows until midnight and then just to turnaround and wake up with the kids a few hours later meanwhile she gets to sleep for 10 hours.

I really appreciate anyone who took the time to read this and for any opinions offered.