Affairs and healing topic and story

Below is my story on why but you don't have to read it. Just telling you how I went from an adamant "cheating is wrong" to this.

I was married for about 10 years. I got married young and was your naive blissfully hopeful teenager married to a Cherokee man who was the image of tall dark and handsome. We got so many commets about how good we were together in public. Then we went home and wouldn't look at each other except to fight.

We also didn't know it in the beginning but I have BPD and he was bipolar depressive. Great combo right? We just thought the other was crazy but we still would make up and say we loved each other. At first it wasn't so bad either, we were still hopeful it would work out and everyone says fighting is normal. Well, you have no perception of normal amounts of fighting when one person comes from a household where their parents tackle them for whoopings, and the other was in a molestation/drinking situation. He cheated on me multiple times over the course of our being together. He'd say I'm sorry I'm just depressed and I'd forgive and take my broken heart and go finish chores or go to work. Over time it became a different girl online or off for him all the time. Bitter resentment. Bitter loneliness. Complete emotional death for me at least. I stopped feeling how to enjoy things for at least 6 years. Never felt pretty. Wouldn't wear anything but pajamas if I wasn't at work. Never felt good enough for anything. But I couldn't afford a divorce. I had no family or friends left at the end. I was finishing college and he worked just enough to pay bills and buy video games. I didn't have a dime to my name. I was also half insane at the end when my mind was in that fog of nothing. I became suicidal. When I tried to kick him out he wouldn't leave or would manipulate people into thinking I was nuts and he was abused.

I stood over him one night in his sleep after grabbing his phone by accident (we had the same phone) and seeing another text from another girl and was inclined to kill him. I knew he could over power me. We'd had many physical fights. I'd been strangled. He'd been thrown through a glass door, you name it. I stood there. No thoughts except years of suffering, betrayal, miscarrages and disappointing heart break again and again. We lived in filth. I had no way to get away. No escape. No hope. But it that moment the only thing I *could* feel was rage. I don't know how long it was I stood there wondering what method would hurt the most. I was there long enough that I lost the energy to do anything again, a daily occurrence, and slipped back into the fog and laid down to sleep.

One day my friend from my hometown texted me half drunk flirting. This was a guy I'd known for a while and we had never been remotely romantically involved. He was another depressed lonely guy for a totally different reason. I don't remember how the conversation went but it ignited something I hadn't felt in years and years. That I was attractive? Smart? That I was someone that someone else would be willing to have sex with at all? Complements? What?

This continued on into a few weeks.

One night my husband was going to work after a fight and my lover texted asking if I needed him that he would come right now. I didn't take that seriously, he lived 3 hours away, but came he did. After the on-the-way text I knew he was coming. My husband was so disinterested in me that he didn't think anything of my random burst to clean up our apartment and shave my legs, something I hadn't done since I needed to be a bridesmaid years before. He didn't even look at me. He stayed glued to his phone screen and left. I didn't exactly hide it either since we lived in a tiny studio. If he did notice then I guess he didn't care. The friend and I had a amazing night feeling more alive than we both had in a long time. I was never attracted to him. I didn't love him and didn't love me. That was okay with both of us. I could see the pain and loneliness on his face and I'm sure he could see mine.

It pretty much ended after that as I expected. But I felt ALIVE after those 3 weeks. I felt like a HUMAN BEING and MYSELF like I did when I was a single teenager. I was oblivious to how dead I was inside before he came along and although I didn't talk to him again, that guy opened my eyes and gave me life back. It felt spiritual. Even so, I battled with the old me and feeling extreme guilt over what I'd done. But I was shown what I was supposed to feel like and it gave me the strength to keep my grades up and graduate the next month. I got a job and had the strength to tell my husband he was gone and if he touched me I would tell our whole family all his filthy secrets. We devorced and don't talk anymore. What a blessing. How could I feel any guilt over such a good turn in events I don't know. I spent so long trying to convince myself that cheating was wrong and I was never going to stoop that low and I had to let go of that. Now that I have, I've never been better.

I still have depression because of my BPD but I rarely have fits now. I have a new boyfriend and he's everything I never had. We're working out my trauma and helping each other get ahead in life. I love no one more than I do him. I didn't even love my ex as deeply when I married him. We're even planning a family now. Something I had completely buried and said I didn't want after my babies died. It's been a year and a half and we have never once argued. We make joking bets on what our first fight will be about. Maybe the self the cereal goes on? Him leaving the lid up? He's my everything. Everything that dumb 17 year old me thought she would have. I have never been happier and more free in my life than I am now. I really believe that is mostly because of a hair trigger event that happened between me and a friend years ago. That is why I now don't judge immediately about affairs. Apparently sometimes that's what's needed to start to heal.