Finding the truth

I finally found the truth N. After a 7 year relationship, promisees of marriage, and his move 800 miles away and thinking it was odd he contacted his ex wife. His ex-wife says they are still married I checked and they are, so it's true. They are living 2000 miles apart, and have been for 16 years. He's lied to his entire family and I.
She has been apparently waiting all these years in hopes of him coming to his senses?. I am not sure why she'd agree to this kind of arrangement. He would keep in touch off and on, they only lived together for 2 years, but she stays married to him for 16 years after only living in the same house hold for 2 years? She knows he's having other relationships with other women. What's this about?

It appears to be about an extremely gullible wife.

RopedIn wrote:He's lied to his entire family and I.
She has been apparently waiting all these years in hopes of him coming to his senses?.

I can relate to that. I married in a foreign country and divorced here a year later. I considered myself divorced, and yet I still felt there was a possibility I could move there and resume a broken marriage, which wasn't broken there. I didn't lead my ex to believe that was happening. It was mutually over. She signed the papers here. But, we stayed in contact. I went there occasionally (as friends, no intimacy). Looking back on it, I believe my motivation returning was that I was a "big fish in a little pond." But, mentally, I think I liked to have options available to my narrative. I could paint that option blacker as I sought something here, then paint it lighter when whatever I tried here didn't work. It added a rationality or escape to an increasingly irrational and inescapable existence. I didn't firmly consider it over (not a possibility of an option) until 2010, about 6 years after the divorce.

He could be more malignant and psychopathic, deliberately being intimate with two women (like a bigomist, hiding the other person). That's not how I considered myself. At least cognitively, I didn't have an emotional investment with two people at the same time. If I dated/met someone here I be honest that we divorced, but I liked it in that other country and had continued to think about going there. I was playing both sides, but I had some level of conscience that I wasn't committing infidelity (missing the point that I was doing something much worse, self-serving in a much more systemic way, without regard to my ex or the women I might "test drive" for comparison here.).

So, I'm not trying to say it's a minor thing. But, I wouldn't see it (especially at the time) in the way a non probably would like bigomy. It seemed very proper and explainable.

-- Sun Oct 11, 2015 3:49 am --

Spaced wrote:It appears to be about an extremely gullible wife.

That's probably true, if @roped's description of the wife's complicity. He's probably given her some "I need to find myself" nonsense and she thinks the hope he'll return is better than being the cause of the more permanent abandonment.

In my case it wouldn't be about me abandoning her. It would be about me making her abandon me. As long as she's willing to be like that, it's supply. "It's not my fault she won't leave me. I've done everything I can." But, in the meantime, he gets supply by having that option. Having someone waiting for him, pining.

Okay, but what is she thinking? His family has no clue they are still married until I told them once I found out. She has been sitting there 2000 miles away only contacting him once in a while until recently when he contacted her recently. She stayed and then went back home. How do they think that is even possibly going to work? Wait for his parents to die and then get back together? She is aware of his relationships. Seriously, not any sort of marriage, but she'd like to think so. She's lived with her mother her entire life except for the two years he lived with her husband and she sits and waits since 1999 to come back? Crazy.

I agree that he probably keeps her around for an option when he's unable to find someone else. When I met him in 2006 he said he had just recently started talking to his x wife (wife) and then it seemed he had cut contact except for an email once and a while. He did tell her about me, because I saw the email. He said, this is my girlfriend for the last 6 years. Can you believe someone has put up with me that long? She replied with saying " she has good taste" She's basically his doormat.

The last 7 years of my life was a complete lie that he created and I's shocking his entire family has been lied to as well. And she can't see this?

RopedIn wrote:Okay, but what is she thinking?
Can you believe someone has put up with me that long? She replied with saying " she has good taste" She's basically his doormat.

In cases like this it's unclear who the doormat is. It always takes two to tango. What you've described is her contacting him for 16 years? Not concerned about being divorced. It sounds like she has own problems which make her extremely vulnerable to the Echo role. Maybe that's an avoidant trait?

RopedIn wrote:And she can't see this?

Since you've been in contact with her, have you considered inviting her to the forum? People attracted to Ns have their own hole to fill. Some get it filled quickly, others take years. It sounds like she would benefit from having people to talk to about her situation.

She's not aware of his NPD. And she wasn't happy about me contacting her. So, I won't be contacting her again.