@NowWhat106. thank you! I asked to have this reopened so I could update and then I took a deep breath and read back through the entire thread while I was waiting. It is so so painful to relive those early days and I cried reading some of the things I wrote, thought, felt and hoped for. I can't even remember posting some of those things. And I could viscerally feel that awful first confrontation all over again. But it feels so different to read what all of you wrote to me in those early days with new eyes. You all told me everything that would happen, you told me who my husband was inside, you shared your own stories that ended up paralleling mine, you gave me all of the right advice. I kept nodding along as I'm re-reading yesterday like yep, yep, that happened, yep, nailed it, turned out that was also right. And just the collective wisdom and connections everyone drew, so spot on - I think that even more now that I'm in a slightly better place with a tiny bit more perspective but even back then the emotional grounding was clearly helping me in such dark moments. I owe you all so much thanks and more.
Turns out that divorce doesn't end the emotional rollercoaster (official as of November 6th) but there is a new space to breathe on this side of it, and I'm trying to focus on that breathing space now. And it's weird but the thing that actually feels like a new leaf isn't being single - I still don't feel single, I might post in another forum to figure out what I'm supposed to feel now - but the actual new leaf was moving out of my former marital home and into my new home. I didn't realize until we moved that the marital home was the source of an ungodly amount of stress and anxiety, looking back it was like living in a crime scene.
A few new revelations about xWH came out in the last couple of months - the worst of it was I found a cloud backup of one of xWH's old laptops from maybe 10 years ago, searched it and found that he tested positive for Herpes I antibodies and he photoshopped the results to send to one of his OW. The original test was HSV-1 (pos) and HSV-2 (neg) and he copied the antibody level info from the negative result and photoshopped it onto the positive one, saved as a new file. This predates my pregnancy, which means he didn't disclose this even once I was pregnant. Of course it also means he exposed his million partners who came after that as well, but at this point I care more about myself and my son. My attorney knows, I chose not to pursue it legally despite that being an option in our state - but I did tell the Whistlesucker OW and also gave her the info she needs in case she would like to pursue it legally. I tested negative a year ago after dday, but had another much more extensive set of tests for every conceivable STD recently (still negative!) and xWH has to pay for annual testing for me for the next 5 years. So that's awful.
The cloud backup also included a few videos of xWH jerking off in the shower, and nudes of two different women and one man. It also had enough info to piece together the pathetic saga of xWH trying to get involved in the swinger community as a solo man and being shut out, after which he discovered sex clubs and had memberships at at least two. It also yielded some info about an OW from the state we used to live in, which helped our forensic accountant to add to the estimate of the amount of money xWH spent on sexwork and his longer term affair trips, gifts, memberships, etc. The total was in the mid tens of thousands of dollars. Unbelievable. Just so fucked up and self indulgent and grotesque.
Also - how did he have the time?? I swear you would think that he was never home or was a traveling salesman living life on the road, but he wasn't! He travels for work a lot (obviously not as much as I thought though) but otherwise was generally mostly home at night. I would have characterized him as a homebody! But then he also works from home, so I think most of this happened during the day and the rest on real or fake work trips. I'll never know.
And on that note I'm not going to follow up on any of the other women or men or expenses I found, I'm never going to look for anything else, and I think back on wanting to know more about what xWH did and I realize you all were right the entire time - that it doesn't matter. I don't need to know. I will never know why, I can't really figure out the 'how', and I know enough of the what and when and who to last me a lifetime. My sister is the only one who knows all the details and I gave her all of my info to lock away so it's not in my new home. I can't figure out if I need to save any of it now that the divorce is final, if I'll ever want or need it? I can't imagine, it seems like it's a huge pile of radioactive waste. Any advice? Ditch it? Keep it? What do people do with all of the infidelity evidence afterwards?
On the positive side we have a new house! My son and I call it the Tree House because it has a huge deck built around a beautiful old tree! And is otherwise also surrounded by them! I gave myself the smallest bedroom, something about the master bedroom just screams 'marital bedroom' to me and when I tried sleeping in there I had a panic attack. I just feel the need to be in a small, manageable space right now. I hate that I feel so traumatized, I'm back and forth with feeling occasional waves of fury at xWH for this, but I also realize that the divorce and move gave me the space to start dealing with a lot I was holding back through all of this.
Another positive thanks to the suggestions from everyone here, my son is now in fencing class and I'm taking aerial dance! I'm terrible! And I totally love it, it's very athletic and will eventually be graceful, maybe, and it requires all my concentration and a shocking amount of muscle! I've passed the stage where I'm just doing floor and mat work and starting climbing and a few simple moves from there. It was a great suggestion, to enroll in a class outside my comfort zone! I hope I never have a close friend who goes through something like this, but if they do I'll share this advice with them, too, it's been a lifesaver!