Scopikaz,
Good luck. It's a hard road, but many here have taken it and made it.
There are many great resources on this site. I found a lot of the stuff here really helpful:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=56204.0I finally understand my own part in the relationship I recently ended. I see how I became so sucked in and also why I stayed (left and kept returning) long beyond what was remotely healthy. I knew it all but kept doubting myself, my own reasons, my own actions (which were not perfect, not fully adult, in their own way).
In the end I understood that I'd learned enough and had to continue learning by myself for a while; that the lessons of the relationship had all been completed and now it was time to process them by myself and not expose myself to the confusion and toxicity any longer.
There's a lot of sadness in leaving a relationship, especially if you feel you haven't done everything you could, that you somehow failed the other person. Sometimes that is true, due to our own limitations, we just couldn't. That is what made me go back even after the confession of cheating. Finding out it had been going on for months, rather than a once-off during a break in our relationship, changed things for me. Not enough to make me leave right away though. I had to give it enough time to sink in, for me to realise how deeply disrespectful that was, how immature and selfish. Once I realised that I could never trust him again, I knew in my heart it was over.
There are always so many details, so many sharings and moments and vulnerabilities that we cherish about our partners. If we are 'good' people, then the knowledge that we've not honoured the other, as you put it, hurts us. That's a sign of caring and health in you, I think.
But be careful of blaming yourself. We do what we can with whatever we have in us at the time. Even if we've not done our so-called best, we did the best we could right then. And sometimes that's all we have and all there is.
I've burst into tears a few times in the last few days, whenever I think of the last moment I saw him, after I told him it was finally the end of the road for me. He stood with a crumpled shopping bag in his hand, looking at the ground, his shoulders slumped. For me, those physical signs of his inner pain are almost unbearable, because I'm an empath and I cared a very great deal for this person and saw his fragility and confusion and the potential for so much beauty in his soul.
Or so I think.
This is also someone who became vicious when I asked for simple information about the nature of the infidelity. Who blocked my attempts to understand, once his initial remorse wore off (rather quickly). Who got defensive and treated our conversations like they were a court room drama, rather than an attempt for two people to agree on the language they could use to understand each other. Who will experience a few days of gnawing loneliness and then hook up with someone else. I know this.
This truth must stand aside the other one. The wounded creature and the vicious liar; they are both true.
I understand your sadness.
