You make light of your experience, which is helpful sometimes, and your decriptions are so admirably explanatory. I just want to let you know that I am so sorry for your pain, for the hurt this woman has caused you, all the injury and for all you have had to go through because of her.
I imagine you might have felt such devistation to discover the things you did about your n-ex. I would feel so broken. Maybe you even felt a bit dirty, thinking you'd been with such a "gem" and finding she was an executive bicycle instead. I would feel so used and so discarded and so utterly taken (a wee play on words). She has sexually abused you. Even as you enjoyed the sex, it was an assault, once you realized that your most basic expressions of simple human love, in the most intimate of avenues with your "wife" were such a lie. The thievery was much more than money.
You must also have felt a great deal of anger and it must be hard not to hate this woman. But it seems like you're doing a good job.
I wonder if she caused you fear too? For your physical safety-disease-wise, depending on what precautions you used, which often are not used in marriage, unless to prevent pregnancy, because of the trust developed and assumed.
And that, may be what this person has taken most from you. She has raped your very soul and caused you to lose a greal deal of the respect you once had for women. She has taken away your desire to give that much love again to anyone else, ever again, because the risk is just too high. She has bitten off a huge chunk of your trust and spit it in your face, I think.
I'm only imagining what it must be like for you. But I do notice that you are doing very well. You have bothered to examine her very precisely and I want that- to give you hope, because with each detail, you gain insight into the patterns, and you also gain the ability to detect such patterns in the future. You are paying close attention to your own behaviour, which takes real honesty.
You are not a failure at marriage. You have not found the right person yet, and as you see yourself, you were not ready to be in a relationship again, when this leech shagged, I mean, snagged you.
Seriously, there is hope for the future and you are taking your time now, which shows how far you have come (no pun intended). The right person will be along sometime, and when she arrives, you will be ready to give your heart again.
