When your marriage ends because you discover your spouse has been deceiving you since the very beginning, you ask yourself, “Was my marriage a lie?”:
The fact that he was cross-dressing behind my back is, to me, a betrayal on the worst level. It’s like my whole marriage was a lie. I feel honestly, that he stole twelve and a half years of my life. ~ Andrea
Andrea and her husband married after a dating for just year although they met through a mutual friend. Andrea thought he was a perfect match but clearly she was mistaken.
The Divorce Coach Says:
With the end of a marriage, there is often a feeling that it leaves a void. It’s as if ending the marriage means it didn’t happen and so there’s this gap in your life as if getting divorced means erasing everything that happened.
When there’s been on-going, long term, chronic deception that feeling is magnified.
The deception changes your understanding of the fundamental character of your spouse and likely involves your spouse now appearing to be the polar opposite of one of your core values. Inevitably it raises issues of being able to trust other people but also about restoring faith in your own judgement.
Tackling these issues will be part of your healing.
Something else you can do is to look back over your marriage, all the places you visited together, the activities you did together, things you learned to do together and realize that these may not have happened if you hadn’t been married to your spouse. What did you get from each of these? How did each of these make your life richer? Without these you would not be the person you are today. They are a part of your history. You have a choice: you can embrace them or pretend they don’t matter. What will you choose?