9 years and a whole life change for nothing

by Lori
(Ontario)

I met my husband online. I lived in Europe, he's Canadian. After months of talking every day, many times a day and visits to each other we married and I left my family and friends in Europe and settled in Ontario. We had both been married before. I didn't know he had been married twice until I came here. Alarm bells began at that point but I was here and was not going to give up on marriage so easily.
I didn't realise he had a history of financial troubles until I came here, it seems I missed several other things too. However, I decided I would persevere, after all we were married now and I believed that maybe I had misunderstood the things that kept popping up; like the utilities being cut off, or him being arrested at the house for non payment of child support, or the car being towed because he was caught driving and has a suspended drivers license. He always had a plausible explanation for everything and it was always someone else who had caused the problem or made a mistake. I kept making excuses for him to myself, and to everyone outside of the marriage we looked like we had everything; a lovely home, he has a good job, I was working and going back to finish a degree but it was a front and I think I got less able to pretend as time went on. The relationship suffered obviously but over time it somehow became my fault and I began to believe maybe it was. Maybe if I'd been a better wife he would have been a better husband? I kept trying, we kept fighting as more and more issues came up that I couldn't ignore. I discovered there was a lien on our home for over $30,000 because he didn't pay his taxes, he told me was and that he was taking care of mine too. When we went out west for my daughter's wedding I came home early on the evening of the bachelorette and found him chatting intimately with his girlfriend, whom he was telling that he missed her smell and touch and how he couldn't believe they had found each other and fallen so deeply in love so quickly and on and on, he hadn't heard me come in. I was devastated on so many levels. I had been suspicious but he travels to Detroit a lot as he is a musician. That was over 6 months ago and I am still in the marital home but we are in separate rooms. I am in pain and he has moved on emotionally, quite happy to be living his life, seeing her as often as he likes, staying with her at weekends, knowing that I am trapped here in this house until I can finish my degree and get out of here. What hurts me the most is now he is telling everyone that the marriage was a sham and I only married him to come to Ontario in the first place, that he is the victim here. I am from the UK, not some outer region of nowhere, I have an education, I had little to gain coming here other than the man I believed I loved and loved me, lived here. I cry almost daily at the moment. I feel so betrayed and disillusioned. I have been angry, that was in the beginning, now I am so deeply sad that I am not functioning as well as i should.I hope that soon I will pass through this pain and feel hope for the future, at the moment it doesn't look like it's on the horizon but I know it has to be. For now, it's just one foot in front of the other until I find myself in a place where I can look back at this as a bad dream and hope I learned something from these last 10 years.