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?
I feel like Andrea a lot, when it comes to my marriage, and whether or not it was “real.” My ex-husband pretended to be what he thought I wanted to get me to like him, to fall in love with him, and to marry him; the person I thought I married DIDN’T EXIST. When the scales fell away, and he showed his true colors and who he really was, he showed himself to be the kind of person I would never associate with, much less befriend or love/marry.
In my mind, it was a legal marriage, but it was never a real partnership or marriage in spirit, because from his end, it was all lies.
Thank you for sharing this Erin. It is very hard to accept that level of deception. I can completely understand why you would question your marriage being real. Are you able to see any positives or gifts from your marriage?
At this point, I see very few positives. The only positive is that the relationship gave me the necessary fiscal stability that I needed to finish my undergrad degree, which in turn gave me the confidence to pursue graduate work. But I was on my way to doing this anyway, with or without the relationship; the relationship just seemed to speed it up. The positives came more from ending the relationships, and the lessons I learned from that experience.
Yes … ending my marriage was huge personal growth for me – learning to make my needs a priority and speaking up for my needs. I regard those as gifts from my marriage and I mean that sincerely, not sarcastically 🙂
Wow, I feel the same way! I’m sorry for what you went through, too. After years of being divorced, I’m discovering things that make me think I was lied to the whole time. And I believed him! I feel like an idiot. He used me the whole time. I had the good job, I had the nice car. He conned me into leaving my friends and family to get married. What a con job.
My wife is dead set on divorce. I’ve been faithful, never treated her unkindly nor do I have any addictions such as gambling or drugs. Over the last 15 years I’ve grown a little more open and out going but on the whole I’ve not changed all that much since we got married. I don’t feel I’ve done anything unforgivable. We had been distant over the last few years and of course kids made that harder not easier to find time with each other. I’ve always assumed we had time once the kids were older to reconnect properly. I think she had discussed it with others and made up her mind before she even told me. Since she told me, I’ve tried everything I can think of to convince her to stay because I love her so much. I’ve tried to reconnect but the harder I try the more she seems to resist and close me out. In the end she says she doesn’t love me, she moved out 7 months ago and is still pushing towards divorce. I feel like my marriage has been a lie. That if she had loved me at all she would see the efforts I have made and found a way to love me and not push me away. She seems to have no interest in saving our marriage and we have had two separate marriage counselors say just as much. It’s hard for me not to feel as though she has lied to me when I love her now just as much as the day I asked her to marry me and she seems to have no emotions toward me what so ever.
Overtyme – from what you say, it seems clear that your wife no longer loves you but that doesn’t mean she never did. Do you believe she loved you when you got married? Do you believe it’s possible for a person to stop loving another? I would discourage you from seeing your marriage a complete lie – try to look for the gifts along the way. It’s difficult to do this while you’re still grieving and struggling to accept the end of your relationship. If I were to ask you to talk about the good memories from your marriage what would you say? Did your wife help you be a better person? A better parent?
Healing from the end of your marriage is very important and it helps when you can see that your marriage was not a waste or sham. I would be happy to talk to you more about this – please use my contact form to arrange a free 30-minute consult : https://sincemydivorce.com/contact/
So my husband posts all these wonderful things on fb about how much he loves me and it seems from pictures we are happy. But we barely kiss and make love and most of our photo trips were unplanned and stressful. We have an average of 1 sex per month, and 95% i initiated. Im starting to think he is gay. Im starting to feel like my marriage is a lie. Ive talked to him abt it but it just made it more stressful. We cant have kids because theres just no frequency at all plus i have pcos and the lack of sex made it worse for us not to have kids. We are 35 yr olds with no kids but we have a sex life of a 55 year old couple. Ive decided to keep quiet abt it and wait on him to initiate so he doesnt feel pressured. i dont really know what to do anymore. Making love and kissing are my love language. But it hasnt sunk on him. No matter what i do. The more he doesnt want to do. Its a fake marriage with all these photos and lovey dovey stuff. It has no real connection and substance.