[ArtCogito]

Hi there folks,

I'm usually quite unwilling to share this story, but I think it will be helpful get it out. I was married for four years, and we were making it work. Things were hard, but I found a job, two jobs, then three to support my wife's passion. We were both interested in graduate school and came up with the plan of one us would go first while the other worked, and once one of us got out the other would go. We did not want children, I even got a vasectomy at 22. I didn't think I would even be allowed to, but you never know until you ask. Soon she realized that she did not want to move across the country for school. I had my own misgivings, but eventually settled on staying in town. I wanted a graduate degree in the humanities, job prospects were awful. We had a house, a dog, a yard, two cars and she was going to school for her dream job. Then at school she met someone who was much like me, honestly, almost exactly like me but back before I had my first episode. Soon she stopped coming home, staying later and later. I had an episode, and while I was in the ward she cheated on me with this man while I was in the hospital. She would come by, but was always distant. I told her I was there getting help to come out and help her. I got out, got my job back, got involved and started putting the pieces together. The more I was actually progressing, the more time she enveloped with this other man who was expecting his first born. The most difficult part about it was the religious aspect of it. I simply never expected this behavior from a career religious person.

I refrained from telling anyone because I did not want to affect her religious reputation. However, I found that she uses language and a narrative about what happened that only I exist in. No one knows about the infidelity, they only know that I had an episode, not why, or how. It's hard because she lives in a small town, my hometown, that I desperately want to go back to because my main supports are all there. My entire support network of friends is there, but I don't want to ruin her life by telling people what she did. She throws the entire situation on my illness even though I was stable, considerably so until she found a better version of me that was not ill. I am religious myself, and I don't want to slander, but she created a narrative that allows her to continue on as a holy person while everyone sees me as a pariah. I was never abusive towards her, those weren't the kinds of problems we had.

[jelly-bean]

If you want to go home then go. What happened between you two is nobody else's business and it is not necessary for you to speak about it if you don't want to. You real friends know who you are and will not believe the gossip anyway. Those who don't really know you will learn soon enough what sort of person you are.

[ArtCogito]

Thanks for the kind words. I'm very torn about going to that town, she has difficulties retaining friends too, and a lot of our old friends are shared friends. I don't want them to have to pick sides, and I don't want them to think ill of her. Ideally, I'd like for things to go back to normal, but that seems impossible now.

It was a mature group of people, If all sides were heard, I think we'd all agree that the situation snowballed for everyone involved and no one wanted it, including her, to end the way it did. End perhaps, but not that way. I want her to have a good life as much she wants it for me, but our neurosis always manifested in the one way the other couldn't handle. It was a pattern I didn't see until it was over.

We were really good friends, we were better friends than we were lovers. That was always true, the second we started dating we started competing for each others attention. That was pretty much the end of it.

Holy Hell, looks like I shouldn't go there after all. Thank you interwebs, for the modest step towards closure.